Chapter 7

Dao’s of the world

Well before his three month deadline to learn his clans mediocre beginners level magic, Sai headed out of the house and towards the Chief’s mansion. After half an hour of walking, wind on his back thanks to his level one elemental wind magic, he reached the home of my clan chief. Sai knocked at the seemingly unguarded front door.

“Hello,” a man dressed as a servant answered the door, completely overlooking Sai. After a moment, he looked down to Sai’s tiny body then exclaimed, “ah, it has already been a month and you have done what your elders are still incapable of doing. Show me, I need to see your wind technique!” At his demand, Sai lifted his hand and presented the essence of wind. In many novels Sai had read when he lived on Earth, essence of an element was the highest point of understanding of the element. On his new planet however, learning the essence just shows that you are capable of drawing in energy of that specific element from the heavens and earth. This means that at his level of understanding, he was barely capable of drawing in the wind energy that is around him, let alone having the utmost understanding of the wind element. Of course, the Chief was unaware that Sai knew this much already, so afterward the Chief brought Sai inside to his study, which was now void of the intimidating violet eyed “chief”.

“Sit, sit. No need to stand on formality here. I invited you here to tell you some important information on magic as well as some important information in general.” Sai sat, as the Chief said and he continued to speak. “Firstly, you are only at the most basic point in magic, control over the essence just means that you can only use the most basic amount of magic, that which comes from the heaven and the earth. This means that your journey has only begun. At this point, you can be considered to be in the elementary stage, or stage one. Each stage is also divided into sub-stages, elementary stage one, elementary stage two, and so on till you get to stage ten, which is the maximum stage for each group. I only know of a handful of groups, the first being elementary, the second being named the basic stage, and the third being apprentice stage. I can assume there are at least a handful of stages past that, but the highest stage that I know the name of is the apprentice stage. You getting this so far?”

“Oh, yeah, basic stuff. I can barely move wind, so I am barely considered an elementary level mage,” Sai replied. All of this except the stages of success in controlling elements he had already knew just from experience. Sai wondered about what level was average in their village at that time, hoping the Chief couldn't tell he had already learned these things.

“Ah, yes, the average of our village,” the Chief says, obviously hearing my thoughts despite that. “You are currently the most promising member of our village, you seem to have gained a basic understanding in three elements, I had originally wanted to teach you about my thunder magic, but too much of a good thing will be a bad thing in this situation. It will hinder your growth rate rather than help you to be stronger. Im sure that this didn’t answer your question, but currently I am the strongest in our small tribe, my strength level is already at elementary level two. This means that the average level is also in the elementary stage, with your father having barely reached the basic level.” The Chief explained, continuing to explain further, “The most important thing is that there are multiple ways to reach each level.

“Each level can be reached by either learning magic, which can only go so far, or learning to use a weapon, which can only go so far as well. You are limited by your own ability with either. For magic, as long as you have some reserve magic, you can continue to use it. After exhausting your reserves though, you must expend your life force in order to maintain a spell, after so long, there won’t be any life force left and you will die. Similarly, if you are training with the sword or spear, and exhaust your energy you will make a fatal mistake or use too much energy and expend your life force in a different way. This is the set of skills that our tribe accels in, physical capabilities. On average, our warriors are at the basic level in direct combat, your father is just a step below me at the beginning of basic level one, while I am at the peak of basic level one. As this is our primary technique such, I will begin to train you in weapons so as to boost your overall strength, this will also help you to understand the elements.”

“I have a couple of questions, if that is alright?” Sai asked, unsure if he was even allowed to speak in this situation. After getting consent to ask Sai began, “How many elements are there?”

“There are quite a lot, they are wood, wind, water, thunder, ice, fire, earth, steel, light and dark. These elements are then broken down from these elements into dao’s. For example, your father practices the dao of the gale. The dao of the gale is a subset of the dao of wind. This was told to me by my master many years ago, before I returned to the tribe to lead.”

