Dyon’s blood rolled, agitating and boiling in his anger.

A man tried to do something for the greater good of everyone, and he was rewarded by being stabbed in the back by pathetic cultivators who couldn’t hope to beat him on their own. Were these the type of people who transcended? Were these people really worthy of opening a path of cultivation of their own? Was the universe really so unfair?

Dyon made a silent vow to himself. ‘If I ever meet those who did this to you… I’ll kill them in your stead!’

That said, it made sense that Patriarch Pakal didn’t know where such powerful experts had come from. This quadrant had completely forgotten about their Epistemic Tower. Dyon had little doubt that the other quadrants were laughing away while watching the self-destruct.

Dyon couldn’t help but remember the motto of Focus Academy… ‘Everything by absolute sympathy or absolute strength.’

There was no sympathy here. Dyon needed strength.

“The rest of the story is as you know it,” The Patriarch continued, “The demon sage lost himself in endless savagery, letting his demonic will completely taint him.

“He was angry and resentful of everything, and he wanted to destroy everything in his path… But as you know, that was impossible.

“His empire was gone and he wasn’t in the state of mind to rebuild it. He kept trying to lay waste to kingdoms under his own strength, but was forced to flee again and again.

“Maybe if he specialized in another form of cultivation, it would have been possible. But, as you know, we Pakals specialize in body cultivation. I dare say that we’re unmatched, at least in this quadrant… And much of that has to do with the legacies the demon sage left behind.

“Unfortunately, while this made the demon sage nearly unbeatable in one on one battles and small scale group battles, when it came to attacking hundreds of thousands, to millions, then billions to even trillions, he lacked the versatility to do so…

“If he was allowed to just stroll into a kingdom and begin brawling, and his opponents were forced to face him with nothing but their own strength, he may very well have won… But, his enemies weren’t so noble.

“They used killing arrays and formations, they combined their cultivations in fostering powerful attacks, and even teamed up with neighboring armies to thwart the demon sage at every turn…

“With each passing day, it was becoming more and more clear to the demon sage that this was impossible. In fact, this went on for decades. He would fight without rest for months to even years at a time. He knew nothing or rest or reprieve…”

“What changed?” Dyon asked. He was fully away that the demon sage eventually pulled out of his severe path deviation. But, Arios had never told him the specifics of how. 𝘪𝘳.𝒸𝘰𝑚

“Well, if the records are to mean anything, it likely has to do with his daughter. I’m not sure what happened to her, and as his successor, you may have a better guess than I do, but from my conjectures, it’s him finding his daughter frozen in time that snapped him out of it.

“A man who thought he had lost everything finally found something to cling to in his moments of desperation… Because of that, he was able to pull himself up and repair his heart.”

Although Dyon hadn’t heard the story behind Patia-Neva’s actions, he already knew the importance of cultivating the heart. Well, it was more accurate to say that he had a superficial understanding of it while not truly understanding what it meant…

Dyon couldn’t be blamed for this. After all, he had spent less than three years in the martial world. How could he be expected to understand such a complex concept already?

That said, Dyon’s soul talent was so overwhelming, that even with such a shallow understanding of what it meant to cultivate the heart, he was able to make use of it to improve his wills already.

For example, when Dyon sunk into his feelings of anger and savagery in his battle with Femi, that was him using a crude form of cultivating the heart to gain a deeper understanding of a will he wanted to break through in.

Patia-Neva, however, had taken this to an all new level. He had been willing to spend centuries tempering his heart to gain the results he wanted. Although this backfired on him in the end, it couldn’t be said that his path was wrong… It was only that he himself never truly believed in the path, which was what led to his cultivation deviating.

The truth was that there were some in history who used Patia-Neva’s exact methods to reach even to levels of transcendence. The problem was the Patia-Neva had never truly cast away all of his feelings… Which meant that the path of cultivation he took, was never suited to him in the first place.

That said, the point was that the heart and how well you cultivated it were very important to your progression in cultivation… It dictated your will power, as well as your own personal path to transcending. If you let it run wild like the demon sage had, or to a lesser extent, Patia-Neva, the consequences were clear.

Patriarch Pakal nodded to himself as he watched Dyon seemingly begin to comprehend something, ‘This child is truly intelligent…’

Shaking his head, he continued, “Due to his experience, the demon sage grasped just how important cultivating his heart was. He opened himself up to a completely new path of cultivation, focusing solely on his will power and temperament.

“Because his cultivation had plummeted due to his drastic change in heart, the demon sage didn’t dare to awaken his daughter. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the power to as any saint could do so, it was that he didn’t want her growing up in an era where his enemies would still be able to attach her name to his.

“The Demon Sage had essentially chosen to erase large portions of his cultivation in order cultivate along the right path…

“Ironically, he had lived up to his name. Half his life he spent as a true demon, lording over everyone. And in the second half of his life, he became the embodiment of wisdom and patience. He even began to take in many ostracized children with high levels of talent to groom for the future,” Patriarch Pakal turned a subtle glance toward Arios. He didn’t really understand how a demon general could be here so long after the demon sage’s death… But, there were many oddities of the cultivation world. So, he didn’t ask.

“In the end, the ultimate test for him was putting aside his arrogance and forgiving the clan that had tossed him away all the centuries ago… Thus, the demon sage began to raise up the Pakal Clan…”

𝘳𝘦.𝒸𝑜𝘮