Early the next morning, Chu Xiaoyao had just set down her schoolbag when she saw Zhou You draw an ancient book from his own bag with a mysterious air.
"Look. A body-refining art from this world. Wenchang True Lord gave it to me. Su Tingxue says this cultivation method is really something."
"Mingwang Body Refining Art?" Chu Xiaoyao took it and paged through it, curious.
After he got the body-refining art the night before, Zhou You had been wild with excitement. Aside from the Dao De Jing, this was the second proper cultivation method he had ever come into contact with.
A pity the contents were far too obscure. Reading them was like trying to read an indecipherable heavenly script. Two glances, and he was nodding off, unable to keep his mind on them long enough to take anything in.
No matter. He had Chu Xiaoyao. He need only ask her to interpret it.
"A fine body-refining art. There are points worth praising. It merits a look from this seat." Calm and unruffled, Chu Xiaoyao closed the book and offered the remark with cool detachment.
"Can I cultivate according to this? Or will you teach me a body-refining art?" Zhou You asked, unable to wait. After fighting Lishi, he had felt keenly how frail his body was, and he wanted to grow stronger.
"The art of body refining is like a giant tree towering into the heavens. Its branches and leaves may flourish, yet all of them share one root and one source."
"So at the very beginning, the methods differ little. You may cultivate according to this."
"But I can't understand what's written in it," Zhou You said, hoping the Carefree Empress would explain it to him.
She answered in earnest. "Zhou You, don't you think you rely on me too much in cultivation?"
"Hm?"
With grave sincerity, Chu Xiaoyao set him straight. "With me to teach you, if you cultivate step by step, you will amount to something in the end. On the Hongmeng Continent you could become an overlord of a region. But that would only be walking my old path."
"The shortcut you take today will in the end become your shackle and your bottleneck. Doing nothing but imitate me will never make you a second Immortal Emperor."
"The Great Daos of immortal cultivation are beyond counting—far more than three thousand. You ought to have your own thoughts, your own insights, your own path."
Hearing this, Zhou You was ashamed and reflected deeply on himself. Yes. That was it. Ever since he had learned Chu Xiaoyao's true identity, he had wanted to seek every answer from her.
Convenient, certainly. Just as Chu Xiaoyao said, his cultivation would then go smoothly all the way. But lazy thinking was also at work, and later it would become a bottleneck that trapped him. It would do his cultivation no good.
"I understand. I'll work hard to study this body-refining art."
Nuomi, listening from the side, nodded again and again. She still could not understand what Chu Xiaoyao was saying, yet she had the feeling she had gained a great deal.
Learning something new first thing in the morning. I really am diligent.
Chu Xiaoyao sighed, full of feeling. "Back when I learned body refining on the Hongmeng Continent, I suffered plenty. Besides the money that went into food, I often had to soak in spirit-medicine baths blended from all sorts of precious spiritual medicines, and those cost no less."
"But all of it was worth it. Every inch of skin tempered to an inconceivable strength—rebirth from a drop of blood is merely minor accomplishment in body refining. One who reaches major accomplishment in body refining, as I have, will still stand at the peak of the heavens, carefree and at ease, even if the myriad worlds collapse, time withers, and the cosmos turns to dust."
So strong. Hearing Chu Xiaoyao describe it so, Zhou You's heart stirred. He hoped he could become as strong as she was.
But she had spoken of body refining costing money, and he hardly seemed to have any. What was he to do when the time came?
Nuomi seemed to see what weighed on him, and spoke up of her own accord. "Sect Master, if you all are short of money, I have a way."
She was deputy sect master of the Carefree Sect, sheltered beneath the Grand Elder, her glory rising with the sect's. She had to give her all for the Carefree Sect.
"You have a way?" Zhou You was surprised.
At the question, Nuomi looked thoroughly smug. What she could do far exceeded anything Zhou You imagined. "Heh heh. I've saved up quite a sum these past two years. Call it my little treasury. I'm donating it to our sect."
The sect master and the Grand Elder were so pitiful. They couldn't even come up with five thousand yuan.
Could she be the richest one in the Carefree Sect?
Zhou You was deeply moved. He even entertained the thought of risking his life to urge the Grand Elder to abdicate and let Nuomi succeed her.
