Setting the Course

Everyone knew that in cultivating the Dao, the key lay in balancing yin and yang, tempering strength with softness.

All things bore yin and embraced yang, and the mingling of their qi brought harmony. This had been an eternal truth since the heavens and earth first opened. Each of the five elements—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—had its own nature, its own imbalance, and its own chance at wholeness.

Water was supremely yielding, but easily turned stagnant and foul. It needed true fire to temper its form, strength to overcome softness, before it could become clear. Wood brimmed with life, but easily grew wild and tangled. It needed a metal blade to trim its form and restrain its growth before it could take shape.

The Pleiades Sun Golden Nature he cultivated belonged to a lineage of utmost yang, strength, austerity, and ferocity. It governed slaughter, judgment, the restoration of order, and the destruction of illusion.

It was the Dao of the Solar radiance: burning away all that was sinister and yin, illuminating the deepest darkness. Among the myriad Dao Paths, it was one of the most domineering and purely yang.

But the Heavenly Dao maintained its balance. Too much of anything became a fault.

Yang alone could not give birth. Unyielding strength would inevitably break.

As the ancients said: The sun was yang at its extreme; at the extreme came change, through change came passage, and through passage came endurance. Without change or passage, it burned itself and the heavens alike.

Nine out of ten ancient cultivators of Golden Nature had fallen at the great barrier between the Dao Foundation and Golden Core.

Since the Pleiades Sun Dao Fruit had appeared, he had been able to reach it from time to time through the Dawn Bell. Though he could not