Zhang Qingyuan noticed Gu Qianshan's gaze but did not respond.
Instead, he continued, "Yun Qingqiu will temporarily serve as head of the second-year teaching group. We'll select someone new in three years."
Yun Qingqiu froze, then rose to his feet. "Thank you for nurturing me, Sect Master... er, thank you, Dean. I, Zhou, will certainly live up to your expectations."
"Good. Sit down."
With that, Zhang Qingyuan turned his gaze toward Chu Yunshen and continued, "Besides teaching, second-year teachers must also work on improving and innovating martial arts.
"Everyone here practices martial arts. You should all know that pursuing martial arts is like rowing upstream: if you don't advance, you fall behind!
"In our society today, fathers guard against sons, and masters guard against disciples. Such behavior is everywhere. This dross in our thinking must be abandoned, must be rooted out!
"Starting today, the Tianyang Sect's martial arts group is officially established!
"What we must do is further improve and innovate upon the martial arts our ancestors left behind.
"If a sect or a power wants to develop, it cannot just cling to the manuals its ancestors left behind, eating its fill and waiting to die. It must keep refining and innovating.
"You add to a sword technique, I refine an internal cultivation art. Only then can we martial artists become stronger.
"Rather than saying, 'I'm holding on to this ultimate move, and I'll never let go.'
"A student comes with questions, but you're afraid he'll surpass you once he learns it, so you refuse to teach him.
"You hold something back, he holds something back. In the end, what will be left for us martial artists to learn?
"Take the world's greatest sect, the Beggar Sect, for example.
"How glorious was the Subduing Dragon Palm passed down in the Beggar Sect eight hundred years ago!
"Sect Leader Ma was extraordinarily gifted. He condensed the Thirty-Six Subduing Dragon Palms into eighteen palms and fought all under heaven without an equal.
"But what has become of the Beggar Sect's Subduing Dragon Palm today?
"They cling to the Subduing Dragon Palm to get by, and only the sect leader may learn it.
"By now, those eighteen palms have long since become incomplete. Only nine remain.
"Thirty years ago, beneath the Heavenly Mountain Sect's Jade Pool, they happened to discover the martial arts legacies of various sects left behind by the Heavenly Mountain Ancestor.
"They found the complete Eighteen Subduing Dragon Palms!
"Back then, people called the Heavenly Mountain Ancestor a thief for secretly learning other schools' martial arts manuals.
"But now?
"How many sects and powers have had to approach the sect a thief left behind to find their own cultivation arts?
"Aren't they ashamed?
"Isn't it disgusting?"
Everyone listened attentively as Zhang Qingyuan continued, "And another thing. Four hundred years have passed since the Beggar Sect's leader died and the Subduing Dragon Palm became incomplete.
"Has anyone thought of completing the Subduing Dragon Palm using their own ideas?
"Could the Beggar Sect really have failed to produce a single genius like Sect Leader Ma in four hundred years?
"Impossible!
"I'm certain they had one!
"Then why have fewer and fewer palms been passed down?
"You all know perfectly well why.
"It's nothing more than 'the ancestors' ways must never change.' The Subduing Dragon Palm is the totem Sect Leader Ma left behind after conquering all opposition, so it must not be altered lightly.
"If not for what happened at the Heavenly Mountain Sect, wouldn't the Subduing Dragon Palm disappear in another hundred years or so?
"So our Tianyang Sect, our Tianyang Martial Dao Academy, must never harbor such rotten thinking!
"Improving, innovating, discarding the dross and keeping the essence-that is what our generation should be doing!
"Take just the sword techniques our Tianyang Sect's founding ancestor left behind eight hundred years ago. Many of their moves are already outdated by today's standards.
"If they're outdated, innovate. If you don't, someone else will. When they break your moves, all you can do is wait to die!
"So reforming and innovating our martial arts legacy cannot wait!"
Zhang Qingyuan spoke with ironclad resolve, giving no one a chance to argue.
And as everyone watched him, for some reason, they felt he seemed a little angry.
He really was angry. The moment "holding something back" and "the ancestors' ways must never change" came up, he could not stomach it.
In his previous life, the main reasons his country had languished in weakness for a century, and trades and professions of every kind had ultimately dwindled into nothing, were holding something back and refusing to change the ancestors' ways.
Take traditional opera, for instance.
Everyone called opera a national treasure, yet in the end, that national treasure had no listeners left.
The various schools of opera were still using singing styles from over a century ago.
Don't ask. If you did, the answer was that all of it was the essence.
You wanted to change it? Changing it meant desecrating a national treasure!
