"Forget it. I feel like you should give it up. If you use these 30 years to cultivate, you'll at least become a Shushan Sword Sage. As for a Great Dao Mystique, just cultivate any one. When you reach the point where you feel like 30 years is a short time, you can come back to train it. Erase all your previous mystiques and train a new one. You'll be starting from the bottom, and you will lose a majority of your fighting power for a while, but in the long run, as long as you eventually integrate the immortal's Heaven Dao Mystique, you will be terrifying." Ming Long gave a long sigh.

Evidently, she was needling Wu Yu.

"To think that back in the day, I got this Ruyi Jingu Bang when all my mystiques had already taken shape. That is why I didn't have the chance to choose like you do now. But now I find that, in your position, to make such a choice requires extraordinary bravery. Who knows, you might be killed by someone else within these 30 years before even succeeding. Wouldn't that be a shame?"

Done speaking, Ming Long, free from the burden of such a choice, began to cackle delightedly at Wu Yu's predicament.

"I'll think on this." Wu Yu shut his eyes. Faced with this unbelievably difficult choice, his mind was definitely conflicted. Ming Long did not elaborate on the details of the Great Sage, Heaven's Equal's Mystique, evidently because obtaining it was a difficult process.

Spend 30 years of cultivation time to communicate with the Ruyi Jingu Bang? Or choose a different path and spend the 5,000 merits to obtain a different mystique and cultivate it first, changing later?

30 years was too long. He didn't even know how badly he would suffer in that time.

Virtually all martial cultivators would quail at such a time.

But to back down before such an important treasure, who could bear it?

"Think carefully. What is the most important thing to you?" Ming Long left him those parting words before vanishing before his eyes.

What was most important?

On the spot, Wu Yu could not understand her words.

Two paths before him. One was too difficult to walk, requiring extreme bravery.

The other was too unbearable to walk. There was clearly a better, yet unchoosable choice. How could Wu Yu bear to cultivate a mystique that was not the Great Sage, Heaven's Equal's?

"My life has yet to even span 30 years.

"What will I, Wu Yu, be like in 30 years’ time? If I give up on the chance to cultivate mystique, what disadvantages will I have to bear? As for the Clear Sky of Shushan, I will never be able to go there."

At this juncture, Wu Yu slowly opened his eyes, looking at the boundless world before him.

He suddenly understood a logic.

Cultivation sometimes required courage that ordinary people could not comprehend.

Wu Yu wanted to become immortal. And becoming immortal meant that you had to go out of your way to reach the best results. That was why he could not bear to choose the second path. He was intensely reluctant.

In that instant, when he made his decision, his inner being burned as though on fire.

His intense gaze was like a flame, and the snow around him melted.

"I have made my decision!" Wu Yu suddenly roared, shaking the forests and hills.

"What?" Ming Long had just disappeared, but the scare caused her to come back out to regard Wu Yu.

Wu Yu's gaze was resolute as he faced Ming Long. At this moment, it seemed like his very soul itself had been enlightened. He spoke clearly, "I choose the Heaven Dao Mystique! I want to become immortal, so I must cultivate the most incredible of dao!"

"Are you mad? Such an important 30 years, and you want to pass the time in seclusion? How many transformations will you pass up on?" Ming Long felt that this was incomprehensible. Actually, she understood Wu Yu's situation, and she naturally felt that Wu Yu had no need to immediately chase the Heaven Dao Mystique. Although conversion at a later time would incur some loss, he would still master it eventually.

Wu Yu smiled slightly. He did not reply to Ming Long, but directly entered the pattern.

Since he had made such a decision, it was because Wu Yu was brimming with confidence.

This confidence had come from his resemblance to the Unparalleled Monkey King, whether in terms of nature or in will. But he had realized that Ming Long was far from the Unparalleled Monkey King in many ways. The biggest difference was that Ming Long was a girl, whereas the Unparalleled Monkey King was a male.

Ming Long was the last inheritor of the legacy, but a successor who was not very suitable. That was why her spending 30 years did not confine Wu Yu, nor cause him to shrink back in fear.

"Why would she need 30 years? Can't I just acquire the Heaven Dao Mystique within a year?"

This was the powerful belief and will in Wu Yu's heart, which had caused him to make such a decision.

"Even if I spend a long time, I want to acquire this mystique. My dao should defy the laws of nature itself. It should be courage first, and there should be no path in this world which I do not dare to walk!

"How else can I become an immortal? And join the ranks of the immortals?"

This strong, fiery belief had set Wu Yu's brain afire. He did not care about Ming Long's warning, but directly returned to Heaven's Equal Peak and shut himself in. It was a complete seclusion, and then he sat in the middle of the palace, within the dense spiritual qi of Shushan. He used his Immortal Ape Transformation to turn into a golden ape. The wall before him was extremely shiny, like a mirror, and Wu Yu could see his reflection in it.

