Hou Niao listened to the music of the zither and felt much lighter at heart. The bearing of a true master inspired admiration; unfortunately, he had not even had a chance to ask her name.
From the female Daoist's few words, he had already guessed what she meant: the passenger ship had been under her protection all along. The jellyfish's decadent music would not affect those whose thoughts were upright, but anyone harboring crooked desires could only pray for good fortune.
He had to admit that this female Daoist was ruthless. He had rashly intervened, only to save a lecher and nearly throw his own life in with the bargain. That lesson deserved serious reflection.
The ways of the mortal world did not work so well in the cultivation world.
It came back to the same thing: once he entered the cultivation world, strength was the foundation of everything. Apart from that, there was nothing.
This rash venture had exposed many problems, including flaws in his own response. For instance, according to the Daoist books, a water demon's strength in the water and out of it were worlds apart. In the water, its demon power brimmed throughout its body; out of the water, it was a shrimp with limp legs. The timing of his slash had therefore been wrong.
The best approach would have been to wait until the water demon had leaped entirely out of the water before striking. His method at the time would have been ideal against a human, but against a strange creature like a water demon, it lacked consideration. That was why his slash had achieved nothing.
In his urgency, he had acted purely on instinct, forgetting that he was no longer a criminal investigator, but a Daoist cultivator wandering to the ends of the earth.
He needed to put himself in the proper position.
...The night passed without incident. The boats weighed anchor one after another, and several smaller boats followed the passenger ship even more closely. Everyone knew that a formidable Daoist was protecting it; that was their guarantee of safety along the way.
Naturally, Old Qi and his son's boat was among them, not daring to stray even a little. Over the next few days, all three men kept their boots on at night and slept with blades in their arms, fearing that the water demon would come seeking revenge. But there was no further sign of it.
Nor did they see any further trace of the female Daoist.
Hou Niao cast these worries aside and began concentrating fully on his cultivation. Perhaps those years spent going nowhere had nonetheless laid a firm foundation for him, for his progress in qi gathering was rapid.
He had achieved a burst of progress born of deep accumulation, though his accumulation had been passive and unwilling.
With each swallow, he took in more and more of heaven and earth's spiritual energy, but jade saliva was ultimately limited. He still needed to adjust his state of mind before he could break through the shackles of relying solely on jade saliva to absorb spiritual energy.
Cultivating the Dao also meant cultivating the heart, and that began with the very first step on the path.
At this point, he had to gradually return deliberate methods to effortless action: first hold it in mind, then forget it; remain aware without clinging. That meant not forcing himself, but following nature's course. Heaven and earth's spiritual energy possessed a spirituality of its own and particularly rejected deliberate effort. How to absorb it without being deliberate was an art.
It was also the most difficult hurdle of the pulse movement stage. Those who succeeded in gathering qi within a month possessed precisely this ability. Naturally close to heaven and earth's spiritual energy, they could achieve twice the result with half the effort. Those who failed even after several months were comparatively dull, unable to find the opening that would let them resonate with heaven and earth's spiritual energy, and so they suffered delay after delay.
The Daoist scriptures said, "True intention comes and goes without interruption; awareness without clinging is the skill."
With long practice came mastery. When conscious effort became unconscious, and intention became unintentional, the mind and spirit could obtain profound rest and reach a state without thoughts or desires. A clear, tranquil mind could bring dreamless sleep.
The Daozi said, "The Daoists of antiquity slept without dreams and woke without worries."
Dreams-what occupied the mind by day became dreams by night. No one could escape that influence. For someone like him, who cultivated and studied diligently throughout the day, wholly absorbed in a single pursuit, any dreams at night would inevitably concern cultivation. There was no other possibility.
This was not a good thing, but a bad one!
Only when he diligently circulated saliva by day yet entered a complete blankness in his dreams at night would it show that he had truly attained the skill of awareness without clinging.
