"I'm looking forward to it," Lilian said, "Show me where this unwavering confidence is coming from."
John nodded firmly. After Lilian's display, how could he afford to let her down? He needed to show that the disciple of a heavenly genius was also a heavenly genius themself, otherwise it would look bad on Lilian.
"Oh yeah, I wanted to ask you something," John said, switching the subjects up.
"What is it?" Lilian asked curiously.
"Can you teach me the Dao of Space?" John asked, eager anticipation in his voice.
"The Dao of Space?" Lilian asked curiously, a single eyebrow raised. The Dao of Space was a very rare Dao to have any insights into, and also was a very hard Dao to grasp. Only a true genius could even peer into the starting stages of the Dao, let alone grasp its true profundity.
Lilian paused for a moment, and then remembered that John was an absolute monster when it came to comprehension. In fact, he had managed to reach the Dao Adept stage in his Lightning Dao even before she reached the Dao Adept stage in either of her specialized Dao's, despite having a natural advantage for it.
It was most likely that his comprehension was at a level even higher than hers, which once again reminded Lilian of the monster she called her disciple.
"What do you need the Dao of Space for?" she asked curiously, revealing she was open to the idea.
"I have a battle art, the Divine Reaping Scythe, that utilizes the Dao of Space," John replied. "It's amazingly profound, even more profound than the scythe battle arts you were unleashing."
Lilian raised an eyebrow in skeptical curiosity. Where did he possibly manage to find and learn such an amazing scythe art. Her scythe arts were top of the line, and yet he claimed to have something far better.
"It's true," John said firmly. "In fact, I was thinking of letting you learn it as well, but unfortunately I only have the stages up to the Heaven Tribulation Realm, so it would be quite useless for you outside of this realm," John added, explaining why he had not yet imparted the amazing battle art on his master yet.
He would also have to go through the process of teaching her to read the ancient language the scythe art was written in, but that was another matter.
"How much do you know of the spatial Dao?" Lilian asked.
"Not much to be honest," John replied, somewhat disappointed in himself. "I haven't run into any other battle arts that used the spatial Dao, and I never ran into any natural treasures or phenomena on which I could study the spatial Dao either, so everything I learned was from unleashing the Divine Reaping Scythe," John explained his situation.
"My grasp of the spatial Dao isn't even in the Dao Adept stage yet, so anything will help."
"Show me," Lilian instructed.
"Show you?" John replied, confused.
"Convert your essence Qi into the strongest spatial Dao ball you can manage. Show me your level," Lilian explained.
"Oh," John mumbled. "I guess I can do that."
He had never used the spatial Dao in anything other than his Divine Reaping Scythe.
'It shouldn't be too hard to just form a spatial Dao ball though,' he thought as he focused on the task.
Essence Qi surged from his dantian, and using his soul and comprehensions into the spatial Dao, John converted that pure essence Qi into the strongest spatial Qi he could. The Qi flooded through his meridians to his hands, and then left his hands to form a ball of spatial Qi.
The ball of spatial Qi was three inches across, and shimmered and waved like rippling space. It wasn't large, but the size didn't matter; only the quality of the spatial Qi did. Lilian studied the ball of Qi for a moment and then instructed him to undo it.
The ball of spatial Qi faded away.
"Not bad at all for never truly practicing the spatial Dao," Lilian praised, and then a flash of green light appeared in her hands. John looked at the green object, a jade piece, and eyed it curiously.
"This jade piece contains my comprehensions into the spatial Dao," Lilian explained.
"Your comprehensions?" John asked, not expecting to hear that. He had thought it would be some spatial battle art, or an ancient thing Lilian had found somewhere.
"I like to record my comprehensions and then study them later. It helps reinforce and grow my grasp of the Dao's I study," Lilian explained.
"Oh, that makes sense," John said, eyeing the jade piece enviously. Comprehensions from a spatial Dao expert like Lilian would no doubt be amazing. Lilian smiled at his expression, and then handed the piece over to him.
"Return that before we leave the realm," she instructed, to which John nodded.
His divine sense pierced into the jade piece without hesitation, and information flooded into his mind instantly. The information was exclusively about the Dao of Space, and contained both easy to understand as well as nearly impossible to understand portions.
The easy-to-understand parts were clear messages about Lilian's insights into the spatial Dao, her thoughts about how to best use it, and other similar straightforward topics. The nearly impossible to understand parts were slivers of spatial Qi that Lilian had imparted into the jade piece, like recordings of all her comprehensions into the spatial Dao at certain parts of her life. Each sliver was more profound than the last, showing the growth of her spatial Dao insights as she progressed cultivation wise.
John was able to get insights immediately when studying the least profound slivers of Qi, but he only saw a jumbled mess of indiscernible Qi when he studied the spatial Qi slivers Lilian had created recently. It was as if he was looking at the Qi she had just used in her previous battle.
'Wow, this is quite amazing,' John mused internally, studying those slivers of spatial Qi. With the written parts explaining her thoughts of the Dao, as well as the slivers of Qi increasing in profundity, John knew this jade piece was a goldmine of information into the spatial Dao. His eyes lit up with joy as he hungrily absorbed all the information he could, like a man dying of thirst finding a spring of refreshing water.
Lilian smiled lightly as she watched John's eyes light up with joy, and she remained silent as he hungrily devoured the information contained within. The minutes quickly passed by, and the golem appeared in the middle of the arena once more.
"The time for the next battle has arrived," it said, snapping John out of his entranced studying of the jade piece. His gaze snapped to the golem, and then Lilian next to him, who had an expression of unconcerned calm on her face.
"Don't worry," she said to John as she stood up. "Asuros is yours. I'm merely going to have some fun with him for a bit."
