Gu Feiyan had once said that when she entered a temple to worship the Buddha as a little girl, she could see the stone Buddha speak and all one hundred and eight arhats move.
Such changes, too, were seeing reality through illusion.
Though they did not truly happen, they were entirely real within that person's spiritual world.
The antique painting Junk King had given him worked on the same principle.
Stone Buddhas and antique paintings were both lifeless objects.
To glimpse their wonders, one could only see reality through illusion.
The Buddha had no fixed form, so the Buddha Gu Feiyan had seen must have been the Buddha she imagined in her heart, another manifestation of her own thoughts.
And though this antique painting was called the Lüzu Slaying the Flood Dragon Painting, the sword remained sheathed and the flood dragon unslain. Whatever happened next should be shaped entirely by his own imagination, drawing the sword and slaying the dragon through his own thoughts.
In this way, he could temper his own sword intent.
In simpler terms, this method was somewhat similar to the Buddhist School's Visualization Method.
The Buddhist School practiced Visualization.
The Daoist Sect practiced Thought Preservation.
Those who practiced Thought Preservation focused their minds on the intangible, without pursuing external thoughts.
The Visualization Method used Spiritual Power to strengthen oneself; Thought Preservation sought communion with the divine, resonance between human and deity, and perfection of both body and spirit.
And Lüzu in this painting was a Sword Immortal. The painting was dead, but the human mind was alive, so he should use his boundless thoughts to imagine changes within the painting, drawing a sword and slaying the dragon through imagination alone.
In this way, his intent could be tempered a thousand times over. What would he have