Training in Follow Your Heart's Desire was no safe undertaking.
More than once, Pan Long lost control of his mind during training. He felt himself drifting beyond the world, on the verge of becoming one with heaven and earth.
If Bi Lingkong had not watched him with unwavering care, jolting him awake the instant his mind began to drift, he would long since have lost himself and become part of the world.
"This is called Materialization. We of the Confucian School do everything we can to avoid it," Bi Lingkong explained. "The Daoist School, on the other hand, can make use of that state to some extent."
"Becoming one with the world means losing yourself. You might as well be dead. Can that state really be useful?" Pan Long asked.
"The Daoist School has a path called 'Make self and things equal; leave right and wrong behind.' Its central idea is to grasp what all things have in common and make no distinction between them. Little Zhuang could be me, Bi Wu; Bi Wu could be Elder Li; Elder Li could even be that bastard Zhao Da... Anyway, all living things are born of the Dao and eventually return to it. From the Dao's perspective, there's little difference between them."
"...And what good does that do?"
"I'm not sure what benefits it brings to cultivation. I'm not a disciple of the Daoist School, after all," Bi Lingkong said. "But I know its benefits for supernatural arts quite well. The Daoist School's most famous art, Wishful Transformation, grew out of that path."
"The Seventy-Two Transformations?" Pan Long immediately thought of Sun Wukong.
"More or less. That's the idea." Bi Lingkong nodded.
"Does the Confucian School have any transformation arts?" Pan Long asked.
Bi Lingkong shook her head and said solemnly, "We