To him, it held a certain special meaning.
But now, the person widely acknowledged as the foremost cultivator in the Body Integration Realm was telling him that cultivation allowed room for trial and error—even knowingly making a mistake was acceptable. She had said outright that success and failure were equally meaningful to a cultivator.
"You look rather surprised?"
Wen Xu nodded honestly, his voice carrying unmistakable shock. "Very surprised."
Only then did Jun Zhaoying remember that the young man before her was barely in his twenties. She also understood that Cheng Wei liked to give people free rein and probably seldom interfered with his disciples' cultivation. "A-Xu, you don't mind if I call you that, do you?"
Wen Xu shook his head, of course.
"Cultivators are people too. And people make mistakes. Do you know how many mistakes a cultivator makes on the way from Qi Refining to the Body Integration Realm?" Jun Zhaoying gestured. "Too many to count. Even a cultivation prodigy like your master has stumbled and fallen into pits. Many people take their predecessors' experiences as warnings. And then?"
"When the time comes, most of them still make the very mistakes they were warned about, trembling all the while. Just as people know they'll die someday, yet still fear death."
To Wen Xu, her words were truly like a cleansing draught poured over his head, clearing his mind at once.
"But if a person lives constantly in fear of approaching death, what meaning does life have?"
Wen Xu knew all too well what kind of person he was. He loved making plans, looking three steps ahead whenever he took one, then five, then ten. He liked everything to go according to plan. Even his choice of the Dao of Control reflected a desire to control his own