The Yellow Court Scriptures, Primordial Unity Qi

The Mystic Pass lay silent and secluded, dim and unfathomable in the Nether.

Amid the boundless mist, a strand of Divine sense descended.

It carried the weathered weight of accumulated years.

It was none other than Xuanming.

As he walked through it, a light drew his attention.

He followed the light forward.

Soon, the Three Daoist Scriptures came into view. Within three feet around them unfolded Daoist Visions of Heaven and Earth opening, the Clear and Turbid dividing, and myriad Divines shining together—magnificent, majestic, and vast.

The Daoist characters on the Three Daoist Scriptures were ancient and vigorous, gleaming as though born of Primordial Heaven, bearing the Great Dao and flowing with its laws.

Xuanming had never learned the writing upon them, yet the instant he saw it, he knew their name and understood their meaning.

"The Yellow Court Scripture."

It was one of the Daoist classics from his previous life.

It was hailed as a wondrous scripture for longevity and enduring life.

Only with white hair did one grasp the mystery of nourishing life—all lay within the Yellow Court's three scrolls.

This scripture was the cheat Xuanming had gained after transmigrating.

In his previous life, he had lived to forty, built a fortune from nothing, and possessed wealth, fame, beautiful women, and children—everything he could wish for. He had intended to earn one more modest hundred million, then smoothly retreat behind the scenes and enjoy life. Instead, at the very moment of success, everything went black.

When he awoke, it was already sixty years before the present. He had transmigrated into an unborn child at the Truth-Seeking Abbey, becoming the Former Abbot's youngest son.

Because his soul needed to merge with the Yellow Court Scripture, he had spent the first half of his life simple-minded, with only an eight-year-old's intelligence, until he turned fifty-five.

The numbers of heaven totaled twenty-five, and those of earth totaled thirty.

Fifty-five matched the sum of heaven and earth.

That year, he fully merged with the Yellow Court Scripture.

That year, he broke free of his cage and beheld his true self.

That year, his father unexpectedly passed into immortality.

He had thought that once he merged with his cheat, his fortunes would turn and he would soar into the heavens. He had never expected conditions to govern its use.

Methods were not lightly transmitted; the Dao was not lightly imparted.

To read the Yellow Court Scripture, he needed to accumulate Dao Qi, nurture Dao Intent, and comprehend Daoist principles.

The most effective method Xuanming could devise was to read the Daoist Canon and contemplate its scriptures.

He would draw upon his predecessors' wisdom and borrow the inspired insights of ancient sages.

After all, writing bore the Dao, and knowledge was the most precious wealth in the world.

When he touched a Daoist scripture, the Jade Scripture of the Yellow Court's Outer-Scenery Yellow Court Qi finally responded, conveying a message:

Comprehend Three Hundred Scriptures, and discerning eyes shall behold the truth of the Dao.

From then on, Xuanming read without pause, concentrating on three hundred Daoist scriptures, reading them over and over, studying them tirelessly, and copying them without complaint.

He carefully read each scripture a thousand times, understanding, savoring, weighing, and contemplating every word and sentence.

For five years, neither wind nor rain stopped him; for five years, winter cold and summer heat came and went.

He dared not slacken, his heart devoted entirely to the Dao.

Only today had he finally entered the Dao. The Jade Scripture of the Yellow Court's Outer-Scenery Yellow Court Qi bestowed a wisp of mysterious energy, helping him shatter his shackles, gain a new lease on life, behold a new world, and witness its grand vistas.

Three hundred scrolls.

They granted him one chance to read the Jade Scripture of the Yellow Court's Outer-Scenery Yellow Court Qi.

This was the blessing Xuanming had received.

But he did not act immediately.

Those who succeeded early did not necessarily achieve lasting success; those who arrived late did not necessarily fail to arrive.

He was long past being a rash, impulsive youth and understood that some things could not be rushed.

Withdrawing his heart and Divine sense from the Mystic Pass, Xuanming glanced at the sturdy old pine beside him, evergreen through all four seasons, and smiled faintly.

Before, when he saw a tree, it was merely a tree; his perception remained on the surface.

Now, his realm and perspective had changed, and so had the way he saw the tree. It was a tree, yet not a tree.

It was a pine, but also a principle of the Dao.

It was vigorous vitality.

It was unyielding perseverance.

