novelhk Chapter 12 The Innate Fire 2
Chapter 12 The Innate Fire 2
After Xu Ping'an finished his explanation, it was already bright daylight and sunrise was just around the corner. He gazed at Zaoxiuping.
Aolai is a dangerous place. Hunting and being hunted accompany every mountain dweller as they grow up. Entering the Dao is not only for cultivation, but more urgently for survival. Therefore, almost everyone has had the childhood years of getting up at dawn and meditating facing the sun.
At this moment, most people on Wujia Ridge have already gotten up. Apart from the teenagers who came to Zaoxiuping, the rest of them are cultivating at home. Many of them possess internal energy, but it is basically impossible for them to enter the Dao.
It is generally believed that only boys and girls under the age of 16 are eligible to join the sect.
The reason is simple—the innate fire and innate essence in the human body gradually diminish with age. Experience tells us that if one fails to attain enlightenment by the age of 16, the chances thereafter are extremely slim.
Moreover, Aolai is poor, and poor people's children have to learn to manage the household early. They usually have to participate in daily farming, planting, gathering, and hunting as early as seven or eight years old... After sixteen, they are all strong laborers in the family, so they have no time to cultivate themselves...
Moreover, mountain people often get married very young. Once married, their innate physical condition declines drastically, and the possibility of entering the Tao becomes almost zero. After that, although they may still meditate and practice breathing exercises in private, they will no longer enter the morning cultivation ground to enjoy the spiritual practice.
Xu Pingan glanced across the room. Most people had already closed their eyes and sat cross-legged, waiting for the sunrise. Only a few young children were still looking around. He then said, "As the sun rises, focus your mind on your dantian, without any thoughts or worries."
He used a trace of magic to say this, and his voice echoed in everyone's ears. His tone was gentle, like jade against one's heart, like a friend whispering in one's ear, circling around the ears before suddenly falling silent.
In that instant, the courtyard fell silent. Even the chirping insects suddenly fell silent. A sudden quiet enveloped the entire world, drawing people involuntarily into a deeper realm.
Outside the gate of the orphanage not far away, Xiao Caifei did not dare to be negligent. He put the mud on the ground beside him, rubbed his little hands, spun around on the spot, faced east, closed his eyes and sat cross-legged.
There was still some time before the sun actually rose, but the clouds on the horizon were already dyed orange-red, and the light of dawn had descended upon the earth.
As for the famous essence of the sun, it has long been spread throughout the earth. Of course, only cultivators can see and perceive this thing; ordinary people cannot feel its existence.
The essence of the sun, or "Sun Essence" for short, is born at the moment when darkness and light intersect, that is, within half an hour after the dawn.
Within this half hour, wisps of sunlight will be generated in the air, floating between heaven and earth. If a cultivator absorbs them, they can ignite the innate furnace fire and refine the spiritual energy in the dantian. If no cultivator absorbs them, they will dissipate between heaven and earth and naturally disappear when the time comes.
This thing is definitely related to sunlight, but it may only need to be "bright" and whether the sun is exposed or not has no effect on it—whether the weather is scorching hot or cloudy, as long as it is morning, there will definitely be solar halos, and the amount of solar halos produced each time is similar.
But for ordinary people who have not yet entered the path of enlightenment, the feeling of the rising sun is different, because they cannot feel the radiance of the sun. They have to rely on their imagination to light the fire in the hearth. Obviously, the moment when the sun shines directly makes people think of fire more easily.
In the morning light, Xiao Cai straightened his back, sat upright, and then slowly lowered his consciousness, relaxing his head, shoulders, chest, abdomen, and hands...
Everything seemed to relax. The mind returned to the lower abdomen, imagining a small, suspended ball about an inch in size. The ball had two layers; the upper layer was hollow, shaped like a fish basket, with a point of innate spiritual fire inside, suspended in mid-air.
Cai Fei imagined this spark of spiritual fire as the shape of a candle wick—a candle, which did not exist on Wujia Ridge, indicating that memories of his past life were still deeply hidden within his soul.
