On the eighth day of May, on Laohua Mountain to the northeast of Jiudaokou County, a man was walking down a mountain path holding a book, paying attention to his surroundings in his peripheral hearing and vision.
He wore a gray robe with wide sleeves. A wooden hairpin was inserted through a small bun on his head, and his hair fell loose at his back with some bangs in front. He carried a bag with an umbrella on his back. He looked to be walking slowly, but in fact his pace was quite fast.
In order to avoid getting lost, Ji Yuan walked at a more moderate pace over the past few days. He asked for directions whenever he had the opportunity, and also stopped briefly in various counties to experience the local customs and practices that he would have rarely seen in his previous life.
This time, there was another reason for walking slowly on Laohua Mountain.
Although Laohua Mountain was far less vast than Niu Kui Mountain, it was still by no means small. It was about 20 to 30 li in radius.1 It might not seem like much, but one should not underestimate this number: this was equivalent to a circular area with a radius of more than 10 kilometers. In addition, this mountain road was difficult terrain to travel, so for ordinary people who were not experienced mountaineers, crossing Laohua Mountain was already quite difficult.
Additionally, there was a deep pool in Laohua Mountain, which had actually been mentioned in “A Historical Account from Outside the Tao.” There hadn’t been many things in Ji Province that had been recorded in the Historical Account over the years. Ji Yuan planned to set aside one day to spend by the deep pool.2
What would he be doing? Fishing!
There was a line in “A Historical Account from Outside the Tao”: In the Ji Province of the Country of Dazhen lies Laohua Mountain. In the mountain is a secluded pool, with no river leading to it from above, and no marshland leading away from it below. The fish that live in the pond therefore embody the essence of water.
Ji Yuan just wanted to see whether this fish was truly a so-called water spirit, or whether they had been blown here by a typhoon, tornado, or both.
He used several trees in the forest as leverage points for his jumps and finally landed in front of a bamboo forest.
He looked at the bamboos in this forest. Most of them were tall and slender, swaying in the mountain breeze. They looked exactly like Ji Yuan’s ideal fishing rod.
He took a piece of suitable size and length, bent down, and lightly tapped the base with two fingers.
With a “click” sound, the bamboo broke in a smooth cut.
While walking through the mountain, Ji Yuan sliced off branches from the bamboo trunk with his knife. In a short while, a smooth green bamboo pole appeared in Ji Yuan’s hand.
He grabbed it and swung it about a couple times. It made a pleasant whooshing sound as it swept through the air.
Ji Yuan was very satisfied with the bamboo.
He had brought fishing line and hooks in his bag, and he didn’t need a buoy.3
What made Ji Yuan a little curious was that the fishing line he bought was made of a transparent silk thread, and it was quite tough. After asking the seller, he found out that it was actually made of the extruded and stretched silk pulp.4 Each fishing line came from one or more poor-quality silkworms that failed to form cocoons…
When Ji Yuan arrived at the deep pool, his brand new green fishing rod was ready. He did not need any additional processing or reinforcement, because once the fish bit the hook, as long as it was not too large, he could just use his spiritual energy to pull the rod back and directly toss it upward at that moment.
The deep pool in front of him was circular in shape, with a diameter of only ten or twenty zhang5 at most, which was far smaller than Ji Yuan imagined. Looking at the water in the pool, it was an emerald green, and the deepest part was pitch black. Nothing could be seen in the water, and there was no movement.
“Would there really be fish here?”
After muttering to himself, Ji Yuan found a suitably shaded spot to cast his fishing rod. The bait was not a worm, but rather a grain of cooked rice, and and suitable place to cast the rod. The bait was not an earthworm, but a grain of cooked rice that was infused with a trace of spiritual energy.
He put the bait on the thin hook and swung the fishing rod.
The flexible green bamboo swayed with force.
The fishing hook was thrown into the pool and fell into the water with a “splash” sound, causing a small ripple.
Fishing was all about patience. With Ji Yuan’s current keep senses, he could immediately feel the slightest changes in the movement of the straight line of the hook as it sank underwater. He didn’t have to worry about being distracted and missing the catch.