Golden hair, a fit body, sharp eyes, explosive power. One look made others tremble.

"This is me."

Wu Yu only had one way of communicating with the Ruyi Jingu Bang, and that was through Visualizing the Inner Ape.

Visualizing the Inner Ape brought forth fire, and within the golden flames, the armor-clad Unparalleled Monkey King roamed. With the Ruyi Jingu Bang in his hand, he smashed his way through the world and leveled seas and heavens wherever he went.

How awesome, how majestic, how arrogant, how disdainful!

Seeing the him in the wall, Wu Yu was very clear that he was worlds apart from the Great Sage, Heaven's Equal, the Victorious Fighting Buddha.

Not just in terms of ability, but in terms of mental fortitude, in will!

Comparing the two, Wu Yu was like a newborn infant, while the Sage's will conquered the world!

"Great Sage, Heaven's Equal! Born of a want to level the world. Victorious Fighting Buddha, lives for battle. The victor is the king and the alpha. These two names are the embodiment of the will!"

It has to be said that each time he Visualized the Inner Ape, he would be taken aback. Each time Wu Yu met the eyes of the golden Monkey King, Wu Yu's spirit would be taken to a higher level.

"I want to become him!"

Before he knew it, Wu Yu had developed an extremely powerful longing.

He continued to inspect his image in the wall. He looked at the Great Sage, Heaven's Equal within the flames, and then at himself.... Through repeating this over and over again, he could very clearly see the direction that he would work towards from then on.

This meeting had shaken his very spirit itself.

To Wu Yu, this Unparalleled Monkey King within the flames was no longer a being. He was a dao! An indescribable, but complete and mystical dao!

"My future dao!"

Cultivating dao depended on one's nature, on one's transformations, on one's fate, and the choices that one made.

Wu Yu, in all aspects, dared to choose more so than other geniuses. And now the choice that he made, to him, had broken through his own mental limits to a certain level. It promoted his spiritual will, and even his dao, to an even higher level!

This sort of embodiment and refining was of enormous benefit to refining his Jindan! As the outlines within Wu Yu's eyes became clearer and clearer, his rate of refining Jindan began to rise speedily and intangibly.

In the Jindan Dao Realm, as long as one's spirit of dao continued to progress, then wanting to increase Jindan essence was not a difficult task.

Hu!

His golden ape body began to spout golden flames. The entire palace was on fire, and Wu Yu's gaze only intensified within them.

"How did he do it?" Ming Long was constantly watching him. As she felt Wu Yu's spirit begin to aggressively rise, his heart of dao became more and more resolute. In some abstract way, his understanding of this world had further deepened.

"He has yet to reach the dao contemplation level, and yet already has such an intense heart of dao. Could it be that he really is a more suitable successor to the Great Sage than I am?" Ming Long was starting to doubt herself now. In truth, if she had been of the same nature as Wu Yu back then, and had his guts and his meticulousness, she would not have been hit unconscious by the legacy, and perhaps she would not have died.

"He clearly knows that it will take 30 years, but still he dares to try. He was not intimidated. Whereas, I was impatient - in order to chase power, I refused to hold myself back for even a moment. Could it be that this is the difference between him and I? And the reason that the Great Sage does not like me?"

Ming Long thought all of this to herself, and Wu Yu naturally did not know.

He only had one belief in his heart, and that was to become the being in the flames. Like him, he would become immortal, and live disdainfully above all in the sky palace.

Each time, he changed, and looked at himself, and visualized the Inner Ape.

Wu Yu soon lost track of how much time had passed, and even that Nangong Wei would be looking for him. At this moment, there was only one notion in his heart. He had even forgotten about obtaining a Great Dao Mystique. While facing the Great Sage, Heaven's Equal, he was finding himself, and endeavoring to find a way that was close, yet not exactly like him.

Days and nights passed, and time passed.

Wu Yu only felt that their stare seemed as long as 30 years. He had originally thought he would dread such a long time passing, and that he would be deeply affected by it. But now that he was actually on the path, as long as he was contemplating, time did not seem so important.

One day, when his mental will had intensified to an unprecedented level, as though it would rip apart all that was before him, he suddenly heard the Unparalleled Monkey King speaking to him through the flames.

"Immortal domains crumble, and the immortals fall. To stop the body from failing, and the gods from falling, the stalemate breaker, the chosen one!"

Wu Yu only heard these words dimly, but they continued to echo in a thunderous voice. He only remembered the last six words: the stalemate breaker, the chosen one.

He could not react, but could only take in all that was happening before him. Suddenly, from within the flames, the armor-clad Great Sage, Heaven's Equal rode a cloud of fire and appeared before him. At such a distance, Wu Yu was stifled.

"Today, I impart to you the Mystique Unshackled Doppelganger. On the day that you master it, you can create hundreds of thousands of body doubles, and you will be the commander of an army of millions."