Chapter 12
At the highest peak of the Hundred Thousand Mountains, clouds and mist billowed.
Beneath the blue-tiled halls of the Xuan Yang Sect (玄陽宗), a renowned cultivation sect, young disciples listened to their master’s lecture.
The old man with a long white beard set down his bamboo slips.
“To become a Qi Refining cultivator, you must pass through three stages.”
“Those three stages are sensing qi (感氣), drawing qi into your body (入氣), and condensing qi (凝氣), until you gather true qi in your dantian. Do you understand?”
Thanks to having admitted quite a number of commoners with spiritual roots this time, the Xuan Yang Sect was busy training them to become proper cultivators.
Among them, a young disciple in the front row raised his hand.
“Master (師尊). I have a question, and I dare to ask for your guidance.”
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve been taught that the cultivation methods we practice are the fruits of the past patriarchs’ blood, sweat, and tears.”
“Indeed.”
“Then… if a commoner in the mortal world happened to obtain a cultivation manual, could they set out on the path of cultivation all by themselves?”
At the boy’s innocent question, the elder let out a scoffing laugh, as though he found it absurd.
“What a foolish question! Do you think cultivation is a dog’s name in some household?”
“Eek! M-Master!”
“How foolish. Spiritual qi is indeed an energy that forms Heaven and Earth, but it is unrefined, exceedingly coarse, and impossible for a person to control.”
The old man picked up a wooden cup from the table.
“What would happen if you poured boiling lava into this thin cup?”
“It would burn up. No, it would melt away without a trace.”
“Exactly. Gathering spiritual qi in one’s dantian is every bit as dangerous. That is why I impart these secret manuals under the thorough supervision of a capable master like me!”
Then a child of about nine asked,
“Then how do wandering cultivators train? Did they all rise from humble beginnings to become dragons without a master?”
A few disciples in the lecture hall nodded, evidently curious, too.
They’d been separated from their parents at such a young age, and had spent a month rubbing shoulders with strangers. Their longing for the mortal world was beginning to well up.
But the elder whipped his sleeve and thundered at them.
“Wandering cultivators who attained immortality without a master? They’re nothing but figments in the fanciful stories told by ignorant mortals in the mundane world. A commoner trains alone with a few books? One hundred times out of one hundred, their dantian will tear apart and they’ll cough up blood and die, or be devoured by a heart demon and go mad.”
The disciple bowed his head, his face pale. The elder’s gaze drifted beyond the distant clouds.
“A wandering cultivator is a cultivator who has no affiliation with a sect, not one without a master. They, too, have to receive basic cultivation methods from someone, learn about meridians from their seniors, and rely on spirit medicines before they can barely cross the first threshold.”
The old man picked up a brush and wrote the character for ‘person’ (人).
“Look at the character for ‘person.’ It shows two people leaning on each other to stay upright. What does that mean?”
“That humans can never stand alone?”
“You’re right. So how could anyone cross the first threshold of cultivation—the act of drawing the energy of Heaven into their body—alone?”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Then has no one in history ever become a Qi Refining cultivator on their own?”
“Unprecedented. I’ve never heard of such a thing. The reason is…”
When the old man opened his palm, a sphere of water appeared in the air.
The disciples gasped as he formed a sphere of water this size out of thin air.
“Even if that person were a peerless prodigy who reached Deification and was capable of ascending to the Upper Realm, it could never happen. And furthermore!”
Whoosh—!
As soon as he finished speaking, the sphere of water shot toward someone.
“How many times have I told you not to mess around during my lecture?”
The disciple who’d been drenched in an instant lifted his limp hair.
“Master, how did you know?”
“When you’re standing up here, it’s easy to see when someone’s fooling around.”
Another disciple cautiously raised his hand.
“Did you perhaps extend your divine sense (神識)?”
“Oh? You know about divine sense? Then tell us what you understand by it.”
“Yes. I understood divine sense to be a sixth sense—the mind’s eye that one naturally gains upon becoming a cultivator.”
“You’re half right and half wrong. Divine sense is not simply some abstract thing like the mind’s eye.”
“Please forgive your foolish disciple. I beg you to teach me, Master.”
“Ahem. What did I say was the difference between a commoner and a cultivator?”
Then a boy who’d been sitting quietly raised his hand and called out.
“A spiritual root!”
“Good grief, you brat! What have you been listening to this whole time?”
Then the child who’d asked for guidance gave a different answer.
“True qi.”
“You’re right. It’s true qi. Then let me ask you: if this old master told you to demonstrate your divine sense, what would you do?”
“I’d have to use true qi, wouldn’t I?”
“True qi? How?”
“That’s…”
The disciples quietly held their breath.
“You see? Even for divine sense, which every cultivator learns to use, you need the insight passed down by your seniors. So if someone managed cultivation alone, with no foundation at all, they’d have to be a once-in-ten-thousand-years prodigy—or someone Heaven’s Dao favors.”
