Chapter 10 — Buddha and Dao
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 6
Song Dayi, new to the role of teacher, saw Zhang Qingyue propping his chin on his hand, listening spellbound, and could not help but warm to his subject; he spoke on with great gusto:
The cultivation of the Taiji Profound Purity Way proceeds from the easy to the difficult. Most people can master the first tier of the Jade Purity Realm within a year, but beyond that the steep and arduous stretches begin to show themselves. For the second tier, an ordinary person must train five years; the third tier is the true watershed—those of meager aptitude stagnate there for life, and even for the better sort, fifty or sixty years of training is nothing remarkable.
Zhang Qingyue gaped, speechless. Song Dayi smiled faintly and went on.
The principal methods of the Taiji Profound Purity Way are more or less fully transmitted by the third tier; beyond that, it depends chiefly on one's aptitude and on one's own efforts. A teacher of profound cultivation may offer a pointer or two, but that is merely the fruit of personal experience, meant to spare the disciples a few detours. Of course, the "detours" spoken of here are reckoned mostly in centuries.
To cultivate the Taiji Profound Purity Way to the fourth tier of the Jade Purity Realm is to possess the root of all methods, and one may then begin to practice other wondrous arts and to refine one's own magic treasure. The lore of magic treasures and secret artifacts is of ancient lineage; in myth and legend the gods of heaven all possessed their own divine weapons of peerless might. And in the mortal world, those who cultivate the Way and refine the Dao, wielding such things for the first time, command the creative power of heaven and earth, and their might is immense. At the least, one may ride the void and speed like wind and lightning; at the greatest, one may shake heaven and convulse the earth, shatter mountains and sever rivers.
The materials of magic treasures are likewise multifarious and bizarre beyond reckoning, but one rule holds: the material determines the might the treasure will possess once refined. If one works the "True Formula of the Divine Sword That Commands Thunder" upon common iron, before the sword can strike the foe, it and its master will together be reduced to ash.
As for the Canglan Sect, its founding patriarch, Qingye, in the Phantom Moon Grotto-Heaven obtained the ancient sword Slayimmortal, and with it swept across the world, meeting scarce a match. In their admiration, the greater part of later generations likewise cultivated immortal swords. A thousand years on, sword-heroes have come forth in multitudes, and it has become all but an unwritten rule of the Canglan Sect—one might as well rename it the Azure Cloud Sword Sect and no one would object.
Yet speaking of this, one must mention Tian Buhui, Master of Dazhu Peak. He himself cultivates the sword, and his guardian artifact, the Crimson Spirit, is among the famous swords of the Canglan Sect; yet toward the disciples under him, for some reason, he shows not the least inclination to encourage their cultivation of immortal swords. Not only that—he often "eggs on" them to refine odd and unorthodox treasures, a practice much criticized within the sect. But for one thing, there is no rule forbidding it; for another, Tian Buhui's disciples are of middling aptitude and few in number, so the rest let him be.
Among the disciples of the Dazhu Peak line, the eldest senior brother, Song Dayi, is the deepest in cultivation, having brought the Taiji Profound Purity Way to the fifth tier of the Jade Purity Realm. Next comes the fourth, He Dachuan, who has reached the fourth tier. Though he entered the sect later than Wu Dayi and Zheng Dali, he is the cleverest of all the disciples, and so the latecomer has outstripped the rest.