"Dear Vaughn, I don't know what 'yunqilonging' and 'ruricueng' mean, but I can be certain that Li Nanyu—Master Li—said those words for a reason. He seemed to be describing something, perhaps expressing the ideals of himself and his faction. Unfortunately, I know nothing about Eastern culture and couldn't understand—"
"All right, let's put those irritating questions aside for now. I'm not writing to ramble about such boring matters. Of course, the main reason is that I'm not sure whether China checks the letters I send. Let me whisper this to you: they don't care about my privacy at all. It's terrible."
"What I want to describe to you is the wondrous Eastern magic—the Loong awakened by the cultivators are not real creatures, of course. Just like the meaning it originally represented, the Loong is a totem, a faith, and the philosophy of Eastern people. The one thing it is not is something that truly exists."
"If I had to define it, I think its existence better fits the theory of how legends exert influence. Over the long course of their civilization, Eastern people revered and worshipped the land. They wove legends for it, bestowed humanity, divinity, and duties upon it—until, in the end, the land became a god, and the earth veins became Loong!"
"So the clouds they weave are false as well. They are born through the Loong; if the Loong is absent, they naturally disperse. Yet they are also undeniably real. I saw with my own eyes those cultivators stepping upon fiery red clouds, rising from the various peaks, and flying into the cloud and mist that flooded the mountains and had been dyed crimson by the morning glow."
"They recite incantations, and the incantations weave themselves into golden threads in their hands. They use those golden threads