Ten-Thousand-Oracle Machine Brain

Man the Cleaver, I the Fish.

He Ping silently mulled over Little Stone Buddha's words. To be honest, he did not quite believe Little Stone Buddha was so kindhearted, and he also harbored some doubts about the use of this so-called "Man the Cleaver, I the Fish Great Art."

"I am indeed one body with two souls. From the sound of it, could it be that you intend to awaken my other soul?"

"Not so."

Little Stone Buddha continued his explanation. "The state your other soul is in is most peculiar—neither cessation nor continuity, without any awareness of mind. This is very strange. From a certain perspective, it is extremely close to a state where all afflictions of body and mind have been severed, freed from the outward forms of matter and emptiness. In Buddhism, this is called 'the body reduced to ashes, wisdom extinguished, nirvana without remainder.' Yet in my view, that other 'him' can barely even be considered a soul..."

"Then what can this Man the Cleaver, I the Fish Great Art accomplish?"

"The purpose of this art is to use the difference between cleaver and fish, to allow even ordinary mortals to awaken the heart of great compassion born of shared being..."

Little Stone Buddha explained that this Daoist art had originally come from the Daoist sects. Long ago, there had been a tale among them: a man wholeheartedly devoted to the Dao entered the deep mountains and took an immortal as his master.

The immortal was refining pills and decided to test the man.

He told him that the pills in this furnace were divine elixirs capable of helping one ascend to immortality, and that all manner of demons and monsters would come to hinder the refinement.

"If you can guard this furnace of pills for