Rumors came quickly and vanished just as quickly.
Besides, it had only been a gathering of small animals. It was not as though they had seen some true mountain spirit or wild demon. There had been no especially uncanny phenomena, at most something a little eerie.
As time passed, the villagers tossed the matter to the backs of their minds. Their after-dinner gossip was soon replaced by the romantic scandal at Widow Li's house in the eastern part of the village.
But Ye Qin's cultivation would not stop.
The bright moon atop the mountain remained unchanged, shining upon the rocks like a reflection in water. Within it, one could vaguely see a long shadow coiling around.
Even when the sky occasionally turned cloudy, it did not affect Ye Qin's visualization anymore, because the bright moon had already been etched into his heart.
Ye Qin cultivated as usual. Before long, all kinds of small animals gathered behind him once more.
They were like pilgrims on a holy journey, bowing and worshiping Ye Qin atop the enormous rock.
Always ruled by instinct, they now possessed a faintly discernible concept in their minds, though it was no more than a vague outline.
They did not know why they were doing this either. Some inexplicable instinct was driving them onward.
This was the spirituality of animals: born close to nature, keenly sensitive to all things, an innate spirituality humans utterly lacked.
Yet even so, for an ordinary creature to enter cultivation like Ye Qin was simply impossible.
Spirituality alone was not enough. Wisdom was also required. Only when the two combined could one step through the gate of cultivation.
Thus, Ye Qin was a variable beneath the so-called "Great Dao"—or, more accurately, an aberration among all of nature's myriad creatures, the one exception among ten thousand.
With his current cultivation, he still could not do as the sages of folklore had done, establishing an altar to lecture and enlightening all living beings.
The reason these animals gathered here was merely that Ye Qin had affected the surrounding magnetic field, giving them a deeply comfortable sensation and making them unconsciously want to draw near.
The moonlight was pale and hazy, like rippling water, seemingly within reach if one extended a hand.
As Ye Qin gradually entered an exquisite state, a faint layer of mist rose around him at some unknown point.
The mountain's high altitude and low temperatures meant that mountain fog occasionally formed, but this mist was clearly different from ordinary mountain fog. It seemed somewhat mysterious.
The hazy moonlight was like a thin veil, intertwining with the mist and shrouding Ye Qin. It was as though he were swallowing clouds and breathing out fog, stirring all the winds and clouds around him.
No one knew how much time had passed before Ye Qin slowly opened his eyes. The mist around him had not yet dispersed. It faintly formed the shape of a crescent moon before slowly dissipating in midair.
Ye Qin fell into deep thought. He had vaguely sensed some change taking place in his body earlier. After observing it through these several cultivation sessions, he could finally confirm it.
During his cultivation, some phenomena would manifest involuntarily. Yet all of it happened while Ye Qin was unconscious and was completely beyond his control.
He guessed that the police officer who had approached him earlier and then inexplicably walked away might have been confused by the illusionary phenomenon.
"It seems I've cultivated to the second realm and gained some special ability. It still can't be considered a spell, but for now, I can call it a 'divine power.' However, judging from the current situation, this divine power still isn't something I can control freely."
No one could be born knowing everything, and cultivation was no different.
Moreover, Ye Qin was the only cultivator. If he wanted to figure out how to use this divine power and bring it completely under his control, he would probably have to dig into it carefully.
After racking his brains, Ye Qin decided to visit the library again.
Although he was an aberration, entering the city actually posed no great danger. After all, he was too insignificant, and no one would associate him with some so-called "monster." Humans would fill in the gaps with reasonable explanations on their own.
Besides, if he did not go to the library, Ye Qin truly had nowhere else to obtain knowledge. Relying entirely on the "power of wild guesses" was unrealistic, so learning was extremely important.
This time, he knew the way by heart and spent less time than before. When he saw the familiar buildings ahead, he waited until evening, when everyone had left the library, before quietly slipping inside.
He went straight for books related to the mind and hypnosis. After all, whether illusionary realms or hallucinations, both were closely connected to the human spirit.
