Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way

“The one right at the back usually belongs to the head of the household and the wife’s residence is on the left. Manager Han’s aunt probably sleeps in the residence on the right.” Gu Suihan narrowed his eyes as he silently looked at this large but quiet house and made a few deductions.

He carefully dodged the lax patrolling guards and made his way stealthily towards the building on the right that was shrouded in darkness and seemed a little cold.

There was nobody in the vicinity, so Gu Suihan cast a spell at the room on the second story and leaped into the room in an instant.

“Aunt, I’m very sure Xi Ran is the one who left you in this state. I’m going to hunt him down and make sure you recover.” Manager Han was sitting in front of a bed with a threatening look on his face and tears in his eyes.

Gu Suihan was silently hiding in the shadowy corner of the same room and watched this scene unfold before him. He knew that this Xi Ran was already in the room too because he had sensed a faint ghostly Qi in the room. Manager Han, however, had no idea.

“Hoho, Han Xingxiong, you’re so clever. You actually managed to guess it was me,” a slightly shrill voice resounded in the room. The two maids outside the room had been knocked out without a sound. A figure floated into the room through the window like a ghost, emanating a sinister aura as it floated through the air.

“You still haven’t given up?” Han Xingxiong suppressed his fury and clenched his fists. The veins on the back of his hands bulged and his widened eyes were filled with hatred.

“You should know what I’m after.” Xi Ran cut to the chase after cackling wickedly. “Give that to me and I’ll remove the curse. We will have nothing to do with one another after that.”

“Dream on!” yelled Han Xingxiong. His previously depressed-looking eyes now shone with unshakeable resolve.

Xi Ran cackled again and looked at the old lady on the bed who was barely breathing. A cruel smile spread across his lips. “And you’d rather let your aunt live as she might as well be dead?”

“Humph! I won’t give in to you! I’ll find a way to heal my aunt and help her to regain consciousness, even if it means I have to give that to someone else! I’m never giving it to YOU!” Han Xingxiong retorted fiercely as he stared straight at the sinister, ghostly Xi Ran.

Xi Ran didn’t say anymore. He looked intently at the furious Han Xingxiong, then turned into nothing but green smoke, floating out of the window and disappearing into the darkness again.

“There’s more than meets the eye after all. I just don’t know what is this valuable item that they’re referring to.” Gu Suihan had a cheeky glint in his eye. He then disappeared into the darkness as well.

He wasn’t interested in the item itself, since anything that a cultivator in the Way of Ghosts would be interested in was most likely to be something useful only to those who cultivated in the dark arts, which had nothing to do with him. Besides, these two weren’t even at Foundation Establishment yet. There was nothing valuable to cultivators at this stage that would be valuable to Gu Suihan. Not even a spiritual weapon would catch his eye.

He had merely been curious, and now that his curiosity had been satisfied, he didn’t think about these things anymore.

Once he arrived back at his residence, he sat in the little pavilion in his front yard by himself, quieting his mind and gathering Qi. The sword Qi inside his body was slowly circulating like an intricately designed machine.

The phrases he had uttered earlier in the day to the two managers weren’t really anything philosophical, They were just some of the thoughts he had. The Hun and Po of humans were split this way: the three Huns were Heaven Hun, Earth Hun, and Life Hun, the seven Po were within the body.

The three Huns were also known as Taiguang, Shuangling, and Youjing (Clacker: no Daoist text has given these terms English names so please don’t ask me to).

Heaven Hun referred to luck, fate, and destiny, the things that had been decided before one’s birth that one could not see, but was very real.

Earth Hun referred to the person itself, which was why the word for “life” was a combination of “person” and “destiny”¹. This “person” was referring to the things that a person developed after being born, like their personality and sexual orientation, as well as whatever resulted from their environment. There were some who liked to say that humans can definitely defeat Heaven (this is a literal translation of an idiom that means mind over matter, or being able to control one’s own destiny). That phrase was saying that anything that could change what the Earth Hun stood for would be able to have an effect on the Heaven Hun to a certain extent.

Life Hun was exactly just that. Without it, humans would die and they would lose their will as well. For ordinary humans, their Life Hun was tied to their bodies, so when their physical bodies died, their Life Hun was erased as well. For cultivators, their Life Hun was actually their Spiritual Sense. It was part of their consciousness and lived there. Therefore, even if their physical body was severely injured, their Life Hun would not die and would not disappear.

