Chapter 22: Perception

To be honest, Wen Xu did not feel much of a difference leaping from the second level of Qi Refining to the seventh. He had simply opened the 《Art of Myriad Things Co-Creation》 and understood the principle that wind could affect all things.

Then, he began to feel that the first layer of the 《Art of Myriad Things Co-Creation》, 《The Birth of All Things》, which had originally been obscure and difficult to understand, suddenly became simple. It was like when he took the child candidate exam; the examiner had handed him the provincial exam paper, and no matter how long he studied it, he could not find the answers. But after his epiphany, the examiner handed him the correct child candidate paper, and he could naturally sail through the exam.

These seven days felt like a mere instant in his perception. When he opened his eyes, he heard his master’s voice, full of laughter: “Not bad. An epiphany on your very first cultivation session, reaching the seventh level of Qi Refining.”

Only then did Wen Xu look inward to inspect his dantian. Sure enough, there were five more seas of Qi in his dantian, and the size of each sea had expanded significantly. He tried to circulate the spiritual energy in his body, finding it more than ten times smoother than before.

He immediately felt a surge of joy. “Thank you for your guidance, Master.” He had taken another giant step toward the Golden Core.

Venerable Chengwei smiled and waved his hand. “No need for thanks. However, while your cultivation rose quickly, your physical reactions haven’t caught up yet. Sabers, spears, staffs, axes… which do you prefer?”

Wen Xu thought for a moment and shook his head honestly. “Your disciple has no preference.”

Venerable Chengwei, as a dragon, seemed unreliable, but anyone who truly knew him knew that he was actually very meticulous. He was meticulous only where he felt it mattered. For instance, right now, many people on Yonglu Mountain, including many high-ranking elders, believed he had only taken a disciple out of boredom to play around. Whether he would teach seriously was highly debatable.

In truth, however, he was a rather traditional dragon. Since he had accepted this introverted disciple, he would inevitably need to pry open the little fellow’s defenses. To him, this was actually quite interesting and challenging. “I see. Ah Xu, can you tell Master about your experiences in the Mortal Realm?”

Wen Xu was puzzled. “What does Master wish to know?”

“Well, can’t I learn more about my only personal disciple? I’m over a thousand years old, and you’re the only disciple I’ve ever taken. This is my first time being a master, so I have to cross the river by feeling the stones. Shouldn’t I ask?” Venerable Chengwei sat down casually on the ground. He withdrew his aura, looking exactly like an ordinary person.

At least, that was how he looked to the face-blind Wen Xu.

Wen Xu startled, quickly waving his hands. “No, that is not what I meant. I just… do not know where to begin.” Few people had ever been interested in his past.

It seems this little fellow is starved for affection, Venerable Chengwei thought, resting his chin on his hand casually. “Then let’s start with… how you learned to read and write. Ah Xu, were you a scholar in the Mortal Realm?”

“How did Master know?”

“Hmph, everyone says your master is highly perceptive. Don’t you believe it?” As for the truth, it was because although this little fellow had the Emperor Fate, it had been suppressed too severely, leaving a lingering aura of cyan scholarly Qi around his fate, formed through his own hard work.

Wen Xu: I believed it at first, but now I’m not so sure.

“Master is correct. I was indeed a scholar when I was in the Mortal Realm.”

“Did you pass the imperial examinations?”

“At eighteen, I passed the provincial exam and became a juren.”

Oh, so my disciple is actually a Wenqu Star^[1], Venerable Chengwei thought. No wonder he could comprehend the 《Art of Myriad Things Co-Creation》 so quickly. To think scholars have such an advantage in cultivation. If word of this gets out, I’m afraid quite a few shameless old fools will sneak off to the Mortal Realm to search for disciples.

“I’ve heard that scholars in the Mortal Realm must be in good health and free of physical defects. Did you not pretend to be blind back then?”

At the mention of this, Wen Xu felt slightly embarrassed. “Yes.”

“It must have been very hard,” Venerable Chengwei said. He thought about it. Balancing his studies while concealing his unusual eyes, and doing so successfully, he was beginning to admire his disciple’s mental fortitude.

Wen Xu instinctively wanted to deny it, but before he could speak, his master’s voice came again: “Ah Xu, don’t casually deny your own hardships and efforts. If you deny them too often, you might end up ignoring things you should have valued.”

Wen Xu froze, forgetting what he was about to say.

