Daoist Master of Qing Xuan

Chapter 102: Unknowing About Cultivation

“Thank you for saving my life.” The young lad was lying on the ground, his blood in a pool as he cracked this sentence.

There was no reply but a soft laughter quietly rang out. After that, he saw a person’s robe floating in the wind like rolls of waves under the moonlight, the person was carrying a young girl in his arms. In a blink of an eye, the person disappeared.

The young male stumbled out from the alley. In his mind, he was still very curious about that capable person but now was not the time to look for this person.

******

Shen Lian was being random. After playing the mysterious savior, it could be said that he had satisfied one of his fantasies from his younger days.

Speaking of which, who did not ever imagined that they could fly and have all kinds of supernatural powers when they were in their teens and what they would do with it? But once he had truly become that kind of person, he hardly did the things he had imagined during his teenage years.

He slowly walked into the clinic, gently placed Young Ruoxi on the bed and covered her with a blanket.

As for Shen Lian, he tied a long rope at the side of the room and as it hangs in the air, he flipped himself on top of it and calmly laid down.

Initially, he wanted to copy a certain figure from his past life. That person was enlighted and his heart was pure and clean of desires. He did not have distracting thoughts and for years and slept on a rope.

There was actually not much use to meditate and practice Qi in the hustle and bustle of the human world. It was just on a playful whim he decided to copy it.

At the beginning, he still needed to use his mind to control his body so that he did not fall, hence he was not in a deep state of spiritual calmness.

Afterwards, he eventually entered an unintentional state and his body actually naturally responded. He was then able to master the balance and allowed the vigor of his body to transform constantly but that center of gravity still remained unchanged.

Even though it did not really help, but he still felt the need of vaguely catching hold of something.

Hanging in midair, Shen Lian slowly entered a state of spiritual calmness. His spirit had formed into a Yin spirit. Even in the middle of bier, it was not that illusory and it was real and congeal.

It was just that compared to the previous formless spirit smoke, it was less brilliant and had become somewhat dull.

The deeper his concentration was, the more he could feel the calling from beneath the ground. It could not even be said that it was from the underground but a lethargic unnamed world. It was gloomy and he could somehow hear a subtle water flowing sound, and the toneless and low wail that lingered in his ears from time to time.

These did not disturb him. It was as though with just a change of mind, he could enter into that world, laid life and death aside and attained a form of quietness.

He had entered into this state for years now and this situation was not the same as Chushen of the nine states of cultivation, even though these two had some similarities.

Shen Lian naturally understood the implication of this situation, this was also called ‘connecting the netherworld’. That world was most probably what was called the deep springs of the netherworld. It was just that Shen Lian had no way to verify it.

This kind of information was also not found in the Taiwei Pavilion of Qing Xuan.

The scary part of the Mastery of Senses was even when one hits a plateau during cultivation, as long as one can make it over, it would be smooth sailing until the next juncture. This juncture might be difficult or it might be easy. There were no rules to it. He only needed to cultivate it step by step and one day, like the river flowing eastwards towards the sea, he could reach a state that had never been reached before and not is burdened by illness and death.

But it was because of the difficulty of the Taixu Strategy that this method of martial exercise seemed too easy. He vaguely felt that in the end, he could become an existence without being able to feel neither joy nor sorrow. That was not the longevity he wished for.

The contradiction in life was that one cannot give up the current progress to inquire the root of the matter. He was still cultivating with this martial art exercise but he was also not giving up on his exploration of the Taixu Strategy.

Based on this point, he still had not truly detached from human nature.

Little children sleep early and they also wake up early. Ruoxi woke up and washed up at the first light of dawn. Shen Lian was already awake by this hour.

Shen Lian did not arrange her daily routine from day until night and allowed her to fully let her nature take over. After that, he would arrange tasks that were within her capabilities which would not feel too harsh 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 uncountable wonderful things to do, uncountable wishes to be realized.

Only by knowing the preciousness of having life and loving all of it, only when there was the ever going motivation to cultivate.

That was how Shen Lian thought of it, so when his cultivation became dry and boring, it was dry and boring but he also did not forget about the perks in life.

The ordinary human, to him, would be considered as ants. But there were rare moments when he would still find interest in watching the ants move food underneath the tree. The perks in life lied in the truth and abundance, there should not be a division on what was high or low.

The melodious sound of the Guqin rang in the compound. Ruoxi naturally did not hear the “scattered and magnificent, the spears swung freely with great ease” within the tune. She only felt the safest with her big brother right now.

The tune leisurely ended and Shen Lian said, “Today I will teach you to cultivate. Even though according to the Qing Xuan rules now, I cannot recruit disciples but I can still teach you some superficial matters.”

Confusion flashed through Ruoxi’s innocent eyes. She still did not understand that if this chance was given to those who understood about cultivation in the imperial city, people would fight nail and tooth to have their descendent to train under Shen Lian.

She even did not know that her brother had left the Shen household in the search to find celestials and to seek Dao, that he had traveled far and wide to only be able to enter this school for cultivation.

Cultivation was very particular on established practices which were hard to come by. If there was no fate, like Ling Chongxiao, even though he had reached Celestialism but he could do nothing about it and carry this regret for the rest of his life.

She just asked, “What is cultivation?”

A child’s innocent words usually shocked those who were mindful of the words.

Shen Lian could not help but smiled and answered, “Now that you’ve asked me, I actually don’t know how to explain it to you.”

Ruoxi went ‘Oh’. She was not happy about baffling her brother. Instead, she was disappointed when she realized her brother was not all-knowing.

Big brother was big brother and not an idol, so the little girl did not understand the feeling of an idol crumbling.

Shen Lian thought, “She is still so young, saying too much will only muddy her, I should just teach her directly.”

This proved that Shen Lian was no Patriarch Bodhi and Ruoxi was no monkey. She had a pure heart for Dao and a natural born body for Dao.

Even though Ruoxi’s talent was better than the ordinary person, and she also practiced calligraphy to set her nature, she did not fully understand when it came to the stage of feeling her inner Qi.

After all, no matter whether it was a monkey or a genius like Chen Jianmei, it was still rare to find people who could.

After spending half a month, Ruoxi could only feel the Qi that her big brother mentioned inside of her. Shen Lian only lets her feel it and not have her do anything else.

Ruoxi had another homework and that was to practice the ‘Yong’ word. Naturally, the ‘Yong’ word written by Shen Lian was never that simple.

She was serious while she did her homework in the clinic. Halfway through, a youth came into the medical house. She recognized this person, it was the person next to the guy who poured water on her.

He was not as good looking as her big brother and he was definitely not as good looking as Ruoxi.

1. “纷披灿烂,戈矛纵横” is used to describe this traditional Guqin song named “Guang Ling San” （”广陵散”）.
2. 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.
3. Original character is 永, which roughly means forever.