Heaven's Greatest Professor

Chapter 262: Touching the Moon

"Sit down," Ariha said, rubbing her forehead. "There seems to be too much of a gap in your knowledge about the Way."

"Way?" He raised an eyebrow. "Way, as in the way of power?"

"Not just power," she said. "The Way encompasses the universe, perhaps universes... The Way is endless. There is no beginning or end to it, we are merely edgewalkers, trying to comprehend the intricacies since the beginning of time.

"If we were to divide the path we had managed to comprehend with all our rich history..." she let the silence hang for a moment. She sucked in a breath as the pattern swirled around her. "In the time of my rise, we had ten huge steps into the Way... however, in the time of the other me, another step was carved, which brought the war down on the realms."

A frown crept to his brows, as some form of conjecture came to him. "So, copper, iron, silver, gold, these are the huge steps you are talking about?"

"More or less." She nodded. "They used to be called something else in my time, but it seems like they simplified the steps, taking metal attributes as their titles. But you don't need to worry about a lot of this stuff currently... I'll make sure to educate you more about the Way during breaks..."

Before she paused the conversation, he asked the question that he was mostly interested in. "Where do the broken Calamities stand in the eleven steps?"

"That's the issue," she said, narrowing her eyes. "A Calamity is supposed to stand nowhere in the Way."

"Supposed to?"

She didn't answer his question and began explaining. "When most reach the fourth step—Gold Ranker, they could finally glimpse at the Way..." she thought for a moment to give an example. "Suppose there are countless moons in the sky, but normal rankers' eyes weren't good enough to see them. But once they reach Gold, they finally could glimpse at the moons and interpret a path to reach there.

"Once you touch the moon, you've ascended to the first step of Transcendence."

"But where does a Broken Calamity fit in all this?" he asked, still confused.

"That's the point, it doesn't," she said softly. "When one reaches Transcendence, the Way throws a tribulation in their path... In the Celestial path, it is called a Calamity. Most people fail before even meeting their Calamity... but those that do meet and fail to overcome them were corrupted by the force of the Calamity.

They were twisted into a monstrous form, bereft of most of their essence and ideals, never to touch the Way ever again."

He felt his throat go sour. "Then I..."

"You are unique," she said before he could put any words to define himself. "All the logic and my knowledge say you should have been turned into a mindless monster, never to even glimpse at the Way ever again. But that clearly wasn't the case. Not only did you keep your essence and ideals—albeit with some side effects, the important matter is that the Way does not reject you."

He had no words to respond to her, and Ariha seemed to be in a similar position.

"I do not know where to place you in the steps," she said. "Your path seemed to be unique, even more so compared to any Celestial or the Void Emperor. Logic says you're only at the second step, yet you showed aspects which put you at the precipice of the fifth step."

"The fifth step is Transcendence..." he sucked in a frigid breath.

"Only the first step of Transcendence," she said and nodded. "But what you mentioned is probably the truth. You have touched Transcendence before your memory was wiped out, perhaps for a small amount of time, and managed to keep some aspect of your transcendent power."

He only let out a breath, still unable to wrap his mind around the fact even though he had heard her clearly.

"Show me your equipment, I have a theory," she said.

He agreed and opened his subspace to bring out all three pieces of his equipment. He could feel the suppression on them had been lifted. He could use them in the battle coming in three months' time, though he wasn't sure how much benefit they could give him.

Ariha took the cloak first as her eyes narrowed. "Cloak of Void Radiance," she muttered, her eyes glaring in silver light. "As I thought, they are invested with your essence. The essence that makes one transcendent."

He narrowed his eyes. "What are you talking about?"

She gestured for him to stand up as she moved to the centre of the stage. "For reasons unknown, your vessel was unable to maintain the transcendent essence, so you likely invested them with the essence and developed them into something unique. The Armour [Maya's Protection] has the highest essence of the three, followed by the cloak and blade... The distribution is like 55%, 40% and 5%..."

It took a moment for him to understand that those pieces of equipment didn't give him his power. No, it was his power that turned those into Soul Relics.

"With these, you have another weapon against Bully Ariha," she said. "I'm planning on dividing half of your training time into harnessing the power from them, and for the rest of the time, you'd interpret the pattern."

He sucked in a deep breath and nodded. "Well, will they be enough to defeat her?" he asked.

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"Defeat her?" Ariha snorted. "My poor disciple, that me could swat you like a fly if she wants to. No, the whole training regime I'm planning is to give you a fighting chance to withstand her power for five minutes."

He didn't mind her distrust of ever coming close to defeating her other Avatar, considering he had experienced a trickle of her power. "So, I'm your disciple now?"

Ariha didn't reply to that. "As much as I know myself, she would play fair as much as possible, so you could only blame yourself if you fail."