The Outer One

Yuan returned to the summit of Mount Tai in anticipation of his so called master, time slowly passed until he could see a being holding three swords on his back and white hair is a mess if one casually glanced at him they would expect him to simply be a beggar or someone of an equal footing to one, but upon a closer look it could be said that no creature had the intention of coming close to the person in instinctive fear of him, a truly curious scene because it was not just one or two beasts that were following him while keeping their distance, suddenly the man lowered his straw hat and looked at Yuan in the eyes "Hello child, I am know as the Martial Scholar in this world, a peak existence only below those in the Dao Seed Realm, I come here in hopes of making you my first and also my last disciple, if you accept then we will leave this mountain and begin our way over to Zhili province where we will study martial arts together" the man now known as the Martial Scholar said with clear eyes, signifying his sincerity in his offer.

"Disciple greet master, my name is simply Yuan and it is an honor to follow in your path to the great Dao" Yuan said with excitement, he was still only 5 and was not very well versed in manners or anything except hunting, he hoped he had behaved in the most proper manner, afterwards the two set off.

After 5 days of journeying and camping Yuan saw many new sights, it seemed as though Mount Tai was a sort of forbidden area for humans as it was overruled by beasts and so only the most brave or stupid people went there, after leaving the mountain Yuan experiences humans flying on top swords or using the elements to fly, it really changed his perspective on humans overall, he had always believed them to be inferior to beasts because humans were always weaker and were not as large in numbers as beasts but these 5 days had proved him completely wrong, it seemed that the world was dominated by humans, not beasts.

Throughout their journey Yuan asked many questions of his teacher, which explained the strength of humans and the weakness of beasts, humans were naturally born with the foundation realm already finished, humans were born in the Qi manifestation realm in this world and this allowed them to outwardly use qi very easily, due to the restrictions of this world though cultivation was a very slow process for them because humans have no innate affinities with any element, this is also why so many man-made dao had appeared a simple example being the sword dao, truthfully he said it was a secret that he was in the celestial realm with a half step into the dao seed realm because the bigger the tree is the larger the wind that it attracts, the only reason he said all this to him was because he was his first and last disciple because their sect follows the rule of two and so only he was worthy of knowing this truth, when they arrive at the sect he would explain further about their sect and what is expected of them as the successors of the sect to carry on its will.

Another secret was spilt throughout their journey and that was that there were multiple worlds in their universe, the universe that they were in right now was the strongest of the mortal ones and could be said to be a utopia for cultivators but other worlds used other systems such as magic, aura, beast taming, alchemy and many more but the hardest part of all this is that the last realm for the worlds is always the dao seed realm, this also signifies the importance of choosing your dao from the start of cultivation.

They began talking about how the worlds are all closed off to others with only their sect being able to travel through the worlds because they have different artifacts that allow them to transfer worlds secretly but even those were destroyed by the cultivators of this world, now all worlds are isolated from each other, another key thing was that only a specific system would be effective in a given world, for example if we used our own system in another world we would be weakened by 3 tiers, this is also because our system has the most explosive strength, when we are born we are easily stronger than the strongest of other worlds, this is also why we are considered the strongest mortal world, its to the point we could even beat the weakest immortal world, but this also makes our world extremely chaotic among humans, currently their are no dao seed realm cultivators because they all leave as soon as they can to their designated immortal world.

After these talks they were able to arrive at Zhili province, which also holds the emperor's palace, this is the safest place in the world for mortals who cant cultivate any qi or have no aptitude, people in situations similar to Yuan who cannot use qi come here to be under the protection of the emperor who upholds the law and can cover the sky with one hand, there have also been many fight between him and the cultivators that are gathering the providence bearers because it has been recently confirmed that a son of heaven had been born in the past 30 years but he has not been located yet, this alone has attacked the credibility of the emperor because every emperor in history is known as the son of heaven and now someone else has claimed the title, which also means that this person can contend for the throne, and with the emperor reaching the limit of his life span this person has a very real chance to become the new emperor, apparently the story goes even deeper because the emperor's lineage was not chosen by the sentient Heavenly Dao but instead it was chosen by the Heavenly Dao that had no emotions and was only ever rationale.

The master and disciple came to a tower and went instead, it was clear that there were few servants taking care of the place, the tower was realistically just a library full of martial arts techniques, theories and ideas that never came to pass, this was also the reason that the master gained the title of the Martial Scholar, he hoarded as much information from all places possible, the tower itself was inherited through the sect that Yuan became apart of.

The master then took his time explaining the sect, starting with its name being "The Eternal Flame" sect, a very ordinary name compared to those that are very domineering or poetic but the reason was because the sect was actually a religion, through this sect the next prophet was chosen hence why the rule of 2 is required to be used in this case, ontop of that they only follow one god, an extremely rare situation in general, after that the master said something that shattered the confidence of Yuan, they do not even believe that other gods exist, the master went deeper into this, according to him the god they worship is universally called the creator god, over time he has had many names in many languages so it easier just to title him the creator god, the master also explained that the creator can also destroy everything in a second but is exonerated a creator because that is the role he likes to be.

Every few generations a revelation would come to a prophet and he would gain a divine book that he would be required to spread throughout the many worlds, in this generation the master didn't receive any revelation which is a blessing in disguise because he had already lost all the divine artifacts of the sect that allowed for travel between the worlds, he then placed the burden on Yuan to find artifacts to allow for travel between worlds, honestly Yuan greatly contemplated the situation until he decided to tell the truth his master, taking out the Void Compass he explained what it was and how he had gained it, along with who gave it, realistically if he could not even trust his master who would he trust? There were too many secrets he had on him that if even one came out a lot of others would come out too.

The master just looked at Yuan with both amazement and extreme excitement, clearly all of this was planned by the creator to allow the sect to continue with its goal of salvation, he told Yuan to keep the compass close to him at all time and this was clearly predetermined, this also removed a huge load off his chest for having chosen Yuan, after that he told Yuan to get settled and that they would get started in their training in the morning.