But where had that national treasure come from? Master Mei and the others of his generation had created it through their changes.
Only after they changed it did it become a national treasure!
Martial arts were the same. As the times developed, certain martial arts ideas and moves simply became outdated.
However exquisite a move had been a thousand years ago, by now, who knew how many people had already worked out how to counter it.
If you brought out an ultimate move from a thousand years ago as your trump card today, plenty of people could break it and kill you instead.
Zhang Qingyuan's words were meant for the martial academy's people, but even more so for his six senior brothers.
They could not always let outsiders study them. They had to study others themselves.
In The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, the Five Mountains Sword Sect's techniques had all been exquisite sword moves in their day.
And then?
A few members of the demonic cult worked out counters to them in a cave, and Linghu Chong eventually discovered them.
Reading the story felt great. The protagonist had obtained a cheat.
But when he dissected it, it was actually rather tragic.
After all those years, the Five Mountains Sword Technique was still the same set of sword techniques.
As for countering the moves, a group of people on the brink of death only thought to unravel them one by one out of boredom.
When the Five Mountains Sword Technique was lost, everyone panicked, but no one thought of innovating.
Only a bored group of dying people thought to work out counters. While they were alive and well, no one thought about those things either.
Wasn't that tragic?
Eldest Senior Brother wanted to say something, but remembering how clearly his junior brother, the sect master, had already spelled everything out, he felt too embarrassed to bring it up.
Some might say, how could no one have thought of countering moves and innovating? If no one had, where had all the new sects and martial arts come from?
Those who created and reformed were all people with a voice.
Only those whose cultivation had reached the top were qualified to do such things!
For instance, only after becoming a great Confucian scholar could someone revise the Confucian classics.
Or they could hide away and create in secret, only showing their work once they succeeded.
Just like Chu Yunshen. His abilities were clearly outstanding, yet he had no way to realize his ambitions.
It was not that he had never shown his talent at his old workplace. But the cultivation arts he modified had been denounced as heretical.
So this world did not lack geniuses. It lacked eyes that could recognize them!
What Zhang Qingyuan wanted was to put their talents to full use and make them work their asses off for him!
Bring all the fucking talent into the Tianyang Sect!
His words left everyone speechless. Only after seeing them all behaving themselves did Zhang Qingyuan say, "I appoint Chu Yunshen head of the cultivation arts group, and Gu Qianshan deputy head!"
Chu Yunshen and Gu Qianshan both widened their eyes, staring at Zhang Qingyuan in disbelief.
Both felt very much like warriors ready to die for someone who truly understood their worth!
How did that saying go? If my lord would have me, I would pledge myself to him this instant!
Of the two, one was a creative genius expelled from his sect, and the other was an old traditional physician who had spent over a decade studying meridians and dantians.
With those two powerhouses joining forces-holy shit!
"We will never betray your trust, Sect Master!" the two declared in unison.
Zhang Qingyuan nodded. "As for members, anyone with ideas can approach the two group heads to discuss them.
"The two group heads will be responsible for researching and discussing things with them.
"Take Zhou Lei, for example, known in the jianghu as Third Brother.
"He has plenty of ideas too. You can absolutely discuss them. If you hit a creative bottleneck, talk to them. Pool your wisdom.
"Whenever you create or improve a cultivation art, we will credit you on the title page.
"As the Tianyang Sect's sect master, I have opened the Tianyang Sect's library.
"I hope the seeds of this selfless dedication of mine can reach more people, taking root and sprouting in more hearts!"
As his words fell, the entire gathering went silent.
If anyone from Earth had witnessed this scene, they would definitely have recognized it. Hadn't he just fucking set up a research group?
Patented inventions, exclusively for Tianyang Martial Dao Academy!
Seeing that everyone had been drawn into his line of thought, Zhang Qingyuan finally said, "I believe a person must experience three deaths in their lifetime.
"The first death comes when the heart stops and breathing ceases, and the individual is declared biologically dead.
"The second death is social death. At the funeral, amid farewells from friends, family, and society, the individual's social identity is erased, and they vanish from human relationships.
"The third death is the ultimate death. When the last person in the world who remembers you forgets you, you disappear from existence completely. The entire universe no longer has anything to do with you.
"But what if you could leave behind a work?
"Writing, legacies-these things will never disappear from people's memories.
"Think about it. If you create a cultivation art, then a thousand years later, when people practice it and remember you, its creator, you will never be forgotten.
"And that means you will never die!"
In an instant, they felt they had been elevated.
Cling to their own ideas, treasuring their shabby brooms, or pass them on and develop them-did that even fucking need thinking about?