“Well, isn’t this nostalgic?” Duo De sighed, breathing in deeply with contentment, taking in the sight before them. “What a nice view.”

Li Xun trailed uncertainly behind the eccentric older man. It had been a decision largely driven by emotion and impulse, desperate for any chance of venturing once more back on the path of cultivation. Now that he had several hours of quite travelling with his new mentor, however, he realised that Duo De remained largely a mystery.

They hadn’t talked much – in fact, throughout the journey away from the village, Duo De had merely waved him along, expecting Li Xun to travel alongside him. He had made no attempt to dig up more about Li Xun’s past, but equally, had not spoken of his own. Since his brief loss of control, and the strange manner in which Duo De had subdued the darkness within, it had remained mostly quiescent.

“Have you been here before, Master?”

“Teacher is perhaps the more appropriate term,” he chided. “But no. Still, this place certainly bears resemblance to where I first embarked on the Path of Wisdom. Ah, it has to have been decades since I last visited Mount Olympus.”

They were now at the base of the Sapphire Peaks. Here, a forest led up toward the mountains themselves, and from where they were now at, he could see the frosted peaks of the tall mountain range. Most commonfolk tended to stay away from here, since Spirit Beasts occasionally ventured down the mountains from their homes. There were occasional cultivators about, but they would be making their way up the mountain itself, testing their might against the Spirit Beasts. Here, just between the edge of both worlds, was where they were likely to be safest.

“This place will be just as good as any.” Duo De patted a nearby rock, beckoning him over. “Lay down your belongings here. Let us begin your first lesson.”

Already? Elation leapt up within him. Immediately, he knelt down, fist clasped in palm in a gesture of respect.

“I humbly await for your instruction, Teacher.”

Li Xun looked at Duo De with determination. This was it. Finally, after three years, he had at last found his path to redemption.

They had fled a good distance away from the village. Now at the base of the Sapphire Peaks, they should have lost the trail of any would-be pursuer. He would know, having been forced to escape detection from cultivators a fair number of times over the course of three years.

Duo De looked at him oddly as he remained kneeling, but then shook his head. “Alright. We shall begin, then, with the hardest part of all. Ready yourself, student.”

He nodded, tense. No matter how tough – how gruelling – the training might be, he would endure. He would purge himself of the darkness that tainted him, restore his core to the pristine state it had always been, and he would return to his Sect with his head bowed, asking for a second chance to prove himself among their ranks.

“I am ready.”

Duo De glanced at him, inspecting him carefully. “Very well. Listen carefully, Li Xun, because this will be the most important lesson of all. Even if we should part ways, so long as you contemplate upon what I will now teach you, everything will reveal themselves to you in time to come.”

He inhaled sharply. Such a grand secret? Was there a trick, here? Why would he possibly offer up such prized knowledge, to someone he had only just met?

“This one is unworthy of your tutelage, but I –“

“None of that, now.” Duo De glared at him with disapproval. He patted at a nearby stone. “Self-improvement is the greatest of duties that is owed to oneself. Take a seat, and we shall begin the first lesson.”

Hesitantly, he complied. Though clearly a Master, given that he had been able utilise the primal forces stemming from the dao during the earlier altercation in the tavern, Duo De behaved differently from his own Elders and Masters back in the Rising Crescent Sect.

Duo De did not begin his teachings immediately, instead pacing back and forth, studying Li Xun all the while. Still, he remained seated on the stone, adopting a posture of attention and respect as was demanded of him, awaiting instruction to begin.

Finally, he spoke. “I will begin, then, with the first lesson that my first teacher taught me, whose teacher taught him, who in turn heard it from his mentor, in an unbroken chain stretching back to the time of the first who dared to ask. This is the first question that one ever asks, and yet is also the last thought that one ponders before being claimed by death.”

There was an intense look in his eyes, as though he was judging Li Xun’s worth the entire time. This arrangement could be broken off at any time, he knew. He had to exceed his mentor’s expectations. Failure was not acceptable here. He needed to step back onto the path of cultivation.

