I read.

The Tome had given me access to a lot of information, all within my rank, but still useful.

I was still set on making myself a cultivation technique, one that tailored to my needs and abilities. The problem was that my dao was lacking.

But there were ways around that. The practice of raising your dao had to do with how you lived and how your actions reflected your dao. The dao of the blade required the use of a sword, the dao of justice required the practice of justice, and the dao of peace required the chasing of peace.

I was actually doing fairly well to have gotten to this point.

Right now I was in the forest, sitting beneath the shadow of a tree, watching some dragons play with a dog.

Action equated to impact.

That was to say, the stronger my actions were for my goals, the more impact they would have on my daos strength.

A dao in a way was like a law, a personal law. The more one acted in making that dao a reality, the more of a law it became.

In Nei Lo's presence, injustice became impossible. In front of the Tome, I was made more intelligent.

And in that sense, my dao was already powerful. I had instituted peace between beasts. I helped mortals walk with cultivators, and more importantly, I had helped discover the budding plans of an eternal war.

Unfortunately, actions of the past couldn't help my dao grow after I got it.

But what I did now was still effective. With Fey Lin here and the dragons playing with Tob, I had broken into the eighth rank.

It felt strange, manipulative almost.

It felt like I was using them, even though I wasn't. I understood I wasn't and that my desire for peace came from me and my dao. But the growth I felt in pursuit of it felt wrong.

I sighed into that emotion and let it go.

I could at the very least cultivate my dao, if not my whole body.

I took the doubts out of my mind. I knew myself. I knew why I did what I did.

Doubts like this were important. They tested your faults and allowed you to see the cracks of your dao. What was the path you were walking on? Where does it lead? Do you really want to go down it?

They should be contemplated and studied, and if they bore any truth, addressed.

But if they were unfounded or untrue, then they should be discarded swiftly. Those cracks could grow into heart demons eventually and stagnate your whole being later on. They could even corrupt your dao heart or overwhelm it into insanity and slaughter.

Cultivators, our insecurities can make us commit unfathomable crimes. What a great thing to be.

I breathed out.

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My dao settled at the eight rank.

"Just five more to go," I whispered sarcastically.

I walked out of the forest and into my house.

I'd been upgrading this thing recently as more and more people were coming here, mainly to meditate.

Chin sat in one corner, staring at a pot of soil and trying to feed the plant his qi to make it grow. Next to him was Medin, sipping tea and knitting.

Nai had come up here with Medin, seemingly on guard for something and then there was the dragon.

The twelfth rank dragon that was supposed to be in the forest now stared up at me from the floor. It was a shade of blue-green and had those twisting branches like horns. It was sitting at the edge of the table, waiting for me and hiding from everyone else.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

It immediately snuck out of the house and into the back yard.

I followed.

There was the dragon, a phoenix, a lion, a tiger, and a whole host of beasts, each at the twelfth realm.

"Hello," I mused. "Are we having a gathering?"

We are.

"Great, what for?"

We wish to roam the whole of the valley uninterrupted.

"Explain."

We understand that the array has a cover area of the whole area known as the Great Desert Strip, and we wish to roam the full limits of the array, outside of the human realms of course.

I thought about it.

"I'd have to expand the playground," I noted.

The playground was a euphemism for the entrapment array that kept them here. The original array was only at the ninth rank so I had something layered on to keep them limited.

We would accept such a thing.

"But the same rules go for every person traversing through the area."

We understand.

I nodded. The array, as lazy as it was, had expanded to take over the whole of the former desert.

And because of that, the byproducts of the array would also be scattered. I was planning on collecting them and bringing them over to the beasts, but since they seemed to want to have more space that's what I would do.

Besides, size wasn't a problem for their cage.

The biggest factor of a cage like this was what it contained rather than just mere space.

I pushed the metaphysical limits, out from the forest to the edges of the desert and on top of that I had to adjust their little realm.

In terms of existential weight, this little plot of land probably weighed as much as this realm, no way more now.

If the realm was a donkey, then this spot was an elephant on top of the donkey's back. The elephant would support its own weight and walk with the donkey, but still, it was a little unnerving to have something so big on your back.

The realm grumbled.

"Go along with me buddy. I'll upgrade your array down there if you do, deal?"

Ah-Marin whined like a dog being taken to the vet, but eventually relented.

I'd been meaning to do that anyway.

I went down to the core of the Ah-Marin and redid that old array. I shoved a twelfth rank spirit stone in its center and gave it a singular warning.

"Don't let anyone know about this, okay?"

The small, old, dying world barked with new life.

It was still small, still only at the tenth rank, but now it had resources to go even further than that.

I assumed that's why it allowed me onto its back in the first place.

Well, I say allowed but it probably didn't feel like it had much of a choice.

I redid the array once more, this time with more effort and power. I took time, space, light, darkness, and all other crystallization of laws to create something valuable.

I moved the weak bits out of the way. The array wasn't the realm, it was more like an organ of the realm, a heart maybe. It relied on it now more than before.

Like how a baby needed baby formula and old people needed medicine, this realm was again and supplementing it with this could increase its lifespan by trillions.

Realms were like plants in a way, or even beasts. Some could be ants and squirrels, small weeds growing in the concrete cracks of infinity. Or they could be dragon's, behemoth's, and Yggdrasil's.

Like people, they varied.

I was just taking it to the vet.

Ten minutes later, the world was a lot healthier than it used to be and the small beasts now roamed the former desert.

Trees were blooming, stars were shining and the animals, along with the entire realm, were happy.

My dao hit the ninth rank.

"That easy huh?"

I was, in nature, ahead of my dao, so the ninth rank was inevitable. But I would need to contemplate and reflect on the growth.

So I sat, not beneath a bodhi tree, but next to a small sapling and started contemplating.

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