Chapter 177: Chapter 168: Heaven, Dao, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Demon
["Wait, what does this have to do with me being unable to cultivate now?" Lü Bu was puzzled.]
["Good question." Wuyou Daoist guessed that Lü Bu had no teacher and patiently explained, "Before the Dao Ancestor, there were no Qi cultivators, no Confucians, no demon race, no divine generals, no cultivation paths in this world."]
["Likewise, there was no martial arts, no true Qi or Gang Qi."]
[Lü Bu didn’t understand; this had nothing to do with dual cultivation either. He simply wanted to learn some Daoist skills to perform the art of defying the heavens to change one’s fate.]
[Wuyou Daoist sighed, "After the Dao Ancestor consulted with the Inquiry Divine Monarch, in just a short millennium of cultivation, a world-shaking battle suddenly broke out. In that calamity, besides the Dao Ancestor, three more Saints were gradually nurtured in the world."]
["Ten thousand years ago, the Four Saints led the Ten Thousand Races and successfully fought the heavens."]
["Afterwards, the Four Saints each dominated a part of the world and established their Dao lineages. The four Great Paths—Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Demons—all have ’Nine Realms’. All living beings can choose one path for cultivation. However, once on the path, the foundation cannot be changed, although one can learn by analogy, yet the inheritances of each are inherently different."]
["As for those who practice dual cultivation, they either remain trapped in the lower three realms for life, making no progress, or due to conflicting ideals and inner conflicts, ultimately fall into madness and perish. For thousands of years, none have been spared."]
["Your martial Dao Gang Qi will autonomously reject magical power. If you want to switch to a Qi cultivator, you must first find a way to abolish your martial Dao Gang Qi. I see you have practiced martial Dao deeply into your bones; abolishing it will leave you either dead or crippled."]
[As Wuyou Daoist spoke, he took out a scripture, "If you don’t believe me, here are the first three volumes of the ’Taiping Scripture.’ Everyone in the world can learn it; you can try cultivating for a while."]
[Lü Bu took the ’Taiping Scripture’, pretended to flip through it, paused, then quietly set it down. He couldn’t recognize the characters; not only him, this was a frontier area, besides remembering a few sayings of Saints, no one could recognize the characters.]
[Lü Bu looked at Wuyou Daoist, curiously asked: "Why isn’t there a Martial Dao Saint?"]
[Wuyou Daoist thought for a while, "Martial Dao is mortal, unable to attain longevity and is not a Great Dao. In those days, the Confucian Saint, when he was young, naturally had the power to lift cauldrons and move mountains, traveled through the states, spreading martial arts, in total six realms, and the Vigorous Qi Breaking Body was the limit of martial Dao.]
It’s said there is a Martial Arts Seventh Realm, capable of rivaling Seventh and Eighth Realms Immortal Gods, but for thousands of years, no one has reached that mythical realm."]
["What about the divine generals then?" Lü Bu frowned.]
["Though divine generals do not die and do not age, they lack human emotions; divine generals are no longer human." Wuyou Daoist paused and warned: "Remember, never pursue power to become a celestial divine general."]
[Lü Bu chatted with Wuyou Daoist for a long time.]
[In the world, besides the Saints, there is also the ’Emperor of the Yun Dynasty,’ a young man who during the battle against the heavens, seized the position of the divine race, proclaiming himself the Lord of the Celestial Court.]
[Competing with the lineage inheritors of the Four Saints for this world, fighting and contending.]
[Over ten thousand years, the human world was left with the last unclaimed land.]
[That young man personally established the celestial dynasty, lasting five hundred years, when the nation is on the verge of collapse, celestial divine generals descend to suppress all directions. Even Eighth Realm Immortal Gods and Qi cultivators with a millennium of Dao practice are mere ants under the Yun Dynasty.]
[Yu Province, Ji Province, Qingzhou, Yan Province, Xuzhou, Jing Province, Yang Province, Yizhou Province, Liang Province, Bing Province, You Province, and Jiaozhou.]
[Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism each occupy several provinces, openly contending and secretly fighting.]
[Natural disasters and man-made calamities, people living in misery.]
[The Taiping Daoist Master was a disciple of the Dao Ancestor. That Daoist cultivated for three thousand years, and couldn’t tolerate the actions of the Four Saints, debating Dao with the Dao Ancestor. The Dao Ancestor said one sentence, "You do it if you can," which broke the Daoist’s defenses, in a fit of rage, established his own lineage in the lower realm.]
[He even made a great vow, "In times of difficulty for the mortal world, I vow not to achieve Dao."]
[Wuyou Daoist was a disciple of that ’Taiping Daoist Master’.]
[Taiping Dao cultivation does not require sitting and arduous cultivation, Minor Success Method "save people, resolve difficulties, eliminate pain, survive, guide others...", Mahayana Method "save the world", Wuyou Daoist, though only thirty years old, achieved such profound Dao practice, owing to the merit of saving people.]
[And that Taiping Daoist Master’s name was ’Zhang Jiao’.]
...
"In this life, I’m called Lü Bu, outside there’s a Zhang Jiao..."
Once these two familiar names connected, Ning Xunqiu’s memory of hundreds of years began to awaken.
"A first-class general, a celestial divine general, could this be the Three Kingdoms?! It’s just that this version of the Three Kingdoms is mythical."
However, he did not finish reading that divine work, and it was just a dramatized play, not to be taken as true.
"Three religions transmitting Dharma, the ancestral masters are all Saints."
"The level of combat power is somewhat high."
Ning Xunqiu, having now succeeded in cultivation, did not view the ’Emperor Heaven Realm’ as ’history’, but rather as Qingxu Realm’s ’Holy Dao Struggle’.
