Atop the gate tower of Hangu Pass, Great Saint Yin Xi clapped his hands and smiled. "Purple qi came thirty thousand miles from the east; five thousand years have passed since the first crossing of Hangu Pass."
In the Dharma-Ending Era, no saints remained. This was the age's declining fortune overcoming the virtue of the Dao.
Yet people could spread the Dao; the Dao could not spread people. At the beginning of remote antiquity, no one taught the Dao. Only when the earliest ancestors crossed mountains and rivers, ate plants, watched the seas, gazed at the stars, and encountered all things did cultivation arise.
Even in the Dharma-Ending Era, Dao Ancestors could emerge, surveying heaven and earth and taking nature as their teacher. A speck of dust, a blade of grass, mountains, rivers, and all things were scriptures to be read. In ragged clothes, driving wicker carts, they blazed a new path.
This was the virtue of the Dao overcoming the age's declining fortune.
Saints born in the Dharma-Ending Era far surpassed the sages of other eras. They deserved to be called perfected beings, True Sages.
"Neither mouth nor nose draws mortal breath; the perfected breathe through their heels, mortals through their throats. From here, perfected and mortal stand apart; at this point, the flawless body is attained."
Lin Xian walked while singing, his blue robes fluttering as he stepped onto the mountaintop. Strands of divine power emerged from within him, and streams of blood qi soared skyward like True Dragons lifting their heads. His entire body shone, translucent and radiant, his skin like snow, as though cast from Nine Heavens Divine Jade. He resembled an immortal dwelling on Kunlun Immortal Mountain, who ate no grain and lived on wind and dew.
His saintly might surged like a mighty tide,