Chapter 835: Choosing Heretic Dao
Aksai remembered Arkaal’s exact words.
"Heretic Dao stands between righteous and demonic. Yet it belongs to neither."
At first, the concept had sounded contradictory. How could something exist between two opposites while belonging to neither?
Yet the more Aksai thought about it, the more sense it made.
Heretics rejected fixed labels. They refused to limit themselves to a single viewpoint. They borrowed from both sides. Accepted both sides. Rejected both sides.
They walked their own road. And that road was often less trodden than others.
Aksai could understand why.
Both righteous and demonic cultivators distrusted Heretics. To righteous cultivators, Heretics were dangerous because they refused to follow rules. To demonic cultivators, Heretics were pitiful and to be scorned and looked down on because they refused to embrace selfishness completely.
They belonged nowhere. And because they belonged nowhere, they became enemies of everyone.
Aksai chuckled softly.
"Sounds familiar."
His entire life had been like that.
Even in his previous world, he had never liked being placed inside neat little boxes. He preferred freedom, flexibility, and practicality.
He would do good when it benefited him. He would do terrible things when necessary.
He did not particularly care about maintaining some righteous image. Nor did he enjoy senseless cruelty.
He simply did what needed to be done. Or what the situation forced him to do at the time.
Thus, the Heretic inclination fit him almost perfectly. As if it had been made specifically for him.
Aksai slowly stood up. The spirit essence around him shifted slightly. His robes fluttered gently. At that moment, he remembered another thing Arkaal had warned him about.
Heretics were strong. According to the Poison Gu King’s understanding, Heretic Dao cultivators were monsters among their peers. As long as they managed to keep their sanity in check while practicing the Heretic Dao, they could become Supernovas of their generation.
Their understanding of Dao Paths tended to be broader. Their abilities were often more flexible. And because they drew insights from multiple viewpoints, they frequently achieved results that ordinary cultivators considered impossible.
In simple terms, they were freaks.
The kind of people who shattered common sense. The kind of people who constantly punched above their weight class. The kind of people who forced others to question established rules.
The rewards of practising the Heretic Dao were enormous. But so were the risks.
Aksai’s expression became solemn.
"Nothing comes for free."
The heavens might be impartial. Nature itself might be indifferent. Yet balance always existed.
If Heretics gained twice the power of ordinary cultivators, then they naturally paid a greater price. And that price came in the form of calamities.
Arkaal had been very clear about that.
Heretic cultivators attracted stronger tribulations. Stronger lightning. Stronger mental trials. Stronger bottlenecks. Everything became harder.
The heavens did not hate Heretics. That was merely how ordinary cultivators described it. The truth was much simpler.
Nature was balancing the scales.
If someone wanted greater rewards, they needed to bear greater risks.
That was all.
Aksai looked up toward the massive branches above him.
His eyes were calm. There was no hesitation. No fear. Only determination.
The thought of stronger calamities did not discourage him.
After everything he had survived, such concerns felt almost ordinary.
He had already defied his so-called "fate" many times. He had fought enemies stronger than himself.
He had unlocked a family heirloom that couldn’t be used by many generations before him. He had become a Turtle Lord of the Emerald Cove Island and guild master of the Emerald Cove Guild even with his humble background as a rental Spirit farmer.
He had stolen treasures that should never have belonged to him. He had killed a Nascent Soul King. He had obtained the Void Gu.
His entire cultivation journey had already been one long act of defiance. What difference would one more dangerous path make?
A faint smile appeared on his face.
"Heretic it is."
Aksai had not chosen his Dao Path. Not yet. That decision could wait. But his inclination had already been decided. This inclination was bound to turn his Dao into Heretic Dao no matter which paths he took, raising the difficulty of practising them by many levels.
When the day finally came for him to choose a Dao Path, he would walk it as a Heretic. Neither righteous. Nor demonic. Only himself.
The spirit essence surrounding him responded faintly to his conviction.
The roots beneath his feet trembled slightly. The leaves overhead rustled louder than before. As if the Demon Tree itself had heard his decision.