It was proud defiance of wind, frost, and bitter cold.

It was tranquil freedom, rooted deep in the mountains.

The same held true when he looked at the courtyard's other objects.

He could look beyond appearances and glimpse their inner laws, the flow of spiritual energy, and even certain subtler forms of qi.

At that moment, Xuanming understood.

His Dao heart had attained subtle discernment, allowing him to see the great within the small.

In other words, he had stepped from the realm of "seeing mountains as mountains and waters as waters" into the realm of "seeing mountains as not mountains and waters as not waters." Though he had only just crossed that Daoist Tradition threshold, things were different all the same.

Once he understood, Xuanming stroked his beard and smiled.

That night, the Bright Moon shone clear.

It draped Floating Cloud Mountain in a layer of silver radiance.

He burned incense, bathed, and changed into a new Daoist robe. After reciting the Purity of the Heart Scripture once, he sent his consciousness into the Mystic Pass.

Rumble!

The instant his Divine sense made contact, the Jade Scripture of the Yellow Court's Outer-Scenery Yellow Court Qi erupted with dazzling light and pulled it into the book.

After the world spun around him, Xuanming entered a Primordial World. Neither sun nor moon was visible; there were no directions, only emptiness above and below.

Only the words of the Great Dao surged abruptly into his heart.

In a flash of inspiration, he uttered the sounds of the Dao. The words left his mouth, entered his ears, and returned to his heart.

"...Above lies the Yellow Court, below the Origin Pass; behind lies the Hidden Gate, before the Gate of Life. Breath passes through the Lung Chamber into the Dantian; clear water from the Jade Pool irrigates the Spiritual Root..."

The sounds of the Dao were faint at first, then gradually grew louder.

At last, they boomed like the thunder that opened heaven.

A point of light blossomed amid the words of the Great Dao.

Primordial chaos shattered, and Heaven-Cleaving Creation began.

The limitless gave birth to Supreme Polarity; Supreme Polarity gave birth to the Two Principles.

He saw the Clear and Turbid divide, watched the Yin and Yang qi circulate, and witnessed water and fire qi evolve into an endless stream of Primordial Qi that nourished the newborn world. At last, the World Membrane formed, and heaven and earth took on their first outlines.

The primordial chaos qi could not be extinguished.

In a daze, Xuanming heard dragons roar and tigers howl.

Heaven and earth had just formed.

He saw a strand of Clear Qi stretch across Heaven and Earth.

It was a Divine, shrouded in boundless Divine radiance. Though its features were indistinct, its towering majesty seemed eternal.

Merely looking at it brought peace to his heart and Divine clarity to his spirit.

This Divine dissolved into eight streams of light, forming an Eight Trigrams Diagram as five colors—blue-green, white, red, yellow, and black—flowed through it.

Lofty mountains rose from the ground, and long rivers appeared, surging onward.

One Divine among them was the most Divine and sacred, radiating boundless earthen-yellow Divine light. It commanded the other seven Divines, sustained the world, drove the workings of heaven and earth, and fostered the birth and growth of all things.

Xuanming lost himself in the sight.

Until a rooster crowed.

He abruptly came to his Divine senses, already withdrawn from that state of profound mystery.

His heart and Divine sense entered the Mystic Pass. The Jade Scripture of the Yellow Court's Outer-Scenery Yellow Court Qi had fallen dormant again. Though he found it a pity, Xuanming felt no regret.

To receive such a blessing already spoke of deep good fortune.

Dissatisfaction and insatiable greed would only trap him in delusion, creating needless troubles and imprisoning him within his own heart.

On this point, his mind remained clear.

Only by refusing to bind himself could he remain forever pure and tranquil.

Though he was sixty, a night spent reading the scripture and comprehending the Dao had left him not weary, but brimming with Divine energy.

This world abounded in spiritual energy.

Cultivation flourished, a hundred schools contended, and countless methods blossomed like flowers.

Daoist cultivation consisted of three great realms: Essence refining, qi refining, and Divine refining. Essence refining was further divided into four realms:

Harmonize Yin and Yang: nurture essence and qi, seek out deficiencies, and make them whole.

Hundred-Day Barrier: draw from Kan to fill Li, establishing the Hundred-Day Foundation Establishment.

Jade-Liquefying Realm: turn qi into liquid, bringing a hundred rivers to Guihai.

