My God am I tired. I'm not even quite sure why; it's not as though I expended a lot of Qi or stamina teaching the kids, but it feels as though I'd ran a marathon under the sun, just without the severe dehydration to prove it.
Maybe it was the nervousness? I mean, this may have been the first time I've genuinely guided the kids in cultivation, rather than just giving them some vague advice about life or something like that. It apparently took a lot on my end to maintain some semblance of composure.
Made the kids happy, at least.
And it did come with some benefits--a total of 2,000 points as part of the kids gaining understandings of the art, as well as me actually being a proper teacher. Which made me curious about something: what if Long Tao gained this system instead of me? Maybe one more 'specialized' for this era, but with the same concept.
He'd be able to understand all the arts he creates, and would be able to effortlessly teach them to his Disciples.
... no, wait. Long Tao I met way back when would probably not have taken any Disciples. He may have just done what my supposed predecessors did: went at it solo.
Huh.
Anyway, the points weren't actually the most tantalizing award.
[--guiding your Disciples properly has triggered a special reward][...][Perfect Comprehension Talisman (???) x1 -- gain a complete comprehension of any of your arts or methods of Myth and below tier. Must still have minimum requirements to gain art comprehension]
This was applicable basically to... everything? Well, no, two arts came to mind that this couldn't be used on: Song of Hellfire and Tethers of Naẁa. Counting just those that I can learn to begin with.
Which one to use this on left me a bit befuddled, to be honest. There were the obvious choices: Protean Song of Eternity as my mainstay cultivation method--no, wait, that one's quasi-Divine as well--or maybe the Harmonized Heart Sutra, or even Surging Spirit Art.
None would be bad choices, I don't think, and reaching 'complete comprehension' of any of them would allow me to eventually transfer that onto the kids, letting them skip a huge grind.
If I think of it like that, and consider what would be the most helpful option... it has to be the Surging Spirit Art, no? One worry I have is that it's 'merely' quasi-Myth art, and that I'm leaving something on the table by not choosing a full-tier Myth art like Harmonized Heart Sutra or even Art of Surviving.
Though I first considered the latter, as that would allow us to have so many disguises we'd be a troop of a thousand faces, it doesn't really help us in combat. Besides, even with just two extra faces--three in total if we consider our original ones--it's more than enough to stay under the radar for now.
Ugh.
There's also the difficulty of comprehension to consider, which is why I'm leaning towards Surging Spirit Art as it's one of the arts with Transcendent difficulty. Very few of my creations reach that, but there is also a step above it, and something that was a back-screamer of sorts that I'm desperately trying to ignore: Enduring Eternity.
Not the upgraded version, but the 'original' one. Despite having 'graduated' to the Protean Song of Eternity, we are still technically also cultivating Enduring Eternity. I'm kind of curious what would the relationship and outcome be if I and the kids reached the complete comprehension of the method that has '???' in its comprehension difficulty segment.
... oh no. The curiosity is burning. It's surging like a tsunami wave.
What will happen?
Welp.
Time to find out.
**
Long Tao was lazily lounging around and thinking back to Master's little lesson to Rayce. Though the man had shared a good chunk of that with him already back when he taught him of the existence of black holes, he shared a bit more during this lesson.
While the idea of compressing things was far from unknown as virtually every cultivator who wanted to ascend needed to understand that concept, there was always a stoppage point--and it was usually around the size of a fingernail. Compressing any further was impossible, as it was simply too unstable and hard to control.
Now that he'd heard Master's lesson, Long Tao vaguely understood why; if it had been that simple, whole worlds would have likely collapsed by now.
But his thirst for knowledge wasn't satiated. It was clear that his Master had a completely alternate understanding of the world that was far more detailed than his. Even if Long Tao understood air, or understood fire, or even understood life itself, it felt like his Master understood them, too, but in unilaterally different ways. Whether they were more profound or not was irrelevant--just the fact they were different meant that Long Tao could use that knowledge to sharpen his strength.
Just as he was about to stand up and go bother the man, he paused; a surge of energy so pure and holy left him aghast as his eyes immediately flew to his right where, some forty yards in the distance, he saw the golden light burn upward into a pillar that faded into a shower of embers.
Within it, a figure of a familiar man arose from the ground. Master was in a lotus position, levitating some ten feet above the ground, his eyes closed, while countless halos of light surged and vanished around him in a continuous cycle.
He sped to the front immediately as everyone else gathered, worried and confused expressions across their faces. But Long Tao's held neither; instead, his bore an expression of abject horror and shock.
He'd seen this phenomenon--just once, actually. It was when he watched a Disciple of his comprehend a small martial art Long Tao handed over. By some miracle, the young girl entered a complete and total state of Enlightenment and managed to burn through the realms of comprehension until she reached the final one--that of Dao itself.
Master's figure was aglow with white and golden, plumes of energy swirling around him like cosmic rays. At the same time, an image surged from behind him, a reminder of something that Long Tao had seen a long while back when he stood as a Dharma Protector for Master while the latter underwent a breakthrough: the visage of an Azure Dragon.
But this time... it was not alone. Rather, it resided in the shade of a heaven-spanning bodhi tree that arose from the back. It sprawled and fanned out widely, its canopy seemingly bearing the weight of the firmament above.
The Dragon roared, but it was not the kind of a roar that the world would hear--but they did. Instinctively, they all sat down and crossed their legs, including Long Tao.
Master was resonating with Dao itself, and this was the remnant hum. If they could capture it, even just the smallest trace of it, the benefits would be unimaginable.
Though the question of what exactly Master did to trigger this phenomenon--or, rather, which art did he resonate with so deeply to emulate Dao--was burning him up from within, now wasn't the time to ponder. It was the time to grasp the opportunity and greatly accelerate his comprehension of Eternal Voidfiend Sutra, finally breaking away from Minor and reaching Intermediate.