Over the next few days, the curriculum covered the History of Tang, the Theory of Heaven and Earth, the Theory of Karmic Destiny, and the Theory of Arts in succession.
The History of Tang went without saying, while the Theory of Heaven and Earth and the Theory of Karmic Destiny were both effectively practical cultivation courses. The Theory of Heaven and Earth addressed the movements of celestial timing, the geography of mountains and rivers, and how to adapt to environmental changes during cultivation to absorb heaven-and-earth essence more efficiently and speed up one's progress.
The first class of the Theory of Heaven and Earth was held on the mountain outside the Hall of Inspiring Thought. After the instructor taught the underlying principles, the students were left to find their own ideal spots to practice. There was no single right answer for this optimal location; each student had different foundations and aptitudes, and each would walk a different Dao path in the future, so everyone had their own corresponding best place to cultivate.
Wei Yuan discovered that the higher he went, the faster he cultivated, so he ultimately chose the mountain summit. However, he arrived a step too late, and the spot had already been claimed by Bao Yun and Xiaoyu.
The moment Bao Yun saw Wei Yuan, she came over to greet him, taking his hand and saying warmly, "Junior Martial Brother Wei has come as well! Let's cultivate together!"
Her hand was cool and slick, soft as if boneless. Wei Yuan felt an indescribable awkwardness holding it and wanted to pull away, but Bao Yun turned her grip and held on tight. Propriety told Wei Yuan that forcefully shaking her off right now would be very rude and easily draw criticism, so he could only endure it.
Wei Yuan followed her a short distance when Bao Yun suddenly stumbled, as if about to fall.
Wei Yuan hurried to support her, but the moment he lifted his foot, he suddenly flew into the air and inexplicably tumbled right off the summit, rolling down the slope for over a dozen zhang before coming to a stop.
Bao Yun came running down and helped Wei Yuan up, saying anxiously, "Junior Brother, are you all right? Did you hurt yourself anywhere? Goodness, how could you be so careless!"
For a moment, Wei Yuan wasn't sure whether he had truly been careless or if something else had caused him to fall. Faced with Bao Yun's good intentions, he could hardly refuse, so he let her help him up.
Bao Yun assisted Wei Yuan to a nearby flat area to sit. Wei Yuan was surprised to find that cultivating here was only a sliver slower than at the summit, so he was no longer picky. Bao Yun offered a few more reminders, telling him he must take good care of himself, before returning to the summit.
And so, the first class of the Theory of Heaven and Earth passed like that.
The Theory of Karmic Destiny had only begun to emerge within the last three hundred years and was the newest course. A thousand years ago, individuals blessed with karmic destiny were exceptionally rare and often accomplished great divine abilities. Thus, whenever such people appeared, every sect would spare no effort to nurture them. If they resided in the secular imperial courts, they were bound to become either founding heroes of a dynasty or pivotal ministers of a revival.
Those blessed with the great destiny of their era were called children of karmic destiny. Once such a figure appeared, even the aloof and exalted immortal sects would join the scramble for them, sparking countless schemes and bloody conflicts.
Over the generations, the number of people blessed with karmic destiny had generally remained relatively stable, with slightly more in some periods and fewer in others. But starting four hundred years ago, heaven-and-earth karmic destiny suddenly increased at a rapid pace. People blessed with karmic destiny emerged in droves, and children of karmic destiny appeared time and again.
Over the following few centuries, karmic destiny as a whole continued to rise, and those blessed with it grew more numerous by the day. Many who would have been nurtured with the full might of an entire sect a thousand years ago now merely received a bit more attention and slightly more cultivation resources from their sects.
Anyone whose karmic destiny reached one zhang in the Daoist test would have unequivocally been a child of karmic destiny and a luminary of the human race in the past. Yet now, in the Palace of Grand Beginning alone, Wei Yuan's cohort had six individuals with one zhang of karmic destiny, two of whom were not even placed on the palace's list for priority cultivation due to poor root bone. A thousand years ago, let alone having slightly inferior root bones, even if they were complete deadweights, countless heavenly materials and earthly treasures would have been used to forcefully pile them up into peerless prodigies.
