Hou Niao accepted the jade booklet but did not open it. "Martial Uncle, if the Quanzhen Sect has this secret art, why has it never been spread widely? Why let so many Quanzhen disciples squander their years below Profound Connection? Waste their time?"
Yu Zhengxing gave a rueful sigh. "Who said we never spread it? We tried over a thousand years ago, and nearly ended up being hounded by everyone on the Brocade Continent. We were originally the strongest sect after the revival of spiritual qi, but this very thing sent us plummeting, leaving us clinging to the Shan Kingdom, barely prolonging our last breath.
"And that was the outcome after we decisively halted the practice several hundred years in. Had the Quanzhen Sect persisted in its own course, I fear its name would no longer exist on the continent."
Hou Niao was puzzled. "Why was that?"
Yu Zhengxing sighed. "Just as you imagined, if every Quanzhen disciple below Profound Connection practiced this art, what would they do?
"Other than kill people, kill demons, kill ghosts, kill everything, they would do nothing! Thus they provoked the wrath of heaven and the resentment of men, and cultivators across the continent turned against us. They only wanted to gain an understanding of Sword Consciousness; they could not actually wield flying swords. With everyone their enemy, although they killed many people, many of them were killed as well!
"In the end, Quanzhen's senior ranks discovered to their horror that however many disciples they recruited, it was never enough to replace those others killed. After a hundred years, the lower-ranked disciples had almost all died out!
"Without a foundation, what building could we speak of? This brought about the Quanzhen Sect's inevitable decline. Fortunately, the patriarch of that time reined in at the precipice