Expounding the School of the Mind, Golden Lotuses Spring from the Earth, an Audience with the Sage, the Chess Pieces Revealed

Chapter 140:

Inside the academy.

Li Shouming stood frozen in place.

High in the heavens, the three thousand miles of literary qi shot down a beam of light that fell upon him.

All the literary qi he had lost returned.

It was healing the injuries he had inflicted by destroying his own Confucian Dao.

This... was inconceivable.

Destroying one's own Confucian Dao essentially severed that path, unless a Grand Confucian rebuilt one's foundation, or one composed a Timeless Famous Poem while Illuminating the Will anew.

Otherwise, destroying one's Confucian Dao meant cutting off any future on that path.

Yet now, after becoming Xu Qingxiao's disciple, he had actually received a share of Xu Qingxiao's literary qi, healing every injury and restoring his severed path.

"Don't overthink it. Illuminate your will."

Just then, Xu Qingxiao's voice rang out, reminding him not to dwell on it and to hurry up and illuminate his will before anything went wrong.

Hearing Xu Qingxiao, Li Shouming stopped letting his thoughts run wild and began contemplating what "Unity of Knowledge and Action" meant.

Everyone understood Unity of Knowledge and Action differently.

That was perfectly normal. As long as their understanding did not stray from its central purpose, there was nothing wrong with having other interpretations.

At its simplest, Unity of Knowledge and Action meant first understanding "principles," then putting them into "practice," and finally doing good in one's own way. This was "Realizing Innate Knowledge."

It did not mean killing someone simply because one wanted to. Rather, if someone was guilty of every conceivable evil, one could persuade them to turn toward goodness or kill such a villain outright. If persuading them to do good accorded with one's heart, then one should persuade them.

If one believed that person truly deserved death, one could kill them,