novelraw Chapter 92: Master Wang Discusses Past and Present
Chapter 92: Master Wang Discusses Past and Present
Master Wang taught history the way one tells a story.
"Why do we study history after completing the classics? It is actually to answer that question posed by our aspiring Supreme Ruler of the Universe."
"What is an immortal? What are secret manuals of divine techniques? You will only find the answers to these questions within the history books."
Primordial Chaos, Human Sovereign, Spring and Autumn, Twilight of Law, New Era, State Affairs.
The recorded history of this world was divided into six great epochs. Each epoch had a verifiable historical record spanning thousands or even tens of thousands of years.
In the Primordial Chaos Epoch, heaven and earth first opened. All things were shrouded in chaos. Gods and demons rose together.
In the Human Sovereign Epoch, the Heavenly Emperor came into being, establishing order out of chaos, with the human race coming to govern the world.
In the Spring and Autumn Epoch, nations waged ceaseless war against one another, and immortal cultivation sects rose up in great numbers across the land.
In the Twilight of Law Epoch, endless and unceasing conflict eventually caused the collapse of order. The Heavenly Court fell. The mortal world descended into a demon realm.
In the New Era Epoch, humanity rebuilt civilization from the ruins, and the three realms of heaven, earth, and the human world gradually restored their order.The State Affairs Epoch referred to the eight thousand years of continuous history from the founding of Great Chu to the present day.
"What is an immortal?"
After giving a broad overview of the Six Histories, Master Wang raised this question again.
"An immortal is one who dwells in the mountains apart from the mortal world, untouched by its dust, deathless and eternal, at ease and in perfect freedom."
"By this definition, every cultivator throughout history who has remained within the secular world cannot truly be called an immortal."
"Unable to release the grip of fame and ambition, unable to escape the pull of the seven emotions and six desires, with inner demons taking root and karmic burdens accumulating, such a cultivator, even if peerless under heaven, how could they be called an immortal?"
"So the immortal that our Supreme Ruler of the Universe has imagined in his mind is not a true immortal at all. It is simply a term of respect. Just as your parents when socializing outside might say Old Boss Zhang, Shopkeeper Li, Great Benefactor Wang, and when they see a cultivator flying overhead they call out Immortal Elder, and when they encounter a demon playing tricks they address it as Immortal. These are all polite forms of address."
"True gods and true immortals are not something any of you will encounter in ordinary life. The so-called cultivators that people see and hear of in everyday life have only one accurate name, and that is cultivators, or spiritual practitioners."
"So what is a spiritual practitioner? Or rather, what is it that a spiritual practitioner cultivates?"
Master Wang knew the students couldn't possibly answer this question. He paused for only a moment before continuing.
"I told you just now that in the earliest Primordial Chaos Epoch, when heaven and earth first opened and all things were shrouded in chaos, there was no clear standard by which to define what was human, what was a demon, what was a god, and what was a fiend."
"It was not until the Human Sovereign Epoch, when the Heavenly Emperor came into being and established 'order' out of chaos, and from that order derived the 'Way of Heaven,' that we first had a framework for understanding what was good and what was bad. This process of discovering and pursuing the Dao of Heaven was the earliest form of cultivation."
"The earliest cultivators were nothing but crude imitators, copying whoever they found to be most powerful. It was much the same as martial arts today. The tiger is powerful, so we practice tiger-form fist. The mantis is powerful, so we practice mantis fist."
"It was only once order was established and clear standards of judgment existed that our ancestors came to understand that the Dao of Heaven is the supreme and highest symbol of power in this world. The ultimate goal of cultivation is to open one's own path and merge with the Dao of Heaven itself."
"In that era, there were already three embodiments of the Dao of Heaven: the Heaven of Creation, the Heaven of Longevity, and the Heaven of Freedom."
"No one knows when these three great Ways of Heaven came into being, nor in what form they exist. Only the earthly incarnations through which they walked among humanity have left behind sparse yet profoundly significant historical records. They are therefore also referred to as the Three Ancient Sages."
