Chapter 44 — The Book of Heaven
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 5 of 6
The forms of heaven have no shape; the Way is praised but has no name. Therefore it is said: no self, no person, no beings, no lifespan — and one reaches the light. Hold to the one true Way, behold the self-nature within, and heaven and earth take the root as their heart.
Therefore when movement rests within the earth, the heart of heaven and earth is seen.
Therefore there is neither the real nor the void.
Therefore heaven and earth accord with nature, acting not and making not.
Therefore if things do not all exist together, they cannot be complete.
...(Note One)
Bili gave a cold snort. She had meant to be angry, but on second thought said nothing, and turned her eyes to the wall. She had read only a few lines before her head began to swim, and she felt a certain admiration for Zhang Qingyue — that he could actually take in such dry stuff.
But when she turned to look at him, she was somewhat startled: his face was full of pain and bewilderment, and his whole body was trembling faintly — an indescribably strange sight.
In truth, had it been anyone else in the world, he would not have been so stirred as Zhang Qingyue was now. This "Book of Heaven," called the classic of the Demon Sect, this passage called its general outline, seemed to Zhang Qingyue's eyes almost every character a knife, piercing straight into the depths of his heart — a shock a hundred times greater even than what he had felt as a child, when he discovered that the Daoist cultivation methods of Canglan Mountain and the Buddhist "Great Brahma Prajna" that Puzhao had transmitted to him were utterly opposed.
In these words he was astonished to find that the Daoist and Buddhist methods of cultivation, which he had secretly believed since childhood to be fundamentally different, here faintly showed a tendency to converge by different roads to the same end. Even so, startled as he was, he could still accept it. But as he read on, his face grew gradually pale, for in this "Book of Heaven," called the classic of the Demon Sect, he discovered a great secret.
The various divine powers and strange arts of the Demon Sect were extreme and peculiar, yet at their root — the Book of Heaven holds that the body may command nature's fashioning, while the Buddhist gate attends to the realization of self-nature; yet the Book of Heaven seemed to cover every aspect, holding both Daoist thought and Buddhist essentials.
Anyone else — Bili, say — would read these words and think nothing of it, taking them simply for the great divine powers left by their own patriarch. But to Zhang Qingyue, the one man in the world versed in the true methods of both Daoism and Buddhism, the matter was truly terrifying.
A thought such as he had never had wound itself about him and would not let go.
What, in the end, was right?
He could not help reading on, his face pale, his heart in turmoil. With fervor and a strange, hungry curiosity, he vaguely felt that a great secret was right before his eyes, yet ever beyond his grasp, beyond his sight — and all the more did it draw him on, racing toward that goal.
Only, there was some fear in his heart as well. Ought this to be?
Bili watched Zhang Qingyue for a long while. Seeing him still wholly absorbed in the carvings on the wall, his expression strange, seemingly quite forgetful that she stood beside him, she felt a surge of irritation for no reason and gave a cold humph. Zhang Qingyue, however, was deaf to it all and gave no sign.
Bili pressed her lips together, greatly vexed, yet somehow she did not want to raise a hand against this man. She turned and stalked out, stamping her feet loudly as she went — but alas, the foolish boy still showed no reaction at all.