“Tell me, Li Xun,” he said. “What is there?”

…what?

“Teacher?”

“What is there?” he repeated, his words intoned with meaning. “What is there, and of those that are, what are they like?”

He furrowed his brows. This… was nowhere near what he had been expecting. How did this factor at all to how he was going to overcome Qi Deviation?

“I do not understand, Teacher,” he said slowly. Had he already failed?

“Exactly. No one does.” He gave an amused smile, but Li Xun’s confusion only grew. Where was he going with this? “And that is what gives cultivation its meaning. Let us take a step back, for now, but keep these questions in mind. What do you think a cultivator should be like?”

“…Teacher?”

“Go on,” he waved him impatiently. “Speak up.”

“A cultivator is one who pushes beyond the limits of the human body,” he answered, but was not in the least bit confident. “He harnesses the power of the qi, and always desires to improve. Comprehension of the dao is the achievement all should strive for, that one may find enlightenment through discovering the meaning of their place in the universe. Most of all, a cultivator must never remain stagnant, and always desire to break past his limits each time he faces an obstacle in his path of cultivation.”

Such were the teachings of the Rising Crescent Sect, though his paraphrasing of their words was highly condensed.

“Ah, yes. The dao. Indeed, a complete comprehension of it allows one powers over all of Creation. It would not be wrong, therefore, to claim that full mastery of the dao would grant one the powers of a God.” He made a sly smile. “It is a good thing that you mentioned it, because that is where we will begin.”

…what?

-x-x-x-

Duo De felt a sense of amusement at the nonplussed look on his new student’s face. Had he given much the same expression, back when he hadn’t even yet truly been a Philosopher?

“Listen to my words, and think. You will undoubtedly have many questions by this lesson’s end – and I am not certain that I will have the answers.”

Though obviously confused, and more than a little perturbed, his student still nodded diligently.

Right, then. It wasn’t often that he had the chance to speak of this. It was the highest of honours that he was now in the position to allow others to realise their own duties of self-improvement.

And so, he started from the beginning.

Literally.

“It is said that in the beginning, before there even was Creation, there was the All, that was also the One,” he lectured, pacing. “It is the beginning, and also the end. The One is so simple that it cannot be said to exist, devoid of the features that gives existence its meaning; and yet, it is beyond a state of being, so profound that no mind may possibly ever come close to understanding it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“And out of the One, emanated the rest of the universe as a series of lesser beings.” He grabbed at a nearby branch, and scratched a thin line in the dirt. “If this is the One,” he said, pointing, before drawing a second line some distance away. “And this is the world that you and I live in, everything between them – including us – are but emanations of the One. One is All, and All is One.”

Li Xun’s brows were furrowed, but he did not interrupt. Good. He was thinking.

“But how does one get from that which is beyond a state of being, to those that are? The answer to that question is what you call the dao. The dao is the order of the universe. One who understands the dao, therefore understands all of Creation,” he said. “But one can never truly comprehend everything. And so, one reaches for smaller branches of wisdom that derives from the One, and through them, a cultivator gleans an understanding of the greater whole.

He drew a circle, and joined a line between it and the One. “This is the Nous – the first emanation of the One. And within the Nous is contained the perfect forms of everything that is, dwelling within the noumenal realm.” From the circle, he drew branches that stemmed outward, linking to a dozen more nodes. “These are the termed the noumena, and are the most basic unit through which one may comprehend the dao. They are the truest of Forms; timeless, absolute, and unchanging. Everything that exists in the physical world arises as instances of these noumena. All apples, for example, arise as but emanations from the Ideal Apple.”

From each of those dozen nodes, lines trailed outward, inching ever closer to the second line that he drew; the representation of the physical world. “How, then, you may ask, does the noumenal turn into the phenomenal? What is it that gives physical form to these constructs of Thought? The answer lies in the anima mundi – also termed the world-soul, or the pneuma –” He paused meaningfully. “– or the qi.”

