Water and Fire

But now, Wen Xu-Xu's words had awakened him. Cultivation methods were indeed important, but not important enough to be placed first. They should assist one's Spiritual Root, assist one's own cultivation. He could not stake all his "treasure" on a cultivation method.

Cultivation methods were profound and mysterious, written like heavenly books with characters upon them. This was a reminder to novice cultivators: this should be a process of a cultivator merging with the cultivation method itself!

It could not be applied by rote. It should be adapted to local conditions; it should change to suit him, rather than him exhausting every possible means to see its shape clearly and cater to that shape!

"I understand! So that's how it is! No wonder I could never find my way in!"

He had thought too simply. He had believed cultivation was a step-by-step engineering project, that cultivation was a problem and the cultivation method was his approach to solving it. As long as he obtained the solution method, he would surely be able to solve the problem.

But it was not like that. Even a math problem had different solutions. Functions, geometry, sequences, and conic sections all led to the same destination by different paths. He should not force himself to comprehend the one most correct way to practice Water-Fire Harmonization.

Because it had never possessed a single most correct answer. It only had the optimal answer most suited to him!

Every cultivator's Spiritual Root was different. How could different Spiritual Roots be fitted to the same cultivation method? No wonder cultivation methods were not written in a form everyone could understand, because that—would have no meaning at all.

It could only lead people astray. It truly ought to have been written as it was now.

Bian Chunchou suddenly calmed down. Holding the jade slip of Water-Fire Harmonization, he slowly closed his eyes.

"He's entered enlightenment."

Chen Zui looked at Wen Xu in confusion. "Could you repeat what you just said?" He wanted to enter enlightenment too.

Wen Xu: I'm playing the lute to a cow, and even the cow would have reacted more than you.

Water and Fire

The writer of the world's first cultivation manual must have been an unparalleled genius.

That was what Bian Chunchou thought. As for the first cultivator to write down a water-and-fire cultivation method, perhaps he had not been a genius, but he must have been a brave man. If someone dared to walk a road no one had ever walked before, one that was even fraught with peril, how could he not be called a brave man?

A Fire-Water Spiritual Root was a Dual Spiritual Root close to a Waste Spiritual Root. People used "as incompatible as water and fire" to describe two sides locked in sharp opposition, a relationship whose contradictions could not be resolved. Thus, water and fire could not coexist.

If water overcame fire, the water would extinguish the fire. But if fire overwhelmed water, the fire would evaporate and dry up the water.

The two were like needlepoint against wheat awn, impossible to reconcile.

But truly, could they not be reconciled?

If it were truly impossible, why could a Fire-Water Spiritual Root be born within one person? Why could predecessors have written Water-Fire Harmonization?

Bian Chunchou believed they could surely coexist, just like other Dual Spiritual Roots. Their way of coexistence was merely more hidden, requiring someone to blaze this path open.

So, how could water and fire harmonize?

Water-Fire Harmonization did not provide a clear method, nor did it explicitly state how one should control the growth of water-and-fire Spiritual Root spiritual energy. That was why he had never found the way in.

He had thought the cultivation method had written it down, and that he simply had not understood its deeper meaning because of the cultural and educational differences between ancient and modern times. But in truth, it had never been written, like the reference answer to a math fill-in-the-blank question. It gave the answer, but omitted the process of deriving it.

Just as Wen Xu-Xu had said, a cultivation method served as guidance. The true core should be himself.

Thus, what he truly needed to comprehend was his own understanding of water and fire coexisting.

Then he returned to the original starting point: how could water and fire coexist?

Although Bian Chunchou was a science student, he had not studied chemistry. Still, even without specializing in it, the basic chemistry knowledge from high school told him that water was an inorganic compound composed of hydrogen and oxygen. At normal temperatures, it was a colorless, odorless, transparent liquid. Below freezing, it became ice; when boiled, it became water vapor and dispersed through the air.

Fire, meanwhile, was a light- and heat-producing chemical reaction, usually manifesting as extremely high temperatures. It was a process of energy release. Fire could not arise from nothing. For combustion, first, combustible material was needed; second, oxygen was needed. In other words, in a vacuum, fire could not ignite.

But what he wanted was water and fire coexisting, not one simply restraining the other.

Then how could water and fire affect each other without consuming each other? Bian Chunchou thought, If I'd known I was going to cultivate immortality, I should have studied chemistry back then.

But it was not as though he had no ideas at all. Water was a very special substance. Its composition of hydrogen and oxygen allowed it to serve as both a reactant in chemical reactions and a product of chemical reactions.

In fact, most combustion in nature was accompanied by the production of water. It was simply that this "water" was water vapor, invisible to the naked eye.

Therefore, the ideal state was for water to become water vapor and coexist with fire.

But then, the offensive nature of a Fire-Water Spiritual Root would become too singular, far removed from Bian Chunchou's imagined water-and-fire coexistence. What he wanted was to control both water and fire as easily as moving his fingers, not... to keep burning endlessly.

Water and fire might be able to coexist this way, but his body probably could not withstand such "coexistence." Even though cultivators possessed physiques far beyond ordinary people, their cultivation would gradually increase. Most Fire-Water Spiritual Roots could not advance to the Nascent Soul stage, likely because their bodies could not bear excessively intense water-and-fire reactions, leaving them trapped in a deadlock.

But water vapor... hmm, it truly was a rather good form of attack. It could stack buffs together with fire, making it a decent direction for talisman crafting.

Yet when it came to cultivation methods, excessively complex coexistence of water and fire would only make cultivation more complicated. It might be fine at the beginning, but the later it went, the more difficult it would certainly become. After all, advancing one's cultivation required ever greater amounts of spiritual energy.

Then what was the simplest way for water and fire to coexist?

People generally believed water and fire were incompatible because under normal temperature and pressure, the ignition points of most common substances were higher than water's boiling point. Thus, when substances burned, the excessive heat would be accompanied by the evaporation of large amounts of water.