Moreover, this world has already been divided by at least five ’sacred beings’.
However...
Why is there martial Dao in this world? Did the Confucian Saint visit the Qingxu Realm? But martial Dao heritage was only ever circulated in the Mountain and River Realm, at most with the addition of a monkey.
Ning Xunqiu continued to read the Celestial Derivation Volume with these doubts in mind.
...
[Lü Bu paid no heed to the chaotic struggles in the sky, and was unmoved by Wuyou Daoist’s descriptions of the pitiful plight of the masses and the aloof and apathetic stance of the Celestial Dynasty and the Saints in their conflicts. His heart was completely unperturbed.]
[Simply because, when he was starving, the one who offered him meat was neither the high and mighty Celestial Dynasty nor those revered as Saints.]
[He only cared about the people in front of him.]
[The next day, Lü Bu carried ten pounds of cured meat and requested Wuyou Daoist to teach him literacy.]
[During the time Wuyou Daoist spent recovering from her injuries, she discovered that Lü Bu was an especially peculiar person whom she couldn’t quite comprehend.]
[Lü Bu’s ambition was incredibly small, shockingly incongruous with his world-shaking prowess.]
[A normal Martial Artist with the strength of first-class generals would have long made a name for themselves in the province... Yet he had no intention to leave this borderlands, which puzzled Wuyou Daoist.]
[Once Wuyou Daoist’s injuries healed, she asked Lü Bu after dinner, "Do you not wish to venture out into the world?"]
["I’m full," Lü Bu replied.]
["I’m asking what you plan to do in the future? What are your aspirations?" Wuyou Daoist questioned.]
["I’m full," Lü Bu looked puzzled, "Why venture out?"]
["For... for..." Wuyou Daoist tried to argue but suddenly paused in thought. After a while, she came to a realization, "I see... This is why the heavens are in perpetual conflict."]
[Wuyou Daoist laughed mockingly at herself, speaking to herself, "You are right, and I am not wrong."]
[After teaching Lü Bu literacy, she left behind a token and departed gracefully.]
[The Taiping Daoist saves both others and themselves.]
[Through this, the two forged a bond. Occasionally, Wuyou Daoist, passing through Bing Province, would visit Lü Bu in the border county, which lacked the Celestial Dynasty, and the alien races deemed this place a forbidden zone, resulting in a better life for the local people.]
[It had become a veritable paradise.]
...
[The next year, a new overlord rose on the grassland. Under his command were ten unparalleled Great Demons, and within mere months, his forces swept invincibly across the tribes of the grassland, achieving unification.]
[Subsequently, this King of the Grasslands, full of vigor, led a mighty force of a hundred thousand, proceeding to attack the Celestial Dynasty with the momentum of a fierce tiger descending a mountain, breaking through one formidable pass after another.]
[Externally strong but internally weak.]
[Corruption ran rampant within the border troops of the Celestial Dynasty, rendering them ineffective in battle.]
[Witnessing this, the King of the Grasslands personally led his elite forces, advancing as if into an unguarded realm, almost breaching Luoyang, besieging the Emperor for three months.]
[The Emperor sitting on the dragon throne felt the decline of the Celestial Dynasty’s fortune and flew into a rage, ignoring court machinations.]
[The first-class generals stationed in Luoyang requested battle but were no match for the King of the Grasslands.]
[Ultimately, it was the Celestial Divine General descending to the Lower Realm with three Eighth Realm Qi Cultivators, blessed by heaven, seeking to secretly kill the King of the Grasslands, yet his Great Demon steeds intervened, allowing the King of the Grasslands to escape effortlessly.]
[The grassy armies ravaged and retreated, leaving devastation in their wake.]
[The Emperor immediately dispatched generals to rigorously investigate the borderland and summoned heroes from the borders to jointly oppose the grassland overlord.]
[Amongst the generals’ trusted war leaders was a man named Dong Zhuo, styled Zhong Ying, who gained fame for slaying fierce tigers in his youth, breaking through to the realm of Gang Qi Martial Artist, and achieving the status of a first-class general.]
[However, despite Dong Zhuo’s humble beginnings and the many merits he and his brothers achieved in the borderlands, he remained an inconsequential minor official in the Celestial Dynasty, suffering cold stares and discrimination.]
[The years had drifted by.]
[It was only upon reaching his thirties that Dong Zhuo faced this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The Emperor’s disgrace and loss of face meant that any resplendent success in the upcoming campaign against the grasslands could catch the Emperor’s eye, positioning Dong Zhuo for an endless ascent in rank.]
[Thus, Dong Zhuo valued this opportunity highly. Upon arriving in Bing Province, he did not rush into battle for merits but instead broadly recruited local champions. Those who could survive in such an alien-menaced environment must possess genuine skills.]
[Faced with heroes from all quarters, Dong Zhuo generously entertained with fine wine and exquisite dishes, welcoming all comers, gaining fame and prominence unrivaled.]
[Even those tribes long oppressed by the King of the Grasslands came forward to rely on Dong Zhuo, gathering nearly a hundred thousand soldiers under his banners. Yet, despite a few talented Martial Dao prodigies, they lacked true Gang Qi generals.]
[Moreover, considering that the King of the Grasslands dismissed even the ’Divine Generals,’ a solution must be sought to balance the scales.]
[Dong Zhuo was troubled by this issue, his lack of heritage making him unskilled in ’Military Array Skill.’]
[It was at this moment that his strategist, Li Ru, brought good news. Li Ru learned from ’alien race friends’ that a Gang Qi general resided in Bing Province; this individual’s might was extraordinary, having once coalesced Qi into an arrow, forcing a thousand troops into retreat.]
[Dong Zhuo was overjoyed.]
...
