Dinner was at a restaurant on the Chang University campus called Miyue. The food there wasn't expensive, about the same as at restaurants outside, but it tasted good and was famous among the students and faculty.
When Huang Tian and the others arrived, the restaurant was already full of young students. Feng Zechun picked a corner table with practiced ease and ordered eight dishes: beef brisket and potatoes in a clay pot, loofah with clams, dry-pot pork intestines, sizzling squid, baked egg with minced meat... Most were hearty dishes, though the flavors ran a little strong for Xu Kaizhi, who was from Su Province.
Xu Kaizhi had spent a long time in Gan Province, though, and could just about handle the salt and spice. He simply had to keep drinking water, which earned him a good deal of teasing from Feng Zechun.
After dinner, the three of them went their separate ways. Huang Tian left campus, hailed a taxi, and returned to his apartment. He didn't submit the paper right away; Feng Zechun still needed to help him revise its formatting.
One of the most irritating parts of submitting a paper was that reviewers often nitpicked its formatting and minor writing issues. Even when there were no errors, they would still send it back for revisions. Feng Zechun was an editorial board member at a domestic journal, so he knew these details inside out. With his revisions, the paper's formatting and prose would be unlikely to draw criticism when submitted again.
Back at the apartment, Huang Tian washed up quickly, then sat cross-legged and returned his consciousness to the Late Han Dynasty World.
Luoyang, in a palace chamber.
Huang Tian slowly opened his eyes. A feeling of completeness welled up in his heart. His expression shifted as he looked within his sea of consciousness and saw the purple orb radiating a sense of perfect, natural harmony.
"Eight months have passed since Jing, Yang, Yi, and Jiao Provinces nominally submitted to the Dao Court. In those eight months, all thirteen provinces under heaven have truly come under the Dao Court's rule. No wonder this orb is complete..."
Huang Tian thought to himself, "It's time to see what this thing really is!"
His consciousness lightly touched the purple orb. In an instant, boundless purple light burst forth, surging like a vast, roiling sea and swallowing his entire sea of consciousness.
Huang Tian's vision blurred. A seed etched with mysterious runes sprang out of his sea of consciousness, turning in midair as faint purple light shimmered around it. Then the seed suddenly burst open, becoming a stream dozens of miles long. It stretched farther and wider, its waters roaring, until at last it transformed into a mighty river stretching for millions upon millions of miles, its surface flecked with endless white foam.
Huang Tian felt himself grow to a height of tens of thousands of zhang. He sat cross-legged above the vast river like the Jade Emperor in heaven, lowering his head to quietly observe everything in its waters.
The river rushed endlessly onward, revealing figure after figure and scene after scene.
First came the sight of Huang Tian imparting the Dao and teaching the arts to Zhang Jiao and the other nine. Then came Huang Tian overcoming his tribulation and "ascending," departing this world amid the farewells of countless people.
After his departure, Zhang Jiao, Huang Tian's sole nominal personal disciple, cultivated while using the knowledge Huang Tian had left behind to govern the world. In just sixty years, the Dao Court made tremendous advances in ironworking, papermaking, gunpowder, animal husbandry, and other fields.
Farmers everywhere could afford iron tools. The use of iron plows and oxen spread ever wider, and paper was no longer a rare luxury only the wealthy could afford. Little by little, it entered the homes of ordinary people.
Zhang Jiao governed the realm with great success, but by then he was nearly a hundred and twenty years old, frail and nearing death. He had never managed to cross the threshold from the ninth layer of Qi Refining to the Dao Foundation Realm.
That was not because he hadn't applied himself. It had taken him sixty years just to reach the ninth layer of Qi Refining, exhausting his vitality and spirit. The crucial problem was that before ascending, Huang Tian had passed down only the first six layers of the Qi-Gathering chapter of the Mountain-Suppressing Spirit Scripture. The final three layers simply didn't exist!
So, for decades, cultivators throughout the realm inevitably ran into a wall once they reached the sixth layer of Qi Refining.
What could they do when there was no path ahead?
They had to forge one!
Cultivators gathered in Luoyang, spending day and night studying, exploring, and discussing the continuation of the Mountain-Suppressing Spirit Scripture. It took them a full twenty years to piece together the first nine layers of the Qi-Gathering chapter. Zhang Jiao's life was stretched out by twenty years as a result.
