After learning the new Fireball Technique, Mo Hua spent all his attention on arrays.
A few days later, after Mo Hua had thoroughly mastered the Reverse Spirit Array, he went to ask Mr. Zhuang for guidance again. Mr. Zhuang pondered for a moment, but suddenly asked:
"Hua'er, cultivators seek the Heavenly Dao. Do you know what the Heavenly Dao is?"
Mo Hua thought for a moment, then answered, "Longevity?"
"Longevity is the result, not the Heavenly Dao itself."
"Isn't longevity the same as attaining the Dao?" Mo Hua asked.
Mr. Zhuang looked at Mo Hua and said earnestly:
"Cultivators attain the Dao and thereby gain longevity. Only by comprehending the Great Dao and practicing the Heavenly Dao can one ultimately achieve longevity."
"If one does not experience the Heavenly Dao, does not practice the laws of the Great Dao, yet vainly dreams of longevity, that is abandoning the root to chase the branch. One will inevitably step onto a crooked path."
Mo Hua only half understood, but he still nodded and committed Mr. Zhuang's words to memory.
Gu Shanjun explained, "Lesser Daos have no birth or destruction. Those who go against the Heavenly Dao violate the Heavenly Dao of 'birth'; those who defy the Heavenly Dao violate the Heavenly Dao of 'destruction.'"
"Then do the five elements count as the Heavenly Dao?" Mo Hua thought for a moment, then asked again.
"The purest and richest among them, which can be refined and used by cultivators, is spiritual qi. Spiritual qi contains the power of the Heavenly Dao, and that power is called Valley Virtue."
"Although the countless cultivation methods and Dao arts of the world differ—metal, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, thunder, ice, and so on—their root is the manifestation of spirit arrays."
But he was, after all, still young