Chapter 23: Water and Fire

The person who wrote the world’s first cultivation method must have been a one-of-a-kind genius.

So thought Bian Chunzhou. As for the first cultivator to write down a water-fire cultivation method, he might not have been a genius, but he was certainly a man of courage. If someone dared to walk a path no one had ever trodden before, a path fraught with extreme danger, how could they not be called brave?

The Water-Fire Spiritual Root was a dual spiritual root that was practically useless. People often used the phrase “incompatible as water and fire” to describe sharp, irreconcilable opposition, meaning the two elements could never coexist.

If water prevailed, it would extinguish the fire. If fire dominated, it would evaporate and dry up the water.

The two were like opposing blades, utterly irreconcilable.

But was it truly impossible to reconcile them?

If it were truly impossible, why could a Water-Fire Spiritual Root exist in a single body? Why would a predecessor have written 《Harmonization of Water and Fire》?

Bian Chunzhou believed they had to be capable of coexistence, just like any other dual spiritual roots. It was just that their method of coexistence was more hidden, requiring someone to blaze a new trail.

So, how could water and fire harmonize?

《Harmonization of Water and Fire》 did not provide a clear method, nor did it explicitly state how to control the growth of spiritual energy in the Water-Fire Spiritual Root. That was why he had been unable to find a way in.

He had assumed the method contained the answers and that he simply failed to grasp the deeper meaning due to the cultural and educational differences between ancient and modern times. In reality, it had never been written down in the first place. It was like the answer key to a math fill-in-the-blank question: it gave the final answer but skipped the derivation process.

Just as Wen Xuxu had said, the cultivation method only served as a guide. The true core had to be himself.

Therefore, what he truly needed to comprehend was his own understanding of how water and fire could merge.

This brought him back to the starting point: how could water and fire coexist?

Although Bian Chunzhou had been a science student, he had not majored in chemistry. Even so, basic high school chemistry told him that water was an inorganic compound composed of hydrogen and oxygen. At room temperature, it was a colorless, odorless, transparent liquid. It froze below zero degrees and turned into water vapor in the air when boiled.

Fire, on the other hand, was a chemical reaction that released light and heat, typically characterized by high temperatures. It was a process of energy release. Fire could not appear out of thin air. The conditions for combustion required fuel and oxygen. In other words, fire could not burn in a vacuum.

But what he wanted was for water and fire to merge, not for one to simply suppress the other.

So, how could he make water and fire influence each other without consuming one another? If I knew I was going to cultivate, I should have majored in chemistry, Bian Chunzhou thought.

Yet, it was not as if he had no ideas at all. Water was a highly unique substance. Its hydrogen-oxygen composition allowed it to act as both a reactant and a product in chemical reactions.

In fact, most combustion in nature was accompanied by the production of water, except this “water” was water vapor, invisible to the naked eye.

Therefore, the most ideal state was for water to become water vapor and coexist with fire.

But if he did that, the offensive capabilities of his Water-Fire Spiritual Root would be too one-dimensional. It was also a far cry from the harmonization of water and fire he envisioned. He wanted to be able to control both water and fire freely, not just… keep them burning continuously.

While water and fire might coexist this way, his body probably could not withstand such a “coexistence.” Even though a cultivator’s physical constitution far surpassed that of an ordinary human, their cultivation would gradually grow. The reason most people with a Water-Fire Spiritual Root could not advance to the Nascent Soul stage was likely because their bodies could not handle the intense reaction between water and fire, leading them into a dead end.

But water vapor… well, it was indeed a decent form of attack. It could stack buffs alongside fire, which was a pretty good concept for talisman making.

However, when it came to cultivation methods, an overly complex coexistence of water and fire would only complicate his cultivation. It might be fine at the beginning, but it would definitely become harder in the later stages. After all, advancing one’s cultivation required more and more spiritual energy.

So, what was the simplest concept for the coexistence of water and fire?

People generally believed that water and fire were incompatible because, under normal temperature and pressure, the ignition point of most common substances was higher than the boiling point of water. Thus, when a substance burned, the excessive heat would cause a large amount of water to evaporate.

So, how could water and fire coexist?

It was simple: he just needed to change where the water and fire were located.

By hiding fire within water, as long as the pressure in the water was high enough, like in the deep sea, where the high pressure would raise the boiling point of the water, the fire would not evaporate the surrounding water, and the two could coexist perfectly.

Bian Chunzhou felt that while cultivation required a scientific approach, there was no need to be too rigid about it. It could be materialistic, but it could also be slightly idealistic. Spiritual energy was not a product of science, so it could accomplish things that scientific experiments could not.

Therefore, what he needed to do now was find a point of balance for his “Fire in Water” method, a balance that would allow both sides of his Water-Fire Spiritual Root to flourish.

Isn’t this just running an experiment? Bian Chunzhou thought. Finally, I’m in my comfort zone!

Immersed in his epiphany, Bian Chunzhou continuously experimented with the balance of water and fire in his mind. Meanwhile, in the outside world, Wen Xu’s patience was wearing thin. What did it mean to be blockheaded? He had never really understood the concept before, but now he was looking right at it.

