Li Yijiu had no intention of describing her love life to this bunch of lonely bachelors and spinsters. Instead, she calmly let her gaze pass over the thousands of disciples gathered at the teaching grounds before meeting Shu Sanqing’s eyes.
“What is desire?”
A chorus of scoffs rose around her.
They’d thought she was going to ask something important.
That was it? How could she be shameless enough to ask such a stupid question?
No wonder she was Fifty-Nine. They’d nearly been fooled by her calm, unruffled manner again!
Shu Sanqing, however, answered in an even voice. “Desire is what the heart seeks.”
Li Yijiu asked another question. “Then what does it mean to be free of worldly desires?”
“To cast aside distracting thoughts and devote oneself entirely to the Dao,” Shu Sanqing replied.
After those two questions and answers, the disciples were practically itching to shove Li Yijiu into the dirt.
How embarrassing!
Couldn’t she stop showing off with such stupid questions in front of the Sect Leader?!
He’d think all the new disciples were this ignorant!
Lulu anxiously tugged at Li Yijiu’s sleeve.
Li Yijiu didn’t budge.
She asked one final question. “Then is the desire to seek the Dao also desire?”
The surroundings fell silent at once.
Everyone’s expression froze.
What was desire? What the heart sought.
Why cast aside what the heart sought? To seek the Dao.
They cast aside what the heart sought in order to seek the Dao, but seeking the Dao was itself something the heart sought.
Wasn’t that… a paradox?
The foundation of Qingxin Sect was a paradox.
Shu Sanqing froze. The Elder beside him turned pale with shock. The Sect Leader’s state of mind had been shaken!
“Leader…”
Shu Sanqing raised a hand to signal that he was fine. He gave Li Yijiu a long, penetrating look, then left the teaching grounds at a hurried pace.
Everyone came to their senses, and an uproar broke out.
Before long, word spread that the Sect Leader had gone into seclusion. The Inner Alchemy classes that followed would be taught in rotation by the Elders of the various peaks.
Li Yijiu had once again become famous throughout Qingxin Sect.
Not in a good way, of course.
The disciples certainly weren’t going to abandon their resolve to cultivate at Qingxin Sect over a few words from her. They just thought she’d twisted words around and made the Sect Leader so angry he’d shut himself away.
Li Yijiu was at a loss. Why were her disciples and grand-disciples in later generations so thin-skinned?
With those three questions, she had only meant to tell them not to take things to extremes.
To be free of worldly desires? Fine.
To sever all romantic attachments? That was fine too.
They claimed to be following her, though it had nothing to do with her cultivation method. Still, to some extent, it could benefit cultivation; otherwise, Qingxin Sect wouldn’t have achieved its standing today.
But everything in the world could be taken too far.
Not eating, drinking, or sleeping—was that any way for a human being to live???
Their desperation to make progress in cultivation by any means necessary had become nearly obsessive, bordering on greed.
When the Sect Leader’s lecture turned to being free of worldly desires, she actually heard a disciple beside her boast that, in accordance with the Patriarch’s will, he had completely severed all romantic attachments—and that it had worked spectacularly. In other words—
He’d castrated himself, and gotten stronger!
The other disciples were eager to try it.
“…”
The Patriarch was utterly shocked.
The Patriarch respected their choices and wished them well.
But don’t say the Patriarch taught you to do that!
With mixed feelings, Li Yijiu accepted Lulu’s invitation to attend a talisman class on Talisman Peak.
“Fellow Daoist Li, when you went to take the talisman exam, did you see Elder Fu Yangzi? I heard he looks like the Thunder Lord, and that his temper is as explosive as thunder…”
Curious Lulu.
“I don’t really remember. I left as soon as I finished drawing the talisman.”
“…”
Lulu remembered then: Li Yijiu was known for “being no good at anything, except being first to hand in her exam.”
But she’d gotten a perfect score in talismans!
After they took their seats in the classroom on Talisman Peak, Lulu took the lesson from before to heart and didn’t gossip about Fu Yangzi here. These powerful cultivators had sharp ears and keen eyes, and Fu Yangzi was infamous for his temper. If he heard her, she’d be done for.
So she decided to talk about something more serious. “Fellow Daoist Li, after listening to the Sect Leader talk about the dispute between Internal Alchemy and the External Alchemy path, I got curious. How did Patriarch Mingdeng come up with Internal Alchemy in the first place? In those circumstances, wasn’t it a path that led straight to death…?”
Lulu rested her chin in her hands and speculated, “It’s incredible. It’s not something an ordinary person could have done. Could it have been like the legend says: ‘An immortal lays a hand upon my head; my hair is tied, and I receive eternal life’? And then the Patriarch attained enlightenment and founded the Great Dao of Internal Alchemy…”
No. Li Yijiu said nothing.
No immortal had laid a hand on her head, and there had been no wondrous legend.
There had only been a little, pitiful compassion.
