Gao Jian had almost come to believe that the immortals of ancient Chinese myths and legends had truly existed. He had even sketched out a story outline in his head about an age when spiritual power had faded away.
The Classic of Mountains and Seas, Primordial Journey to the West, Strange Tales of Mountains and Seas-all of them flooded his mind at once. Gao Jian could almost see that magnificent world of immortals unfolding before him.
But after carefully reading the cultivation method, Gao Jian began to feel that something was off.
"...Readers must understand that the world is material. Immortals, spirits, and monsters do not exist. Thus, this path is not the art of occult practitioners. It involves neither breathing exercises to refine qi nor seated meditation to preserve the spirit. It draws on no spiritual energy of heaven and earth and relies on no divine protection.
"This path cultivates only the mind, understanding, and empirical verification. With materialism as its root, practice as its furnace, and truth as its fruit, it is the sternest and most impartial method of attaining the Dao in this world."
Something was off.
Gao Jian felt the vision of immortals before his eyes shatter like an illusory dream.
His brow creased slightly, and he read on.
"To establish the foundation of cultivation, first uphold three precepts: do not cling to sensory illusions, do not follow the unfounded claims of society, and do not become trapped in subjective conjecture. Everything seen and heard, thought and felt, must undergo logical deduction, factual verification, and practical testing before it may be deemed true. Those who harbor wishful thinking, blindly follow authority, or indulge in illusions shall never cross the threshold in their entire lives..."
The cultivation method ran to nearly a thousand characters. By the time Gao Jian finished reading it, he felt shaken to his core.
This... was this world's cultivation method?
Why had he never heard of it?
Materialists cultivated the mind? Interesting.
Was it absurd...? Not really. Immortal cultivation was materialist too. A cultivator's consciousness also depended on matter to exist. Death extinguished a person like a lamp, and even a powerful cultivator's soul needed spiritual power to sustain it. Spiritual energy and spirit stones were tangible forms of matter too.
Immortal cultivation was materialist. Every cultivator back home agreed on that.
Gao Jian marveled inwardly.
This Mind-State Cultivation Method required no assistance from spiritual energy, and this world had no concept of spiritual energy either. Even the truth realization realm offered an extremely limited increase in combat power-at most, the equivalent of a first-level Qi Refinement cultivator.
But Gao Jian could not understand where that combat power, comparable to a first-level Qi Refinement cultivator's, came from without spiritual energy to support it.
Wang Yangming, the last practitioner to reach the truth realization realm, had been hailed as a sage, yet had lived only fifty-seven years-no longer than an ordinary mortal. Gao Jian could not help wondering whether this method of cultivating the mind did nothing for one's lifespan.
What exactly did the falsehood recognition realm, delusion breaking realm, and truth realization realm represent?
Wasn't a state of mind simply an individual's subjective mental activity?
Whatever. He would practice it first and figure that out later!
Following the instructions on the fragmentary pages, Gao Jian closed his eyes and concentrated. For a Foundation Establishment cultivator, this Mind-State Cultivation Method posed no difficulty at all. He had expected to break through all three realms in one go, only to hit a wall at the falsehood recognition realm.
Refusing to accept it, Gao Jian held his breath, focused, and tried again, continuing until evening.
"Little Gao? Are you back? Come out and eat. Dinner's ready. I made your favorite braised pork ribs, and there's Xizhilang jelly too."
It was Auntie Zhang, the housekeeper.
Gao Jian immediately withdrew the Soundproofing Talisman, lowered his voice, and replied in a weary tone, "Auntie Zhang... go ahead and eat. I'm exhausted. Let me get some sleep and recover from the jet lag..."
"Oh, all right, all right. Your grandfather told me you'd just come back from the United States. Get some sleep, then. I'll cook you a fresh meal tomorrow."
Gao Jian closed his eyes and said nothing.
Outside his door, Auntie Zhang made noticeably less noise as she tidied up. She covered the untouched dishes with plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator, gave the living room a quick clean, then quietly closed the door and left.
Elder Gao had not come home either. Presumably, he had something important to attend to.
Only after the entire apartment fell silent did Gao Jian let out a deep sigh.
Forget breaking through three realms in one go. He could not even get past the measly falsehood recognition realm.
He went the whole night without sleep.
Early the next morning, Gao Jian seemed to gain a little insight. A sudden flash of inspiration lit up his mind, and his eyes snapped open.
What greeted him was a clearly defined material world.