Though it was subtle, Duo De caught the unbidden sharp intake of breath that Li Xun had made. Evidently, he was eager to find a way past the Splintering that he had encountered.

“For the qi is more than just vital force. The qi is the essence of being, that gives space and time their meaning. When it meets what exists in the noumenal realm, this interaction gives physical form to what otherwise exists only in Thought. In its most simple state, the qi allows for tension – which in turn imparts stability and cohesion to things. It is for this reason that all who embark on the path of cultivation first learns to harness the qi dwelling within the natural world.”

He would brush over what else the anima mundi imparted into those that it imbued, for now. This would be sufficient for the rest of this lesson, and it looked like Li Xun had enough questions on his mind already as things were.

“But these divisions are not discrete, and therein lies the infinite beauty of it all. It is a flow, and though you and I – and the rest of physical existence – lie at the end of this flow, we are not denied the right to transition beyond. And that, my student, is what I believe to be the purpose of cultivation – by infusing ourselves with the power inherent to the qi, and by ever-questioning what is, we go against the flow toward the original state of being. And in the process, through knowledge and insights gained throughout the journey, we learn to harness the secrets of Creation to achieve what many think to be impossible.

“It is a journey of infinitely many steps, for which there is no end. Each step we take is harder than the last, and many times, we are forced to pause, ponder, and find a way to continue the journey.” He looked intently at Li Xun. “But with each new step, we draw ever closer to the Nous, and thus to the One, and gain new insights about what truly is. And so, student, just as we shall all return to the One upon our eventual deaths, to once again begin the flow anew, we return back to my original question.

“What is there? What are they like? At the absolute most fundamental level, this is all that cultivation entails.” He paused, then shrugged. “Of course, I do not deny that I have glossed over the many technical details that every cultivator will undoubtedly struggle with at one point or another. That, student, is why we begin with the dao; for it is both the beginning and the end of cultivation.”

He allowed some time for Li Xun to take in his words. This was clearly a different approach than what the local Philosophers taught, although he knew that they were all simply different models used to approximate the Truth. In his time of travelling across different worlds, he had met many cultures and practices that all saw the One in different ways.

“It would be easy, if this were the end of the matter,” he finally said, once he judged that sufficient time had passed. Besides, he could already predict what Li Xun’s first question would be. “But unfortunately, there is more. Pay close attention, because this pertains to the pesky little problem that ails you.”

He straightened up, giving his fullest attention. Hopefully, this would make sense to him, because this would be a more nebulous subject.

“For you see, there is a symmetry that underlies Creation. And here, at its very source, is where that symmetry begins.”

On the opposite side of the line that represented the One, equidistant to where he had drawn the circle that was the Nous, he drew a second circle. “A second Nous. Equal and opposite. They are reflections of one another – but in the noumenal realm that transcends time and space, they are instead overlaid on one another, lying within each other’s shadow. That was the primordial state of the universe.”

His student must have been listening diligently, because he caught the crux of it all. “Was?”

He nodded approvingly. “In the time of the first cultivators – before they had even gone by that name – though there was a beautiful symmetry and order that underlay Creation, the physical realm was anything but calm,” he said. “You have to understand – it is only the most basic of approximations, but these are analogous to reflections. In the most cases, things are almost exactly equivalent to their reflection. The reflection of a table, after all, is still a table. The noumena from which they stem are different, but within the physical world, they remain virtually identical.” He paused. “The exception, of course, are the things that aren’t.”

He held out his hands, stretching them apart to emphasise his point. “Temperance; Gluttony. Charity; Greed. Diligence; Sloth. Patience; Wrath. Kindness; Envy. Humility; Pride. Chastity; Lust. Virtues and Sins, ranging across an entire spectrum, for which there exists an equal and opposite for each. Time and time again, battles that raged across the Heavens were fought between those who found purpose on each side of the divide; who drew upon the strengths of two separate world-souls, and who comprehended two equally valid views of Creation from different perspectives. In the end, one side ultimately triumphed over the other.

