Chapter 10 — Buddhism and Daoism

Tian Buhui shook out his sleeves and rose, shook his head, shifted his short, stout body, and without a word walked off toward the rear hall. The disciples looked at one another, at a loss.

Song Dayi had followed Tian Buhui longest and had some inkling of what was in his master's heart; he guessed that the master had given up on this youngest junior brother. In these three months, apart from his cultivation duties, Zhang Qingyue had bustled about in his spare time, glad to help others, honest in his dealings, and everyone had grown rather fond of him. Life on the mountain was lonely; even the always spoiled Tian Lingsu, suddenly given a playmate near her own age, scolded him constantly on the surface but was in her heart somewhat pleased.

Song Dayi knit his brows and stepped forward to help Zhang Qingyue to his feet. "Youngest junior brother, the master is only angry for the moment; it's nothing serious. So long as you apply yourself diligently, sooner or later you will win the old man's approval."

Zhang Qingyue, ashamed at heart, nodded again and again, and from then on strove all the harder.

Each morning he went up the mountain with Tian Lingsu to cut bamboo. Ordinary disciples, after three months of practicing the Taiji Xuanqing Dao, could cut through black-joint bamboo; Zhang Qingyue did not cut through his first stalk until half a year had passed. Still, day after day, rain or shine, his body grew rather sturdy, and at least he no longer arrived at the mountain gasping like an ox.

From that time on, Tian Buhui paid Zhang Qingyue no further heed. Song Dayi asked after his progress a few times at first, but as the days lengthened and Zhang Qingyue's advancement grew slower than slow could be, in the end even Song Dayi lost heart and stopped asking.

Zhang Qingyue himself did not much mind. He knew his aptitude was poor, and though he sometimes wondered whether practicing the two methods together might be the cause, whenever the thought came to him he would recall the face and voice of the monk Puzhao, and his heart would grow warm and he would hold on. The road was unspeakably hard, but his nature was stubborn and unyielding, and he endured it.

His dwelling was secluded; by day he practiced the Taiji Xuanqing Dao, and deep in the night he practiced the Mahabrahma Prajna. So the time drifted by, slipping past unnoticed, and before he knew it three years had gone.

And in the meantime, Zhang Qingyue had set the worst record since the Canglan Sect was founded: he had spent a full three years—three times as long as an ordinary person—before he finally completed the first layer of the Yuqing Realm of the Taiji Xuanqing Dao, gaining mastery over every aperture in his body and gaining the ability to draw the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into himself and circulate it through thirty-six cycles. But what no one knew was that, through his practice of the Great Brahma Prajna, he had also begun to grasp the rudiments of inner-energy control and had laid a solid foundation.

When Zhang Qingyue timidly announced it to the others one evening at supper, the disciples of the Dazhu Peak line of the Canglan Sect were struck dumb, as though they had seen an iron tree bloom after a thousand years; then they burst into laughter, and Song Dayi hoisted the much-grown Zhang Qingyue into the air and tossed him up again and again, beside himself with delight.

Tian Buhui, seated at the front, watched coldly, gave a sniff, and muttered low, "What a prize idiot!"

Over those three years Zhang Qingyue had grown to fourteen; the daily bamboo-cutting had made him sturdy, and though he was two years younger than his senior sister Tian Lingsu, he already stood as tall as she. Tian Lingsu had grown from a girl of thirteen into a young woman of sixteen, and her beauty had only deepened; when she smiled and spoke, her loveliness was beyond all describing.

Tian Lingsu had always felt that her other six senior brothers were far too old for her, solemn and stiff, and so she had always preferred the company of this muddle-headed junior brother; after three years the two were as close as could be. Still, it was always Tian Lingsu who came out on top. Zhang Qingyue felt that his senior sister was indeed much his better, and though she ordered him about and scolded him as she pleased, whenever the senior brothers teased him, she was always the first to step forward and speak up for him.

Life in the mountains was lonely, but it was quiet too. Now and then Zhang Qingyue asked Tian Buhui and Song Dayi about the massacre at Liumiao Village, but the matter remained a tangle with no clue to be found, and as time went by the memory slowly faded in his heart.

One morning Zhang Qingyue took up his billhook as usual, went out of the house alone, and headed for the mountain behind. Tian Lingsu had finished her bamboo-cutting duties two years before and no longer went; so for the past two years Zhang Qingyue had mostly climbed the mountain alone, though sometimes when she had nothing to do Tian Lingsu would run up to play and keep him company.

Today Zhang Qingyue saw no sign of Tian Lingsu, and thought nothing of it; he went up the mountain path alone. In a little over a month he too would be done with the bamboo-cutting. He could now cut two black-joint bamboos a day, but he was still far behind Tian Lingsu, who near the end of her term had been able to cut a dozen or more in a single day.

A month ago he had finally mastered the first layer of the Yuqing Realm of the Taiji Xuanqing Dao, and Song Dayi had thereupon passed on to him the essentials of the second. He had practiced it for a month. It was far more profound than the first layer, yet somehow he had a vague sense that it was in fact easier. The first layer, for instance, had required control of every aperture in the body, and it had taken him three full years to achieve even a small success; the second demanded that he "refine qi into essence," transforming the spiritual energy drawn into his body into essence within his meridians. By his eldest senior brother's account this was more than ten times as difficult as the first layer, yet Zhang Qingyue found it unexpectedly easy. When he traced it to its source, it seemed to have something to do with the Great Brahma Prajna: for three years he had practiced it daily without a single break, and his inner-energy circulation had already reached a fair level of mastery; essence being a form of inner energy, with that three-year foundation his progress was remarkably swift.

Yet he did not believe in himself. Others had mastered the first layer in a year while he had needed three; this time, he supposed, it must be an illusion. So he paid it no mind, and simply practiced on schedule each day, and no one came to disturb or question him.