"Where is it?"
"Sunk in Big Stone Lake."
Big Stone Lake lay at the southeast corner of the school. It was said that when the school was built, the construction crew had taken what they needed from close at hand and dug earth right on the grounds, until at last they had dug out a great pit. After the school was finished, the pit was not easy to fill. The principal slapped his forehead and simply flooded it, making a lake. Because a boulder taller than a person stood beside the water, the students all called the place Big Stone Lake.
When Zhou You passed this good news on to Grand Elder Chu Xiaoyao, she was every bit as moved.
"Good Nuomi. The revival of my Carefree Sect is in sight."
Seeing that Chu Xiaoyao offered only praise in words, with no intention of abdicating, Zhou You shook his head to himself. This was where she fell short of him. She was too petty in the way she did things.
"Big Stone Lake is over by the old dormitory building, a fair distance from the teaching building. A trip there and back takes quite a while. Let's go together at dinnertime." Zhou You suggested it, and both Chu Xiaoyao and Nuomi agreed.
All through the day, Zhou You behaved himself. When it was time for class, he was in class. When class let out, he studied the body-refining art. He spent a very fulfilling day.
A rumor was going around that, for Su Tingxue's sake, he had given Wang Chong a savage beating and staked his claim on her. Zhou You, however, firmly held that an immortal cultivator was not swayed by outside opinion, and he laughed it off.
Through unbroken study in the breaks between classes, and by paging through those two hefty volumes, the Dictionary of Ancient Chinese and the Modern Chinese Dictionary, he roughly grasped how the first stage of the body-refining art was meant to be cultivated.
As the saying went, body refining began with skin refining. The skin was the body's first line of defense. Once it was well refined, it could greatly blunt the force of an attack, so that blade and spear could not pierce it.
"If I succeed at skin refining, I won't be afraid the next time I run into that big fellow." Zhou You muttered. The one he meant was Lishi.
To refine the skin, one had to keep whipping it to stimulate it, while at the same time, as the body-refining art described, sending spiritual power coursing through the meridians. The two had to be done together.
Spiritual power coursing through the meridians was no trouble. With his soul leaving the body, he could see the meridians perfectly clearly.
It was the whipping of the skin... Zhou You struck himself twice. It stung a little.
He truly could not bring himself to do it, and could only look for help elsewhere.
"Xiaoyao, how about you hit me hard a couple of times?"
Zhao Zhuo, in the row ahead, was utterly at a loss. Was this some new way to play?
Chu Xiaoyao let out a disgusted ugh and refused at once. "No."
...
When the last class of the afternoon ended, Zhou You and Chu Xiaoyao did not even spare the time to eat dinner. They took Nuomi with them and hurried toward Big Stone Lake.
For fear students might fall in, the school had enclosed Big Stone Lake with a ring of iron railings. On ordinary days, no students came this way.
"Why did you hide the things in Big Stone Lake? Wouldn't the old dormitory building have done?" Zhou You chatted with Nuomi as they walked.
"You don't get it, do you? This is called a cunning rabbit keeping three burrows." Nuomi was immensely proud of her own wisdom. This was the wisdom of survival.
"So many people come to the old dormitory building to exorcise spirits. If I ever run into someone I can't beat, I'll have to run for it at once. Where would I find the chance then to move my little treasury? Of course I had to hide it somewhere else."
"A lot of people come to exorcise spirits?" Zhou You was puzzled. Could the old dormitory building be some hot tourist spot in their circles, with so many people coming to exorcise spirits?
"Once every few months, I suppose. I hear they're all incompetent Daoists your school leaders specially hire."
"Specially hired?" Zhou You did not understand.
Nuomi strained to recall the scene. "Mm. Once I came across your school leaders talking with a Daoist. They said they had to find Daoists who weren't up to the job to get rid of me, then split the money with the leaders afterward. If they couldn't get rid of me, the leaders would have an excuse to keep hiring Daoists to come."
Zhou You: "..."
Had he run into something this corrupt before he had even left campus?
"So I've always worried your leaders would be arrested. Fortunately, the thing I worried about never happened."
"...I'd rather the thing you worried about did happen."
Chapter 22