In the torrential rain, the smoke and dust dispersed quickly. Within the Daoist temple that had already been reduced completely to ruins, Gu Daotian stared blankly at the heavens, watching the lingering traces of cloud and smoke that had yet to fully fade. His entire heart had become empty and hollow.
Had he not already surpassed the former limits of martial arts and attained the state of mind of Ten Grounds Immovability, this brief psychological plunge alone might have been enough to make his heart retreat.
After all, the heart was inherently formless, without fixed shape or substance, and thus changed most easily.
If a person kept winning, becoming intoxicated by Victory after Victory, then over time, they would naturally develop a fighting heart that believed itself invincible.
Or if a person was content in poverty and delighted in the Dao, always skilled at discovering interesting things in an ordinary life, then over time, they would naturally gain a tranquil heart of detached naturalness.
Yet regardless of whether it was the former or the latter, the heart itself was unstable. A person with a fighting heart, if they suffered defeat after defeat, could have their heart shattered in an instant beneath the immense blows, losing all their former powerful Spirit Aura.
Likewise, if one possessed a natural heart but became trapped in the toil of daily life, needing to exhaust every ounce of strength merely to survive—and perhaps not even managing that—then over time, such a heart would also return to the mundane.
In truth, the most common was probably the childlike heart that nearly everyone had once possessed. In their youth, people all had some measure of such a heart, but beneath the passage of years and the affairs of the world, it was worn away at terrifying speed.