The cultivation during this period had changed more than just his body; it had also transformed his mind. Now, reading ten lines at a glance was effortless, and he could even remember everything he saw.
However, Ye Qin kept his wits about him and did not make his performance too outrageous. Even when reading, he seemed to be dozing off absentmindedly, making it impossible for anyone to detect anything strange.
After finding the answers he wanted, Ye Qin did not linger this time and quickly left.
The mountains were lush and verdant, stretching without end. As night slowly descended, they seemed like thick ink spreading across paper. A sliver of silver climbed the treetops like the finishing stroke that brought a painted dragon to life, breathing a soul into this landscape ink wash.
The moon sank among the mountain ravines, silent and still, illuminating Ye Qin's path home.
Returning from the steel-and-concrete city to the great mountains once more was like stepping into another world.
There were no neon lights and revelry here, no blaring car horns, no worldly turmoil and strife. There was only endless serenity, accompanied by the chirping of insects and the cries of birds.
And the bright moon, unchanged since ancient times.
Ye Qin slowed down. His serpentine body slithered forward as he recalled everything he had seen in the library, sinking into thought.
When the eyes saw something false, it was a hallucination. When the five senses were deceived by something false, it was an illusionary realm.
An illusionary realm could influence a person's understanding of things through sight, smell, and all kinds of senses.
Then what was "illusion"?
From a scientific perspective, the universe was merely an illusion, and the world was a projection of consciousness.
In Buddhist terms, it could be explained as: "Dependent origination is emptiness; all phenomena are consciousness-only; there is no dharma outside the mind; one and many are mutually identical."
Put more plainly, when we looked at something, what we saw before us was its "appearance," belonging to the dusts of form and dharma among the six sense objects.
It was because the eye received the refraction of light and shadow, which passed through the pupil and traveled along the optic nerve to the brain. Thus, our conscious eye-consciousness resided at the point of contact in the posterior lobe of the brain.
Consciousness and eye-consciousness arose from this, enabling us to distinguish an object's color, written words, and the meaning represented by an image, as well as beauty and ugliness, length and width, distance and proximity, and so on.
Eye-consciousness and awareness were both deluded minds, phenomena arising from causes and conditions. In other words, both could be altered by external forces.
It was somewhat like hypnosis. In modern times, illusionary realms and hallucinations were all mixed together, and both were displayed in hypnotism.
Ye Qin's divine power leaned more toward using his own powerful mental will to influence the people around him, or even create a special magnetic field—in other words, an "illusionary realm."
Hypnosis required the aid of external objects, but he did not. He used himself as the bridge and could release it anytime, anywhere, entirely as he pleased.
The "Admonitions of the Yan Clan: Returning to the Heart" once recorded: "There are exorcists and various illusionists in the world who can still walk through fire and tread on blades, plant melons and move wells."
From this, one could glimpse that illusionists had actually existed in the world since ancient times. It was simply that people of that era called them practitioners of occult arts.
One of the more famous examples was Fan Ying of the Han dynasty.
The "Book of the Later Han: Biographies of Practitioners of Occult Arts" recorded: "Once, a fierce wind arose from the west. Fan Ying said to his students, 'The fire in CD City is raging fiercely.' He then held water in his mouth and sprayed it toward the west, afterward having the recorder note the date and time. Later, a traveler came from Shu's capital and said: 'That day, a great fire broke out. Suddenly, black clouds rose from the east, and moments later, heavy rain fell, extinguishing the fire.'"
Regarding these illusionary arts of swallowing clouds and breathing out fog, later generations held various opinions. Some said it was a coincidence, others said the practitioners had colluded beforehand, and still others said Fan Ying possessed an extraordinary ability.
Besides this, Sun Nu of the Eastern Han was skilled at the head-severing technique, while Guo Pu of the Jin dynasty excelled at illusionary arts and could make people see soybeans as tiny figures.
During the Five Dynasties, there were practitioners who could summon birds. During the Northern Wei, the Yueban Kingdom far to the northwest sent illusionary artists as tribute. There were countless records of such things in unofficial histories.
(End of chapter)