Thank the philosophers and the Chinese authors, or else this chapter wouldn't have been possible lol.
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The surroundings blurred, and the barrier dissolved before me.
The mountain ground materialized beneath my feet, and the familiar mountain air filled my lungs.
Three figures already stood waiting. I was the last to appear.
Zhang Feng stood with his hands behind his back, his head raised, looking at the sky. His robes were pristine, and his expression was calm. Whatever fight he'd endured had clearly been no fight at all. I didn't know his opponent, but the fight had probably only lasted seconds.
Liang Ruxue sat on a flat stone nearby, one leg crossed over the other. She looked as though she'd just returned from an afternoon stroll rather than a fight. Not a single hair was out of place.
Dong Mei stood apart from both of them, arms crossed, her gaze fixed on the ground. Her robes were slightly disordered, but that was all. Though signs of tiredness were gracing her face.
The moment I appeared, the three of them turned in my direction.
Their gazes settled on my body.
My robes were torn. Blood covered my torso, arms, and the lower half of my face. Several wounds had already begun closing under the effect of the pills I had swallowed, but the injuries were still obvious.
Still, I was standing.
And I did not give off the impression of exhaustion.
I walked toward the group without urgency, my expression perfectly neutral despite the condition of my body.
Liang Ruxue's carefree smile faded slightly. "Oh my..."
Zhang Feng's gaze sharpened. He said nothing at first, but his eyes moved over the sword wounds, then the deeper lacerations, then the places where my own self-inflicted injuries had torn open further.
Dong Mei's reaction was the most restrained.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Who was your opponent?" Dong Mei asked without ceremony, her tone flat and direct.
"How about you guess?"
Her eyes narrowed further.
"Zhao Wuying." Zhang Feng's voice cut in before she could respond.
I turned my gaze toward him. "Oh? May I hear your reasoning, Senior Brother?"
"It is simple," Zhang Feng replied calmly. "I fought Yang Dong. If Junior Sister Liang had fought Zhao Wuying, she would have mocked him the moment she returned, or at least made some remarks about his defeat. Yet she remained silent."
Liang Ruxue smiled but didn't deny it.
Zhang Feng continued, his tone even. "As for Dong Mei, if she had fought either Hua Mingzhu or Zhao Wuying, even if it had ended in a victory, it would have left clear traces. Zhao Wuying is stronger than her, and Hua Mingzhu's Earth Qi is difficult to suppress cleanly. Yet she stands here with barely a wrinkle on her robes."
His gaze returned to me. "Which means her opponent was someone she could defeat decisively, and that's Xun Liang, which leaves Zhao Wuying as your opponent."
Dong Mei's expression soured.
His analysis was accurate. More than that, it was blunt. Zhang Feng had not gone out of his way to insult her, but he had stated the difference in their abilities without softening the truth.
"Color me impressed, Senior Brother," I said. "Indeed, Zhao Wuying was my opponent."
Zhang Feng simply nodded, as if the answer had only confirmed what he already knew.
Dong Mei's expression turned more serious.
Among those present, she was the only one who had directly engaged me in combat before. She knew what my techniques could do. She had experienced it firsthand when I devoured her strongest attack and turned its energy back against her.
But this was different.
Zhao Wuying, despite his arrogance and personality flaws, had been objectively stronger than her. Stronger than most of the disciples who had entered the Sanctum. A genuine combatant at Foundation Establishment with techniques, instincts, and a cultivation base that exceeded her own.
And I had defeated him while still at the eighth stage of Qi Condensation.
Even if none of them showed it openly, I was certain the result had shaken them, Liang Ruxue and Zhang Feng included. A cultivator defeating someone a full major realm above them in single combat was not impossible, but it was rare enough that news of such a feat could spread across entire regions.
Liang Ruxue rose from the flat stone where she had been sitting like some leisurely queen. She walked toward me, her gaze moving across my torn robes, the drying blood, the half-closed wounds, and finally my face.
"You look terrible, Kiyotaka."
"I know."
She studied me for another moment, her expression unreadable. Then, without saying anything more, she reached out and straightened the collar of my torn robe.
"There," she said lightly. "Slightly less terrible."
Then she turned away as if nothing had happened.
At that moment, the invisible barrier blocking the path ahead dissolved.
The four of us resumed climbing without another word.
