Without an immediate solution, following Qinyang's suggestion, Hao Meng placed down his immortal aperture in the five regions.

When an immortal aperture was placed down, the rate of time flow would decrease inside, approaching closer to the outside rate.

This was a consequence of how the River of Time worked. Without the River of Time, there could be no change, the world would stand still.

It irrigated the five regions, two heavens and each small world, be it an immortal aperture or a blessed land, it had it's own separate tributary originating from the River of Time.

Hao Meng's immortal aperture's tributary was considered extremely large, drawing in a huge amount of 'water', making the time flow very quick.

When the entrance was opened the rate of time flow would decrease even further, exactly matching the outside's at a one-to-one ratio.

This connection was akin to a tributary merging back into the main river.

But this was only a temporary measure. Hao Meng could only keep his immortal aperture placed down at all times if he could resign himself to be trapped inside.

On the other hand, even if he was content like this, keeping the entrance open was a whole another ordeal. It posed a great risk of someone sneaking in or harming him.

One's immortal aperture had to be handled thoughtfully!

A fiery ring floated above the desert sand, from within, Qinyang walked out.

She breathed in deeply, appreciating the outside air fully.

Compared to Hao Meng's fire path immortal aperture, it was a night and day difference. Inside, billowing smoke plumes crossed the sky, ash and cinder swirled in the air. The outside deserts' dry air seemed like a spring breeze in contrast.

Being used to an icy environment, even Hao Meng felt uncomfortable inside. But he could only endure in this situation, practicing fire path and studying his inheritance.

Bao Zhi gained a better understanding of the current era, after his look into Treasure Yellow Heaven and purchasing some information.

If he had to describe his findings in one word, it would be; unsettling.

The overwhelming prevalence of soul path was more profound than most other paths. This was most apparent to someone with a background like Bao Zhi, who came from the previous era.

Every path had their specialty and role. However, for the first time in the history of gu immortal cultivation, this path brought a major change to how gu immortals could increase their strength.

To understand the fundamental principles, one just has to look at the previous mainstream paths.

A good example was wood path. This was Bao Zhi's baseline as well.

Wood path emphasized a robust foundation with comprehensive aperture management. Building on the foundation, growing incrementally and steadily, then turning this into more foundation, self-sufficiently producing resources.

It was the example of the traditional, tried-and-true path that gu immortals walked, deriving their strength from the foundation of their immortal aperture.

Then a change occurred over half a million years ago, Reckless Savage Demon Venerable elevated strength path to prominence. Strength path offered a new way of power by strengthening the body of a cultivator.

A strength path gu immortal's body was as tough as an immortal beast's. But their dao marks still originated from calamities and tribulations.

For them, the strengthening of the body became equally important as the aperture's development.

Soul path was different in this aspect, it went one step further, because above all, it emphasized the strengthening of the soul of the gu immortal.

Although a soul path gu immortal would still accumulate soul path dao marks on his body and aperture, and those would amplify the effects of immortal gu, this wasn't the focus.

Why?

When using soul path techniques, the soul's soul path dao marks became be the new primary foundation.

This meant the calamities and tribulations that carved dao marks on the immortal aperture were less important for them than for cultivators of other paths.

To soul path gu immortals, Spectral Soul Demon Venerable was the prime example of soul path's extreme defiance of the traditional ways.

He abandoned his body and immortal aperture completely. He solidified his soul and become a mountain sized soul beast with three heads and thousand arms.

Even mortals were familiar with this monstrous appearance, erecting statues of worship in his name.

As a result, the general trend of aperture management and development not just stagnated in this era but even regressed on average!

In this era, this was common wisdom, a typical soul path cultivator should keep his aperture development to the bare minimum, facing their tribulations of lesser strength, while relying on their soul foundation to fight their weakened tribulations.

Adding in the emergence of food path resources to the five regions' abundant soul path resources, one did not have a hard time feeding their soul path immortal gu either.

This was the perfect storm that made soul path greatly flourish!

"What is, is what ought to be." Bao Zhi had to admit, as wrong as it may seemed to his experiences, the current status quo of cultivation was a natural consequence of the world's conditions.

