As if caught in a sudden gust of wind, the pages of the booklet fluttered loudly, and the curtains in the study swayed incessantly.
At the same time, a clamor of noise arose around him, sounding at once like countless people talking over one another and like someone screaming at the top of their lungs.
Yet these strange phenomena appeared for only a fleeting moment before vanishing abruptly, as though forcefully suppressed by a powerful force.
Chen Chuan kept his eyes on the booklet, reached out, and smoothed it flat. He could tell that what had just occurred was a purely mental phenomenon. The moment it surfaced, the Second Self had absorbed it entirely, causing the anomaly to dissipate naturally.
Through that brief contact, he gained a general understanding of what it was.
It was likely the spiritual consciousness and cultivation experiences left behind by previous individuals who had read this book—or rather, this particular section of it.
It was much like the appendices and annotations left by predecessors, except it was not presented in written form.
However, the mental states of these individuals were likely quite different from those of ordinary fighters. He suspected that they had either deviated in their cultivation or been contaminated by something. As a result, the impressions felt chaotic and tangled. Some of the contents did not even seem like something a human could produce, resembling instead those entities from the other side.
Even so, from that brief glimpse, he felt these things were still exceedingly valuable.
Within them lay the personal impressions of those predecessors when they cultivated the Dongxuan View. The so-called "Dongxuan" meant penetrating profound mysteries. Whether it was the Purist Faction's manual or Wansong's technique, both merely pointed out a direction without offering specific paths on how to proceed. Therefore, being able to perceive one more person's insights would deepen his understanding by a fraction. Even if their path was wrong, he could at least learn where the error lay.
After some thought, he decided to experience and savor it carefully.
However, these things were inherently a form of contamination. If the Second Self absorbed them, he would be unable to perceive them.
Thus, if he wanted to see them, he had to endure the taint himself.
Chen Chuan was fully prepared to accept this; it was a necessary price to pay. Besides, when he cultivated the Longevity View, he had already endured contamination and even turned it to his advantage to aid his practice, so he was hardly inexperienced. Even if problems arose, he could find a way to resolve them once it was over.
With that, he sealed off the Second Self and reopened the booklet. Perhaps because he was actively reading it, or perhaps because he turned the pages methodically, the mental impressions no longer surged forth all at once. Instead, they manifested one by one.
As he turned to the first page, he felt as though someone were muttering beside him. It began relatively smoothly, but further along, it turned into an indistinct blur, accompanied by inexplicable emotions and sensory impressions that sank into his mind along with the taint.
Unmoved, he finished the first page and turned to the second. At that moment, another anomaly occurred—he felt as though someone were sitting right behind him.
He did not turn his head to look. Instead, with a calm expression, he quietly absorbed the contents that surged forth.
Just as before, what initially entered his mind was a relatively coherent voice, but it grew increasingly chaotic as it progressed. Further along, the moment he tried to discern what was being said, an inexplicable sense of confusion overwhelmed him.
It was somewhat reminiscent of Guardian You's speech before he transformed into a yaogui—riddled with incomprehensible, nonsensical words, yet genuinely expounding on the technique.
As he delved deeper, various stifling sensations and bizarre noises drilled into his mind. The surrounding scenery seemed to shift as well, with indistinguishable human silhouettes and surreal visions wavering around him.
Yet he remained unmoved, persisting until he finished reading before turning to the next page.
After flipping through several more pages, he confirmed his hypothesis. These were indeed left by individuals who had fallen into completely inhuman states. He even suspected that some of them were on the verge of mutating into yaogui. Yet for reasons unknown, they had preserved their entire process and impressions of cultivating this technique within the book.
Now, Chen Chuan took it all in without missing a single detail.
What was contained here was not merely an understanding of the technique, but also the firsthand experiences of their personal cultivation. Though it was mingled with deviant paths and failed attempts, stripping those away still left insights that were illuminating to him.
He could feel that with every page he read, he entered the mental state of the person at that moment. Yet perhaps because of his mastery of the Purist Faction's secret arts, his mutated tissue mounted a spontaneous resistance. Furthermore, likely due to his security clearance having been raised by a level earlier, his body's ability to resist contamination had increased, indirectly repelling these impressions as well.
This made certain details difficult for him to see clearly. Consequently, he simply soothed the mutated tissue within his body, preventing it from reacting, and allowed these mental impressions along with their contamination to enter him freely so that he could observe them with ease.
He turned page after page, meticulously experiencing every insight of those people from that time.
