By the brook where the water babbled, a boy tightened his grip on the little wooden sword in his hand and fixed his eyes on the white-haired man who came riding upon his flying blade.
"Your root-nature is fine. Would you like to come away with me?" the white-haired man said.
Young as he was, how could he fail to see the vista of the clear heavens roaring past? He was about to answer yes when a stubborn voice sounded at his side. "Take me too!"
The owner of that voice was his playmate, and the loser of the "sword fight" they had just had.
The boy knew his friend's stubbornness well. As for today's "sword fight," he had long since lost count of which number it was. But this friend, having lost once before, would doggedly refuse to stop until he had won it back.
The boy thought — then we can go cultivate together.
Many details he could no longer recall, but he still remembered the white-haired man's eyes. Clear as stream water, and yet as lofty as the sky.
The white-haired man looked at them with those eyes — at the two children who had been inseparable since infancy — and the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile of unfathomable meaning.
"I take only one disciple," the white-haired man said.
He repeated it. "You are both fine. But I will take only one."
What to do? the boy wondered then.
But he was given only that single instant to wonder. In the next, he was shoved into the brook.
Splash!
The sound of water bursting open.
His friend — the friend who had played with him bare-bottomed since they were babies, still only a child himself — had pushed him into the water without the slightest hesitation!
Through the trembling ripples he saw his "friend's" expressionless face, and the white-haired man's eyes, calm and untroubled throughout.
And then, a frost-white sword light shot up into the heavens.
His little companion and the white-haired man were wrapped in that splendid, dazzling sword light, and like a sudden clap of thunder they came abruptly and departed abruptly. Like countless legends of immortals seeking the Dao, they brushed past pitiful and ordinary mortals — leaving behind only a heart that could not let go, could not believe, waking startled from dreams on countless midnight nights!
***
Jiang Wang opened his eyes. Black night wrapped around everything, and wrapped around him. The dormitory was utterly quiet; Ling He and Du Yehu breathed long and slow, with a particular rhythm.
Jiang Wang knew they were practicing the Basic Breath-Regulation Method. Shallow and elementary though it was, only Inner Court disciples were taught it — the century-unshaken foundational art of the Zhuang Kingdom Dao Academy.
The Inner Court selection at the Fenglin City Dao Academy held no real suspense: Ling He, Du Yehu, and Zhao Rucheng had all become new Inner Court disciples, their names entered into the Daoist Jade Register enshrined within the Hall of Worship.
Yet until the Dao meridian manifested, they could not be counted true Hemp-Robe Daoists.
The Meridian-Opening Pill is worth a thousand pieces of gold and hard to come by; even the Fenglin City Dao Academy, though sustained by the state, could not hand one out to every disciple for free. Having been chosen from the Outer Court as the very best of their year, they would in general have to endure at least a year, accumulating enough merit, before they qualified for a Meridian-Opening Pill.
Each year, only the Outer Court's top contributor could exchange their merit for a single Meridian-Opening Pill. This was the academy's special spur to the Outer Court. So since Jiang Wang had emerged in this class, no one else could walk his road.
Even so, it was only by fighting for his life in blood-soaked battles that Jiang Wang accumulated the merit to trade for the pill. And now, across the hundred-li radius of Fenglin City, there were no more Western Mountains bandits left to suppress.
Enter the Outer Court, cultivate with all your might, defeat countless rivals to reach the Inner Court; then, within the Inner Court, continue your training while accumulating mission merit, until at last you are granted the Meridian-Opening Pill and step into the transcendent — this was the path of a normal Zhuang Kingdom cultivator. It was a broad, open road, visible to the eye.
Yet compared to those born with their Dao meridian already manifest, who entered the Inner Court directly to study Dao arts, these youths who climbed the Outer Court route truly wasted far too much time.
On the path of cultivation, a single slow step means step after step left behind. This was why Jiang Wang had fought so desperately in the Outer Court — and likewise why Fang Pengju could not restrain his greed. No one was willing to wait those extra years!
So Jiang Wang understood Fang Pengju's craving, but could not forgive his methods.
Exceptional martial artists though they were, whether Ling He or Du Yehu, which of them desired the transcendent any less than Fang Pengju? Yet none of them had done such base things.
