The Bottom of the Mind, The Realm of Form and Spirit (Middle)

At this moment, the core thought truly wanted to "shake its head"; the original Gui Yan was merely a person who achieved things by relying on others! Regardless of anything else, proceeding along this train of thought meant discarding most of the previous judgments, rendering his days of preparation and effort all for naught. Yet the foundation of all this was merely reading facial expressions and indulging in a few conjectures--before life and death, how could one pin one's hopes on others? He never stopped to think that, from the perspective of Xiao Lei and the others, wouldn't a wavering Gui Yan, whether recruited or used as a blood sacrifice, be all the more easy? No wonder he had spent hundreds of years in cultivation striving in vain for longevity; looking at it now, that was hardly undeserved. Of course, this was viewed from the perspective of a bystander, a typical case of talking about others' pain without feeling it himself. Judging from the nature of the "Black Forest" system he had just penetrated, it was practically the ultimate annotation and example of "the authorities are in the dark," and unless one's mastery over one's own consciousness and mind had reached the supreme extreme, with a will as unyielding as steel, as steady as a mountain, and completely unshakeable, who could dare claim they could maintain absolute sobriety within it at all times and make correct judgments? Even if one could manage it once or twice, one could not guarantee doing so for a lifetime. The various sects of the world each had their own differing methods for "subduing the mind and thoughts"; Buddhism mostly sought it in "emptiness," the Xuan Sect usually sought it in "tranquility," while the Confucian school spoke of "holding fast to the golden mean." Grouped