The entire cultivation art was only two hundred or so words, obscure and difficult to understand.
Yang Yong recognized every word, but...
Put together, they might as well have been a heavenly script.
He had read it no fewer than a million times and still understood only bits and pieces.
This was probably what they meant by lacking the requisite affinity...
Read a book a hundred times, and its meaning would reveal itself.
But he had read it a million times and still hadn't broken through that final paper-thin barrier.
Yang Yong thought of a joke.
Without a master to guide you, even if someone gave you an authentic cultivation art, you would end up practicing it into a demonic art.
Just like Mei Chaofeng, who stole the Nine Yin Manual and somehow turned an orthodox Daoist art into the demonic version of the Nine Yin White Bone Claw.
In that joke, someone visited a Taoist temple and saw a pair of couplets.
The first line read: Man follows earth earth follows heaven heaven follows the Dao the Dao follows nature
The second line read: The Dao begets one one begets two two begets three three begets all things.
The horizontal inscription read: The Dao follows nature
The correct reading was: Man follows earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Dao, the Dao follows nature. The Dao begets one, one begets two, two begets three, three begets all things.
But in a demonic cultivator's mouth, it became, "Man follows earth-earth, follows heaven-heaven, follows Dao-Dao, follows nature. The Dao begets one-one, begets two-two, begets three-three, begets all things"...
The words were all the same, but the meaning was completely mangled.
Yang Yong knew that if he hadn't read the Tao Te Ching, he would probably have done the same.
His comprehension