Long Tao was staring intently at his Master, a man who was quite dedicated to pretending to meditate. It was quite inspiring, actually, as even Long Tao himself would not have been able to pretend that hard.
He'd been surprised by the man whose eyebrows were involuntarily twitching while droplets of sweat began to drip down his temples, and he'd been surprised many of times by now. Each time it happened, he was certain he'd be less shocked the next time around, but even that belief had been spurned one too many times before to rely on it.
As such, when he saw the man utilize Dao of Space so proficiently--and so uniquely, more importantly--he was massively shocked, but wasn't as surprised to be that shocked. But it was impossible to remain indifferent to it, try as he may.
Dao of Space was one of the oddities of the countless paths--practically every cultivator simply had to understand it to some degree as they otherwise could not break through into the Void Transformation Realm, and even beyond that, utilizing any notable movement arts needed a deeper understanding of Dao of Space. But there as a hard line, the 'Great Cutoff', past which very few, if any, had ever trodden.
Long Tao himself had never managed to master Dao of Space past a certain point; in fact, he managed to master Dao of Time to a greater degree than the former, despite the fact that 'Time' as a concept was vastly more confounding.
As such, Dao of Space remained in this limbo, where it was easy to grasp, but once a certain comprehension of it was reached, going any further just... stopped being possible for whatever reason.
Seeing Master utilize it so differently than anyone Long Tao had seen before made it clear that there was a path beyond what they could gasp, that the road didn't simply end at a certain point with no other options.
More than that, it was also clear that Master didn't understand why his utilization of it was confounding; the man he was fighting, whatever his name was as Long Tao could not bother remembering, put up about as good of a defense as one could. Even Long Tao would not have been able to do much better without ever having seen anything like it.
Even that, though, was potently dangerous as it was clear Master's mastery of it was still quite low. The sheer quantity of Qi that he expended with every act was borderline self-abusive and definitely not sustainable in a prolonged fight, but on the highest level, if he managed to lower the expenditure...
He was burning up inside over wanting to ask him how he did it, but now was neither the time nor the place. They had to drop of these vermin of the cult and leave, though if it were up to Long Tao, he would have killed them all on the spot.
These were clearly some low-level branch members that had likely never stepped foot past the Gates and couldn't even be considered members of the cult. Even Light would have killed them all the moment they disrespected Master had he not stepped in immediately.
The timeline of the Cult's downfall still wasn't quite clear to him, though; before he ascended, they were active here but their main Gates were in the Upper Realm. They'd occasionally send tertiary inheritors down here as a precaution, but they barely operated here otherwise. By the time of his death, they, too, were hunted into extinction. Their main Gates were demolished, all the main descendants would have been slaughtered, and their 'Demon God' had famously been felled in the 'Battle of Far-Heavens' by one of the Seven, Sword Emperor.
As such, Light's mere existence--let alone her existence now--was confounding. But it was irrelevant, ultimately.
Demonic Cult would always come back as it had done so hundreds of times before throughout the history. Demonic Qi was far too powerful and enticing to be left alone, and old teachings had always prevailed. One way or another, even if Light and Wan Lan do not do it, it would return in due time.
They flew for about an hour before descending.
Master had neatly tucked them halfway up a mountain which was covered in a layer of deep frost and then another, thinner layer of ash. There was no life anywhere within ten miles, as most had likely scattered due to the odd combination of extremely cold temperatures and the ash-infused snowfall.
As the cult members made Oaths one after another to never divulge anything about this, Long Tao's gaze finally caused Master to break away from the group and join him on the edge of a nearby cliff overlooking the forest of naked trees below.
"What?" Master's voice sounded quite annoyed, causing Long Tao to smile faintly.
"Not much," he said. "Just wanted to have one of our legendary conversations."
"Haah," Master sighed, looking up at the sky. "You call them legendary, I call them annoying. What do you want?"
"Not much. Just tell me how you comprehended Dao of Space to such a degree. According to my great-grandfather thrice removed, Dao of Space is--"
"--wait, wait, wait. What the hell is a great-grandfather thrice removed?"
"My family is quite odd, Master."
"It doesn't matter if it's Addams levels of weird, it's not odd, it's impossible."
"Addams? What is that?" Long Tao asked.
"... no one," Master said, sighing yet again. "I comprehended it the same way I imagine everyone else does. Are you truly impressed by me managing to do something that cost me a quarter of my Qi reserves that I could have done using a movement art at almost a thousandth of the cost? Your family's standards had truly degraded, Tao'er."
"..." Long Tao silently rolled his eyes, looking over at the man deeply; it truly did seem as though he didn't understand why his approach was so... defiant. "Just tell me: what did you do? And why did you need so much Qi?"
"What do you mean?" the man looked at him oddly. "I didn't do anything. And the reason it cost so much Qi is because it's an archaic way of doing it. I just... I just thought that, since I'm always going to be lacking in combat experience no matter who I'm up against, I ought to have something I can resort to as the last hurrah of sorts. Something stupid, yes, but also marginally effective and something that they won't expect. When attacking, using movement arts leaves traces, no matter how well hidden; I was simply thinking of, well, bypassing that. Rather than moving myself, I moved space."
"... e-eh?" Long Tao blared almost involuntarily. What... what do you mean you moved 'space'? "What do you mean?" he asked, forcibly calming himself down.
"Uh, I mean... I mean that. What do you mean what do I mean? I just moved space between me and that guy. Displaced it. That's why it needed a stupid amount of Qi. Because it's woefully impractical. No, wait--why are you even asking this? Isn't moving space around basically the most basic aspect of understanding Dao of Space?"
... Long Tao was deeply, deeply speechless. The most basic aspect? It truly was mind-boggling what his Master considered 'simple' versus what he considered 'confounding'. Something a child ought to know sometimes left him baffled, and the other times he would drop a massive breadth of knowledge that would have all the living Emperors bow in acknowledgement were they to hear it.
It was fitting, Long Tao mused, that only a man like that could ever call himself Divine Blade's Master.