"Note: everything written in this notebook was copied from the internet. It also came from surviving pages of The Canon. I am not the only person who possesses such pages. The following is for reference only. Also, I hope you know enough history, or you may have trouble understanding it."
Gao Jian took a deep breath.
Perhaps he should have invited Elon Musk over. The man claimed to know history well.
Gao Jian looked at the tiny, meticulous handwriting. The contents of the very first page were already intriguing.
[The master said: "Material things are themselves principle. There is no mind apart from material things in this world. This flower blooms and withers on its own deep in the mountains, silent in itself. How could it wax or wane because of the presence or absence of my awareness?"]
Gao Jian thought the passage looked familiar. It seemed to be part of a conversation between Wang Yangming and a disciple, but something felt off.
He searched for it on his phone, and Doubao soon supplied the original text:
[The master said: "Before you looked at this flower, both the flower and your mind rested in silence. When you came to look at it, its colors at once became clear."]
Comparing the two, Gao Jian felt bewildered and uneasy. He noticed a clear discrepancy between the passage copied into the notebook and the "original": the opening statement, "Material things are themselves principle," had been deleted.
Why delete that sentence?
It meant that a flower was objective matter, and its blooming and withering were movements of matter. It would not disappear because of a person's subjective perception. Consciousness could not create or destroy objective things out of nothing.
The original, however, meant that the flower did not exist when he was not looking at it, and existed when he looked at it. Philosophically, that was subjective idealism.
The views expressed by the two were diametrically opposed.
Gao Jian searched for other material on "Yangming Philosophy." Almost all of it consistently upheld subjective idealist thought.
Gao Jian carefully pondered the statement, "Material things are themselves principle," and soon broke out in a cold sweat again. If the notebook's account was true...
H-holy shit, Wang Yangming really was a sage.
Was he the one who proposed materialism?
Gao Jian instinctively raised his head and looked toward the room's bookcase. In that row of philosophy books, from left to right, were works on materialist dialectics and idealist dialectics. Sandwiched between them was the unremarkable Tao Te Ching.
A chill settled in Gao Jian's heart, and goosebumps rose all over him.
But the next few pages were even more horrifying.
[...Of all learning under heaven, some is true and some is false. True learning follows material things to seek facts; false learning indulges in idealist speculation. The sages of antiquity all verified the principles of matter through practice, whereas the Sheep People’s classics were mostly compiled by those who discoursed emptily on the mind and human nature...]
[...The Sheep People stole Christ and falsely called him God, deceiving the world and usurping his name for over a thousand years. Since the capital of Great Qin fell, no materialist learning has remained in the West, and the surviving people of Great Qin have been reduced to a people of idealism...]
[...Great Qin and Great Song both fell to barbarians. Yet the Han people were fortunate to have Emperor Hongwu restore their land, while Great Qin had no ruler to restore its nation. Ever since, it has remained fallen in a dark and corrupt age...]
[...Hongwu is gone, and all under heaven is about to fall. We shall divide The Canon into pages and hide them amid the turmoil, awaiting those who come after us. The Yongle Encyclopedia gathers concrete evidence of heaven and earth and factual events past and present into one collection. Though the world now decays and false doctrines flourish, the principles of reality shall not perish. Those who obtain these surviving pages in the future must understand their mission...]
The notebook contained nearly a thousand words, clearly copied with painstaking care by "Gao Jian."
"Gao Jian" had also added a note himself: much of the material did not come from the Yongle Encyclopedia, but from annotations others had made on it.
The gist could be boiled down to three points.
First: all learning was divided into idealism and materialism. The sages of antiquity all praised materialist principles, and ordinary people knew that the world was material. This had been a widespread consensus in that ancient era.
Second: “Sheep People” was probably a homophone for “Westerners”? Those who believed in God were all idealists, and the materialist thought of ancient Western figures such as Archimedes and Aristotle had already been eradicated.
Third: Great Qin probably referred to the Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire here? In any case, "Great Qin" had been destroyed by the Ottoman Empire, while the Northern and Southern Song had been destroyed by the Mongols. The two great empires of East and West had been allies, but neither could save the other. Like a pair of ill-fated lovers, both had lost their nations.
