Raising Ducks for Daily Rewards-Chapter 15: Dao Language

Fengyu didn’t hesitate and chose to learn the Wood Recovery spell first and foremost.

With a wood root and vitality spell talent, it should be the easiest to learn.

"The dao language is truly difficult to pronounce, and every spell seems to have new words, only a few being the same.

Maybe in the future, I should try to comprehend this language fully...

I heard this is an ability Spell Masters have to master to reach higher stages..."

A spell consisted of three stages:

Dao Language, an ancient profound language used to describe the myriad daos, said to have been passed down from the primordial realm. To cast the spell, you have to learn the incantations and pronounce them fluidly with no mistake.

Dao Move, a different name for gestures. Gestures describe the form of the spell. With higher comprehension, this can be reduced to a small move of the finger, but this requires deep comprehension of the spell.

Dao Thought, which is to think of the effect your spell is supposed to achieve. You have to imagine the spell you want to cast, it has to be grand and detailed, but not so much that it requires too long of a thought.

These three stages have to be perfectly aligned to cast a proper spell. Any mistake, any small delay will ruin the spell.

This is just the first hurdle of the spell, mastering it allows you to enter the stage of Entry.

From then on, you have to refine the different stages to reach higher mastery.

Refining one allows you to reach Minor Accomplishment, two is Major Accomplishment and three, refining all, is the level of Perfection.

Above Perfection is the level of Grand Perfection, the realm where you unite the different actions to a singular action, where comprehension has reached the level of ease, as if the dao is accompanying you.

The issue is that with each refinement, there is an exponential increase in difficulty, especially at the last step. The first refinement is easy because you don’t have to balance anything, the second refinement requires deeper comprehension to balance the refinements and consider the stance of the previous refinement, and with each further refinement, the difficulty rises more.

And this is just the stage of Spells... after spells come Minor Magic Powers, Magic Powers, Minor Divine Powers...

Fengyu remembered his Spiritual Absorptions spell – when he gained a single point of expertise, he seemed to have gained insights into Dao Language.

He quickly engrossed himself into learning the Dao Language of the Wood Recovery spell.

He had already learned quite a few spells and felt that the difficulty of language was the highest, followed by Dao Move and finally Dao Thought.

Maybe it was because of his past life, but in his experience, imagining and thinking of anything was extremely easy, requiring no deep comprehension at all.

Because he learned that the difficulty with each stage would rise, he decided to start with the most difficult and end with the easiest to him.

"Mu- qi – chong-" he practiced, trying to pronounce the spell, yet after just three words, he felt stuck. His tongue became heavy, beads forming on his forehead.

He calmed down and breathed slowly, until the symptoms of the dao language mistake disappeared.

"This language is really difficult, requiring deep contemplation and correct pronunciation... but where was I wrong?

Mu stands for wood and Qi for vitality... Chong? What does chong mean?

No, it should be Chong Ying, they are together, not separated...

But this sheet clearly separated them as Chong Ying and not Chongying..."

He thought about it and tried again, "Mu- qi- chongying-" but once more, he felt a backlash!

His tongue became even heavier this time and he felt like he was losing his strength.

"No, no, Chong Ying can’t be combined, instead, it should be pronounced closely but with distance, it should be pronounced ChongYing, together yet separated..." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

He tried it once more, "Mu- Qi- ChongYing-"

This time, his tongue didn’t swell, but his voice couldn’t continue. Instantly, he felt a backlash once more!

"This word, ChongYing, is too difficult to pronounce. After doing that, I need to take a small break, but a break will stop the spell casting and cause me to suffer the backlash..."

He calmed down and tried to start again, "Mu- qi-"

"Cough! Cough! Cough!" he suddenly felt a cough rise when he stopped barely for a second in preparation for the next word...

Each time he tried to speak the Dao Language, he felt his power dwindle and slow down.

After the sixth try, even pronouncing Mu became difficult, so he stopped for today.

Although it seemed like he only spoke three or four words, in fact, to him, was a huge burden.

Every word carried deep meaning and a single wrong step caused him to suffer backlash.

"Learning spells is so difficult! Fortunately, with every spell, it becomes a bit easier. This time I directly knew Mu and Qi, next time, I should be able to have it even easier..."

That’s one of the reasons why learning one lineage is easier than dipping into different fields –

Once one learns the lineage of wood spells, one will quickly realise that each spell only has one or two new words, the rest being the same as those one had learned already.

This quickens the speed of learning by a lot.

Naturally when entering a different lineage and learning different spells, one will lose this benefit wholly.

Only those higher cultivators have mastered many common words of the language, able to cast various new spells.

But there is an endless number of words, so even if one learns most common ones, one would quickly realise that higher spells require a deeper understanding and couldn’t be cast easily.

After an hour of learning, Fengyu returned to the field and took care of his ducks again.

He only had a few hours every day in which he didn’t work –

Usually, three hours were spent cultivating and he had two more hours of free time. Now, he could use that time to learn an hour in the morning and another in the evening.