“Alright, alright, I won’t chat with you anymore. Cultivation requires a balance of tension and relaxation to last. Go play with your little friends. If you don’t go out soon, there won’t even be room to step on the transmission talismans on the front gate.”

Venerable Chengwei was about to leave when he suddenly remembered something and turned back. “I almost forgot. Since you have no preference, start by practicing the sword. Any style will do. Just go to the Scripture Library and pick one yourself. Your master doesn’t have those low-level sword techniques.”

Wen Xu: …Master really comes and goes like the wind.

But looking back closely at their conversation, Wen Xu suddenly felt a weight lift from his chest. He exhaled a breath of turbid air, and his respect for his master couldn’t help but increase by three points. Well, setting aside the fact that his master had enemies all over the world, his master was actually… Alright, subtract one point of respect.

Having gathered his thoughts, he finally had the time to check the transmission talismans at the door. Most of them were from Bian Chunzhou. He read through them all carefully before heading down the mountain to Liujiang Peak to meet up with his friends. He hadn’t expected his timing to be so perfect, arriving just as Lin Congcong was causing trouble for Chunzhou.

Perhaps his master had given him immense confidence just now, because for once, Wen Xu had shown a rare sharp edge. But thinking about it, there was nothing wrong with being sharp once in a while.

At the very least, offending Lin Congcong would not have much of an impact on him now.

Wen Xu was accustomed to being kind to others, not because he was genuinely kind and polite, but simply because… he was in the habit of avoiding trouble and not making enemies.

But just now, he realized that he was no longer that solitary scholar. He was now in the cultivation world, a Qi Refining Stage cultivator who had just embarked on his path.

With this in mind, he directly answered Chen Zui’s invitation to fight: “Master said my physical body hasn’t caught up with my cultivation, so he told me to go to the Scripture Library first to find a couple of sword techniques to practice.”

Chen Zui began to frown. “Why sword techniques? Saber techniques… Well, you really don’t look like someone who would practice the saber.” Just like Bian Chunzhou, he didn’t have a single trace of a saber cultivator’s temperament.

“Sword techniques are so cool! Wen Xuxu, let’s ignore him. I know where all the sword manuals are in the Scripture Library. I’ll take you there.”

Chen Zui had absolutely no interest in sword manuals, nor did he need to go to the Scripture Library to look for cultivation methods or saber techniques. Thus, he did not join them. Judging by the way he walked off with his saber in hand, he was likely heading back to practice his saber forms.

“Actually, Chen Zuizui is also at the seventh level of Qi Refining, but seeing that you’ve reached the seventh level today too, he’s definitely feeling a bit stifled,” Bian Chunzhou whispered.

Overachievers, they were all overachievers. Bian Chunzhou had originally planned to take his cultivation slow, but the people around him were training like madmen, which inevitably affected his state of mind.

No matter how optimistic he was, he could not stand being the only one left behind, running in place.

Wen Xu fell silent for a moment. “Chunzhou, is there anything I can do to help you?”

Bian Chunzhou was about to say no, but then he thought, Why am I trying to act tough in front of my best bro? “Actually… there’s a lot. Wen Xuxu, how is your literary foundation?”

Wen Xu seemed to understand. “Chunzhou, do you want me to teach you how to study?”

“Would you?” OvO.

“I should be able to. To be honest, I studied for a few years back in the Mortal Realm.”

Bian Chunzhou let out a soft exclamation. “But your eyes…”

“I wasn’t born blind.”

“Ah?”

“My master said it has to do with my fate,” Wen Xu trotted out this catch-all excuse once again.

Bian Chunzhou babbled incoherently for a moment before immediately dropping the subject. “How many years did you study?”

Wen Xu pursed his lips slightly. “Well, over a decade.”

Good grief, a scholar from ancient times! Wasn’t that basically a master of classical Chinese analysis? Sobbing, Bian Chunzhou immediately lunged forward. “Save me! I can’t understand my cultivation manual!”

Wen Xu: …No wonder Chunzhou’s cultivation hasn’t progressed at all.

Since noise was forbidden in the Scripture Library, and Wen Xu was in no hurry to find a sword manual anyway, he simply went with Bian Chunzhou to the neighboring Meditation Peak. They found an empty cave dwelling to start their private, one-on-one tutoring session.

“Um, would you mind teaching one more student?” Bian Chunzhou stealthily raised a finger.

Wen Xu was puzzled. “Chen Zui?”