The East had Hongwu to restore its nation, but the West had no such figure. Did that dark and corrupt age refer to the Dark Ages?
Before the Ming dynasty fell, someone had deliberately dismantled the Yongle Encyclopedia into countless individual pages and hidden them among the common people to ensure that materialist principles would survive.
After reading it all, Gao Jian's mind was filled with nothing but shock.
"Gao Jian" had also written a concluding passage at the end of the notebook:
"My friend, most of the Yongle Encyclopedia has been burned, but some pages survive. Books can be burned, but the spirit of investigating things to attain knowledge cannot. One day, humanity will abandon those empty discourses on the mind, return to the proper path, and develop science and technology. Those who obtain surviving pages of the Yongle Encyclopedia must shoulder an even greater responsibility and courageously spread the spirit of materialism!"
Gao Jian was overwhelmed with emotion.
He put the notebook into the Storage Bag and looked back at the computer screen.
His body's original owner had left another message on CryptPad:
"There are many discerning people in this world. I am not alone, but they too have concealed their identities, and some have even suffered persecution. Sadly, this truth was buried long ago. Now that online public discourse is controlled, making the truth public is even harder. Speaking out can even get you branded a conspiracy theorist or an anti-intellectual. But time is on my side. As I said in the notebook, though false doctrines flourish, the principles of reality shall not perish.
"Still, we need more evidence. I believe the surviving pages of the Yongle Encyclopedia contain far more than this. Finding evidence of steam engines alone is not enough. We need more evidence."
A third voice message appeared on the screen.
Gao Jian clicked to play it.
The original owner's voice flowed from the speakers:
"My friend, you may not believe this, but I think organizations like Freemasonry, the kind people dismiss as conspiracy theories, actually exist. I even suspect the civil bureaucracy is in cahoots with Freemasonry, which makes them very difficult to deal with. But we are not without opportunities, and our greatest opportunity is hidden in this surviving page."
Then came the final message.
"Actually, I still have a lot to say, but this goddamn CryptPad is fucking expensive. The free quota is tiny, and they only accept BTC. Where the hell am I supposed to get bitcoin? I even have a brilliant hypothesis, but unfortunately, the free quota is so small that I can't fit it here."
Gao Jian checked and found that CryptPad's free quota really was only 1,024 bytes, roughly 500 Chinese characters. The original owner had indeed used it all.
Even the free audio quota had been exhausted by the three recordings.
There was also a free allowance for one image.
The image showed another surviving Yongle page, far more complete than the one in his possession. Clearly, the original owner had obtained a digital copy somewhere.
Gao Jian leaned closer to the screen and carefully deciphered the writing on the page.
"A Materialist progresses through three stages. The first is falsehood recognition, the second is delusion breaking, and the third is truth realization."
"Those who attain falsehood recognition can recognize all falsehood in the world. Ordinary people spend their entire lives trapped outside this gate. Those who attain falsehood recognition can distinguish false people, and are exceedingly rare among all people under heaven."
"Those who attain delusion breaking can not only recognize falsehood, but also break it. When the deluded encounter false people, it is like a red-hot iron meeting snow. Many capable officials of the Qin and Han, renowned ministers of the Tang and Song, and sages of ancient Greece belonged to this rank."
"Truth realization is the ultimate realm. Those who attain it can dispel falsehood and, once all falsehood has been stripped away, personally verify that indelible reality. Those who reach this realm are themselves manifestations of truth. They can perceive the face of all under heaven and distinguish truth from falsehood throughout the cosmos. Even surrounded by countless delusions, their light cannot be taken from them. Alas, since Master Wang Yangming, those who have attained truth realization have been as scarce as stars at dawn."
Was this... was this a cultivation method?
Gao Jian's breathing quickened.
The Ming dynasty was badass.
No wonder the Jiajing Emperor was obsessed with cultivating immortality. Who wouldn't want to become an immortal if cultivation methods existed...? But why did this method look so absurd?
What did it mean, you had to become a staunch materialist before you could cultivate?
Before you continue