Chapter 17 — Object Driving
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 5
"Woof! Woof! Woof!"
"Chee-chee-chee-chee!"
……
The barking of the dog and the shrieking of the monkey intertwined, echoing across Dazhu Peak of Mount Canglan, shattering its quiet. Zhang Qingyue, black iron rod in hand, burst out the kitchen door in a fury: "You damn dog! You damn monkey! I dare you to not run!"
The monkey, Xiao Hui, darted in a flash onto the back of the big yellow dog, and Da Huang, already tensed for it, shot off on all four legs. Zhang Qingyue could not catch them, and could only watch as Xiao Hui pulled a face and stuffed a fragrant meat bone into Da Huang's mouth. Da Huang was so thrilled that his canine face lit with joy; had his jaws not been clamped on the bone, he would surely have grinned so wide his dog teeth fell out.
"Whoosh!"
Zhang Qingyue returned to the kitchen in deep dejection, seething with grievance. Ever since he had taken charge of the kitchen at fourteen, his cooking had made everyone sit up and take notice, and Da Huang, for all his "venerable old dog" cultivation, could not help drooling over the delicacies in Zhang Qingyue's hands—especially the meat bones Zhang Qingyue used for broth, fragrant and savory, the feast of Da Huang's dreams.
But the broth Zhang Qingyue simmered was meant for people. Da Huang, old as he was (Tian Buhui had raised him from a pup) and senior in standing besides, never received the treatment he felt due him, and was forever left drooling from three feet away with nothing to show for it. That was, until he struck up a friendship with the monkey Xiao Hui, and the scene just played out became a regular occurrence on Dazhu Peak, lasting a full two years. However carefully Zhang Qingyue hid the meat bones, with Da Huang's nose and Xiao Hui's nimbleness, the battle over meat bones invariably ended in Zhang Qingyue's defeat.
Two years slipped by in a hurry—a year and a half, really—and Zhang Qingyue had grown into a youth of sixteen, taller now, half a head above his senior sister Tian Lingsu. During this time, because of Tian Buhui's stern order, every disciple on Dazhu Peak had shut themselves away in hard cultivation; apart from the sixth brother, Du Biyan, who had gone down the mountain to travel, only Zhang Qingyue the cook had the most leisure.
For two years, unnoticed by anyone, Zhang Qingyue had cultivated on his own, and what even he could not believe was that, following the method Senior Brother Song Dayi had taught him, it had taken him only a single year to seemingly complete the second level of the Yuqing Realm, Qi Refining.
Doubts gnawed at him, but in the end he did not go to ask Tian Buhui. Song Dayi, Tian Lingsu, and the others were all devoted to their closed-door cultivation with no time for anything else, and Du Biyan, his closest friend, had gone down the mountain. So he kept the question buried in his heart. Yet now a great difficulty lay before him: Tian Lingsu had privately given him the method for the third level. He knew full well this was a grave violation of the sect rules, but late at night, standing alone in the little courtyard gazing up at the sky, a single sentence always came back to him:
No matter how hard you train, you will never match Senior Brother Qi Hao!
After ten nights, he began to practice the method of the third level.
In the Way of the Supreme Ultimate and Mystic Purity, the first three levels of the Yuqing Realm are the foundation of all arts, growing harder by degrees. Unlike the first two levels, "Guiding Qi" and "Refining Qi," the method of the third level, "Primal Qi," focuses on cultivating the Supreme Ultimate primal qi. The method says: "The primal qi of the Supreme Ultimate holds three and makes them one. Ji means the center; yuan means the beginning, moving through the twelve double-hours… Here yin and yang join in virtue, qi gathers at zi, and the ten thousand things are born." (Note: from the Book of Han, Treatise on Pitch Pipes and the Calendar.)