With his body failing and death approaching, and with capable successors such as Zhuge Kongming, Zhou Yu, He Ting, Qin Xun, and Xun Yu serving together in the Political Academy, Zhang Jiao felt at ease with the state of the realm. He decided to risk everything and break through to the Dao Foundation Realm!
The result was just as expected.
He failed.
All his spiritual power dissipated, his meridians were severed, and his internal organs rotted away. Yet Zhang Jiao laughed aloud several times and ordered that every insight he had gained from his attempt be recorded for the benefit of those who came after him.
After Zhang Jiao's death, his younger brother Zhang Liang became the Great Virtuous Teacher. But he held the position for only ten years before passing it on to He Ting, hoping to break through to the Dao Foundation Realm in the final stage of his life.
He Ting was the youngest son of Commander He Yi. Born clever, he could recite poetry at seven. After receiving the methods of immortal cultivation, he devoted himself to training, only to discover, to his despair, that his aptitude was abysmal. Disheartened, he focused on studying ways to govern the realm, and achieved much.
After taking up the mantle of Great Virtuous Teacher from Zhang Liang, he worked diligently and ushered in a new era. Culture flourished throughout the realm, and the imperial examination system completely replaced the recommendation system, itself a mutation of the practice of recommending filial and incorrupt officials. The Dao Court's channels for selecting talent grew far broader and more comprehensive...
In the cultivation world, Zhang Liang, Zhang Bao, He Yi, Huang Shao, Tian Feng, Lu Zhi, and many others all fell before the natural chasm of the Dao Foundation Realm. Plenty of others, with even poorer aptitude, never even got the chance to glimpse that chasm.
With the world of cultivation sunk in silence, Zhuge Kongming, already over a hundred years old, read the notes and insights left behind by Zhang Jiao, Zhang Liang, Tian Feng, and the others after their failed breakthroughs. Deeply moved, his soul reached into the mysterious void. He sat motionless all night. When dawn broke, he suddenly let out a long howl—and broke through to the Dao Foundation Realm, becoming the first Dao Foundation patriarch in the world!
After his breakthrough, Zhuge Kongming kept nothing to himself. He lectured on the Dao in Luoyang, benefiting countless people. Ten years later, Zhou Gongjin successfully broke through, becoming the second Dao Foundation patriarch. He too lectured and taught in Luoyang, earning praise throughout the realm. Zhuge Kongming and Zhou Gongjin became known together as "the Yu and Liang of their age."
With the experience passed down by these two, more and more people broke through to the Dao Foundation Realm over the next three hundred years. Techniques and Dao arts gradually grew in number. Xie An compiled the Water Origin Mysterious Scripture, Tao Yuanming created the Spirit Wood Azure Brilliance Scripture, and Liu Yu created the Great Evolution Sharp Metal Qi...
Of course, the one who created the most cultivation methods, Dao arts, and immortal crafts was still Zhuge Kongming: the Heavenly Evolution Eight Trigrams Formation, the Spirit Puppet Mechanism Art, the Spirit Sealing Grand Formation, the Minor Art of Moving Clouds and Spreading Rain, Introduction to Talismans...
It could be said that Zhuge Kongming had, by himself, opened up more than half of this world's cultivation system. Sadly, no matter how brilliant his talent, he ultimately fell short of the Golden Core's wondrous realm.
Over the centuries, generations of cultivators had striven forward, yet none had broken through to the Golden Core. The notes they left behind filled several palace chambers...
Then one day, an old man named Wu Daozi painted what later generations would call an immortal masterpiece: the portrait of Sovereign Yellow Absolute descending into the world as a divine infant and loving mankind. Through painting, he entered the Dao and established his Golden Core!
On the day he formed his Golden Core, cultivators throughout the realm gathered in Luoyang to celebrate. Wu Daozi sat high above the clouds, his proof of the Dao unfurled beside him. His clear voice carried for dozens of miles, while rosy clouds blotted out the sun. He appeared like an immortal, like a god, manifesting his divine presence...
A wave in the river of time rolled past, and another two hundred years went by. The Profound Dao flourished. There were five Golden Core masters in the world, hundreds of Dao Foundation patriarchs, and more than ten thousand Qi Refining cultivators.
Together, they composed wondrous methods and profound scriptures: nine Golden Core chapters, three hundred Dao Foundation chapters, and countless Qi-Gathering chapters...
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