So, Ji Yuan took out a book to read. This time, he was reading “Bright Strategies.”
Although they were both written in Heavenly Script, the contents were completely different. Ji Yuan had roughly flipped through it before, so he knew that Bright Strategies was much more “serious” than A Historical Account from Outside the Tao.
Although it was not a real method of cultivating immortality, it did point out the difficulties and dangers at various stages of cultivation. The author of this book had most likely collected the views and opinions of many immortal cultivators and summarized them based on his own experience. The book even included some content related to Shintoism, spirits, and demons.
To use Ji Yuan’s words from his previous life, this was a book that could truly benefit immortal cultivators.6
But why was Bright Strategies still a “compendium”?7 From Ji Yuan’s point of view, it was because the author had too many assumptions and guesses, and the proportion of facts was relatively small relative to the full content of the book. Additionally, those who could read Heavenly Script would all be aware of that small amount of content, so it had become a “compendium.”
However, Ji Yuan was different. Although the content was much more boring than what was written in A Historical Account, it was still useful knowledge, after all. However, it was all just theory, as Ji Yuan could not use this knowledge for the time being, since he did not have any Qi Training techniques.
“By refining Qi, it transforms into spiritual energy, and the spiritual energy gives birth to the Tao, constituting both spiritual and magical power…8 The so-called mysterious gate that touches the heart can be either insignificant or extremely important.”9
‘Alas… there’s still a long way to go! ’ ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novᴇlfire.net
He fished and read at the same time. An hour passed, but there was no movement from Ji Yuan’s fishing rod. He couldn’t help but lift the rod to take a look, and found that the rice grains were still there.
‘Was the information false? Or could it be that the fish died off over the years?’
He looked up at the sun hanging high in the sky.
‘Could it be that they come out at night? ’
Ji Yuan was in no hurry. Perhaps he had developed good skills in cultivating his Qi because of the mountain temple.
He took out a piece of bread from the bag and began eating it slowly. He had bought this bread in Jiudaokou County, and it was about the size of two palms put together. There were five pieces of bread in the bag, and they were all still soft. The bread was slightly sweet and had some dried vegetable filling, which was very tasty.
As the sky gradually darkened, a sunset glow appeared on the horizon, and the stars began to shine overhead. However, Ji Yuan heard a peculiar sound in his ears. It did not come from the deep pool, but from the mountains.
“Hehehe… The Green Jade Pool10 is just ahead, we’re finally there! Let’s go faster!”
“Oh, you’re so full of energy. I’m exhausted!”
Clear sounds came intermittently from a distance. As the sounds approached, light footsteps also entered Ji Yuan’s ears.
A boy and a girl about thirteen or fourteen years old, both wearing clean light blue silk robes, nimbly climbed over the rocks and jumped over the stream, walking through the woods and arriving at the most secluded place in Laohua Mountain.
“Oh, there’s someone there!”
The girl of the pair was startled, and her companion seemed to have just noticed Ji Yuan in the distance.
“Really? It’s getting dark. What is he doing? Fishing?”
“It seems so! Hahaha… He thought he could catch it!”
“Come on, let’s go! What a rare opportunity, let’s go tease him!”
The two of them slowed down their pace and quietly approached the deep pool, as if they wanted to scare Ji Yuan. When they were about ten meters away, they looked at each other, grinned, then tacitly put their hands up and opened their mouths.
The imagined scene of the fisherman throwing away his rod in fright did not appear. Ji Yuan was like a deaf man, holding the fishing rod and continuing to read the book on his lap, taking a bite from his bread from time to time.
The two children felt rather bored and walked towards the edge of the deep pool. At this moment, Ji Yuan’s calm voice suddenly rang out.
The two people who were walking suddenly trembled and shivered with fright.
“How can this be possible? Are you actually trying to scare us?”
The two children, a boy and a girl, seemed very angry. Ji Yuan turned his head toward them and smiled.
“What a rare opportunity!”11
The two children froze in their tracks, and looked at each other with a slightly dumbfounded expression.