“And the victors – those who pursued the Nous that encompassed the Virtues – made the decision to forevermore alter the world,” he said. “The wisest among them found a solution. The Perfect Prison – the Noumenal Prison – to cage its equals. And so, Pandora’s Box was formed from his comprehension of its Form – an emanation that was as close to the noumenal Prison as possible, so profound that it exists outside the physical world, within which is contained this second Nous, and all that emanated from it.”

Li Xun was silent for a long moment. Duo De give him the time to think.

“But then… how can that be right?” he asked, conflicted. “If that were true… then why do these Sins still exist?”

“You must remember that for all his wisdom, even the greatest of us all is still but mortal,” Duo De explained patiently. “The Prison is perfect – but his comprehension of it is not. And therefore, though the flow is greatly diminished, its prisoners still escape through the smallest of imperfections, and influence the physical world, albeit only to a miniscule degree. That is why all is yet subject to Sin, though to a significantly reduced degree compared to the days of the first cultivators.”

And in that instant, he could see as realisation dawned on his student.

“Then – everything that has happened – the Qi Deviation; the problems with the dao – the prison is broken?”

“Not broken,” he corrected. “Weakening. And that is a terrifying prospect, though the rate of attrition still seems mild. More than likely, by eclipsing their equivalents, the noumena reaching out beyond the walls of Pandora’s Box are interfering with the comprehension of the dao, for it takes great effort to distinguish between them. While you remain my student, this is what we will be investigating alongside your training.”

He fell silent, troubled. It was a lot to take in.

“Then… Qi Deviation is…”

“A result of this secondary qi – the miasma – having been absorbed and integrated within you. Just as the qi, it is a glue that holds Mind, Body, and Spirit together. It cannot be removed, for it is now part of what imparts cohesion unto your physical form. To forcefully remove it would result in death.”

“But – you said that you managed to overcome it –“

“That is correct.”

With that, he reached inward into the depths of his soul, where a perfect balance was struck between the pneuma and miasma – and then, he brought their powers to bear.

They surrounded him, imparted stability and cohesion to his physical form, granting him power beyond what his material self should be capable of. For demonstration purposes, this most basic application would be enough. Though opposites, they did not invest themselves in different halves of his body. Instead, though still separate beings, they were joined together, existing as a perfect unity of opposites.

They were as oil and water, substances that normally existed in different phases, but were now linked by the emulsifier that was his Spirit and Will. Not a day went by that he did not feel the stirrings of Wrath, or the pangs of Envy, or the sweet temptations of Lust, or the bitterness of Spite, but his devotion to his chosen Doctrine that brought together the various aspects of the Virtues kept him from becoming a thrall to the primal forces locked away within Pandora’s Box.

“You must find the unity of opposites within,” he spoke. “Yes, the miasma tempts you toward the Sins from which it relates. Yes, you will feel yourself being torn apart, as equal and opposite forces seek to annihilate each other, but are incapable of doing so while they dwell within the same physical form.”

He took a step forward. If nothing else, this would be the most important part of the lesson.

“But you are more than that. You possess the ability to choose your own path. You decide the way your journey goes.” He let the power recede, once more condensing within the depths of his soul. “That is what you must learn, Li Xun. Beyond reconciling the two halves within you, you must dedicate yourself to a Doctrine – a Code, an Oath or a Creed; a set of rules by which you will never waver – and in doing so, never lose sight of yourself along your journey. It will take time and contemplation, and is a more difficult path than that tread by most, but it is possible.”

He had to have realised what exactly that meant, because that sense of uncertainty returned. “But for a perfect unity of opposites to be achieved…”

“Yes,” Duo De confirmed grimly. This would be all up to him, now. “You must incorporate more of the miasma within you.”