Study Hard

Over the next few days, the classes were, in order, History of the Tang, Heaven and Earth Theory, Fortune Theory, and Techniques.

There was no need to say much about History of the Tang. Heaven and Earth Theory and Fortune Theory were both, in essence, cultivation classes. Heaven and Earth Theory taught the workings of the seasons and the geography of mountains and rivers, as well as how to adapt to changes in one's surroundings during cultivation so as to absorb the essence of heaven and earth more efficiently and speed up one's progress.

The first Heaven and Earth Theory class was held on the mountain outside Qisi Hall. After the teacher explained the principles, the students were left to find the best place to cultivate on their own. There was no fixed answer as to what that best place was. Every student had a different foundation and aptitude, and the Dao Path each would follow in the future was different, so everyone had a place best suited to their cultivation.

Wei Yuan found that the higher he went, the faster he cultivated, so in the end he chose the mountain peak. But he arrived a step too late; Bao Yun and Xiao Yu had already claimed the spot.

As soon as she saw Wei Yuan, Bao Yun came over, took his hand, and said warmly, "Junior Brother Wei is here too. Let's cultivate together!"

Her hand was cold and slick, soft as if boneless. Holding it made Wei Yuan feel indescribably uncomfortable. He wanted to pull away, but Bao Yun tightened her grip. Good manners told him that wrenching his hand free would be very rude and invite criticism, so he could only endure it.

Wei Yuan walked with her for a while when Bao Yun suddenly stumbled, as if she were about to fall.

Wei Yuan hurried to catch her, but the moment he lifted his foot, he suddenly went flying. Somehow, he tumbled right off the peak and rolled down the slope for more than ten zhang before coming to a stop.

Bao Yun came running over and helped Wei Yuan up, saying anxiously, "Are you all right, Junior Brother? Did you hurt yourself anywhere? Goodness, how could you be so careless?"

For a moment, Wei Yuan couldn't tell whether he had fallen because he was careless or for some other reason. He also found it hard to refuse Bao Yun's kindness, so he let her help him up.

Bao Yun helped Wei Yuan find a flat spot nearby and sit down. To his surprise, cultivation here was only a little slower than at the peak, so he stopped being picky. Bao Yun reminded him a few more times to take good care of himself, then returned to the mountaintop.

And so the first Heaven and Earth Theory class came to an end.

Fortune Theory had only begun to take shape in the last three hundred years, making it the youngest subject. A thousand years ago, those blessed with fortune were exceedingly rare, and they often achieved great divine powers. Whenever such a person appeared, every sect would spare no effort to cultivate them. If they lived amid the imperial court, they would be either founding heroes or ministers who helped restore a declining dynasty.

Those blessed with the great fortune of their age were called Children of Fortune. Whenever one appeared, even the lofty immortal sects would join the scramble for them, sparking countless schemes and bloody conflicts.

Across generation after generation, the overall number of people blessed with fortune had remained relatively stable, sometimes rising and sometimes falling. But starting four hundred years ago, the fortune of heaven and earth suddenly surged, and those blessed with fortune began appearing in droves. Children of Fortune, too, emerged one after another.

Over the next few hundred years, fortune continued to increase overall. More and more people were blessed with it. Many who, a thousand years earlier, would have been cultivated with the full support of their entire sect now merely received a little more attention and a few extra resources.

Anyone whose fortune measured one zhang in the Dao Assessment would once have been an undisputed Child of Fortune, a beacon of the human race. But now, Taichu Palace alone had six people with one zhang of fortune in Wei Yuan's year. Two of them had such poor Root Bones that they had not even made the palace's list of priority pupils. A thousand years ago, their Root Bones wouldn't have mattered. Even if they'd been good-for-nothings, they could have been piled high with countless heavenly treasures until they became prodigies.

As fortune increased, research into it and methods of cultivating through it began to appear in ever greater numbers. By now, there were many well-established systems for borrowing fortune to cultivate. And fortune no longer referred only to an individual's fortune; it had also been divided into four aspects: the great fortune of heaven and earth, the fortune of the times, feng shui, and human fortune. It encompassed fields such as astrology, feng shui, and geomancy, and had become a crucial part of cultivation.

The term Child of Fortune referred to someone blessed with the great fortune of their age. The great fortune of heaven and earth was far too vast for any person to bear. Heaven and earth had endured unchanged through the ages. Never mind one or two Children of Fortune—even all the rise and fall of the human race amounted to no more than a tiny wave in a surging flood. Even if humanity were wiped out completely, it would not affect heaven and earth in the slightest.

As fortune increased, its effects were no longer as good as they had once been, but having it still made a fundamental difference. So the great clans and noble houses painstakingly developed methods of transferring fortune, allowing them to take another person's fortune and add it to their own children. From then on, being blessed with fortune was not always a good thing. One had to seek out opportunities, while also making sure not to be discovered by the aristocratic clans and powerful houses—or one might end up sewing a wedding gown for someone else.

As people did this more and more, they realized that being born into the right family was itself a great stroke of fortune.

The last class, Techniques, covered all the arts used in the course of cultivation. These included not only spells, but also medicine, artifact crafting, pills, talismans, Witchcraft and Divination, poisons, and more. Besides its divine Dao Arts, Taichu Palace also had Tiangong Hall, renowned for artifact crafting; Zaohua Temple, known for its pill-making tradition; and Xuanming Hall, which had made its name through medicine. As a result, the lessons devoted plenty of attention to pills and artifacts, while Witchcraft and poisons were covered only in broad strokes.

The Body Forging stage focused mainly on cultivation, so when the curriculum was arranged, all the less important material for this stage was put into Techniques.

Seven days passed like this, and at last they had completed one full cycle of classes. On the eighth and ninth days, they returned to the two subjects General History of the Human Race and Introduction to the Immortal Path.

But on the ninth day, Introduction to the Immortal Path was taught not by Daoist Dixia, but once again by Feng Chutang.

Feng Chutang still wore his smiling, easygoing expression, and didn't mind when students joked with him. In this lesson, he didn't follow Daoist Dixia's schedule and teach about ancient times. Instead, he jumped straight to the dividing line between ancient and modern: the founding of the Great Tang and the introduction of the Sect Unified Examination.

"While Daoist Dixia is in seclusion, I'll use this class to talk about the origins of the Sect Unified Examination, and why it's one of the key dividing points between ancient and modern cultivation. Daoist Dixia can slowly explain the impact of the Great Tang's founding on immortal cultivation in the future."

All the students sat up straight and listened intently.

Since Feng Chutang put it that way, the Sect Unified Examination must have held a particularly important place in history. Besides, in the previous two classes, the students had already discovered that much of what Feng Chutang taught could not be found in the history books at all. It had to be pieced together from scattered records in numerous books before one could sketch out a general picture. Yet the events in that picture had been crucial links in history. Without them, one could say that studying history meant understanding it only halfway.

The students from powerful families had all grown up steeped in their household teachings, and knew more or less why the history books refused to record certain events in detail: to spare the emperor's reputation, to spare the powerful, and so on.

But precisely because they understood the reasons, these children were all the more keenly aware of Feng Chutang's erudition and incisiveness. So even though this teacher seemed utterly harmless, they listened with rapt attention, afraid of missing anything. After all, the things taught in class couldn't be found in books, and their own elders weren't necessarily well-versed in history.

Happy Dragon Boat Festival! If you have any spare monthly tickets, please toss one or two Zhang Sheng's way.