Jiang Wang's father had once said a thing: a person is defined by the choices he makes. Jiang Wang agreed with all his heart.
And he himself had lately been caught in a difficult choice.
As all know, cultivators are ranked in nine grades, the first most honored, the ninth reckoned the beginning of the transcendent. The mark of attaining the ninth grade is to achieve the Dao Spiral, with Dao essence arising of itself.
Cultivators have passed through a history too long to count, and so have studied this first step into the transcendent with great care and depth.
The spine is regarded as the body's Great Dragon, and the Dao meridian is hidden within it. Once the Dao meridian manifests, the cultivator may feed it back with the power of qi and blood, thereby generating Dao essence. Dao essence is the root of all Dao arts, and the foundation of the transcendent.
Take Jiang Wang's Earthworm Meridian as example: each time he mobilizes the "earthworm," he must call upon a considerable measure of qi-blood power, driving it through the whole spine-Great-Dragon, before a single Dao essence can be formed. And a cultivator of Jiang Wang's level may at most perform the meridian-rushing cultivation twice a day, gathering two Dao essences. It is not that he does not strive; his body simply does not permit it. The drain of qi and blood is too great, damaging the source and harming the spirit — utterly not worth the cost.
After gathering Dao essence, the next step is to command it with the spirit, laying out the corresponding formation points exactly according to the Foundation-Establishing Formation Diagram. When the formation is complete, the Dao Spiral is born.
As one who had already opened his meridian, the Fenglin City Dao Academy had naturally imparted the Foundation-Establishing Formation Diagram. It is the Return-to-Origin Formation in common use throughout Zhuang, with a total of eighty-one formation points. That is to say, arranging the foundation formation diagram without the slightest error, he would need at least forty-one days — nearly a month and a half — to truly become a ninth-grade cultivator. (The two Dao essences Jiang Wang had stored up before had already been spent in battle.)
Before this, Jiang Wang of course had nothing to trouble him. But now he had by chance entered the Great Void Illusion, and had inherited Zuo Guanglie's "Dongzhen Ruins Blessed Land," unlocking the corresponding Sword-Discussion Platform and Dao-Platform — and so a new worry was born.
Yesterday, after obtaining the Return-to-Origin Formation Diagram, wishing to test the Dao-Platform's effect, he had poured all 1850 of his Merit into the deduction of the foundation formation diagram. In the end he obtained the enormously intricate Zhoutian Star-Dou Formation Diagram. The whole foundation formation diagram held three hundred and sixty-five points!
Setting aside the difficulty of laying out the Zhoutian Star-Dou Formation, even if he could perfectly reproduce the foundation formation diagram, he would need no less than half a year before generating his first Dao Spiral.
And after that, ninth grade to eighth requires three Dao Spirals, and eighth to seventh requires nine.
By that reckoning, the time was far too long!
The Zhoutian Star-Dou Formation was without doubt stronger than the Return-to-Origin Formation, but the long time its foundation demanded was precisely where Jiang Wang hesitated. He needed to raise his cultivation quickly, to catch those cultivators born with their Dao meridian manifest — yet time waits for no one.
But after waking from tonight's dream, he had already made his choice.
Jiang Wang closed his eyes and drove the single Dao essence born of yesterday's meridian-rushing, moving it slowly within his spine. In the hazy, perceiving world of commanding Dao essence, this was a boundless and vast expanse.
Because the Great Dragon dwells here, it is also called the Spine Sea.
But in the word-of-mouth of cultivators it has a more resounding name — the Heaven-Access Palace!
To pierce through the Heaven-Access Palace and open the Heaven-Earth Gate — that is the transformation from a low-grade cultivator into a mid-grade one.
In the boundless Heaven-Access Palace, a single Dao essence was tiny as a grain of dust. Yet it did not drift with the currents; instead it firmly, stubbornly carried out Jiang Wang's will. Moving, moving, it at last came to hover at the place it desired.
That was the position of the Sun Star, within the Zhoutian Star-Dou Formation Diagram.
When this Dao essence came to rest, Jiang Wang seemed once more to see the eyes of that white-haired cultivator in his childhood.
He would never forget, the moment he was pushed into the water.
Those eyes seemed to say to him —
"The path of cultivation is contention."