Alex walked into the Hall of Fame as the mayor took him in. The elders followed behind him and arrived in a giant open room where very few paintings were hanging from the wall.
There was a circular set of stairs that went around the walls of this massive building, and along those very walls was where the paintings were.
"Right this way, your majesty," the headmaster said and took him to the stairs, where Alex could start his journey of viewing the paintings in the room.
"There are a total of 12 paintings in the Hall of Fame at the moment," the headmaster explained. "Each one better than the next. We will be starting off with the older ones and going halfway up to the stairs where the latest ones are."
Before they arrived at the first painting, the headmaster paused and turned around. "I must warn you your majesty, some of these paintings might be hard to view due to the subject of the painting itself and the Intent that accompanies it."
"If at any point you feel like you are hurt or disgusted by the feeling, simply close your eyes and look away. The Intent won't affect you if you stop looking at it," the headmaster said.
"Thank you for your concern, headmaster," Alex said. "I shall do as you say."
The headmaster nodded and took him to the first painting.
Alex glanced at the painting and started feeling a mix of warmth and heartache at the same time.
The painting was a picture of a small girl in a white dress with a bright smile, playing in a field of flowers. The entire painting looked so beautiful, and yet… the ones looking at it could only feel the sadness.
"This painting is called The Summer's Dream. It was painted by an excellent painter over 17 thousand years ago, and the subject of the painting is the painter's daughter, who he lost to some incurable physical conditions."
"He made this painting as a method of moving on from her death that had affected him so much at the time, but also as a way of never forgetting her."
"This is truly a masterpiece and is the painting that made the people at the time start the hall of fame to commemorate the painter at the time. He never made anything as good from what we can tell, but he certainly created precedence that allowed 11 different painters to send their names down the annuls of history.
Alex stared at the painting for a while, taking in everything. He thought he saw the flowers move in the wind, the girl swinging on the swing. He could hear happy, cheerful laughter from the girl and could tell that she was very loved.
This was a truly moving piece.
After looking at it for a while, they decided to move on.
The second painting was from 12 thousand years ago, a whole 5 thousand years after the first painting.
It was a piece called 'The War God's Fury', and it depicted a man killing an army of thousands of cultivators in a single strike.
Apparently, it was made by a man who once had to fight against an entire sect of cultivators to rescue the woman he loved that had been kidnapped. However, before he could rescue her, the sect killed the woman, earning the man's fury.
He had fought them all in a bloody life-and-death battle where he had killed them all. The painting obviously depicted a rather exaggerated version of the events, but it still managed to send across the feeling of fury and anger through the painting.
Alex could feel his heart beat faster as his own fighting spirit was touched on after looking at the painting.
He closed his eyes and calmed his feelings before opening them. "Truly magnificent," he said.
They moved on to the third painting and Alex stopped as he looked at it. As soon as he looked at it, an odd feeling had grown inside of him.
It was a painting of a mountain, nothing else. It was a single mountain on a white background that wasn't even properly colored in at all.
The mountain was without any greenery, so it was entirely brown in color, and it also wasn't the best-looking mountain at all.
However, the Intent that came through the painting was not something Alex had expected. Even more than the first two paintings, this was something else entirely.
"The piece is just called the mountain," the headmaster said. "It was created by a painter who—"
The headmaster stopped when he saw Alex put his hand up to make him stop. He didn't want a description now. He simply wanted to see this painting.
It was possible for him to tell what was happening here to some extent. This wasn't a painting made by a painter at all, but rather someone very amateur. However, the heart and soul they had put into this painting made it come out quite well.
And the Intent that was driven into the painting made this a masterpiece.
The elders and headmaster stopped looking at the painting and started looking at Alex instead. The headmaster above all was surprised to see Alex's reaction as he understood what it meant for someone to view this painting in particular with such high attention.
He slowly stepped back and asked the elders to step back with him. They left Alex alone to view the painting for a while.
Alex wasn't even aware of what was happening around him. He knew he was safe here, so he had completely focused on the painting itself.
The more he looked at the mountain, the more he thought he understood what it was trying to convey. The more he looked at the mountain, the more he understood the mystery surrounding it.
After staring at it without moving for nearly half an hour, Alex reached into his ring and pulled out a bottle. Then, he pulled out a pill from inside of it, one with 8 veins on it.
The elders immediately recognized the pill and were surprised at what Alex was planning on doing. As Alex ate the pill and sat down, the elders requested the headmaster to move even further away.
The headmaster was more than happy to comply. After all, it wasn't an uncommon scenario to see someone learn some mystery into the unknown after looking at that painting.
After all, that was why this was placed in the Hall of Fame in the first place, despite the obviously bad art in the painting itself.
The three stood there, watching Alex meditate on the knowledge he had just acquired. They were silent the whole time through, not speaking a single word from start to finish.
The headmaster had shut the building down, not allowing anyone from entering for the time being. He wasn't sure how long it would take for Alex to learn it, or if he could even learn it, but he was ready to give him as much time as he needed.
The three started sitting down and cultivating as well, waiting for Alex to be done.
A little less than a day later, the three of them looked up into the sky where they could feel the fluctuations in the aura.
The two elders felt nothing weird about the situation, other than thinking that their king was going to learn another Dao.
However, the headmaster of the school was a different case. He had seen people learn Dao from a painting, but it was never something that happened on a single day.
It took months, if not years to properly learn everything about a Dao before learning it. Had Alex been trying to learn this Dao for a long time and this was his lucky break?
It was possible, which would mean that he was lucky to have come here and witnessed this painting. However, if that was not the case then… had he just called down the worldly laws just by meditating for a single day?
The truth was in fact somewhere in between. Alex hadn't tried to learn this dao at all, but he had gained some insight into it for a while now after all the pills he had made that used this very element.
Coming here and seeing the painting was in fact a fortunate encounter that had helped him push himself that much further into looking into the mysteries of this Dao.
On top of that, an 8-veined Dao pill helped him a lot with processing the knowledge he had just learned, which allowed him to call the Worldly laws down so early.
The worldly laws descended onto Alex, helping him learn about the Dao. At the same time, Alex's mind grew lucid as the pill's effect wore off a lot, which allowed him to grasp the opportunity that was provided to him.
While he tried his best to learn the Dao, he also used the opportunity to start cultivating as this was the best moment to do so.
It had been a while since he had entered the 6th Saint Core realm, so it was about time for him to go that much further.
Half an hour later, the worldly laws descended back into heaven and its aura fully disappeared from the world afterward.
Alex took a deep breath and opened his eyes now that he was done with it.
Using the random coincidence as a catalyst for it, Alex had broken through to the 7th Saint Core realm.
And at the same time, he had also learned the Dao of Earth.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