Chapter 178
Chapter 178
Hiss!
Everyone at the dinner table sucked in a breath of cold air.
All four adults were dumbstruck.
They stared blankly at Master with their mouths hanging open.
Mom was especially shocked.
The chopsticks fell from her hand…
Clatter!
They struck the floor.
She had probably never imagined that a face like this lay hidden behind Master’s strange mask!
Nor had she expected the woman known as the Immortal Lady Qin to look so young.
Master resembled a girl of eighteen or twenty!
My younger cousin, Wu Xiaoxin, didn’t understand the significance. She simply exclaimed in a young, astonished voice,
“Wow! This big sister is so beautiful. She’s even prettier than the stars on television.”
Her clear eyes stared directly at Master.
Ahem…
I hurriedly spoke up.
“Dad, Mom, Second Uncle, Second Aunt, stop staring at Master. Let’s eat. Everyone, eat!”
Dad was the first to recover and nodded vigorously.
“Right, right! Let’s eat. Um… Immortal Lady, please take the first bite. You’re Xiao Zhong’s master and Second Brother’s savior. We’re just simple people who haven’t seen much of the world and lost our composure for a moment. Please don’t mind us.”
Master gently shook her head.
“It’s fine. Just don’t tell anyone outside this room.”
Master had probably become immune to people’s shock upon first seeing her face. She remained perfectly calm.
After all, forget my parents. I had been even more astonished the first time I saw Master’s true face!
She picked up her chopsticks, placed a piece of free-range chicken stir-fried with pickled chilies in her mouth, and slowly chewed.
She knew none of us would begin eating until she did.
“Time to eat!”
Wu Xiaoxin cried happily. Holding her chopsticks in one small hand, she first helped herself to a piece of *shaobai*–steamed pork belly with preserved mustard greens. The meat was extremely tender and easy for a child to eat.
We sat around the table enjoying delicious farmhouse dishes.
The Spring Festival Gala played on the television beside us.
Our New Year’s Eve dinner was joyful and harmonious, filled with a wonderful atmosphere…
We continued enjoying ourselves until nearly eleven.
My parents and the others watched comedy sketches with Xiaoxin, laughing until they doubled over.
I rose and followed Master into the courtyard outside.
Fog had already gathered in the night.
Like a veil of white gauze, it draped itself across the mountains.
The stars shone brilliantly, resembling diamonds scattered across a black velvet sky.
Whew!
I took a deep breath.
The air in the mountains during the depths of winter was cold and biting. Drawing it into my lungs brought an unusual sense of clarity.
“Master, what should I do?”
I asked curiously.
From what Master had implied earlier, cultivating on New Year’s Eve would probably differ from ordinary practice!
Master didn’t answer immediately. She clasped her hands behind her back and looked toward the distant horizon, her expression calm and detached, filled with an ethereal quality.
Only after a long while did she speak slowly.
“Ah-Zhong, do you know the myth of Pangu creating heaven and earth?”
Huh?
I was suddenly baffled.
I had no idea why Master had brought this up.
Most Chinese people knew the story of Pangu creating heaven and earth. It was a traditional myth, after all, and teachers covered it in elementary-school textbooks and extracurricular reading.
I asked in surprise,
“Master, did Pangu truly create heaven and earth?”
Smack!
She slapped the top of my head.
Master rolled her eyes at me.
“What do you think? I told you to study diligently in school. Where did all that knowledge go?”
I clutched my head aggrievedly and muttered,
“School teaches scientific knowledge. What we’re talking about now is metaphysics…”
“They’re the same. Their underlying principles are connected. Naturally, Pangu never created heaven and earth. Earth is merely one tiny planet in the vast universe. However, although Pangu’s creation of heaven and earth is only a myth, the story contains a great secret of cultivation.”
Seeing my confused expression, Master didn’t keep me in suspense and continued,
“The myth says that after Pangu sacrificed his life to create heaven and earth, his body transformed into all things in the world. Most importantly, it became pure and turbid qi.”
“The pure qi rose and became the sky, while the turbid qi descended and became the earth. Thus, heaven and earth came into being, forming the cosmos.”
“The myth makes it sound extremely mystical, so naturally, that part is false as well. But from the perspective of metaphysics, pure and turbid qi correspond to the division of yin and yang and together construct heaven and earth.”
“This world obviously wasn’t created by a nonexistent god as the myth describes. Nevertheless, pure and turbid qi representing the world’s fundamental essence truly exist between heaven and earth. They lie hidden within the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and are exceedingly difficult to discern.”
“If practitioners can sense and absorb this pure and turbid qi, it will greatly benefit their cultivation. It may not cause their strength to skyrocket in a short time, but it will give them a much firmer foundation.”
“If I had to describe this pure and turbid qi with scientific terminology, I believe… dark energy would be fairly accurate. Science still cannot capture or use dark energy, but certain orthodox traditions and arcane lineages among practitioners have spent thousands of years developing methods that can barely connect with its surface.”
“Or, to put it more simply, you can think of it as another kind of qi–one far purer and more profound than the sense of qi gained through ordinary cultivation.”
