The Eye of True Spirit

At last, the afternoon meal hour arrived.

Li Mo and Lu Tianyou walked side by side to the dining hall, each taking a portion of plain, coarse fare. They sat on neighboring bamboo chairs and swallowed their food as if chewing wax.

Li Mo was still thinking about what Uncle-Master Ding Wei had told them earlier that day.

Curious about the Tu Xing Sect's betrayal, he couldn't help asking Lu Tianyou, "What do you think the path to immortality is?"

"Living forever, obviously."

Lu Tianyou shrugged. "I heard the people over in Lu Country are very good at taking care of their health."

"So the people from the Tu Xing Sect wanted to live a little longer?"

Lu Tianyou shook his head. He wasn't interested in that and instead gave Li Mo a meaningful look. "What do you think of that girl?"

Li Mo looked in the direction Lu Tianyou indicated.

The girl wore her hair in a coiled Serpent's Mane and was dressed in a plain white silk skirt. Her eyes and brows had a distinctly aggressive quality, and every frown and smile seemed tinged with a faint, alluring charm.

If Wang Ying of the Pingshan Society was a fox, then this girl was a flower snake.

Li Mo hadn't expected Lu Tianyou to like this type.

"I don't think she's in our class."

"Mm."

Lu Tianyou chuckled. "I like wild girls like her. I'll go over and strike up a conversation later, see if there's any room for things to develop."

Li Mo couldn't help shaking his head.

Just as Lu Tianyou wasn't interested in his topic, Li Mo wasn't interested in the girl either.

After the meal,

Lu Tianyou really did go after her and launch into an animated conversation.

Seeing that, Li Mo had no choice but to leave on his own.

He took a quick look around the courtyard. The Enlightenment Hall had at least four hundred students, divided into twelve classes, each taught by a different cultivator. Perhaps more people would arrive from the more distant counties over the next day or two, but there probably wouldn't be many more.

"Li Mo!"

Two girls were standing by the road. When one of them spotted Li Mo, she showed off a sweet dimple, called out to him, and walked over.

It was Zhu Yidan.

At the banquet two nights ago, she had sat beside Li Mo. She seemed lively and adorable. Li Mo couldn't remember the other girl's name; she had very fair skin and a quiet, scholarly air.

"Zhu Yidan."

He greeted her, unsure why she had called him over.

"This is Zhao Xiaonan. There's a cabinet in our room that's in the way, and we want to move it to one side. Could you help us?"

"Sure, no problem."

Li Mo didn't refuse. He wasn't doing anything anyway.

But just as he was about to follow the two girls, Zhu Yidan gestured for him to wait. "Hold on. The cabinet's a little heavy. I'll find someone else to help."

A moment later,

Zhu Yidan called out again.

"Cousin! Wang Feng!"

A boy came over from the distance. He wore a loose crane-feather cloak, but the jade pendant at his waist and the leather boots on his feet made it clear that he came from a wealthy and powerful family. His posture was a little languid, and he looked even more mature than Li Mo. He was probably seventeen or eighteen.

Li Mo didn't recognize him at all.

"Hey, after a whole day of lessons, I'm practically exhausted. I was just about to head back and rest. What is it?"

Zhu Yidan and Wang Feng were clearly very close.

"Help me move a cabinet. This is Li Mo. I met him at the banquet last night, after you went out."

Then Zhu Yidan introduced Wang Feng to Li Mo. "This is Wang Feng, my cousin. His family is from Yuan City. My uncle thinks he's got no sense of purpose, so he sent him here to get some experience."

Li Mo was astonished.

Yuan City was the capital of the Gan Kingdom.

The title Emperor of the Qian Yuan Era referred to the Gan Kingdom by "Qian" and Yuan City by "Yuan." Wang Feng had come all the way from Yuan City to Muzhou, while the place Li Mo had struggled to reach after finally leaving the mountains was the starting point of Wang Feng's stint away from home.

"Hello."

"Hello."

They greeted each other, and Wang Feng gave Zhu Yidan a helpless look.

"What experience? I'm just here to get matched up. We met that young lady from the Ye Family yesterday, and we got along pretty well. She's my type, so don't go blabbing about it. Hurry up and help move the cabinet."

With that, Wang Feng stretched.

"Starting today, I'm a disciple of the Lingmu Sect!"