The seven Po represented man’s fleshly desires or the seven chakras in Buddhism. The seven deadly sins that ordinary people talked about were the seven Po taken to an extreme. These seven Po were not only hidden in the body, but they also quietly developed one’s emotions.

When it came to cultivators, the Origin Core stage wasn’t that bullshit about forming a Golden Core in the dantian like what all those novels in the world Suihan came from talked about. What was that even?

Cultivators went through these three stages after Foundation Establishment: Origin Core, Nascent Change, and the Heart-Soul stage².

Origin Core was the stage where one gathered all three Hun, thereby cutting off connection with fate and destiny, relying on yourself, and disregarding the will of heaven. This combination of the three hun will be your origin core and it will hide inside your consciousness, not that ridiculous golden core shit. That had nothing to do with an origin core. As the saying goes, “gathering of Three Huas in the top and “Five Qis towards their origins”. The Three Huas were Jing, Qi, and Shen, which was the gathering of the three Hun, forming the Origin Core³.

Nascent Change was the Five Qis towards their origins. The Five Qis were the five chakras within the body or five of the seven Po. Of the other two, one was located in between the brows, or the Divine Eye⁴. The last one was located in the abdomen. Gathering the Five Qis would draw the last two Po together. Gather all seven Po and you would reach the pinnacle of Nascent Change.

The Heart-Soul stage was always described as something that was super mysterious, but this was actually the simplest because it was the process of storing all the Spiritual Qi, Murderous Qi, Alkaid Qi, and so on in the lower dantian.

The origin core was in the upper dantian, the nascent change in the middle dantian, and the heart-soul in the lower dantian so that it continued to be toughened.

The three formed one entity. Once the origin core reached its highest stage, and the heart-soul rose, it would automatically form the divine soul.

Or rather, this would be a complete divine soul.

The crap in those novels about forming a golden core or breaking the nascent soul was pure gibberish.

Gu Suihan’s heart-soul had collapsed and his soul was shattered. He had carefully sealed it within his consciousness and he dared not reveal even the slightest bit. He intended to gather his origin core and nascent soul again, then gather his divine soul, combine them, and level up.

More importantly, he wasn’t sure if the forces of nature would eliminate him once his soul recovered, because he wasn’t born into this world in the first place.

He had a long, long way to go.

That was a true reflection of what Gu Suihan was thinking about right now.

“I’ve gone so far away, so I’ve finally gotten some peace. Unfortunately, I don’t know if those people in the Seven Kill Sect have given up trying to insert me into their plans and thrown me out of the picture.” As Gu Suihan thought about these things, his eyes seemed as dark and deep as the universe and did not glint brightly as they normally did.

“Perhaps it’s time I went to talk to the king of Qingguo again.”

It was late at night and it was quiet outside. Every living creature was already asleep, but Gu Suihan was still sitting alone at the pavilion in deep thought. After some time, he seemed to have thought of something and his expression suddenly turned frosty. He hadn’t given that figurine to the king for display purposes. He wanted to use the king to help him with cultivating Questioning Heaven’s aggression.

He got changed and flew towards the capital city again.

When he got there, he dodged the many guards around the city, jumped over the city wall as unnoticed as a bird, and stood in front of the majestic and gigantic palace that looked like an enormous creature lurking in the dark, waiting to swallow its prey whole.

Dim and gentle candlelight could be seen through a small gap in the window, and two eunuchs had fallen asleep at the door. This king clearly did not take Gu Suihan’s word for it and suspected that Gu Suihan had done something to the figurine before passing it on to the king. That was why the king still hadn’t gone into seclusion to cultivate even after receiving the figurine so long ago. Instead, he was still trying to see if he could see anything in the figurine.

“Come in!” An authoritative voice called out from inside the palace and could be heard clearly from outside.

Gu Suihan smiled faintly and the two eunuchs watched in shock and astonishment as he raised an arm to shoot an invisible beam of spiritual energy at the door, pushing the doors open so that he could march right in.

“I’m thinking about your aim in giving me this figurine,” said the king immediately when he saw Gu Suihan.

“Actually, you should know that I’ve not done anything to it,” said Gu Suihan as he pointed at the figurine that was resting on the king’s desk.

“Your aim,” repeated the king expressionlessly. He did not get distracted by Gu Suihan’s non-answer.

The king had been very excited when he first received it, but in his wisdom, he had calmed down to think about this situation more carefully. There was no reason for Gu Suihan to give him something so valuable without asking for something worth as much in return. There was no way that giving the young man a few pieces of information and sending a few hundred people to his station would be worth the same as this figurine.