"It may be like this now. But could this change be lasting?" He was doubtful. "Just as strength path has had its heyday, now it is in its decline. When the abundant resources will be gone, how will they cultivate then? Just as they did before, returning to focus on immortal apertures."

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"Soul path will be no different than strength path or qi path, eventually joining the list of previous mainstream paths." Bao Zhi speculated on the far future.

But now, those who did not cultivate soul path felt left behind. Their inheritances needed to be updated to keep pace with soul path's advancements. At the very least they required offensive and defensive methods that took the soul into consideration.

In this aspect, not even those who cling to the old ways of cultivation could escape the winds of change stirred up by soul path.

"Learning is like swimming upstream, not advancing is to be washed downstream." Bao Zhi sighed in his mind.

He continued to study the information he collected. He too had to delve into soul path to gain an understanding of it.

So what if he was a wood path great grandmaster and a grandmaster in refinement and human path?

A wise man submits to circumstances, and now the world's circumstances have changed.

If his methods were outdated, his fate would eventually just repeat itself.

That's right, Bao Zhi has also discovered another unsavory fact.

Back then, the rank seven gu immortal who injured him and caused his death, Ming You, was none other than the young Spectral Soul Demon Venerable!

Bao Zhi might have held resentment back then, but not anymore.

Hundreds of years later, as if observing like an outsider, he realized the events of Wen clan's and Bao clan's downfall were just small ripples on an ocean, inconsequential to the big picture.

He was just one of the firsts, followed by many, becoming a stepping stone as Spectral Soul slaughtered his way into the new era.

...

Days have passed relatively uneventful.

Bao Zhi helped Mo Xuan awaken his rank one aperture.

This time a handful of hope gu was enough, confirming Bao Zhi's theory that his first rebirth, one way or another, produced a faulty body that needed the forceful awakening of the man triumphing heaven gu.

As expected, Mo Xuan's suffering gu became his vital gu after his aperture was awakened.

Bao Zhi instructed him on the basics of gu master cultivation, the usage of gu and so on.

Then he went on to introduce soul path to Mo Xuan.

His goal was twofold in this.

First, Bao Zhi wanted to test and see if there were any hidden issues with this physique. It would give him a better understanding of his own situation as well.

Second, Bao Zhi wanted to test himself, the correctness of his own understanding of soul path.

"To teach is to learn twice. Understanding is proven when you can make it simple for others." He thought.

After talking to Mo Xuan and experimenting with mortal soul path gu worms, Bao Zhi's nonexistent soul path attainment reached the ordinary attainment level.

...

Qinyang took a whole level of the immortal gu house for herself. Her cultivation notes and research ideas lay scattered in gu worms and on papers, pinned to various places.

Jue Shi has sponsored her with relic gu and other various gu worms. For example, he gave her the rank three clear memory gu, which could make memories become clear and easy to recall.

But Qinyang found that the gu had limited effect after just a few uses, so she repurposed it into her killer move.

She was keenly aware of her shortcomings in regards to cultivation. Not just in terms of cultivation rank, but practical experience as well.

She felt dissatisfied with the information path killer move she has created. Even though it was a successful prototype, there were many possible improvements.

"Unrolling this routine will decrease runtime, as it resolves some of the looping overhead, but then each actuation takes too many gu worms and the essence consumption skyrockets, needing even more essence stones to absorb."

"No, I should aim to reuse gu worms more, then the overall efficiency would increase... A good balance is needed."

"The functionality is very simplistic, but the underlying logic is already mess of a spaghetti! I can't add changes, or I would have to redesign the whole thing..."

She thought long and hard, how she should approach this.

"I need to develop a system that scales vertically and horizontally. I need different layers of abstraction."

"Like the gu worms that gather the inputs, the ones that process them or the actuators, they all need to have their separation."

"It should also be modular, then I can mix and match existing work to create new ones, or swap out a portion if I improve on it later."

In her mind, a killer move should not just be something a gu master uses, like a simple tool.

