Xuanzang opened his eyes.
The layer of golden light around him receded beneath his skin, leaving not even a trace behind.
He lowered his head, looked at his hands, then at Zhang Qi leaning against the back of his chair. Pressing his palms together, he bowed deeply.
"Thank you, benefactor, for helping me achieve this."
"It was nothing. I merely gave you a push.
Finding your true self still depended on you..."
Zhang Qi shook his head. He was not merely being polite.
Whether it was cultivators absorbing spiritual energy, mages drawing upon mana, psychics controlling the mind, or martial artists circulating inner energy.
Once any power that transcended the ordinary reached a certain level, it had to involve such matters.
Because the core of extraordinary power lay in a stable state of mind, intensely focused consciousness, and a unified, orderly inner rhythm.
Human consciousness was like an old computer with its background overloaded by junk software.
A mind hijacked by instinctive desires such as greed, anger, and delusion had its processing power scattered everywhere. Programs conflicted, crashes happened constantly.
Such a wreck of a system simply could not bear the high load of extraordinary power.
Yet for different systems, the difficulty and time required to clear away such useless desires differed completely.
Cultivators emphasized purity of mind and few desires, spending decades or even centuries grinding away bit by bit, slowly wiping the dust from their hearts.
This method was slow, but safe and stable.
The inner demons of Infinite Terror, on the other hand, forcibly gathered all those things together and resolved them in one breath.
Though that method was incredibly fast, overcoming the inner demon was far more difficult.
But Golden Cicada, who had passed through ten lifetimes of reincarnation without wavering in his Dao heart, had