Master’s explanation was extraordinarily profound and complex, whether viewed from the perspective of metaphysics or science!
I racked my brain, doing my best to keep up with her explanation, and understood roughly seventy or eighty percent.
But my head soon began to feel heavy and dizzy.
“All right. These ideas are conclusions I gradually reached over my long lifetime, so they represent only my own interpretation. A general understanding is enough for you.”
“Tonight, I will teach you how to capture the pure and turbid qi between heaven and earth during midnight on New Year’s Eve. Over the course of an entire year, it becomes gradually perceptible only during this two-hour period. And the actual window in which we can capture it lasts only two or three minutes around the exact midpoint.”
One *shichen* in the ancient timekeeping system corresponded to two modern hours. The midnight *shichen* therefore lasted from eleven at night until one in the morning.
The exact midpoint of that period was precisely twelve midnight!
Master then began teaching me how to sense and absorb pure and turbid qi…
The status of each esoteric practitioner varied greatly, as did the things they pursued.
Some stood high within imperial courts and devised grand strategies.
Others roamed far from the halls of power, free and unrestrained.
There were famous great sects that occupied renowned rivers and mountains, including Mount Qingcheng, Longhu Mountain, Maoshan, the Zhongnan Mountains, Mount Wutai, and Mount Putuo, among others.
There were also trades that made a living dealing with yin affairs amid the ordinary mortal world, such as coffin bearers, corpse retrievers, yin midwives, fortune-tellers, and feng shui practitioners.
No matter their background, however, the most important first step for any practitioner of the esoteric arts was developing a sense of qi!
Only after acquiring a sense of qi and gathering qi within the dantian did someone have the opportunity to truly cross the threshold into cultivation.
Without it, no matter what else they accomplished, they had failed to grasp the essentials and remained ordinary members of the lowest ranks within the esoteric world.
Because the dantian acupoint was so important, the esoteric world also called it the Dantian Palace. It served as the primary source from which most practitioners cast magical arts and wielded their many abilities!
However!
Master now told me that two other major acupoints were also crucial to the secret arts passed down through our arcane lineage.
They were the Niwan Palace and the Jiangyuan Palace. If their positions were roughly mapped onto the body using modern medicine…
The Niwan Palace lay an inch inside the brain from the point directly between the eyebrows.
The Jiangyuan Palace lay beside the heart, close to the central axis of the spine.
The Niwan Palace was also called the Heaven Palace.
The Jiangyuan Palace was also called the Earth Palace.
The Dantian Palace was also called the Human Palace.
Together, the three great acupoints were known as the Three Powers Palaces.
As with ordinary practitioners, the dantian naturally stored one’s own qi.
The Niwan and Jiangyuan Palaces, meanwhile, could each absorb pure and turbid qi through certain magical methods.
This was one of the highest secret arts of Master’s lineage!
On New Year’s Eve in the year 2000, she passed this art on to me…
It took me more than half an hour to barely grasp the most basic method and gain the faintest foothold.
The meridian route required to circulate qi through this art was extraordinarily complicated. Only by following it could I activate the Niwan and Jiangyuan Palaces and connect them to the spiritual energy of the outside world!
Once again, I deeply understood why Master always said her lineage accepted only extraordinarily gifted disciples.
She wasn’t deliberately imposing such strict standards. Someone without sufficient talent simply couldn’t learn these arts!
Certain things were profoundly mysterious and genuinely demanded innate comprehension.
The time reached three quarters into the midnight *shichen*–eleven forty-five at night.
Master and I stood in the courtyard, faintly hearing the laughter of my family watching the Spring Festival Gala in the main room behind us.
Beneath the brilliant stars and breathing the cold, clear air, Master and I sat on the ground and entered Daoist meditation with the five centers of our bodies facing the sky.
“Ah-Zhong, use the method I just taught you and extend your intent outward. First, sense the spiritual energy of heaven and earth around you. Then imagine a pair of inner eyes within your mind and gaze far to the east. Do your best to perceive the changes occurring in that extremely distant place.”
“Yes, Master.”
After answering, I quieted my mind and sensed the changes around me.
Very soon, I perceived many different things…
I felt the wind.
I felt the earth-vein qi slowly flowing beneath my feet.
I felt the sparse spiritual energy of heaven and earth.
Finally, I did my best to imagine a pair of inner eyes taking form within my mind and used them to “look” due east.
Unfortunately, I sensed nothing.
But I didn’t become discouraged. I tried repeatedly, again and again, gazing eastward with my inner eyes.
At last, I seemed to catch an unusual trace of spiritual movement.
A faint, ethereal red glow seemed to emerge along the eastern horizon, which had previously been pitch-black!
Naturally, no real light could have appeared in the east at midnight. Everything existed only within my mental perception.
At that moment, Master’s voice rang directly inside my mind.
“Ah-Zhong, prepare yourself. In two minutes, the pure and turbid qi between heaven and earth will begin to surge and separate distinctly…”
My body jolted, and I concentrated even more intently.