Chapter 113: The Common and Myself

　　Speaking about seduction, the techniques used by Buddhism were far better than Daoism. In the previous generation, there was proof that the human form of Water and Moon Guanyin could beat everyone flat in all countries.

　　The Nine Lotus was closely related to Buddhism. It had a long history. Some many years ago, there was a saint with the surname Luo who was preaching at a bare mountain. He was explaining the fundamentals of Buddhism, with emptiness being the origin of the universe.

　　He gained more and more followers, and everyone started calling him Master Luo. After he ended his preaching, he left with an impact.

　　His students then formed Luo, having him as the Master. There were a few great people that were from Luoism and it was at one point extremely famous.

　　When Master Luo did his teaching, everything stemmed from the heart and there was no documentation. As a result, the great Luoist followers led their own paths, which were passed on to the future generations in different branches.

　　These branches subsequently started infighting, which broke down the huge Luoism into many secret cults, and Nine Lotus was one of them. The Book of Nine Lotus put a heavy emphasis on the principles of Buddhism. According to rumors, one would need the power of followings to reach the highest level of cultivation.

　　Due to that reason, they always made use of war times to spread the belief.

　　Given Nine Lotus had such requirement, Shen Lian could roughly guess the aim of Zhao. While the conversation sounded normal, they were both showing their edges through the Daoist mind. Shen Lian, however, did not allow out-of-body to happen so that it would not pierce through the peaceful surface.

　　If there was no hundred percent certainty, Daoist rarely combats each other in a death or alive situation, unless it involved cultivation.

　　Zhao Xiaoyu was the first person Shen Lian had ever met which could come head to head with him in the battle of the spirits at the same level. From the beginning, Shen Lian did not even try to pressure her for a battle. He left her with absolute control.

　　Shen Lian smiled at Zhao Xiaoyu’s words. The moonlight started to popple like water. He smiled as their Daoist minds continued the mental battle. It got more and more rigorous, while shapeless, it had affected the physical world. He spoke softly, “When I was studying in Qing Xuan, I’ve never heard of anything that is considered out of the norm or anything that is inside the path of Dao. If there is anything that can be considered out of the norm, in my opinion, it will be anything other than my path.”

　　When Zhao Xiaoyu heard the phrase “it will be anything other than my path”, there was a change in balance in terms of power. She was disturbed, and her calm disposition disappeared. Her look remained the same, it made her look more akin a girl from the neighborhood.

　　Shen Lian did not try to follow up the victory with hot pursuit. His Daoist mind remained calm. His eyes looked like the stars in the night sky. They were peaceful.

　　Zhao Xiaoyu started laughing, “From what you said, you seem to approach the path of Dao.”

　　The previous statement did not originate from Shen Lian. He saw it from other places, and the reason why it had such a huge impact on Zhao Xiaoyu was because Nine Lotus walked the path of Shen. As it gathered the belief of the common, “The common isn’t me and I am not the common”, it was hard to stay true to self if it relied on the belief of the common.

　　“It would be anything other than my path.

　　Anything different would not be a part of me.”

　　In Daoism, it was all about the self. In contradiction, for Buddhism, the revelation was the most important element. For Luoism, it was all about emptiness. The principles were clear, but knowing them was one thing, understanding them was another. The most difficult part was actually about understanding and implementing them in parallel.

　　What Shen Lian had said was able to affect Zhao Xiaoyu for a short while. It gave the opportunity for Shen Lian to get out of the battle of the Daoist minds. If she persisted, he would not have a chance to win at all. Even if he won, he would not be able to retreat fully. It also would not be beneficial to his cultivation.

　　“The classics of both Buddhism and Daoism is all about the speaking of the path, but it still could not help us reach mastery. We can only be close to it. The mastery is not something that can be achieved with the words of mouth,” Shen Lian laughed. It was indeed true that there were people who had achieved sudden revelation, but who would care for the time spent on it before revelation happened?

　　When Zhao Xioayu heard that, she lowered her head. There was a string of hair by the edge of her mouth. She looked out of this world.

　　The melody of the Guqin began again. It was akin to a soft sigh, or the dew on the lotus leaf. It was perhaps closer to the wind that blew through the branches of a willow.

　　This song was made up of a few simple tones, which formed a natural rhythm, seemingly blending the people into the backdrop of heaven and earth. It led people into a state of hollow calmness.

　　Shen Lian closed his eyes and enjoy the music.

　　It was as if he was in the middle of an empty mountain, where there were pine trees. The streams flowed under the moonlight. Ultimately the music ended and was no longer heard.

　　The Guqin was kept, and some alcohols were served. They were extremely sweet and palatable. The alcohol was refreshing.

　　They discussed cultivation and the universe, from history to present. Unknowingly, the moon was in the middle of the sky.

　　When they were parting, Zhao Xiaoyu did not utter a word of her aim. When Shen Lian got back to land, the moon was particularly bright. The river was reflecting the light.

　　His heart, however, was not completely calm yet.

　　Zhao Xiaoyu was good with words, and she was extremely powerful. As the follower of the Nine Lotus, it was apparent that she needed the belief of the common.

　　To practice the Book of Nine Lotus, the belief of the common was not sufficient on its own.

　　If that was the case, most Daoist practitioners would have followed the path.

　　To reach the path of Shen quickly was extremely dangerous. Once failed, the spirit would be damaged, and oneself could risk being damaged too.

　　However, if one succeeded in this path, which would then convert the Yin spirit to the inextinguishable divine aura and further divide it into multiple bodies, one could become inextinguishable. This path was particularly good in protecting one’s life.

　　Zhao Xiaoyu’s path was something totally incompatible with the one of the Empress’. Perhaps she knew that the Empress wanted to meet him, and hence she decided to meet him prior to that in order to make him work for her.

　　Unfortunately, Shen Lian was not seduced by Zhao Xiaoyu. From the beginning, his bier remained clear, and hence she gave up on this attempt.

　　The Empress would surely be aware of Zhao Xiaoyu and the Nine Lotus. They could have initiated a fight. Shen Lian’s cultivation level could help break the state of balance for both sides. He accidentally stepped into this, but how he would react would depend on the meeting with the Empress.

　　By the time Shen Lian returned to the clinic, Ruoxi had already fallen asleep. He covered the girl who had kicked off her blanket, then he entered the state of concentration as usual.

　　After listening to Zhao Xiaoyu’s wonderful music, he was in a deeper concentration than usual tonight. In the Mud Castle, or the Zifu Bier, the innate deity who was carrying a jade Ruyi appeared again.

　　He started to pay attention to the jade Ruyi. The Ruyi was made to imitate the shape of a hand, which carried the meaning that it was an extension of the human’s mind.

　　In the common world, its purpose was to stop the itch, but it actually meant to say the noise in a human’s mind, which was often fluctuating. Hence it was used to represent a tool that could help in ridding of random thoughts.

　　Previously Shen Lian could only observe the shape of the Ruyi, and not the patterns. It seemed that he had made further progress tonight.

　　The handle of the Ruyi had a lot of stripes, which could mainly be divided into nine stripes. However, he still could not see what they represented. When he paid attention to it, there was a difficult spell that came to mind.