Unlike what he perceived through his divine sense, the world before Gao Jian's eyes seemed extraordinarily clear. Books, the wooden desk, even the concrete walls-all appeared before him without any color applied to them.
Gao Jian saw these objects' true colors.
They had none.
"This..."
Gao Jian's eyes widened. He looked around, but every object had lost its original colors. Yet although everything was colorless, the world before him was filled with dazzling, multicolored light.
Light and color had separated.
Gao Jian quickly realized that the colors human eyes perceived were not the objects' own colors.
An object's color was, in essence, the result of light shining on it. Its molecules absorbed certain wavelengths and reflected the remaining, unabsorbed light into Gao Jian's eyes. That light entered the retina, which transmitted signals to the brain, and the brain interpreted them as the corresponding colors.
Take the book with the ocher cover in Gao Jian's hand, for example. The book possessed no "ocher." Its objective physical properties merely determined how it absorbed and reflected different kinds of visible light, sending those particular "light waves" into Gao Jian's pupils.
And now, in Gao Jian's eyes-
Light and matter had separated.
He focused his eyes slightly, and everything immediately regained its color. Yet he now had a peculiar feeling: the world was entirely colorless, and all he saw was reflected light.
"...Is this the falsehood recognition realm?"
Gao Jian muttered to himself.
This took "recognizing falsehood" far too literally. He could see straight through to matter's true nature. No light could deceive him.
Unable to resist, Gao Jian entered the "falsehood recognition" state, walked to the window, and pulled back the thick curtains.
He saw an entirely different Jingzhou City.
In the "falsehood recognition" state, once light and matter separated, the entire world lay bare. Nothing could hide. Buildings were colorless accumulations of molecules. Stripped of the atmosphere's diffuse reflection, the sky became a profound black, as though someone had removed its blue backdrop with a single click.
The plane-tree leaves were not green either. They were countless thin sheets that selectively absorbed and reflected sunlight. When the wind stirred them, innumerable filtered photons immediately leaped, collided, and scattered along the tree-lined avenue, then became a rainstorm of luminous dust, pattering down.
The young Foundation Establishment cultivator stared blankly.
The asphalt road beneath the morning sun also lost its golden-black sheen, becoming a uniform gray. A layer of slowly rising warm air clung to its surface. Gao Jian could see the shapes of those currents themselves: indistinct clusters of air molecules of differing densities moved violently, pushing against one another. This produced uneven refraction, warping the entire street into a flowing Monet painting.
People seemed much the same.
The clothes, skin, and hair of the children beneath the plane trees had a clear, transparent quality. Here, people seemed to be nothing more than organic life-forms made of water and carbon-chain molecules.
Wait. They were different.
Unlike those inorganic objects, living things possessed a distinct "aura."
Only then did Gao Jian notice the faint aura surrounding the trees, flowers, and grass. It was even more obvious in animals. Within those colorless human bodies, Gao Jian saw something he had never seen before.
Extremely faint wisps of "aura" surrounded every person's body. These auras were colorless too. Children's were the clearest, young people's the richest, and old people's the deepest and heaviest...
Just then, a delivery rider on an electric scooter sped past below. The wisp of aura around him was stretched into a thin thread by the wind and vanished in an instant.
Even the short-legged corgi beneath the trees was shrouded in a thin layer of aura.
What was this stuff?
Gao Jian swept his divine sense around each person, but could detect no trace of it. He could only speculate wildly, until he lowered his head and looked at himself.
A faint "aura" surrounded his body too.
But unlike an ordinary person's aura, clear as water, his was a clear blue. This "blue" transcended light, acting directly on his perception.
An inkling of understanding came to him.
It seemed that only those who had entered the falsehood recognition realm could display this faint white, while ordinary living things were merely clear and transparent.
Gao Jian soon adapted to the falsehood recognition realm.
Controlling the world he saw was as simple as controlling the dilation of his pupils. With just a little concentration, everything before him regained its original texture, and light and matter joined together again.
Delighted with his new ability, Gao Jian put all his talismans into his Storage Bag, then opened his bedroom door.
First, something to eat for breakfast.
But the moment he opened the door, he happened to see his grandfather sitting in a wooden chair. Elder Gao was sipping his morning tea and watching a rerun of the evening news, looking perfectly at ease.
Gao Jian felt his mind buzz. He briefly entered the falsehood recognition realm and saw a thick, deep-white aura surrounding his grandfather, like clouds and mist wreathing Mount Tai.
Hearing the sound, Elder Gao seemed to sense something. His gaze met his grandson's.
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