Severing

After eating some fruits and vegetables.

Zheng Sen sat cross-legged on a boulder, gazing into the distance as the rising sun emerged. Mist drifted around Wuyi Mountain, and the morning sun painted the dawn clouds a brilliant gold.

Meanwhile, Xie Shan and his daughters, Xie Lin and Xie Ying, sat primly off to one side.

"The Dao is the law of the universe; cultivating the Dao is the process of clearly understanding those laws..."

"The heavens followed constant laws, neither existing for Yao nor perishing for Jie. Heaven is a collection of rules without emotion, righteousness, thought, or desire..."

"Heaven encompassed all things, and all things were caged within the Heavenly Dao. False gods, wicked Buddhas, and wild immortals claimed that the Heavenly Dao could not be defied. That was the greatest lie from ancient times to the present..."

Gulp! Cold sweat poured down Xie Shan's forehead. To cultivators, such claims were practically a challenge to their entire worldview.

"My Dao is science; my aspiration is the Way of Great Unity..."

Zheng Sen expounded on The Way of Science at length. Xie Shan fell into an intense inner struggle as the Dao he had cultivated for over a thousand years violently collided with science.

"Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. Use your own hands to practice, your own eyes to observe, and your own self to think. Who says the ways of the ancients are all truth? If you cannot shatter this demonic obstruction, your Dao will stop here."

Those words rang like a great bell, echoing through Xie Shan's heart for a long while.

Xie Lin and Xie Ying, who were young to begin with, felt as though enlightenment had been poured directly into their minds. Their auras began to transform.

But old ginger was spicier. Xie