I took several pills from my spatial pouch and swallowed them one after another as though they were ordinary candy. The medicinal energy spread through my body, knitting damaged tissue and suppressing the worst of the backlash. It would not heal everything immediately, but it was enough to keep moving.
I remained at the rear.
There was no benefit in rushing.
Zhang Feng led the group, his pace steady and unhurried. Liang Ruxue followed several steps behind him, resuming to humming the same tune. Dong Mei walked alone, maintaining distance from everyone.
Ahead, Dong Mei glanced back at me once during the climb. Our eyes met briefly before she turned away, her jaw tightening.
She didn't say a word.
She didn't need to.
I knew what was going through her mind, and it certainly wasn't going to be beneficial for whatever trials lay ahead. Doubt was a poison that worked slowly, and Dong Mei had just been given a strong dose.
▬▬ι═══════ﺤ
We climbed for perhaps another forty minutes before reality shifted again.
I stopped immediately, and the others did the same.
We had crossed the ten-thousand-meter mark.
White light consumed my vision entirely.
When it cleared, I found myself standing atop a stone pillar.
The pillar was roughly three meters in diameter, circular, rising perhaps ten meters from the ground of a vast chamber that stretched in all directions farther than I could perceive. The ceiling overhead was lost in absolute darkness, creating the impression of standing on a tiny island suspended in an infinite void.
Three other pillars stood at equal distances from mine, arranged in a perfect square formation with approximately fifty meters between each one. Zhang Feng occupied the pillar to my left. Liang Ruxue stood on the one directly across from me. Dong Mei was positioned on the remaining pillar to my right.
Unlike the previous trial, we were all together and visible to each other.
At the center of the four pillars floated five interlocking rings. Each ring shone with a different color—silver, green, blue, red, and gold.
Metal. Wood. Water. Fire. Earth.
Before anyone could exchange words, a voice emerged. It was ancient, genderless, and resonated with a quality that seemed to bypass ears entirely and spoke directly into the mind.
"The trials of body and heart are concluded. Now comes the trial of mind and spirit. This is the Dao Debate. Two questions will be posed. Each of you will answer in turn. Your responses will be measured by depth of comprehension."
The formation's glow intensified.
Comprehension, huh?
Depending on the nature of the questions, I was at a significant disadvantage in this trial. My knowledge from Earth could provide frameworks and concepts, but borrowed knowledge wasn't the same as personal comprehension. And what this trial truly demanded was the latter.
If knowledge could be directly translated into comprehension, then any elder could simply impart their Dao onto their students without effort, and the cultivation world would look very different.
But life and cultivation were not so forgiving.
The voice continued. "With each question, the pillars beneath you will rise or descend according to the quality of your answers."
A faint line of light appeared on all four pillars simultaneously, marking a point above our current height.
"The height of your pillar at the trial's conclusion determines whether you are permitted to continue ascending the mountain. Those whose pillars remain below this threshold shall not pass."
The five rings above us began rotating slowly, their elemental colors blurring into streaks of light.
"First question."
A beam of light extended from the formation toward Zhang Feng's pillar.
So he would start first. And this order... If my assumption is correct, it follows cultivation level from strongest to weakest. Which means I would be the last to answer.
In that sense, I had an advantage.
I could listen first.
"What is your element?"
Zhang Feng closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his voice carried a quiet weight.
"Lightning. It is born from imbalance. Heaven and earth remain divided, but when the difference between them grows too great, a path is carved through the void. That path is lightning."
His tone was calm, but the space around him trembled faintly. A strand of lightning coiled around his fingers unbidden, responding to his words as though the element itself was listening.
"Lightning is brief, but it is not weak because it is brief. One strike can split a mountain that has endured since ancient times."
He raised one hand, and the strand of lightning crackled brighter.
"Most see lightning as destruction, and that is true. But it is also illumination. In the instant of its existence, however brief that instant may be, it reveals everything hidden by darkness. Truth and falsehood alike are laid bare."
He lowered his hand.
"Thus, my element is the instant when hesitation ends."
The formation pulsed. Zhang Feng's pillar rose by roughly two meters.
Then the beam shifted to Liang Ruxue.
She tilted her head, considering. When she spoke, her voice had shed its typical teasing playfulness entirely, replaced by something serious and unexpectedly profound.
"Wood is often mistaken for gentleness because it grows quietly. People think it is weak because it bends in the wind. That is ignorance."
