Chapter 10 — Buddhism and Daoism
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 6 of 7
His dwelling was secluded; by day he practiced the Taiji Xuanqing Dao, and deep in the night he practiced the Mahabrahma Prajna. So the time drifted by, slipping past unnoticed, and before he knew it three years had gone.
And in the meantime, Zhang Qingyue had set the worst record since the Canglan Sect was founded: he had spent a full three years—three times as long as an ordinary person—before he finally completed the first layer of the Yuqing Realm of the Taiji Xuanqing Dao, gaining mastery over every aperture in his body and gaining the ability to draw the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into himself and circulate it through thirty-six cycles. But what no one knew was that, through his practice of the Great Brahma Prajna, he had also begun to grasp the rudiments of inner-energy control and had laid a solid foundation.
When Zhang Qingyue timidly announced it to the others one evening at supper, the disciples of the Dazhu Peak line of the Canglan Sect were struck dumb, as though they had seen an iron tree bloom after a thousand years; then they burst into laughter, and Song Dayi hoisted the much-grown Zhang Qingyue into the air and tossed him up again and again, beside himself with delight.
Tian Buhui, seated at the front, watched coldly, gave a sniff, and muttered low, "What a prize idiot!"
Over those three years Zhang Qingyue had grown to fourteen; the daily bamboo-cutting had made him sturdy, and though he was two years younger than his senior sister Tian Lingsu, he already stood as tall as she. Tian Lingsu had grown from a girl of thirteen into a young woman of sixteen, and her beauty had only deepened; when she smiled and spoke, her loveliness was beyond all describing.
Tian Lingsu had always felt that her other six senior brothers were far too old for her, solemn and stiff, and so she had always preferred the company of this muddle-headed junior brother; after three years the two were as close as could be. Still, it was always Tian Lingsu who came out on top. Zhang Qingyue felt that his senior sister was indeed much his better, and though she ordered him about and scolded him as she pleased, whenever the senior brothers teased him, she was always the first to step forward and speak up for him.
Life in the mountains was lonely, but it was quiet too. Now and then Zhang Qingyue asked Tian Buhui and Song Dayi about the massacre at Liumiao Village, but the matter remained a tangle with no clue to be found, and as time went by the memory slowly faded in his heart.
One morning Zhang Qingyue took up his billhook as usual, went out of the house alone, and headed for the mountain behind. Tian Lingsu had finished her bamboo-cutting duties two years before and no longer went; so for the past two years Zhang Qingyue had mostly climbed the mountain alone, though sometimes when she had nothing to do Tian Lingsu would run up to play and keep him company.
Today Zhang Qingyue saw no sign of Tian Lingsu, and thought nothing of it; he went up the mountain path alone. In a little over a month he too would be done with the bamboo-cutting. He could now cut two black-joint bamboos a day, but he was still far behind Tian Lingsu, who near the end of her term had been able to cut a dozen or more in a single day.