Bian Chunzhou snapped his fingers. “Exactly. The two of us are brothers in misfortune.”

Wen Xu: …

Before long, Chen Zui arrived with his saber. The three of them sat facing each other. Wen Xu took a deep breath and spoke, “First of all, I need to know why exactly you two can’t understand your manuals. Is it that you don’t recognize the words, or…”

“We recognize them, we do! And after the spoon-fed training on Liujiang Peak these past few days, I can guess about seventy to eighty percent of the literal meaning. But I don’t understand what direct connection it has to… cultivating with spiritual roots?”

Chen Zui’s situation was slightly different from Bian Chunzhou’s. “My manual is a bit too complex. I can’t seem to practice it.”

The number of times Wen Xu found himself speechless today was practically more than all the times in the first half of his life combined.

He organized his thoughts before speaking. “First, this is just a bit of my personal understanding of cultivation. It might not be entirely correct, but you can listen to the general idea.”

Bian Chunzhou nodded like a chicken pecking at grain. “Go ahead, tell us.”

Chen Zui also nodded seriously.

“Cultivation is a very personal matter. It is just like studying. Everyone reads the Four Books and Five Classics^[2], but how much one learns and comprehends depends on personal effort and the teacher’s guidance, rather than simply reading them repeatedly. Furthermore, everyone has a different understanding of the classics.”

“But a cultivator’s path is slightly different. It seems… and by ‘seems,’ I do not mean I am uncertain, but rather… it should be a state that cannot be spoken or written down.”

Bian Chunzhou could not agree more. “Yes, exactly! I feel the same way! The manuals in the Scripture Library are all convoluted and incredibly esoteric. Not a single one of them is written in plain, human language.”

“Indeed, the manual my master gave me is the same.” Wen Xu hesitated for a moment before continuing, “From the moment the manual was handed to me until I broke through to the seventh level of Qi Refining, my master never asked a single question about my comprehension of it.”

The breath of the other two suddenly hitched. Something flashed through Bian Chunzhou’s mind, but it was too fast for him to grasp.

“So I think, or rather guess, that a cultivation manual serves as an aid. It is more like a tool to help the spiritual root absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. But since everyone’s situation is different, therefore…”

“Individual differences!” Bian Chunzhou could not help but blurt out.

He had been wrong! He had been so wrong! All this time, he had put the cart before the horse regarding the relationship between the manual and himself. It was all those TV dramas that had misled him, with their tropes of a male lead finding a legendary manual, suddenly rising to power, and becoming invincible, or the entire world fighting over a single martial arts manual because whoever obtained it would rule the world. Consequently, he had always prioritized the importance of the cultivation manual above all else.

But now, Wen Xuxu’s words had woken him up. The manual was indeed important, but not so important that it should be put first. It was meant to assist the spiritual root, to assist his own cultivation. He could not bet everything on the manual alone.

The esoteric nature of these manuals, written like cryptic scriptures, was precisely to remind novice cultivators that this should be a process of integrating themselves with the manual!

It could not be followed blindly. It had to be adapted to the individual. The manual should adapt to him, not the other way around where he tried every possible way to decipher its shape and mold himself to fit it!

“I get it now! So that’s how it is! No wonder I could never find my way in!”

He had thought of it too simply, assuming that cultivation was a step-by-step, procedural process. He had viewed cultivation as a problem and the manual as the method to solve it, believing that as long as he had the method, he would definitely be able to solve the difficult problem.

But it was not like that. Even a math problem had different solutions. Functions, geometry, sequences, and conic sections were all different paths leading to the same result. He should not force himself to comprehend the absolute “correct” way of the 《Harmonization of Water and Fire^[3]》.

Because there was no single correct solution to begin with; there was only the optimal solution that best suited him!

Every cultivator’s spiritual root was different. How could different spiritual roots adapt to the exact same manual? No wonder the manuals were not written in a way that everyone could easily understand, because doing so would make them completely meaningless.

It only leads people astray. It truly should have been written the way it is now.

Bian Chunzhou suddenly grew quiet. Holding the jade slip of 《Harmonization of Water and Fire》, he slowly closed his eyes.

“He has entered a state of sudden enlightenment.”

Chen Zui looked at Wen Xu in confusion. “Could you say what you just said again?” He wanted to gain enlightenment too.

Wen Xu: If I played the lute to a cow^[4], even the cow would have a bigger reaction than you.