He was working toward this, striving to cultivate, striving to forget, without thinking about what the future might hold, or how he might slaughter foes on every side or uphold the law throughout the world.
He simply treated cultivation as an indispensable part of life and did it naturally.
His dreams began to grow fewer and shorter, showing that success was drawing ever closer.
...As they traveled by day, he could not stay in the passenger cabin all the time. The cabin was low and cramped, and staying there too long left him feeling confined, so he always went up on deck for air between cultivation sessions. But the boat was truly too small. When Old Qi and his son were working the sculling oars on deck, there was practically nowhere for him to stretch his limbs.
For low-level Daoists, knowing a few fighting moves was important. Before profound connection, martial arts remained a crucial means of defending themselves and resisting enemies. For cultivators of the middle and lower levels, spells could not yet replace everything.
Hou Niao knew several saber routines and was quite accomplished by mortal standards. These were skills his profession required him to master, techniques handed down through his family, and they had helped him subdue several vicious criminals.
He did not want to abandon these skills, but there truly was no space aboard the black-canopied boat to practice his saber. With too little exercise, his whole body felt as though it were shriveling, so after the jellyfish incident, he made a suggestion that Old Qi and his son found utterly baffling.
He would work the sculling oars!
The passenger would row while the boatmen rested? The very thought was bizarre. But his slash at the water demon that night had shown Old Qi and his son that this fellow was not as simple as he appeared.
At first glance, a scholar; in truth, a saber fighter?
At first, he struggled to adapt and could never quite control the direction, so Old Qi had to help him from the side. But after a day, he already had the manner of an old boatman and no longer needed any assistance. Strong and enduring, he did the work of two men, leaving father and son unemployed. All they could do was catch fresh river fare to enrich their meals.
Sculling stirred his blood; swallowing saliva drew in spiritual energy. The two complemented each other.
This was the benefit of cultivating the lower dantian. Without needing to learn spells, one already surpassed others in strength and stamina. No wonder body cultivators favored it: it allowed them to develop fighting strength as quickly as possible.
By now, Hou Niao looked every inch a boatman, and he did not mind. Bare to the waist, he revealed the strong body he had built through years of exercise. Wearing nothing but a pair of short loincloth-style trousers, he sweated freely in the summer heat and found it thoroughly satisfying.
He had little cultivation experience, but he possessed a frightening intuition for it. Previously, that intuition had found no expression because he could not draw in spiritual energy. Now that he had passed that hurdle, he began giving himself free rein. In fact, his cultivation unwittingly accorded with the path of body cultivation, another important branch of the Daoist Sect.
This was following nature's course at its best.
Sculling and cultivating all along the way, he entered the border continent of White Sand Continent before he knew it. Half a month had passed since he boarded the boat, and on their final night at anchor before reaching Liuyang City, everything changed.
As he cultivated quietly in the still night, he felt his saliva growing ever more abundant, filling his mouth with fragrant sweetness. His dantian was warm, his whole body suffused with ease. As his breathing expanded and contracted, every pore in his body responded.
At the utmost depth of stillness, he felt qi like strands of silver thread penetrating his pores, open and unimpeded, wondrous beyond words.
Finally, spirit and intention merged into one, imperceptibly becoming a seamless whole. His mind entered the qi, and the qi enveloped his spirit, mingling in primordial chaos, their misty union never dispersing.
No breath entered or left his nose, while his navel gained the ability to breathe, as though he were an infant within the womb. This was embryonic breathing.
The qi gathering realm-he had attained it!
A clear voice rang out in praise from the passenger ship opposite. "Excellent! An unfettered spirit reaches far; at the sculling oars, you cultivate diligently! I am Daoist Zhan. We may meet in Liuyang City."
Indeed:
...The great Dao lay plainly before their eyes, yet people failed to grasp it and went astray to the grave. The yellow sprout was the qi of heaven and earth; the root of divine water joined with mercury.