Aksai did not immediately begin cultivating after deciding on his inclination.
Instead, he sat quietly beneath the Demon Tree and reviewed everything he knew about Dao Paths once again.
From the moment he chose Heretic inclination, he would eventually be labeled as a Heretic cultivator by the rest of the world. All his Dao of choice would become Heretic Dao by default.
Choosing an inclination had a greater impact on a Spirit cultivator’s life than most mortals could imagine.
Once an inclination was defined, one’s Dao would be defined by that inclination broadly. For example, a Spirit cultivator studying Dao of mist with the righteous inclination would be recognized as a righteous Spirit cultivator with a mastery in the element of mist.
A Spirit cultivator walking on the path of fire element with demonic inclination would become a demonic fire cultivator.
The choice of elements defined the Dao while the choice of inclinations made Spirit cultivators fall into categories of righteous, demonic, and heretic.
The Heretic Dao was powerful. However, it was also complicated. Much more complicated than either righteous or demonic cultivation.
If righteous cultivators tried to understand the harmonious side of a concept, and demonic cultivators tried to understand the destructive or selfish side of the same concept, then Heretics tried to understand both.
Not only that.
They also tried to understand how one side could become the other. That was the foundation of the Heretic Dao.
Aksai’s thoughts naturally drifted toward the poison element. Among all the elemental and derivative paths currently available to him, poison was the most suitable starting point.
He possessed the complete inheritance of the Heavenly Poison Sect. He had obtained Qishan’s techniques. He had Arkaal’s memories and experiences.
He had an entire Gu Insect Farm.
And most importantly, poison was already deeply connected to many of his existing abilities and druidic bloodline.
As such, choosing poison as his first step made perfect sense.
However, the moment he started examining poison through the lens of the Heretic Dao, he encountered a problem.
Aksai frowned.
"Poison kills."
His voice echoed softly through the cave.
That was the most basic truth of poison.
It invaded, corrupted, weakened, and consumed life.
Some poisons attacked the body. Some attacked the soul. Some attacked spirit essence itself.
Regardless of the method, the result was usually the same.
Death.
Or something close to it.
Aksai closed his eyes.
Then he asked himself a simple question.
"If that’s poison... then what’s its opposite?"
The answer came almost instantly.
Medicine.
Healing.
Elixirs.
Life-saving remedies. The very things poison cultivators often hated.
Aksai’s eyes slowly opened. A smile appeared on his face.
"I see."
For the first time, he began to understand why Heretics were considered monsters.
A righteous poison cultivator would focus on understanding poison. A demonic poison cultivator would focus on understanding poison.
Both paths were ultimately studying the same thing but in different ways. Both of them only thought of their respective ways and did not think about its alternative.
The Heretic path was different.
To truly understand poison, Aksai would also need to understand healing. To understand death, he needed to understand life.
To understand corruption, he needed to understand restoration. Only then could he comprehend the complete cycle. Only then could he see both ends of the same concept.
Aksai remembered something Haitin Blackblood had once mentioned in passing when he was telling him all that he knew about the Heretic Dao. Apart from him, Haitin was the only person Aksai knew who had studied the Heretic Dao.
Haitin had studied it to break the Holy Land Torel’s protective formation in order to free his then-alive father. Although Haitin had given up on the Heretic Dao after he managed to free his father, his insights while studying were still very useful to Aksai.
"The extreme ends of a concept eventually touch each other."
At the time, Haitin’s statement had sounded strange.
Now it suddenly made sense.
A poison could become medicine if properly controlled. A medicine could become poisonous if improperly used.
The line separating the two was thinner than most people realized.
A cultivator who only understood poison would forever remain limited. But a cultivator who understood both poison and medicine could move freely between them. Such a person would possess a far deeper understanding of the concept itself.
The more he thought about it, the more fascinated he became.
The Heretic Dao did not reject conventional wisdom. Nor did it blindly accept it.
Instead, it questioned everything.
It forced cultivators to examine concepts from multiple viewpoints.