And that blockhead was sitting right on Chen Zui’s shoulders.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have a single insight after reading the cultivation method?” Wen Xu was baffled. He did not understand. He was utterly shocked.

Chen Zui scratched his head. Things are what they are. Why does there have to be some deeper insight? Cultivation was so hard. No wonder his mother had been unwilling to teach him and insisted on kicking him out of the house to study at Yonglu Mountain.

“No. Why do I have to have an insight?”

Wen Xu: “…”

“Don’t you think the cultivation method is too complicated? It says so much, just like my mother’s cooking. It’s all fancy bells and whistles, but the food still tastes terrible. What’s the point? It’s better to just eat a Fasting Pill.”

Wen Xu pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is it possible that if it weren’t your mother cooking, but the greatest chef in the world, those same preparations would yield the most delicious delicacy?”

Chen Zui had his own unique way of thinking. “But if it’s the world’s greatest chef, they can make the most delicious dish even with the simplest ingredients.”

Having finally managed to coax some information out of him, Wen Xu called Chen Zui’s name with great seriousness.

“What is it?” Chen Zui looked up.

“So, when you practice your cultivation methods, do you want to be like your mother? Or do you want to be the world’s greatest chef?”

Chen Zui thought to himself, Be like my mother? No way, she’d beat me to death.

Be the world’s greatest chef? I don’t want that either. I don’t even know how to cook.

So he spoke up, “Why should I be someone else? I only want to be myself, and I only want to walk my own path of the blade.”

Exactly. He only needed to be himself. Since he couldn’t understand the manual, he might as well stop trying to read it!

“I’m going to practice my blade.”

Leaving those words behind, Chen Zui quickly vanished from Wen Xu’s sight. Judging by his hurried pace, his cultivation would surely have broken through by the next time they met.

Indeed, Wen Xu had discovered that ever since he started wearing the ribbon gifted by his master, even if he secretly opened his eyes to observe others, they wouldn’t notice his gaze as long as their cultivation didn’t exceed his master’s.

Furthermore, no one seemed to realize that this ribbon carried the power of a Body Integration stage expert.

This was practically a cheating tool to help Wen Xu pretend to be blind. However, Wen Xu had no intention of keeping his eyes open around others. For one thing, he disliked looking at people’s faces; since he couldn’t remember them anyway, it would only serve as a constant reminder of how different his eyes were. For another, he was a cautious person. Just in case, he preferred to take everything to the absolute limit.

Besides, being blind did not hinder a cultivator’s daily life or cultivation. To Wen Xu, this was his favorite aspect of cultivation. Furthermore, a cultivator’s divine sense was unique. Once he developed his divine sense in the future, he could rely on it to identify others, eliminating the need to deliberately observe everything about them.

Wen Xu eagerly anticipated that day, and so he would do everything in his power to cultivate.

*

Since Bian Chunzhou was still in the middle of an epiphany and would not wake up anytime soon, Wen Xu headed to the Scripture Library on the neighboring Disciples’ Peak to look for sword arts.

Unless a cultivator was strictly walking the path of the sword, most would not go out of their way to comprehend sword intent. However, the sword was indeed a suitable weapon for beginners, making sword arts the choice for most non-sword cultivators.

Wen Xu was a scholar, and an accomplished one at that, so he had naturally studied the Six Gentlemanly Arts.

The Six Gentlemanly Arts, consisting of rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics, referred to ritual propriety, music and dance, archery, carriage driving, calligraphy, and arithmetic. Of course, the academy did not require students to master every single one. No matter how much of a genius Wen Xu was, he could not excel in every subject, but he was indeed quite good at archery, and his sword dancing was decent.

The standard for “decent” here was based on the aesthetic appeal of his flashy, superficial moves, rather than any actual offensive power.

The basic sword arts were kept on the second floor of the Scripture Library. Wen Xu swiped his disciple token to enter, went upstairs, and quickly found the sword arts related to wind. Most of the sword arts here were organized by the five elements. Single-element sword arts were placed on the far left, while the general five-element sword arts were on the far right. Looking up, there were… so many sword arts.

Wen Xu took a glance and then silently closed his eyes. 《Wind Rises, Water Swells》, 《Golden Sands and Scattered Stones》, 《Wind-Breaking Sword Art》, and so on and so forth. For the first time, he felt that reading jade slips was an exhausting task.

Yonglu Mountain truly lived up to its reputation as a sect of ancient lineage; its heritage was incredibly profound.

After spending most of the day, Wen Xu finally selected two jade slips that were relatively suitable for him. One was the 《Wind-Breaking Sword Art》, which controlled wind through the sword, while the other was rather unique. It was not actually a sword art, but a jade slip explaining how to set up formations using wind.

He wondered if the two could be combined: controlling wind with the sword, and setting up formations with the wind…

“Is the Wind-Folding Fan not to your liking?”

Wen Xu gasped in surprise. He truly had not sensed anyone approaching.

“My apologies for startling you, Little Grand-Uncle Master. It was my mistake.” Although Zheng Jin offered an apology, his actions showed no sign of remorse. He even leaned closer to glance at the jade slips. “Little Grand-Uncle Master, your idea is good, but…”