The Clacker’s Uncle Snack Drawer

Today’s snack recommendation:Dried Surume Squid So…I don’t drink (unless doing that will stop a war) but I really love all the snacks that the Japanese tend to recommend to eat with alcoholic drinks. Dried/roasted squid/cuttlefish is a long-time favorite of mine, regardless of whether you add sugar, salt or vinegar. I also accept a little chili. Umami:

ED Note: Fish is good for the brain, and you need a big brain to tackle this chapter. Drink Responsibly.

1. A + B = C

   Actually, a lot of Chinese nouns and adjectives are created this way. Lumine, our TL for Return of the Unrivaled Knight, asked some time back if it was possible to learn a crapload of Chinese characters and be able to understand Chinese as a result. Back then, I told Lumine no, but perhaps Lumine actually has a point LOL. In fact, part of that conversation was that the dry, crusty things in your eyes in the morning is “eye shit” in Chinese, snot is “nose shit” and ear wax is “ear shit”. I suppose if you knew the words for all those nouns, you’d get it.

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2. Heart-Soul

   Er. The word that the author uses is 灵台, which is classical Chinese (think like Shakespearean English) for the heart/soul/mind/subconscious. If you split the words individually, it’s “spirit” + “platform” = the tablet in the ancestral hall that your descendants pay respects to when you’re dead and gone. According to the paragraph that follows, this stage is actually equivalent to the 元神 (Divine Soul) stage he has mentioned before earlier and includes in his glossary of cultivation levels he released between chapters 201 and 202.

   Whoever read this book via MTL and still gathered that Gu Suihan is an evil MC, congratulations for skipping all the philosophy and getting only action, because I don’t think the machine can take any of it.

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3. Three Huas and Five Qis

   In case you didn’t want to flip back to Chapter 5. Clacker copy paste for you.

   Translated from:http://www.shixiu.net/nanshi/zhuzuo/jzxd/4569.html

   If you cultivate according to the Daoist practices, what does it look like when you’ve “refined your jing (essence) and made qi your own”? We have to look towards two popular phrases among the Daoists: “gathering of Three Huas in the top” and “Five Qis towards their origins”. Three Huas refer to jing (essence), qi (duh), shen (mind) Five Qis refer to the heart, liver, spleen (apparently the Chinese one is not quite the Western one), lungs and kidneys, or the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire and earth. Indian yoga terms it as the five vital energies (please read The 5 Vital Energies yourselves). The names are different but the idea is the same. “Gathering in the top” refers to the head. “Towards their origins” has a few opinions. Some think it’s the traditional lower dantian where cultivators cultivate their qi, some think it refers to the Huiyin acupoint, or what Vajrayana Buddhists and yoga practitioners call the Muladhara Chakra. Either way, it means that everything in the body is where it is, fulfilled, in harmony, balanced, not blocked anywhere.

   TL;DR: Getting all Three Huas = highest level of control over your mind and body

   Getting all Five Qis = healthiest level of internal organs

   The above is the more modern/Traditional Chinese Medicine take on it, this book clearly goes…a little more philosophical.

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4. Divine Eye

   In Buddhism, there is the 三明六通, or Three Wisdoms and Six Higher Knowledges (roughly translated).

   Taken from: What are the 6 types of higher knowledge?

   Specifically, the six types of higher knowledges (chalabhiññā) are:

   1) “Higher powers” (iddhi-vidhā, 神足通), such as walking on water and through walls;

   2) “Divine ear” (dibba-sota, 天耳通), that is, clairaudience;

   3) “Mind-penetrating knowledge” (ceto-pariya-ñāṇa, 他心通), that is, telepathy;

   4) “Remember one’s former abodes” (pubbe-nivāsanussati, 宿命通), that is, recalling one’s own past lives;

   5) “Divine eye” (dibba-cakkhu, 天眼通), that is, knowing others’ karmic destinations; and,

   6) “Extinction of mental intoxicants” (āsavakkhaya, 漏盡通), upon which arahantship follows.

   The三明

   It seems to be a subset of the 6 types of knowledges and are known as the three knowledges or wisdoms (tevijja or tivijja):

   1) “Remember one’s former abodes” (pubbe-nivāsanussati 宿命明);

   2) “Divine eye” (dibba-cakkhu 天眼明); and,

   3) “Extinction of mental intoxicants” (āsavakkhaya 漏尽明).

   Of course, more hilariously, this is also a colloquial term for surveillance cameras, because it also literally means “eye in the sky”. Watch out, ya’ll. ️