Green light bloomed around her. Roots and vines appeared, coiling around the stone pillar beneath her feet.
"Wood is the most relentless of the five elements."
Her voice softened slightly, but she continued.
"Wood is seed, root, trunk, branch, leaf, fruit, decay, and seed once more. Fire may burn a forest, but beneath the ash, roots remain. Metal may cut a tree, but the stump sprouts again. Even death becomes soil for the next generation."
The roots around her pillar thickened.
"Wood does not need to win today. It already understands tomorrow."
She paused.
"Thus, Wood is persistence given form."
The formation pulsed. Her pillar rose as well, reaching almost the height of Zhang Feng's.
Then the beam moved to Dong Mei.
She narrowed her eyes slightly. Despite having had time to prepare, she took longer than the others to answer.
"Darkness is the place where the weak hide and the strong hunt."
Black mist gathered around her pillar.
"All beings fear what they cannot see. Darkness devours light and suppresses movement, thought, and even will. Those who master Darkness master the battlefield. They strike where others cannot guard and survive where others cannot follow."
Her answer ended.
The formation pulsed, and her pillar rose, but only by half a meter.
Her answer wasn't wrong. But it was limited. She had spoken of Darkness only as a setting and a tactical advantage, its role on the battlefield, and its function as a tool. She hadn't spoken about what Darkness was in itself.
She frowned, seeing the enormous gap between her pillar and the other two.
Then the beam fell on my pillar, and all eyes turned toward me.
Even Zhang Feng's gaze sharpened with focused attention.
Metal, huh?
It hadn't even been two months since I first came into contact with the Metal element, and now I was being asked to articulate its fundamental nature. Meanwhile, the others had surely walked their respective paths for years.
By any objective measure, this shouldn't even be a contest.
But comprehension didn't follow the rules of time.
I closed my eyes.
I revisited my earliest encounter with Metal. The White Tiger's mural. The roar that shattered the world. The metallic forests stretching endlessly. The blade-filled chamber where thousands of weapons stood embedded. And the insight that had burned itself into my consciousness afterward.
I opened my mouth.
"Metal is the blade that has already fallen. People understand Metal as hardness, endurance, and the element that resists change and outlasts its surroundings. But that is only the surface."
I paused, organizing my thoughts.
Knowledge from Earth. Experience from this world. The White Tiger's mural. The battlefield. My own choices.
For a brief moment, those separate fragments overlapped.
Then they fused.
"The truth of Metal lies beneath."
Metal Qi stirred within my meridians unbidden. Silver-gray light gathered around my pillar, responding to my words the same way Zhang Feng's lightning and Liang Ruxue's vines had responded to theirs.
"Metal does not hate what it cuts. It does not desire destruction. A blade simply cuts because that is its nature."
The silver-gray light around me sharpened.
"Metal is inevitability."
My mind went strangely empty.
"The outcome was determined the instant Metal moved, whether it takes a millisecond or a millennium to land."
"A river may twist and find another course. Flames may dance and consume something unexpected. Roots may grow around an obstacle. Earth may shift and reshape itself. But once Metal has chosen its direction, it does not deviate. It does not reconsider, and it does not compromise."
"That is both Metal's greatest strength and its most fundamental limitation. Metal cannot adapt. It can only commit. Every cut is permanent... every separation is eternal... and every judgment is final."
"But."
The silver light around my pillar intensified.
"That is fine with me."
I opened my eyes.
"I understand finality. I understand that some decisions, once made, cannot be reversed. That some separations, once enacted, cannot be healed. That attempting to undo what Metal has already severed only creates more damage than the original cut."
The silver lines around my pillar grew brighter.
"Metal does not regret. Regret implies the cut should not have been made. And if the cut should not have been made, then Metal should not have moved at all."
I looked toward the formation.
"Metal that does not move is not Metal. It is only stone pretending to have an edge."
The words left my mouth before I fully considered them.
"And in that regard... I am the same as Metal."
The formation's response was immediate and stronger than anything it had produced for the previous three answers.
My pillar began to rise.
It passed Dong Mei's height. Continued upward past Liang Ruxue's elevation. Then, to my genuine surprise, it climbed past Zhang Feng's pillar as well.
It finally stopped at approximately two and a half meters above the starting position.
The highest point in the chamber.
...What?
