Chapter 161 (1/2)

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Chapter 161

The Dao

Li Chengfeng had no idea that within a prison cell deep beneath Spiritual Mountain, his beloved Uncle Kun was enduring the worst torture known to mankind. Even if he did, he would not be able to do anything.

Right now, the most important thing to him was to become stronger as soon as possible!

But the path of cultivation was long. Was it really something he could achieve that quickly?

Most importantly, he had not even learned what cultivation was. He did not know how to use magical items or wield powerful arrays.

After bidding Su You and the rest farewell, he returned to his quarters, had his dinner, then focused on studying 'Notes for Cultivation' by the fire. To him, the procedures were not as important because his body came with its own unique cultivation methods. That was why 'Psychology of Foundation Solidification' and 'Cultivating Qi' were not books he needed to read urgently either.

However, Chengfeng knew that while cultivation methods varied, the philosophies were generally the same. While 'Notes for Cultivation' did not teach cultivation methods or gave a tutorial on taming one's inner demons, it talked about the major philosophies of cultivation and the most basic concepts. These were what Chengfeng lacked.

Chengfeng had questions like, what is magic? How does it change? How does one control it?

The book explained it in detail using concepts that were convincing enough to this stranger to cultivation.

'Notes for Cultivation' depicted the history of magic: all magic in this world came from five types of energy: the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth. Usually, a cultivator would choose to cultivate in down one path. If a person naturally had metal attributes, they would be more successful in cultivating metal element spells.

A person with wood attributes would find wood spells the easiest.

Most people only had one attribute, it was very rare for anyone to have two. A long time ago, in the first millennium that magical abilities surfaced, cultivators only specialised in one type of spell casting that caused severe imbalances of power chains. A could defeat B easily, yet B could beat C to the ends of the world, and in turn C could beat A.

This peculiar phenomenon left the world's cultivators dissatisfied. They did not only yearn for transcension beyond the mortal reincarnation cycle, they yearn more the ability to conquer the world!

Sometimes, the cultivators realised, there were extremely rare cultivators who had double attributes. They searched far and wide for these double attribute holders and studied how they got these abilities.

After long research, they realised that it was naturally pa.s.sed down bloodlines. This ability could be inherited through marriage and bearing children.

This bloodline was something everyone dreamt off. After generations of marriage between cultivators, the ability was also pa.s.sed down descendants.

After a long time, the characteristic of having double attributes became common. Soon, everyone realised that one person could not have two elemental attributes that were detrimental to each other, for example fire and water.

At this point, magical cultivation had entered its second millennium.

During this second millennium, a genius realised that cultivators were not restricted to the two attributes they had. Using the concept of the five elemental wheel, they could create more spells and energy casting.

This revelation was the most important discovery of the spell-casting world. With this, they discovered the two most powerful forces in the world: Yin and Yang!

Chengfeng's eyes shone as he read this paragraph. The explanations were so concise that even a time-traveller like him could understand it.

The concept was simple: when the five-elemental wheel rotated clockwise, this was Yang; when the five-element wheel rotated anti-clockwise, this was Yin!

[TL Note: clockwise means to nourish (wood nourishes fire, etc); source: wikipedia]

Li Chengfeng clapped at the ingenuity of it!

One line of wisdom was better than ten thousand books of false knowledge!

If this book tried to explain in detail what Yin and Yang was and their sources, Chengfeng would have been very bored.

Yet just this simple explanation was enough to shake him to his core!

If clockwise was Yang and anti-clockwise was Yin, then when two random elements were combined, would they result in different reactions?

“Young Master, what do you think of this?” Zhao Xiaobao was engrossed in the book 'Cultivating Qi' but was pulled aside by Chengfeng to talk about their learnings from 'Notes for Cultivation'.

Su Yuehan was currently reading 'Book of Arrays'. While she looked like she was concentrating hard, she had actually mastered everything in it. While they chatted, she strained her ears to listen and prepared to find an opportunity to give them a few 'casual pointers'.