Taylor had sent a bunch of infected over to Hans, but he was getting bored of playing pokemon. So he used this time to refine his understanding of the dao of fire.

Taylor could feel it; the time limit for the 5th stage was approaching. If he didn't advance soon, he'd be locked in and become unable to move forward.

So as he slaughtered and captured, his mind was lost in thoughts of fire. What was fire? What does it mean to burn? Is it desirable? Is it inevitable?

For Taylor, he considered every single life as a flame. And like any flame, you feed it something to burn, whether it’s good deeds, wealth, or sin. But if you feed it more than it can handle, and the environment isn’t suitable for a flame, it will die. So Taylor made it a rule for himself; only eat what you can process.

Everything that can be eaten can be burned. Good deeds can be refined until it is pure, wealth doesn’t have to remain stagnant and it can generate more if given the ability to act, and sin, like all karma, must be followed to the very end, whether it ends in love or tragedy, it must be completed… Otherwise, it becomes a cancer that feeds on the soul.

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For these sort of things, fire was necessary.

In a way, it was similar to Johan’s dao of gold. It was a way of solving problems. But where Johan applies himself to make things beautiful, Taylor liked to allow things to reach their natural end, and if that meant everything was burnt to ashes, he didn’t care.

Taylor pushes out a hand covered in flames and it touches a man infected by the Greed Aura. The flame attached itself to the man before engulfing him. The power of the flame caused the man’s body to become somewhat ethereal. As if his body became a part of the flame, the particles of his body tried to act freely. They clashed and collided with each other as the man’s life flashes before his eyes. As the flame ate away at his body, the man’s eyes grew dim, and hopelessness found itself in his eyes. But as he stopped resisting, he suddenly sensed a certain freedom that he could only remember from childhood, and before he died, there was a smile on his face.

Taylor watches as the man’s body becomes ashes. It’s almost there… He thinks with a solemn mood.

…

…

Taylor continued to refine his understanding, and one day, he watched Jesse light a candle for Lily’s birthday cake. And an idea hit him like a ton of bricks. As if it was the last straw on the camel’s back… His understanding of the dao of fire compressed and solidified in Taylor’s mind until he thought it was corporeal. When it was complete, it summoned the surrounding cultivation energy as if the weight of this idea was capable of creating a gravitational pull.

Taylor’s body consumed as much cultivation energy as he could until his body broke through the limit.

Taylor had climbed to the sixth stage, the Life Establishment Stage.