Bloom the Essence Flower: bring water and fire into harmony, returning jade liquid to form the elixir.

Xuanming was in the Second Realm.

Hundred-day foundation establishment was perilous. One had to commune with the Kidney Spirit and seize the workings of creation from True Yang and True Yin. Only by merging yin and yang qi could one produce an unending source of energy, refine essence into qi, and transform Primordial Heaven essence into acquired magic power.

During this process, desire obstructed the Dao.

Each day was harder to endure than the last, as desire multiplied daily.

Failure to control oneself meant failure in foundation establishment, all effort undone at the final hurdle, and no hope of attaining the Great Dao.

Xuanming was fine, unaffected.

This was partly because his age gave him stronger self-control, and partly because his enlightenment the previous night had yielded three methods from the Yellow Court Outer-Scenery Yellow Court Qi Scripture. One was the Purity Formula.

It originated from that strand of Clear Qi stretching across heaven and earth.

It could wield the Wisdom Sword to sever desire, safeguard the clarity of the Spirit Platform, and preserve the purity of the Dao heart.

Rising from his bed, Xuanming walked out of his room.

With a light push of his toes, he rose as nimbly as a swallow and floated to the crown of the sturdy old pine, his toes resting on its foliage as lightly as a goose feather.

From that height, he gazed into the distance. The east had begun to whiten, and the rising red sun cast its first ray through the vast sea of clouds.

Xuanming sat cross-legged atop the tree, circulated his method, and gathered and refined Dawn-Glow Purple Qi.

Yesterday, before the Scripture Pavilion.

The foundation establishment manual he had comprehended under the guidance of that wisp of energy from the Yellow Court Scripture was named, in full, the Yin and Yang Primordial Unity Qi Formula.

The limitless gave birth to Supreme Polarity; Supreme Polarity gave birth to the Two Principles.

This was the ultimate principle behind the evolution of heaven and earth.

The Primordial Unity Qi Formula traveled the opposite path, tracing things back to their source. Taking Yin and Yang as its foundation, it returned further to Primordial Unity and gathered a single Primordial Unity qi. Once he endured the Hundred-Day Barrier, he could establish a foundation for the Great Dao—without leaks or flaws, without stain or dust, pure and natural.

In both depth and potential, it far surpassed others of the same realm.

Precisely for this reason, the method was exceedingly difficult, with each day counting as a year.

Every morning, he had to gather and refine Great Sun purple qi; every night, he had to gather lunar essence. He also had to condense them into Primordial Unity qi during Yin and Yang confluence.

Each cycle of gathering and refining Yin and Yang, then combining them into Primordial Unity qi, was equivalent to tempering his foundation for a year.

As his foundation thickened year by year—day by day—the desires he endured would also multiply, becoming hundreds or thousands of times stronger than those faced by others of the same realm. The process was arduous and agonizing.

He could not slacken midway, or all his previous efforts would come to nothing.

Most importantly, Yin and Yang both nurtured and opposed each other. Combining them into Primordial Unity qi was easy to describe but difficult to accomplish.

Only because Xuanming had that mysterious wisp of energy from the Yellow Court Scripture as his foundation could he smoothly reverse Yin and Yang and unite them into a single qi.

Other cultivators attempting it without that energy's aid would face certain death.

That was why he had omitted the Primordial Unity portion and said he had comprehended the Yin and Yang Foundation Establishment Manual.

This both protected the other Daoists, lest word leak out and attract greater covetous attention, and left them with a method they could potentially master.

Otherwise, even if he gave them the Primordial Unity Foundation Establishment Manual, they could only stare at it blankly, lost in clouds and fog.

Gathering his thoughts, Xuanming devoted himself to cultivation.

Pure purple qi was drawn down and absorbed with his breathing, its misty radiance curling around him.

His Daoist robe fluttered. With white hair and a youthful face, he bore an Immortal's grace and a Daoist's bearing.

At that moment, he resembled a true Immortal, breathing clouds and mist, feasting on rosy clouds and drinking dew.

After the time it took to drink a cup of tea, he finished gathering and refining the purple qi.

Xuanming drifted lightly from the tree to the ground.

After breakfast, he had just stepped into the Scripture Pavilion.

There he saw Changchunzi, his junior brother Xuanxu's eldest direct disciple, approaching with a Daoist boy.