No wonder the pedestrians here were all hurrying along; the atmosphere was tense.
No wonder Zuo Guangshu had said it was connected to the nearby Great Void Corner Tower!
The Great Void Illusion Realm of today stretched from the Northern Plains to the Southern Frontier, from the Western Extremity to the East Sea, covering nearly all of The Present World. It had truly achieved the state of "wherever there are cultivators, all know of the Great Void Illusion Realm."
One matter alone illustrated this—
Participants in the Great Void Illusion Realm were also called [Great Void Walkers], later shortened to [walkers]. So much so that it had eclipsed the original meaning of the word "walker."
When people now spoke of walkers, they no longer thought of ascetic monks traveling on foot and begging for alms, nor of ordinary passersby. They thought of those striving within the Great Void Illusion Realm.
The Buddhist School was a prominent learning of the age, its influence touching every aspect of The Present World. Yet the Great Void Illusion Realm had silently replaced the meaning of a Buddhist term—its influence was clear from this alone.
And this was merely a collective unconscious behavior, accomplished in an extraordinarily short span of time.
Back in the era when the hundred schools contended, a shift in a word's meaning could represent a struggle for orthodoxy!
Yet whether Dharma, Confucianism, Buddhism, military strategy, or Mohism, which was not an ancient doctrine spanning several great eras? Which had not endured a long history? Their influence had not been built in a day or a night, but accumulated over countless years and passed down through myriad generations.
From this perspective, Xu Yuanzhi's grand ideal of creating "mysticism" and elevating it into a prominent learning was not the dream of a fool.