Only after the pillar settled did I fully process what had happened. I looked down at the formation, then across at Zhang Feng, who was studying me with an expression caught between surprise and something that resembled respect.
I surpassed him on this question?
"Second question and final question." The voice returned after everyone had given their answer. "Speak of your path. Why do you walk this road? What drives you forward when the path ahead is shrouded and the destination unknown?"
Again, the beam of light shifted first toward Zhang Feng.
This time, he stayed quiet for a moment.
"I cultivated because I saw injustice and lacked the power to correct it."
His voice carried a seriousness I had not heard from him before. It was not anger, exactly, but something quieter and more enduring.
"When I was young, I watched someone important to me die. Not because they were wicked or had earned their fate. Simply because the person who killed them was stronger and wished them dead."
"The strong did as they pleased. The weak endured what they were forced to endure. That was the law I witnessed. So I decided I would become strong enough that such a distinction no longer applied to me."
The air around him trembled.
His eyes met the formation's light directly. "I cultivate to become someone who can make this world slightly more just within the reach of my arms. I lack the arrogance to believe I can change everything. But I can change something. And that has to be enough."
His pillar rose by two meters, consistent with his first answer.
The beam shifted to Liang Ruxue.
She tilted her head, then let out a soft laugh.
"Why do I cultivate?"
"Because I'm curious. I know it sounds trivial, but that's the honest answer."
She looked upward into the endless void above the chamber. "I want to see what lies beyond the next horizon. And the one after that. And the one after that. I want to understand why Wood grows, why Water flows, why the cycle turns. I don't just want to learn the how, but I want to know the why."
"My master once told me that curiosity without wisdom is just recklessness. And wisdom without curiosity is just stagnation." Her voice grew quieter, more contemplative. "I cultivate to maintain the balance between the two. To keep moving forward without losing myself in the motion."
Curiosity without wisdom is just recklessness... and wisdom without curiosity is just stagnation...
Huh.
Her pillar rose by three entire meters, surpassing even Zhang Feng's elevation.
So we aren't completely different after all.
Without pause, the beam shifted to Dong Mei.
"I cultivate for strength," she said bluntly. "To never be powerless again."
Her voice sharpened, gaining an edge that hadn't been there for the first question.
"When I was weak, others decided what I could keep, where I could stand, and whether I deserved to live. Darkness taught me that those who are unseen can survive." She uncrossed her arms, her hands clenching at her sides. "Then it taught me that those who control the unseen can rule."
Her voice rose.
"I cultivate to become someone feared. Someone no one dares deceive, suppress, or betray. My path is to stand where others cannot reach and look down from above."
Her pillar trembled, and then it rose by two meters, equal to Zhang Feng's gain.
Interesting. While her comprehension of her element had been lacking, her motivation to cultivate and progress clearly was not.
The beam shifted toward me.
Why do I cultivate?
The answer should have been simple.
Yet when I tried to choose a reason, none of them felt complete.
My lips parted.
"I don't know why I cultivate."
The words surprised even me.
The chamber fell into a strange silence.
Liang Ruxue's eyes widened slightly.
Dong Mei stared at me as though I had just admitted something fatal.
Zhang Feng's focus sharpened even further.
I paid none of them any attention.
For once, my thoughts were not arranged neatly. They moved too quickly, overlapping and contradicting one another. It was an unfamiliar sensation.
"For most of my existence, I moved forward because standing still wasn't an option. Not because I feared stagnation, but because the concept of choosing to stop simply never occurred to me."
"When I was born into this world, I cultivated because survival demanded it. When survival was secured, I cultivated because advancement was the logical next step. When advancement became routine, I cultivated because... stopping would have required a reason.
I paused.
"And I did not have one."
"Without power, one is forced to accept the choices of others. Family. Society. Sect. Heaven. Fate. They all become names for systems that determine the boundaries of one's life. The powerless may still choose, but only within the cages built by someone else."
"I do not cultivate for revenge. I do not cultivate for righteousness. I do not cultivate to save this world or to destroy it."
"I have no eternal obsession, no final dream, no sacred destination."
"But I understand this much: if a cage exists, I will understand its construction. If strings exist, I will trace them back to the hand that holds them."
"I cultivate because I want to survive. I cultivate because I am curious about this world. I cultivate so that no one can control me or limit my freedom. I cultivate because every world has rules, and only those with sufficient power can see, test, bend, break, or even create those rules. And I cultivate because somewhere ahead, on a path I can't yet see, there is an answer that makes this path meaningful."