Then he turned to Li Mo.

"Brother, don't get the wrong idea. Our family only has a little money in Yuan City, and we hold a few powerless, insignificant posts in the court. Compared with those local tyrants from the sects and Aristocratic Clans, we're nothing. So don't treat me like some rich young master. Right now, we're both the same—outsiders with no connections, wandering disciples. Only after we pass the Enlightenment Hall's assessment in three months can we become formal disciples of the Lingmu Sect and study alongside those Aristocratic Clan disciples."

"Huh?"

Li Mo was surprised. Aristocratic Clan disciples had plenty of privileges. At the same time, he was also a little confused.

"What are Aristocratic Clan disciples?"

As the four of them walked, Wang Feng explained.

"For ordinary people, whether they're born with a spirit root is entirely up to fate. But the people in those Aristocratic Clans are different. Since both their parents are cultivators, their chances of having a spirit root are much higher. Over time, these clans have become the backbone of the various sects. And because they grow up in a different environment, they're exposed to extraordinary things from an early age. They may have studied a great deal of theory and prepared for cultivation, so they don't need an introduction to it—and naturally, they don't need to come here."

"I see."

From talking with Wang Feng, Li Mo learned that he was eighteen, a year older than Li Mo.

Besides completing three years of study at the Lingmu Sect and returning to Yuan City to serve in the court, Wang Feng had come here to marry into the Ye Family, one of the Lingmu Sect's Four Great Aristocratic Clans.

"Although the Ye Family has fallen from grace and ended up as one of the Lingmu Sect's Four Great Aristocratic Clans, their foundations are far more formidable than that makes it sound. And I'm not talking about Lingmu Real Person, the founding patriarch of the Lingmu Sect. The founder of the Ye Family was Quanzhi Zhenren, a Nascent Soul Late Stage cultivator who once made a name for himself across the Gan Kingdom. He was a member of the Ye Family, so they're one of the great clans that rank among the most powerful in the entire Gan Kingdom. If this works out for me, I'll be marrying above my station."

Wang Feng had a pretty clear sense of his own worth.

Before long, Li Mo and Wang Feng had moved the cabinet to the corner as Zhu Yidan and Zhao Xiaonan requested.

The four of them then chatted for quite some time in the room and grew familiar with one another.

The next day,

Ding Wei arrived in the classroom right on time and looked over the students.

"Since every kingdom has its own tradition of the Dao, who can tell me—what is the Dao?"

After exchanging glances, a few students tentatively raised their hands.

Li Mo thought for a moment, then raised his hand too.

To his surprise, Ding Wei glanced around the room and chose Li Mo to answer first.

"I used to be a physician. My master told me that what connects beginning to end is the Dao. The Dao is the beginning of the patterns and order of the world. It has no fixed content, cannot be conveyed through words or instruction, and cannot be defined by rules. Each person must draw on their own heart to comprehend it."

Ding Wei nodded.

After Li Mo sat down, Lu Tianyou nudged him with his elbow, grinning and wiggling his eyebrows.

"Look at you."

Then Ding Wei asked another boy to stand and answer.

The boy was a little chubby, with a solemn expression. He looked like someone who always followed the rules. Li Mo vaguely remembered his name was Yang Zhiman.

He had once wondered if the boy's father was a bookkeeper.

"My father told me that the Dao exists only in the unseen. It is the root that drives all things to change without end. It is unborn and undying, formless and without shape, encompassing everything. Its vastness has nothing beyond it, and its minuteness has nothing within it. It changes through passing, yet has endured unchanged since time immemorial..."

What Yang Zhiman said was no ordinary explanation, but he delivered it in the same sing-song manner as a child reciting a lesson, swaying his head and rolling the words smoothly off his tongue.

Li Mo couldn't help wondering if Yang Zhiman's father might be a scholar.

"Good."

Ding Wei nodded, then looked at Zhao Huaxue and gestured for her to stand and answer.

The instant Zhao Huaxue rose from her cushion, she became the center of the class's attention. Everyone turned to look at her.

Seeing her aloof and cool demeanor, Li Mo suspected she might really be some fallen noblewoman, perhaps with a heartrending tale of heartbreak and tragedy besides.

"The Dao cannot be spoken of. Even what someone who has comprehended the Dao describes ceases to be the Dao the moment it leaves their mouth; it is merely the principle in their heart. Everything in the world is woven from the Dao and its principles..."

