The next day.
Outside Misty-Wave City, amid mountains, rivers, and vast marshes.
Lü Yan stood on the bank of a surging river in his black-and-yellow Daoist robe. His gaze pierced the layers of misty rain, sweeping across the cloud-wreathed wilderness as he asked:
"Master Kuya, are you certain Old Sha Tu has the Supreme Responsive Spirit Art?"
Beside him, a monk in coarse hemp robes held prayer beads and spoke calmly:
"This humble monk tracked him here from the Western Regions and exchanged a move with Sha Tu in the Great Desert. He used the Three Pure Ones Treading the Dipper Steps. That art has been lost for over two thousand years; it could not have been taught to him by some secluded practitioner. He very likely holds a fragment of the Daoist Sect Ancestral Canon."
At these words, Lü Yan's expression grew solemn.
There were Five Great Schools in the present day, and throughout history, more than one Grandmaster had compiled the teachings of the hundred schools and reestablished the standards of cultivation for their sects.
As the Righteous Path's last Grandmaster, the Martial Ancestor had compiled the Dragon Suddenness Response Art, which remained in Great Qian's Capital City to this day. Daoism and Buddhism also had two ancestral canons, the Supreme Responsive Spirit Art and the Illuminating Bodhi Sutra, which collected and organized all the cultivation methods of the sages of Ancient Times.
In addition, Ancestor Hu had compiled the Zhu Man Sacrificial Witch Scripture, recording the Witch Cult's various methods. The cultivation techniques of present-day sects such as Missing Moon Manor had actually all been influenced by the Corpse Ancestor, or even taken directly from this ancestral canon. However, because of the Witch Cult Rebellion, the canon had been destroyed, and only a few scattered pages survived.