A once-in-ten-thousand-years prodigy.
Someone favored by Heaven’s Dao.
Naturally, there was no one like that in this lecture hall.
“Enough of these delusions.”
The elder waved his hand and pointed to a young man practicing swordsmanship.
“All of you, follow the example of your senior brother Jin Mu-ak, who’s practicing over there. Although his cultivation is only at Qi Refining, you should strive to emulate his naturally kind disposition and the upright heart forged through his physical training.”
“Yes! We’ll keep that in mind.”
The children began to murmur among themselves.
“Isn’t Senior Brother Jin said to have a Heavenly Root?”
“They say he’s a once-in-a-century genius. One of the few true disciples of our Xuan Yang Sect!”
“I heard he was recently allowed to venture into the jianghu, even though he’s only at Qi Refining.”
“I’m jealous. I want to be like Brother Mu-ak, too. I’ll become a cool, kind, and gentle senior brother!”
A girl who’d been listening quietly chided him.
“You? Know your place. No chance. Just look at your face.”
“I’ll be reborn with a whole new face, then!”
Meanwhile, Jin Mu-ak, who’d been extending his divine sense, lowered his sword and waved in greeting at the praise being heaped on him.
He was handsome enough to make the nearby female cultivators swoon.
“Kyaaa! Senior Brother Jin Mu-ak looked this way!”
“He waved at me! What should I do?”
As he watched the female cultivators giggling, Jin Mu-ak thought,
'Women really are such easy creatures. So why is that Five-Element Root woman…'
The elder struck his staff against the ground.
“Enough!”
“……”
“Since we’re on the subject, today we’ll practice divine sense. If any of you can extend your divine sense at least one chi, you may leave the mountain.”
At the mention of leaving the mountain, the disciples’ eyes lit up.
But they didn’t know
how painful and difficult it was to extend one’s divine sense.
And they knew even less
that, at that very moment, in a nameless village in a lower realm,
something unprecedented was about to happen.
###
At the same time. On the frontier of the Kingdom of Zheng, at the Ryu family estate.
It was now the sixth night since their daughter had declared she was entering seclusion and shut herself away.
The couple sat facing each other in the Ryu family’s sitting room. The only light came from the oil lamp, its flame wavering unsteadily as if reflecting the turmoil in their hearts.
The food on the table had gone cold, and Ryu Geun-ha, the husband, kept taking swigs of bitter liquor.
A man who wouldn’t back down even when face-to-face with a tiger in the mountains had been fretting for days over the detached building where his daughter was shut away.
“Dear, please have something to eat. You’ll hurt your stomach.”
“Our daughter’s in seclusion. How could a father possibly stomach any food?”
His wife set down her sewing and sighed.
“So-ha will be all right. We checked for signs of movement inside just a little while ago.”
“Dear, can we really leave things as they are? Tomorrow will make it seven days.”
“And?”
“It’s about time we told So-ha the truth.”
“What truth?”
“You know as well as I do how the children of cultivation clans begin cultivating. They spend astronomical sums on expensive spirit medicines and take renowned immortals as their masters, and even then they can barely cross the first threshold. We couldn’t even get So-ha a single low-grade Qi Gathering Pill—the most common kind.”
“……”
“In all my years, I’ve never heard of anyone cultivating alone and ascending to immortality, no matter how thoroughly I searched the Central Plains. It’s time to wake her from the fantasy that a commoner could gain enlightenment all alone—a delusion that’s all but impossible.”
“But surely it’s not completely unheard of?”
“You mean the nonsense braggarts spout in the marketplace? That they happened to eat a thousand-year-old spirit herb in the mountains and became peak experts overnight, or received an immortal’s cultivation method in a dream? Aren’t those stories made up by people wagging their tongues to earn their drink money?”
That was right. Her father hadn’t believed for a moment that his daughter could become a cultivator.
He had only allowed this dangerous farce to soothe his daughter’s trampled pride, her sense of debt toward those who’d died unjustly, and her tender heart, which might have been wounded.
“It can’t be helped. Tomorrow morning, once the sun rises, I’ll break down the door and go in. You stay here, dear. I’ll bear So-ha’s resentment alone. It’s my duty to show her the cruel truth.”
“So-ha will be hurt. After steeling herself like that…”
“If she’s alive, we can always comfort her over a wound like that.”
“What if she says she’ll never see her father again?”
He clutched his chest as if his heart were tearing apart.
“That would be a mortal wound, but… we said it was an equivalent exchange, so we’ll have to pay the price. Even if she hates me, it’s enough for me if So-ha is happy. Someday, she’ll understand my intentions as her father.”
Of course, if he could, he wanted to protect his daughter’s dream.
But sometimes, parents had to do what needed to be done—even if it meant breaking their child’s dream.
That night, the Ryu couple stayed awake all night.
But they had no idea, not even in their dreams,
that their daughter was in the process of shattering the very paradigm of cultivation in this world.
