Chapter 102 - Unknowing About Cultivation
"Thank you for saving my life." The young man was lying on the ground, his blood pooling around him as he gasped.
There was no reply but a quiet laughter could be heard in the alley. Then, the young man saw a robe floating in the wind like waves under the moonlight. It looked to him like the person the robes belonged to was carrying a young girl in his arms. In the blink of an eye, the ghostly figure disappeared.
The young male stumbled out from the alley. In his mind, he still thought about that highly skilled person but now was not the time to look for him.
...
Shen Lian was being spontaneous. After playing the mysterious savior, it could be said that he had satisfied one of his adolescent fantasies.
Speaking of which, who did not ever imagine in their teenagehood that they could fly and have all kinds of supernatural powers and what they would do with it? But once Shen Lian had truly become the person he had hoped to be, he hardly did the things he had imagined during his teenage years.
Slowly, he walked into the clinic and gently placed Young Ruoxi on her bed, covering her body with a blanket.
As for his own bed, he tied a long rope across the side of the room and as it hung in the air, he flipped himself on top of it and calmly laid down.
Initially, he had wanted to imitate a certain figure from his past life. That person was enlightened and his heart was pure and clean of all desires. He did not have distracting thoughts and slept on a rope for years.
There was actually not much use to meditate and practice Qi in the hustle and bustle of the mortal world. It was just on a playful whim that Shen Lian decided to copy this habit.
When he started out with this habit, he still needed to use his mind to control his body so that he did not fall from the rope, and so could not enter a deep state of spiritual calmness.
Soon, he eventually entered an unintentional state of spiritual calmness and his body naturally responded. He was then able to master his balance and allowed the vigor of his body to transform constantly but keeping his center of gravity unchanged.
Even though it did not really help in any way, he still felt the need of vacantly catch hold of something.
Hanging in midair, Shen Lian slowly entered a state of spiritual calmness. His spirit transformed into a Yin spirit. Even in the middle of the bier, it was not that illusory and it was real and congeal.
The only difference was that, compared to the previous formless spirit smoke, it was less brilliant and had become somewhat dull.
The deeper his concentration got, the more Shen Lian could feel a calling from beneath the ground. It could not even be said that it was from under the ground itself but from a sluggish unnamed world. It was gloomy and he could somehow hear the faint sounds of flowing water and the low, toneless wail that lingered in his ears from time to time.
These sounds did not bother him. It was as though with just a change of mental states, he could enter that world, lay life and death aside, and attain a form of quietness.
He had entered this state now for years and knew it was not the same as Chushen of the nine states of cultivation, even though the two shared similarities.
Shen Lian naturally understood the implication of this situation: this was also called "connecting to the netherworld". What he connected with was most probably what was called the deep springs of the netherworld. It was just that Shen Lian had no way to verify this thought.
This type of information was also not to be found in the Taiwei Pavilion of Qing Xuan.
The unnerving part of the Mastery of Senses was that even when one hits a plateau during cultivation, as long as one can make it over the threshold, it would be smooth sailing until the next phase. This phase might be difficult or it might be easy; there were no rules to it. Shen Lian only needed to cultivate the Mastery of Senses one step at a time and one day, like the river flowing eastwards towards the sea, he would be able to reach a state that had never been reached before and not be burdened by illness and death.
However, it was only because of the difficulty of the Taixu Strategy that this method of martial art exercise seemed so easy. Shen Lian vaguely felt that in the end, he could become a being unable to feel neither joy nor sorrow. That was not the longevity he wished for.
The contradiction in life was that one cannot give up current progress to question the root of the matter. He was still cultivating the Mastery of Senses with this martial art exercise but he was also not giving up on his exploration of the Taixu Strategy.
Based on this, he still had not truly detached from human nature.
Little children sleep early and they also wake up early. Ruoxi woke up and got ready for the day at the first light of dawn. Shen Lian was already awake by this hour.
He did not arrange her daily routine through to nightfall and allowed her to fully embrace her character. After that, he would arrange tasks that were within her capabilities which would not be too difficult for her.
What a cultivator sought was longevity—to attain the perpetual path. To put it simply, there was a need to live because, by living, there were countless wonderful things to do and countless wishes to be realized.
Only by knowing the preciousness of life and loving all of it, only then was there the motivation to cultivate.
That was how Shen Lian thought of it so when his cultivation grew dry and boring, he did not forget about the perks of life.
The ordinary human, to him, would be considered an ant. But there were rare moments when he would still find interest in watching the ants transport food under a tree. The perks of life lay in truth and abundance; there should not be a division on what is high or low.
The melodious sounds of the Guqin rang through the compound. Ruoxi naturally did not hear the " scattered and magnificent, the spears swung freely with great ease 1 " within the tune. She only felt the safest possible with her big brother by her side at that very moment.
The tune came to a slow end and Shen Lian said, "Today, I will teach you to cultivate. Although I cannot recruit disciples now according to the Qing Xuan rules, I can still teach you a few superficial things."
Confusion flashed through Little Ruoxi"s innocent eyes. She still did not understand that if this chance was given to those who understood cultivation in the imperial city, the people would fight tooth and nail to have their descendants train under Shen Lian.
She did not even know that her brother had left the Shen household in the search to find celestials and to seek Dao or that he had traveled far and wide only to be able to join this school for cultivation.
Cultivation was very particular on established practices which were hard to come by. If there was no faith then, like Ling Chongxiao, even though he had reached Celestialism, he could do nothing about it but carry this regret for the rest of his life.
She simply asked, "What is cultivation?"
A child"s innocent words usually shocked those who were mindful of their words.
Shen Lian could not help but smile, "Now that you"ve asked me, I don"t actually know how to explain it to you."
Ruoxi pouted, "Oh." She was not happy about baffling her brother. In fact, she was disappointed to realize her brother was not all-knowing.
A big brother was a big brother and not an idol and yet the little girl did not understand why she felt like her idol was crumbling.
Shen Lian thought, "She is still so young and saying too much will only confuse her. I should just teach her without explanation."
This proved that Shen Lian was no Patriarch Bodhi 2 and Ruoxi was no monkey. She had a pure heart for Dao and a natural born body suitable for Dao.
Even though Ruoxi"s talent was better than the ordinary person and she practiced calligraphy to orient her character, she did not fully understand the stage of feeling her inner Qi.
After all, no matter whether a monkey or a genius like Chen Jianmei, it was still a rarity to find someone who could.
After spending half a month learning, Ruoxi could feel the Qi that her big brother mentioned inside of her and nothing else. Shen Lian had ner do nothing else and had her focus on only learning to feel it.
Ruoxi also had another a.s.signment and that was to practice the " Yong 3 " word in calligraphy. Naturally, the "Yong" word written by Shen Lian was never simple.
She concentrated hard while she did her homework in the clinic. About when she was halfway done, a young man came into the clinic. She recognized this person—it was the young man next to the guy who poured water on her.
She decided he was not as good looking as her big brother and he was definitely not as good looking as Ruoxi. "纷披灿烂,戈矛纵横" is used to describe this traditional Guqin song named "Guang Ling San" （"广陵散"） A character from "Journey to the west" ("西游记"). He recruited Sun Wukong （孙悟空, who is also the monkey king, as his disciple and taught him the 72 polymorphic transformations and immortality. Original character is 永, which roughly means forever.