White Dragon Lord

Granny Jin (3)

“There is neither death nor birth; neither vacuity nor repletion.
This is what is called the Genuine Person.” 1

There was a burst of golden light; Zheng Wan watched dazedly as lines of golden and round ancient script jumped lined up and jumped one by one into her one-foot-wide sea of consciousness, causing one splash after another.

It was only after a long time that Ivana Zheng opened her eyes.

It was true that she only had half a volume of the ‘Non-Emptiness Sutra’— to be exact, it was only a small part and was only sufficient for her to cultivate to the Savant stage.
However, it was stated in the volume she had that after reaching the Savant stage, she would naturally develop a sensing for the other half of the scripture; she could wait till then to look for it.

The first stage was the Gateway stage; all she needed to do now was to convert the vital power she had cultivated from the ‘Returning to the Origin Sutra’ into the ‘Non-Emptiness Sutra’.

The conversion process was surprisingly smooth, and by the time Zheng Wan opened her eyes, her eleventh orifice had been filled.

However, she was shocked by her very self; her body was dirty and greasy all over, as if she had not bathed for a long time, and was stale and smelly.
She pinched her nose and went to the bathroom that Eldest Senior Brother had installed for her.
It was very cheap to get it done in the cultivation world; there was a cold water pipe and a hot water pipe, and the water came out as soon as the mouth of the pipe was unplugged.

Zheng Wan gave herself a thorough washing.
When she went out to get dressed, she couldn’t resist looking in the mirror, and found that she looked a little different.
She couldn’t quite say what the difference was, but just felt a little shaken at first glance.

She went out to have a look around and found that only one night had passed, and went to the food store the sect specially set up for those who had not entered the Centring stage for something to eat, then returned to continue practicing.

For some reason, this ‘Non-Emptiness Sutra’ was indeed very compatible with her.
In just one night, she had already completed the conversion of all the vital power, and had even filled one orifice; it wasn’t as difficult as her Master made it out to be.

Zheng Wan took out twenty Yuan beads decisively and asked a young cultivator who had entered with her to bring her some food from the food store three meals a day, intending to fill up the eighteen orifices in one go before leaving the house.

There was no sense of time during cultivation.
When all eighteen orifices were filled, Zheng Wan felt a thunderous rumble in her sea of consciousness—the heaven and earth illuminated, a light wind ruffled the grass, and in the dark, she felt——

That she had broken through.

Centring Stage.

It had only been eight days.

In the master’s abode of Zi Xiao Peak, Zi Xiu Daojun suddenly stood up, and soon settled down again.
Zi Cha asked while munching on a mouthful of sweet fruit, “Master, what’s the matter?”

“Your Little Junior Sister, she has broken through!” Zi Xiu Daojun’s face was full of emotion.

Meanwhile, the four peak masters of Yuqing Peak cast their divine consciousness towards Zheng Wan’s abode at the same time, then quickly retracted it and said in unison, “Heaven bless my Yuqing Peak!”

Meanwhile, Zheng Wan had sunk into a gloom.

The Centring stage’s second level of the ‘Non-Emptiness Sutra’ was in the same vein as low-level charm arts, like that of her Master’s “pleasure-seeking without being lustful”.
It required her to find a male cultivator to be together with day in and day out, and use desire as fuel for cultivation— the stronger the desire, the stronger one’s will becomes, resulting in stronger powers——

She felt that her Father might beat her to death.

She would just go out first for now; her parents should’ve already arrived.

Zheng Wan straightened her attire, and before heading out, looked in the mirror as usual.
With one glance, she was struck dumb— her features were unchanged, and the little blemishes on her skin had all but disappeared, leaving her complexion bright and smooth as jade.
It was the charm showing on the surface in her eyes that made her afraid to recognise herself.

She suddenly remembered the most obvious marker of charm arts: “showing on the surface.”

This was probably the most obvious marker.

Forget it.

Zheng Wan was indifferent to others’ judgement and criticisms— at the most, her parents would nag a little.
As for how to cultivate, wasn’t that still up to her? She went out and had just started down the mountain path when she heard the other disciples chatting.

“I heard that Li Wei Zhenjun has entered closed-door cultivation.”

“I’ve also heard about that.
Apparently, he won’t be coming out of seclusion until he reaches the Grand Magnificence stage.”

“A genius doing as such, he truly is the model for our generation.”

Cui Wang has gone into seclusion; it seemed like she would have to come up with a way to deal with Granny Jin’s issue herself.

Footnotes:

1 From the Huainanzi, an ancient Chinese text that consists of a collection of essays that resulted from a series of scholarly debates held at the court of Liu An, Prince of Huainan, sometime before 139 BC.
The Huainanzi blends Daoist, Confucianist, and Legalist concepts, including theories such as yin and yang and Wu Xing theories.