This process was excruciatingly tormenting, and the contamination could not be faked. Had his mental plane not been sufficiently high, his practice rooted entirely in the Purist Faction's secret arts, and his physical foundation exceptionally solid, he likely would have begun mutating by now.
By the time he finished reading the entire book, his mind felt extraordinarily heavy and sluggish, and his thoughts turned with difficulty, as though rusted over.
He knew that so long as a person recognized something was wrong with themselves, the contamination remained merely surface-level. When the contamination truly ran deep, one would not even realize anything was amiss, believing instead that their condition was better than ever.
Just like Guardian You back then. At first, he felt something was off, but later, he became increasingly intoxicated by it, believing it to be the correct path and even actively pursuing it, claiming he had seen the wondrous techniques transmitted from the other side.
Chen Chuan's gaze turned solemn. The incomprehensible things near the end of several pages were very likely what those practitioners had seen from the other side after mutating.
Those were not what he needed. At that moment, a brilliant, sun-like radiance suddenly burst from his body, rendering him seemingly translucent from the inside out. Numerous dark blotches and impurities could be seen within him, but beneath the blazing light, they swiftly dissolved and disintegrated, ceasing to exist.
As the light receded, Chen Chuan checked his condition once more and found that the problem had not been entirely resolved. A portion of his mutated tissue had completely transformed into a different appearance—becoming exceedingly active and attempting to seep into the other, normal mutated tissue. At present, it was so subtle that it was almost undetectable unless examined closely.
He had no intention of letting it remain. With a single thought, that mutated tissue rapidly decayed and was replaced by newly generated, normal mutated tissue. At the same time, wisps of black smoke drifted off the surface of his body.
After a moment, he had completely expelled the residual impurities of that mutated tissue.
Having dealt with that, he reflected on the experience. Those mental impressions seemed to mirror the reading order of the book, jumbled back and forth yet somehow forming a coherent system of their own.
While their understanding was certainly flawed, there were shared commonalities among them, which precisely indicated that a correct path lay hidden within. It was no exaggeration to say that by experiencing all of this, he had essentially tested and erred through the process himself. This would be immensely beneficial to the cultivation he was about to undertake, saving him an enormous amount of time.
Moreover, having read this far, he made another discovery—something he might have previously overlooked.
Breaking through to this realm required one to "perceive the truth and discern the profound, unraveling the mystic mechanism."
Yet both cultivation booklets he had encountered approached this hurdle by relying entirely on the physical body to shatter the barrier.
His understanding at the time had been that the Longevity View placed greater emphasis on mental cultivation, whereas the Dongxuan View leaned more heavily toward the physical body, as both were meant to lay the groundwork for the next stage to achieve the ultimate goal. That had seemed entirely reasonable.
Many contents within the manuals appeared to support this view as well. But having experienced these records, he now believed otherwise. Rather than saying the Longevity View emphasized the mind, it was more accurate to say it used the external visage as a bridge for crossing; the physical body remained vital, for without it, one could never withstand the contamination.
Meanwhile, the majority of these mental impressions had focused on using the mind to achieve a breakthrough. That was not necessarily wrong, but doing so made one far more susceptible to contamination and was undeniably more difficult. Still, if it were an absolute dead end, those people would never have attempted it.
Viewed from this angle, the mental aspect was likely just as crucial at this step, rather than relying solely on the physical body to force a breakthrough. In particular, since he felt he was different from others, overcoming this juncture would very likely require combining both approaches.
He would have eventually figured these things out during his actual practice in the future, but it would have taken far more time, and there was a chance he might have had to retrace his steps. Now, having experienced enough of his predecessors' cultivation processes, he had grasped this insight in advance, ensuring he would not stumble over it.
This booklet had been of immense help to him.
Yet one question remained: were the contents embedded within the booklet something the Wansong Commission Company was unaware of, or had they intentionally provided it for him to see?
He turned the thought over and concluded that Wansong likely knew.
If it were anyone else, even if they failed to notice the issue with the book at first, they would inevitably be affected by the dispersing mental impressions during their routine reading. Should anything go wrong, Wansong would not be able to wash its hands of the matter. After all, it was a company that provided services to martial artists; any suspicion of harming its clients would be a devastating blow to its credibility.
Did they believe he was capable of handling it, and therefore took the initiative to supply it to him?
Chen Chuan pondered this. During their previous dealings, he had sensed faintly that Wansong seemed to be deliberately creating favorable conditions for him. It had not been very obvious then, but now it was clear to see.
He did not know their purpose, but whatever it was, there was no need to dwell on it for now. So long as he grew strong enough, he could handle it with ease, whether it stemmed from goodwill or malice.
Chapter 1049