"And until I find that answer, I will keep walking. Stopping before I find it would mean accepting that the answer was never meant for anything at all."
"And I refuse to accept that."
The five rings shone brighter than they ever did.
My pillar began to rise.
It climbed past Zhang Feng's and Dong Mei's height without slowing. Past Liang Ruxue's three-meter gain.
It kept rising.
Four meters, then it stopped.
I barely noticed.
My mind was still caught in the wake of what had just left my mouth. The words replayed themselves.
"I cultivate because I want to survive. I cultivate because I am curious about this world. I cultivate so that no one can control me or limit my freedom."
Multiple reasons and not one singular desire.
In cultivation theory, the Dao Heart was supposed to be singular, one burning obsession, one absolute conviction, one path that a cultivator would forsake everything else to walk. That was what the entity on the bridge had told me. One eternal pursuit that, once chosen, could never be changed.
Zhang Feng's path was justice through transcendence.
Liang Ruxue cultivates because she wants to understand what lies beyond the next horizon.
Dong Mei cultivates because she never wants to be powerless again.
But I hadn't given one reason. I'd given three.
And somehow, the formation had evaluated that answer more highly than anyone else's.
Why?
Survival. Freedom. Curiosity.
Three separate motivations. On the surface, they seemed unrelated, even contradictory in certain contexts. Survival was conservative, risk-averse. Curiosity was the opposite, pulling toward the unknown regardless of danger. And freedom... freedom was the space between the two, the refusal to let either extreme dictate the boundaries of one's existence.
But were they truly separate?
No.
They're the same thing.
Survival without freedom was imprisonment. A caged animal survived, but it didn't live. Freedom without curiosity was stagnation. An unchained man who never wondered what lay beyond his own horizon was free in name only. And curiosity without survival was recklessness.
The three weren't separate motivations at all. They were three facets of a single, unified drive.
I want to exist on my own terms, understand the world I exist in, and ensure that nothing—no person, no system, no heaven, no fate—can take either of those things from me.
This is my path.
And anyone who dares threaten it will face no mercy.
Something shifted within me. Not in my body. It was as though a foundation that had always existed beneath my feet had finally revealed itself, and I was standing on solid ground for the first time.
The entity on the bridge had called my Dao Heart complete yet incomplete. It compared it to solid walls around an empty room.
The walls were still there. But the room was no longer empty.
Survival. Freedom. Curiosity. Three pillars supporting a single roof.
That is my Dao Heart.
Remove any single element, and the structure collapses. But, together, they form something that no singular conviction can match.
"The Dao Debate concludes."
The voice resonated through the chamber, pulling me from my thoughts.
I looked across the vast space.
Zhang Feng was watching me. His expression carried no envy nor frustration at being surpassed. When my gaze met his, he gave a single nod.
Liang Ruxue was watching me as well. When she saw me looking, she too offered a nod.
Dong Mei was the only one who refused to meet my eyes.
She stared at the ground beneath her pillar, her jaw tight, her hands clenched at her sides. Her pillar had crossed the threshold barely, but she stood dead last among the four of us. And ahead of her stood a Qi Condensation Eighth Stage cultivator. Not just ahead, but first.
That had to sting.
Four circles of light materialized on the ground beneath our pillars, each pulsing with elemental energy corresponding to its intended recipient.
The pillars began to lower.
The moment my feet touched the ground beside the metallic-white circle, I sat down cross-legged without a moment of hesitation and closed my eyes.
I needed to make full use of this opportunity.
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A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this chapter!
It took me quite some time to finish. Chapters like this take much more effort than simple fights or similar scenes, but I really love them.
In the cultivation novels I've read, the arcs I've loved the most by far have always been the mortal arcs and Dao comprehension arcs. When an author handles them well, they can easily become one of the, if not the best part, of a book.
Of course, we all enjoy seeing the typical young master get slapped across the continent, but for me, Dao comprehension moments are the true peak of a story.
While I'll never reach the level of professional xianxia or xuanhuan authors, I hope you'll enjoy the future I've planned with these kinds of arcs in mind.
Anyway, the Obsidum Sanctum arc will come to an end in two chapters at most. I hope you'll enjoy the next arc even more. And what I can tell you is...
...the next arc will take place outside the sect!