She had just arrived in the cultivation world from an era of peace, still clinging to her dreams of immortal heroes and wondrous adventures, when an elder handed her, still a child, a knife.
“Take out its core, Mingdeng.”
A spirit beast, covered in wounds, lay in front of her.
It had gained intelligence and could speak. The emotions in its eyes were no different from a human’s—fear, despair, pleading. “Please, don’t kill me…”
How was that any different from killing a person?
Mingdeng trembled with fear and uncertainty. “No…”
“Today, you’re either the butcher or the meat on the chopping block. Tomorrow, you’ll be the other one,” the elder said.
What was the External Alchemy path?
Taking a spirit beast’s core and making it your own, reaping the benefits without effort and soaring to the heavens—that was the External Alchemy path. Sometimes, the core didn’t even have to come from a spirit beast.
Her dreams shattered. She lowered her eyes and put away the blade.
“I can’t cultivate the External Alchemy path.”
“Sentimental foolishness.”
“I can’t cultivate the External Alchemy path,” she repeated.
“Then wait to die.”
The customs of the time were brutal: the strong ruled, and the weak had no way to survive. Even infants born without spiritual roots were strangled or drowned.
For mortals, there was only a dead end.
“I refuse to believe that in these Three Thousand Worlds, with the Great Dao stretching toward the heavens, there are only two paths: External Alchemy or death. I can’t cultivate the External Alchemy path.”
How embarrassing, Li Yijiu thought now.
That moment of compassion had led her onto a wrong path strewn with thorns.
At the time, she hadn’t realized how serious the problem was. She’d just wondered why the cultivation novels she’d read before transmigrating didn’t match reality.
If spirit beasts could cultivate their own cores, why couldn’t humans?
So she tried the cultivation method she’d read about in those novels. She succeeded—and was so pleased with herself that she thought she was destined to change the world.
How naïve.
Only later did she learn the truth.
The things she knew weren’t unknown to the world.
People knew everything. They just weren’t willing to do it, because it was too slow.
Cultivating Internal Alchemy was too slow.
Why bother, when you could reap the benefits without lifting a finger?
She devoted herself to cultivation for decades; other people only had to kill a spirit beast—or a person.
If she wouldn’t cultivate the External Alchemy path, then she would become someone else’s External Alchemy.
Contempt, mockery, and oppression followed one after another.
That continued until she rose among the powerful.
And then what? Would people finally revere her? Would she prove that Internal Alchemy was the broad, righteous path, change people’s minds, and thereby change the world?
Ha! As if.
Everyone else cultivates Internal Alchemy, but you don’t. Everyone else kills “spirit beasts,” but you don’t. What are you trying to say—that everyone is drunk while you alone are sober? That you’re so much more virtuous than everyone else?
Her existence and success made things people had once done with an easy conscience seem less than honorable. So—
“Heretic. Kill her!”
“Fellow Daoist Li.”
Li Yijiu came back to herself. Condemnation and curses still rang in her ears, and it was as if the reek of blood still clung to her nose.
Lulu was still talking to her. “It’s been proven that harming living beings really does bring Heaven’s retribution. Those who practiced the External Alchemy path in the past all eventually went mad from cultivation.”
“Patriarch Mingdeng was right.”
“Now everyone cultivates Internal Alchemy. It’s a shame that people of her time couldn’t accept her, and she was hunted down and killed. Otherwise, she would have ascended long ago. Just imagine what the world would be like…”
Lulu sighed.
No, she hadn’t been killed in a hunt.
She’d been struck dead by lightning.
Li Yijiu used every scrap of her lifelong manners to keep from giving the sky the middle finger.
Lulu spoke again, her eyes full of longing, blushing like a shy young maiden. “They say Patriarch Mingdeng was so graceful and beautiful that she surpassed all others. If I could see her just once, I’d gladly die…”
The Patriarch herself: “…”
She couldn’t keep up the serious act for even half a moment before showing her true colors.
“The Elder is here.”
Lulu reminded her, sitting up straight.
The Talisman Peak Elder, Fu Yangzi, strode into the classroom with a thunderous face that made everyone afraid to speak. When he saw Li Yijiu, he was pleased, and his expression softened considerably.
His good mood didn’t last long.
Fu Yangzi took out The Complete Talisman Compendium of Patriarch Mingdeng and pointed to the design on its cover. “This talisman pattern was discovered on the cover of a surviving fragment of the Patriarch’s writings. I’m sure none of you have the slightest idea what it means. The Patriarch must have had her reasons for drawing it. Today, I’ll explain some of them…”
He lectured for two whole hours.
He expounded on the meaning of the mysterious talisman pattern from every angle: the social conditions of the time, the development of talisman arts, and Patriarch Mingdeng’s personal style and aspirations.
The disciples listened, spellbound, now and then looking as if they’d suddenly understood.
The Patriarch herself only grew more and more baffled.
Wasn’t that just a… tortoise?