As karmic destiny grew more plentiful, studies and cultivation arts centered on it began to emerge continuously. Today, there were already many mature systems for cultivating by borrowing karmic destiny. Furthermore, karmic destiny no longer referred solely to an individual's personal fortune; it had been subdivided into four aspects: Great Heaven-and-Earth Destiny, Temporal Destiny, Fengshui, and Mortal Destiny. It encompassed numerous disciplines, including astrology, fengshui, and geomancy, becoming a critical link in cultivation.
The so-called children of karmic destiny all referred to those blessed with the great destiny of an era. The Great Heaven-and-Earth Destiny was far too magnificent for a human body to bear. Heaven and earth remained unchanging through the ages; let alone one or two children of karmic destiny, even the rises and falls of the entire human race were merely small sprays of water in a surging torrent. If humans went completely extinct, it would not affect heaven and earth in the slightest.
With the proliferation of karmic destiny, the benefits of being blessed with it were no longer as potent as before, yet having it or not still made a fundamental difference. Consequently, prestigious clans and prominent families painstakingly developed arts of karmic transference, which could strip the destiny of others and bestow it upon their own scions. From then on, possessing karmic destiny was sometimes not a good thing: on one hand, one had to seek opportunities; on the other, one could not let the aristocratic clans discover it, lest one simply end up weaving wedding robes for someone else.
Once this occurred often enough, people came to realize that reincarnation into the right womb was itself a supreme form of great destiny.
The final course, the Theory of Arts, referred to the various arts used along the path of cultivation. This included not only spell arts, but also the medical path, artifact crafting, pills and medicines, talismans, shamanic invocations, Gu poisons, and more. Aside from possessing divine Dao arts, the Palace of Grand Beginning boasted the Hall of Heavenly Craft, renowned specifically for artifact crafting, the Monastery of Creation, with its legacy in pills, and the Hall of Xuanming, founded upon medicine. As such, the lectures devoted substantial attention to the paths of alchemy and crafting, while subjects like shamanic sorcery and poisons were merely taught in broad strokes.
The Body Casting stage was focused primarily on cultivation, so when organizing the curriculum, all the content deemed less critical for this stage had been lumped into the Theory of Arts.
In this way, seven days passed, and one full cycle of courses was finally completed. The eighth and ninth days returned to the General History of the Human Race and General Knowledge of the Immortal Path.
However, on the ninth day, General Knowledge of the Immortal Path was not taught by Daoist Dixia, but rather continued by Feng Chutang.
Feng Chutang was still smiling, looking exceptionally good-tempered, and paid no mind when students joked with him. In this class, he did not follow Daoist Dixia's pace to discuss antiquity; instead, he jumped directly to the boundary between the ancient and modern eras—namely, the founding of Great Tang and the implementation of the unified sect examination.
"Taking advantage of Daoist Dixia being in secluded cultivation, in this class I shall discuss the origins of the unified sect examination and why it serves as one of the pivotal demarcation points between ancient and modern cultivation. As for the impact of Great Tang's founding on immortal cultivation, we will let Daoist Dixia take his time explaining that later."
The students all sat up straight, rapt with attention.
Since Feng Chutang had said so, the unified sect examination undoubtedly held an exceptionally important place in history. Furthermore, during the prior two classes, the students had already discovered that much of what Feng Chutang taught could not be found in the history books at all. It required piecing together countless scattered fragments across numerous historical texts to sketch out an approximate picture. Yet the pictures thus sketched were precisely crucial links in history. One could say that without these links, studying history would only yield a superficial half-understanding.
Those students from prominent clans possessed inherited family learning from a young age and more or less understood why history books refused to record many events in detail—it amounted to little more than taboos concealing the faults of emperors and venerating the exalted.
Yet precisely because they understood the reasons, these youths perceived Feng Chutang's erudition and incisiveness all the more keenly. Thus, even though this instructor looked utterly harmless, they all listened with undivided attention, fearful of missing anything. After all, the things taught in this classroom could not be found in books, and their own clan elders were not necessarily masters of history.
Chapter 40