Finally, imagine the lower part of the dantian, which is described as "small in proportion and shaped like a crescent moon". The crescent moon is a horizontal half-moon, which is probably the thin curve at the bottom of a sphere.
After completing his imagination, Cai Fei tried his best to make the details clear.
In the stillness of the world, a red light suddenly appeared in the east, and a ray of sunlight shone directly in, finally illuminating the earth.
On the high platform of the playground, Xu Ping'an also sat cross-legged with his eyes closed. However, he was not breathing in spiritual energy. On the contrary, at this moment, he tried his best to suppress his aura and minimize his presence, silently sensing the fluctuations of spiritual energy around him.
As the first rays of sunlight shone on the mountain village, countless spiritual plants released the spiritual energy they had been cultivating overnight, and the concentration of spiritual energy in the world quietly increased. For mortals who lit the furnace entirely by imagination, the symbolic meaning of this ray of sunlight was even greater.
In Xu Ping'an's divine sense, at the moment the sun rose, all twenty-odd points around him experienced a brief fluctuation.
Unfortunately, many of these events only lasted for a moment before returning to calm. These points have experienced several ups and downs since then, but they are mostly fleeting, scattered, and never amount to anything.
In the end, only a dozen or so points formed a stable flow of spiritual energy. Among these, seven or eight points lasted for less than a minute. They disappeared and reappeared many times afterward, but none of them lasted more than a minute. However, these few minutes of cultivation with their ups and downs were enough to cure diseases and toxins, prolong life, and make this morning's cultivation worthwhile.
Four other people were able to last three to five minutes each time, which seems to be one more than yesterday, which is quite comforting.
If these people persist in meditation and can experience three or four such ups and downs each day, they can develop a certain amount of internal strength. They may not be able to advance any further in their lives, but they can still learn martial arts, become fighting masters, and become the backbone of the mountain stronghold in resisting wild beasts.
The most crucial 15 minutes have passed, and the essence of the morning cultivation has been used up. However, the spiritual energy is still slowly increasing, and there is still at least half an hour of cultivation time left. It's just that the time is a bit long, and many of the little kids in the room are obviously getting restless.
Taking advantage of the time when the spiritual energy circulation of several key seedlings had come to an end, Xu Ping'an read a passage to reassure everyone.
"Prepare for what is not yet needed; govern before chaos arises. A tree that can be embraced grows from a tiny sprout; a nine-story tower rises from a mound of earth; a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step..."
The gentle voice was like sweet rain, extinguishing the restlessness and anxiety. Several agitated people calmed down and slowly returned to peace, and another round of cultivation began.
Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes...
Efficiency has clearly declined, with only a few individuals achieving better results than in the first round. Overall, they are still far from mastering the basics.
Seeing that it was almost time, Xu Pingan sighed and was about to say a few words to comfort everyone when he suddenly noticed a strange movement in the distance!
Fifty meters to the north, there was a point where spiritual energy gathered, and the speed at which spiritual energy gathered there far exceeded that of the group of teenagers at Zaoxiuping!
Someone wants to enter the path!
Unfortunately, the anomaly vanished instantly. Xu Ping'an sighed in regret and returned to calm. However, he postponed the dismissal, opened his eyes, and quietly watched everyone meditate.
About five minutes later, the anomaly reappeared fifty meters to the north, and countless spiritual energies surged toward it. Xu Ping'an quickly suppressed his aura, fearing that his movements might disturb the person's chances of entering the Dao.
This anomaly lasted for about three minutes. The point that had caused the disturbance suddenly calmed down. The surrounding spiritual energy gathered around the point, faintly forming a certain spiritual pressure, but ultimately it couldn't find a place to settle and quickly dissipated.
With such a large accumulation of spiritual energy lasting for three minutes, it should have been successful, right?
Did all our efforts come to naught at the last minute?
Xu Pingan couldn't help but stand up. Fifty meters to the north was the location of the orphanage, where there was only one person who had the potential to enter the Dao—Cai Fei, the son of a dual cultivator!
"This morning's study session is now over. Everyone, please be quiet and go your separate ways." Xu Ping'an announced the end of the morning class first, and then planned to go over there to see if it was Xiao Cai Fei who had made such a commotion.