Sai had felt like he had struck a gold mine here. Most people wouldn’t even be told about the major dao’s or the fact that they had subsets until they reached a point where they had learned more than the most basic information about the dao’s, such as his situation. Sai had also realized at that specific moment that dao’s that existed in the heavens and earth likely made up the heaven and earth.

“I will have to stop you there, your wild speculations, even if they are correct will not be of any help to you on your path of cultivation. What will help you is…” The Chief’s voice trailed off, his body slowed down, as if covered by molasses till he stopped moving. The birds outside became quiet, and a single fly hovering around the corner of the room stopped moving mid flight. This situation genuinely scared Sai. What could have literally turned off time?

“Oh, come on Sai. You’re smarter than this.” The ephemeral voice from Silent’s second birth returned.

Oh joy, Sai thought. The guy who killed my parents is back again to tell me how I can help him with whatever was more important than my family and myself. Oh please great Orza, command me to do thy bidding, that is what I’m here for. Sarcasm filled the tiny voice in Sai’s head, he knew that thinking was a faster way of communication between himself and Orza, Sai had also hoped that this self-proclaimed god understood what sarcasm was.

“Yes, I do know what sarcasm is, and your humor only amuses yourself. I could have left you in this situation learning absolute bullshit from this idiot. So, this guy, your Chief, he has no idea what he is talking about, and that is why he has only reached the second stage. There are eleven stages that you need to worry about now, and you will likely take decades to even get to the halfway mark. Only after that can you finally reach a higher plane of existence.” Orza explained, clearly not happy that he planted Sai in such a backwater tribe that had little understanding of the dao. “Keep wondering about how the world works, that is the path to cultivation. Like on your old planet, understanding how the world works meant that you could use technology to control it. On this planet, my planet, you use cultivation in the same way. Technology is a luxury that only those who cannot cultivate use. The next thing I will tell you to help your cultivation is that you do not need a book or master in order to absorb elemental energy from the heaven and earth, you merely need to learn how to sort this energy in order to use it. Penultimately, there are thousands upon thousands of dao’s and you will do well to learn the basic ones first. final thing I will tell you is that there is a fundamental difference between following the path of the mage in order to cultivate the dao and following the path of the warrior to cultivate the dao. You want to do both. Do not, set your sights on a single path, this will lead to greater power in the future.”

After Orza’s long winded explanation of the dao time returned to normal, the Chief continued without realizing that he had even been stopped. “..picking one single path and seeing it to the end. This will mean that you will begin with a dao of the gale, continue to the end, then find out something about the dao of wind that also works with the dao of the gale which helps you to reach the complete understanding of the dao of wind.”

Sai understood both this concept and the concept that Orza presented. According to Orza, because all of the daos are linked, since the world is made up of a mixture of all of the daos understanding them together will build a stronger base understanding and help link all of them together. The Chief however believed that once you reach the end of a dao, you can then move on. It seemed that the Chief’s way would allow me to grow my rank faster, while Orza’s will allow me to grow stronger before finally raising ranking.

The Chief continued to speak while Sai pondered on the best path to take in order to rank higher. Sai heard him mention something along the lines of studying a weapon and using it for a dao of his own, as well as using his fists as a dao based weapon. After hearing this, Sai’s young self grew extremely excited. He had imagined waving a sword covered in flame and thrusting a spear with the power of the earth. His imagination grew wild as he thought of all of the possibilities. Maybe, just maybe this place is where I was always meant to be.

“So, Sai, what weapon do you want to learn? What weapon will you use to boost your power as well as mine?” The Chief asked genuinely, knowing he had lost Sai’s attention. He was unprepared for Sai’s answer, especially since it had gone directly against his idea of how to get stronger.

“I need to use them all.” Sai’s claim shocked the Chief. Most people only used one weapon, but Sai thought that if he found a different weapon that was more powerful, if he knew how to use it, he could. The Chief recovered from his shock by assuming that Sai needed to try before he picked one, the Chief likely wouldn't be happy over this.

The Chief kept speaking to Sai about his upcoming training as they headed down to his weapons room to find some for Sai to “test out”.