"Imitating Innate Qi, sensing with the soul—this is where your advantage lay."
The two continued onward. Yu Ci had not yet had his fill of praise when Xie Liang abruptly changed the subject:
"But if you possessed one especially conspicuous advantage, your thoughts would naturally gravitate toward it. Often, you would focus on one thing while neglecting the rest. You must understand that every realm of cultivation could only be attained through the combined workings of heart, skill, body, essence, qi, and spirit. These aspects were interconnected. Emphasizing only one might bring temporary benefit, but in the end, you would still stagnate. Only when all the other parts were perfected could you truly become stable.
"The Xuan Yuan Gen Ben Qi Fa I was about to teach you placed the greatest emphasis, at the beginning, on form and spirit becoming one. You had to hold the whole picture in your mind and could not favor one at the expense of another. You needed to understand this."
"Hold the whole picture?"
"Precisely. You were to regard the 'self' as an indivisible whole, a concrete image. From there, you contemplated and visualized a mental image, making the mental image and concrete image answer to each other. Once you entered the gate, you would work purely upon the mental image. By painting and enriching it, you would perfect the concrete image..."
Yu Ci's head swelled to the size of a bushel from all this talk of mental images and concrete images. He hurriedly asked, "Immortal Master Xie, what exactly are mental images and concrete images?"
Xie Liang explained blandly, "In the Xuan Yuan Gen Ben Qi Fa, the so-called concrete image was everything belonging to your form and spirit. Your flesh, skin, hair, sinews, channels, bones, blood, essence, qi, soul, cultivation, and temperament—but