It had to be more than that! The gu master was just human after all, and humans make mistakes.

She saw the solution in automating as much as possible, so the human error could be eliminated.

This was her lesson from Hao Jiong's attempt on her life. A key part of her survival was due to her killer move that continued to work without her intervention.

At least, this was her general idea.

It was though, but she enjoyed the technical challenge of designing a system, considering its overall features like activation time, reliability and efficiency.

But also the low-level implementations and optimizations fascinated her, due to the gu world's different nature. She had to think outside the box to put her knowledge into practice.

"This will not work. I need to take a step back. Let's borrow that part of the working prototype." She threw away another concept she was working on.

"Hmm? Why doesn't this work now?"

"Oh, I see. That gu is totally wrong there. But then how did this work in the first place???"

What she didn't like was; debugging.

...

Hao Meng could only bear the confines of his blessed land for a week. He returned to the gu house before he would place down his aperture again.

He was making good progress on making the inheritance's fire part his own, the speed surprising even himself. This comprehension ability was the crushingly unfair advantage of a ten extreme physique.

What bothered him, was his immortal aperture's environment. He was looking for a way to make it more hospitable. Then even Qinyang could stay there, he reasoned.

Qinyang couldn't offer any concrete steps to help with this.

Jue Shi suggested he should simply use gu to block out his sensation, remove the sense of smell and heat altogether.

Mo Xuan naturally had no means to help him.

Hao Meng finally turned to Bao Zhi. He recalled Qinyang telling him to be careful around this person, but Hao Meng thought differently.

"Senior." Hao Meng greeted, cupping his fist. "I seek your guidance. How do I lower my aperture's flames and make it more hospitable?"

Bao Zhi sized him up, astutely sensing a deeper meaning of which Hao Meng was unaware.

"Do you want to merge fire and ice path?" He asked him directly.

"I don't wish to?"

"Good." Bao Zhi wasn't looking for an answer, only his reaction.

"There is a knot in your heart. The problem is not inside your immortal aperture." He began, sitting down.

"Would a water path immortal drown? No. So how would a fire path immortal feel uncomfortably hot!"

"Here." He sat down Hao Meng next him.

He opened his palm, a life-like green flame crackling on it. This was the same as Xu Lian's inheritance, imitating fire path with wood path.

"There are many steps to the dual use of two paths." He opened his other palm, a green ice shard resting on it.

"At first, one could put the two sides together. Using a fire path gu with an ice path gu, anyone is able to do that." Bao Zhi placed his hands together.

Hsss!

The ice melted, the flame extinguished. The two forces cancelled each other out.

"Next you could consider their respective effects carefully, merging them in a complimentary way. This is more difficult." With a new set of green ice and flame, he again put his palms together.

Hsss!

Green steam spewed out from his fingers and palms. The ice and fire was consumed, creating a miniature cloud.

"Then, to go a step beyond superficial combination, you have to thoroughly comprehend." A third pair of ice and flame appeared.

But this time the green flame was chillingly cold, while the green ice shard radiated heat!

Hao Meng peered his eyes, watching the two closely.

"This is the level of imitation. Great experts are capable of this. But there is still a step beyond!" Bao Zhi combined the fake flame and fake ice.

There was no commotion this time, the result was a tranquil union. The flame and ice were interchanging seamlessly in a taijitu pattern, forming a small sphere in Bao Zhi’s palm.

Hao Meng could feel a pulse emanating from it, it was neither cold nor hot.

"All paths lead to the great dao."

Hao Meng did not understand why Bao Zhi was showing him this. But why did he feel like this was exactly what he as looking for?

Bao Zhi laughed softly. He knew the knot in Hao Meng's heart was created by Hao Jiong's unreasonable expectations.

Hao Meng wanted to subconsciously fulfill his mother's obsession, yet he consciously denied this.

"If you are going to cultivate, you got to fall in love with the dao."

"The dao is your enemy, the dao is your friend, the dao is the source of all your frustration and all your transcendence!"

"!!!" Hao Meng stood up at once and bowed deeply. "Senior, please make me your disciple!"

* * * * *