"Do you think this is easy? The Great Dao of longevity—the Dao can be called theft, and a thief is one who takes. This character for 'take' is the most difficult matter on the path of longevity. The problems you encounter during your cultivation are not merely beauties radiating precious light; among ten thousand cultivation methods, ten thousand kinds of spiritual elixirs, and ten thousand interpersonal entanglements, which will you take, and which will you discard? If you take it, can you truly attain longevity? If you discard it, will you truly not regret it hereafter?"
Yu Ci's smile faded. This was no longer a question of ideals and their execution, but was being led back by the old Daoist to the discourse on fish and dragons.
"A person's cultivation must fix its gaze upon this principle: born between heaven and earth, man was never meant to isolate himself. What it is like to cultivate to the peak, I do not know, but upon the path of cultivation, between man and man, there is mutual sensing and communication—some help and assist one another, some are as strangers, and some are irreconcilable enemies. Between man and things, there is also sensing and communication—some are inseparable, some are dispensable, and some arouse hatred at a glance. As for between man and heaven and earth, things like the unity of heaven and man and the mutual communion of heaven and man are written plainly in the classics.
"Such connections, though complex and tangled, involve taking and discarding among them, and this is the true path. To not thoroughly comprehend the principles within this, to fail to understand that 'external things' are also the foundation of cultivation, and to solitarily enter the mountains to practice Chan, giving it the fine name of a 'dead