"The incarnation of the Heaven of Creation was known as the Wa Sovereign, the mother of all the ten thousand races of this world. She used primordial chaos energy to create all living beings in the post-heaven world, repaired the canopy of heaven, divided the Three Realms, blocked the encroachment of primordial chaos, and provided the space within which all living things could survive."
"The incarnation of the Heaven of Longevity was known as the Medicine Master, who bestowed upon all living things the power to multiply and thrive..."
Seeing a student raise a hand below, Master Wang paused and nodded for them to proceed.
Chen Nansheng stood up and said with a serious expression, "Teacher, this student has heard the name of the Medicine Master..."
"And it doesn't sound good?"
"Well, it's not exactly that it doesn't sound good..."
It was far more than just not sounding good.
"There's no need to soften it. In practice, the name is notorious."
Master Wang nodded with a smile, "Those who follow the Medicine Master today can almost be equated with practitioners of dark and deviant arts. But do you know why?"
"This student does not."
"Then listen carefully. The question you've raised is the same as our Supreme Ruler's question. Our ancestors discussed this matter many years ago. The answer is recorded in the history books."
"The Heaven of Creation first bestowed 'existence.' The Heaven of Longevity bestowed the meaning of existence, which is to live."
"The drive to survive is the instinct of every living thing in the world, and it is also the primary force driving the evolution of all races and the advancement of civilization."
"The incarnation of the Heaven of Freedom was known as the Music God. He left behind in the mortal world a question that has troubled countless sages throughout history, and that question is: what does it mean to truly be alive?"
"In the Human Sovereign Epoch, the understanding that living beings had of the Dao of Heaven was extremely rudimentary. The human race, as the last and most perfect creation of the Heaven of Creation, was first to discover and harness the means by which the Heaven of Creation had fashioned the world, absorbing primordial chaos energy to transform themselves."
"This was the earliest method of cultivation, called qi refinement, and those who practiced it called themselves qi refiners."
"The other races discovered that the human body was best suited for cultivation and began to imitate it. This was the origin of the earliest transformations into human form."
"The ancient qi refiners ruled the world for three thousand years. Over this long span of time, certain qi refiners began to explore the Dao of Heaven, and in doing so received the gifts of the Heaven of Longevity and the Heaven of Freedom."
"They began to pursue eternal life, to create entirely new cultivation methods, to continuously elevate their own level of attainment, and to attempt to open new paths of the Dao of Heaven. In the course of this process, the human population grew ever larger, civilization advanced steadily, and nations eventually formed, ushering in the Spring and Autumn Epoch."
"As cultivators pursued the Great Dao, they gradually cast aside everything they deemed irrelevant to it, everything that obstructed their path. Things such as worldly fame and wealth, the mortal body, the seven emotions and six desires. They called this stripping away the false to preserve the true, and so qi refiners became truth seekers."
"In the eyes of the truth seekers, nothing mattered except the Dao of Heaven. In pursuit of the Great Dao, those gifted truth seekers devised countless schemes. They founded sects to carry forward and refine their lineages. They supported ordinary people in building nations, drawing on the resources of an entire kingdom to help gather materials for their cultivation. There's no need for me to elaborate on all of this. Read a few of the novels on the market and you'll understand the general picture."
At this point, every pair of eyes in the room involuntarily drifted toward the Supreme Ruler of the Universe sitting in the back of the classroom. Well, to be precise, toward classmate Zeng Mingming.
"Immortal romances, battles between gods and demons, that sort of thing, I was rather fond of it myself when I was young."
Master Wang stroked his beard with a smile, "The Spring and Autumn Epoch lasted more than ten thousand years and left behind an enormous wealth of historical records, with far too much worth writing about. The most remarkable of all are the stories from the final years of the Spring and Autumn Epoch."
"Every cultivator across the entire world was doing whatever it took to pursue the Great Dao. By the closing years of the Spring and Autumn Epoch, they were searching every mountain and ocean and digging to the very depths of the earth, consuming every last cultivation resource in existence. This ultimately caused the collapse of the Three Realms. The Underworld Emperor was born. The mortal world descended into a hell on earth. The Twilight of Law had arrived."
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