After giving each of the students who had raised their hands a chance to answer, Ding Wei finally began teaching the day's lesson.

"As the saying goes, everyone has their own Dao in their heart. The Dao cannot be described, but its traditions can. The tradition of the Dao upheld by our Gan Kingdom is called the Dao of the Spiritual Supremacy of All Things. It was comprehended by the Emperor of the Qian Yuan Era."

Everything in the Gan Kingdom revolved around the Emperor of the Qian Yuan Era.

He was the founder of the kingdom.

Although the Dao was the beginning of everything and could not be described, there were said to be three thousand Great Daos. These referred to the traditions of the Dao.

"According to legend, the Sage was born in a small kingdom that has long since been destroyed. In his youth, he cultivated at a sect called the Six Arts Sect. After comprehending the Great Dao over two thousand years ago, he founded the Gan Kingdom. Therefore, if we wish to comprehend the Dao of the Spiritual Supremacy of All Things, we must learn as much as possible about everything concerning the Six Arts Sect."

Ding Wei slowly recounted the history of the Six Arts Sect, dating back more than two thousand years.

To ordinary people, events from over two thousand years ago were unimaginably distant. They had taken place in the time of their great-great-grandparents' great-great-grandparents.

"Back then, the Central Plains were far less peaceful than they are now. It was a dark, turbulent age when demons and monsters ran rampant. The Six Arts Sect was merely a third-rate sect founded by six Golden Core Rogue Cultivators. Each of the six Golden Core Stage cultivators excelled at one of the following: alchemy, talisman-making, artifact-refining, spells, puppetry, or runic formations. That was why the sect was called the Six Arts Sect..."

Ding Jie spent the entire day lecturing.

He began with the Six Arts Sect's founding during the dark, turbulent age, then spoke of the Emperor of the Qian Yuan Era's rise after comprehending the Dao, followed by the establishment of the Gan Kingdom over two thousand years ago. He went on to explain how, over a thousand years ago, Lingmu Real Person had traveled thousands of miles to join the Gan Kingdom and found the Lingmu Sect, which had endured through three generations of sect leaders to the present day.

"So every sect in the Gan Kingdom was founded beneath the Dao of the Spiritual Supremacy of All Things—the Dao that places humanity above all. For cultivators in our Gan Kingdom, everything under heaven is something we can take, something we can use as a tool for comprehending the Dao and cultivating. We are no longer limited to the Six Arts."

It was clear that the Dao of the Spiritual Supremacy of All Things taught cultivators to cultivate while preserving the qualities that made them human.

What set humans apart from other animals was their use of tools.

"But as some of your classmates have said, although we share the same tradition of the Dao, each of us understands it in our own way. Our Lingmu Sect's understanding of the Dao of the Spiritual Supremacy of All Things is that we focus on developing tools for mastering other tools, a view shared by the Tianding Sect. Most other sects, meanwhile, focus on refining a single kind of tool."

The twelve great sects of the Gan Kingdom each had their own core cultivation method under the Dao of the Spiritual Supremacy of All Things.

That was how each sect understood the Dao differently.

Ten of the sects focused on perfecting one of the Six Arts. Some had reached the pinnacle of their chosen art, and each had a distinct core cultivation method and fighting style.

The Lingmu Sect and the Tianding Sect, on the other hand, focused on perfecting the means of practicing the Six Arts.

One sought to develop the eyes to see through the essence of various arts; the other collected various arts, then used its natal treasure cauldron to break them down and restore them, uncovering their essence.

"Starting tomorrow, I'll teach you the Lingmu Sect's core cultivation method. It's called the Eye of True Spirit, and it's the sect's only core cultivation method. As your cultivation deepens, your eyes will gradually be able to discern the flow of spiritual energy between heaven and earth, distinguish the properties of spiritual materials, and glimpse how spiritual power circulates through spells. You'll use these insights to comprehend the Dao of the Spiritual Supremacy of All Things, and you'll benefit endlessly."

Hearing this, everyone looked forward to it.

Li Mo had a suspicion.

Over the past two days, besides teaching everyone the basics, Uncle-Master Ding had also been waiting for those with spirit roots to arrive from the more remote counties.

The Lingmu Sect was doing its best to give everyone a roughly equal footing and find the most promising among them.