Volume 4, Chapter 87 – The Hidden Cause

Under the scrutiny of the Golden-Pupil Illusory God, the remnant page reacted and showed Bai Xiang a world-shaking battle from the final days of the Xuan Dynasty.

Even though it had only been a fragment, and the real battle had not even truly begun, the sheer scale of those sky-covering shadowy forms and the earth-shaking tremors had enormously broadened her horizons, allowing her, at the very least, to glimpse a trace of the bearing of a true great power.

After that, the remnant page automatically manifested its secret and passed on one of Xuandi’s supreme arts to Bai Xiang. Its name was Soul Mastery of the Empty Kalpa.

A tiny amount of miscellaneous information had come with it as well. By now, Bai Xiang understood that the Xuandi Scripture was unlike other classics. It belonged to the category of a collected compendium, a text that recorded many divine soul arts and divine soul abilities created by Xuandi himself. Soul Mastery of the Empty Kalpa was merely one section within it.

As for the specific content of this supreme art, the first thing that had to be mentioned was the phrase “formation, abiding, decay, emptiness.”

These four words were in fact the Four Kalpas of Buddhism. In Buddhist thought, the rise and fall of a world, of a universe, must pass through four great tribulations.

The kalpa of formation is the birth of all things. That is why it is called “formation.”

The kalpa of abiding is the development of all things. That is why it is called “abiding.”

Then comes the kalpa of decay. Order begins to collapse, and all things begin to perish. Everything moves toward destruction and extinction. Taken broadly, this “decay” can be applied to the end of a universe, to the destruction of celestial bodies and galaxies. Taken narrowly, it can also be applied to human society, to lives or fortunes taking a sharp downward turn, and to all manner of hardship.

The final kalpa, the kalpa of emptiness, is voidness itself. It symbolizes how, after passing through the cleansing of the first three kalpas, all things return to “nothing,” return to “stillness.” Then, within the void, a new kalpa of formation begins to gestate, and the Four Kalpas once again alternate in endless cycle.

This was one of the most classic concepts in Buddhist thought. Many accomplished monks were fond of using it to interpret and explain the suffering of human life. They believed that a person’s life in this world likewise followed the pattern of “formation, abiding, decay, emptiness,” that all things move through a process of “from void to growth, from growth to flourishing, from flourishing to destruction, and then from void to new life.”

Bai Xiang, who had read the scriptures deeply in her previous life, naturally already knew such ideas. What she had not expected was that Xuandi, Emperor Feng, would have had such a heavy strain of Buddhist thought within his own insights on attaining the Dao.

She could not say about the other sections. But as for Soul Mastery of the Empty Kalpa, the Buddhist influence in this technique was so thick that she could not help suspecting that, before Emperor Feng attained the Dao, he had once been a monk in some temple.

Blinking herself back to her senses, Bai Xiang plucked the remnant page from the air.

Its appearance looked exactly the same as before. If anything, because she had wrapped the little yellow jade in it, its surface now carried even more fine creases and wrinkles.

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But the moment she activated the Golden-Pupil Illusory God to look at it, the words on the page transformed into the Sanskrit of the Yu lands, each one glowing with a faint golden light. What they explained, however, were the specific formulas of Soul Mastery of the Empty Kalpa.

This was a forbidden art specifically intended to teach a person how to let the soul leave the body.

In a sense, the Wu Emperor’s guess had been correct. But the difficulty and profundity of it lay far, far beyond anything he could have imagined.

According to the note left in the corner of the page—and assuming this page had really been made personally by Emperor Feng—then the regret expressed in the line “after me, this road will be hard to complete” meant that Emperor Feng had never expected anyone of later generations to learn it.

Hadn’t he considered factors like inheritance through bloodline?

Bai Xiang began to study the formulas in detail. Combined with the insights transmitted along with them, she gradually grasped their deeper meaning.

The Empty Kalpa was voidness. It was “non-thought.”

This technique had been born when Emperor Feng suffered a failure while attempting something. It had been an immense failure, one that struck him with profound force. In that instant, his will had sunk into dejection, and he had suddenly entered a state of “thinking of nothing, seeking nothing.” Then, inexplicably, he discovered that his divine soul had broken free of his fleshly body and could fly through the void nearby on its own.

After recovering from the shock, Emperor Feng followed that sensation of “void-flight” and created Soul Mastery of the Empty Kalpa. It emphasized using one’s insight into “void-flight” and the “Empty Kalpa” to govern the divine soul. In that way, the soul could break free of its shell and enjoy many “marvelous benefits.”

As for what those “marvelous benefits” actually were, the record did not say.

It was impossible to know whether Emperor Feng had thought that no one in later generations would ever be able to learn it anyway, so mentioning them would be useless and would only create more frustration, and thus he had simply been too lazy to write them down, or whether this was merely because the page was incomplete and the later records had always been missing.

Bai Xiang received all kinds of insight from it, but once she came back to herself and examined them carefully, she felt strangely cheated.

You have got to be kidding. Whether it’s projecting the soul out of the body or entering the state of neither thought nor non-thought, does Bai Zhixing really need you to teach me that?

Weren’t these things something I already knew how to do?

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She did not notice that when her dissatisfaction became so obvious, a faint illusory shimmer was stirring within those golden pupils of hers, the same eyes that Bai Zhuqing would have described as capable of enchanting all living beings.

Under the wash of her gaze, the remnant page began to tremble. The small golden words in her Golden-Pupil vision broke apart, rearranged themselves, and recombined into a much shorter supplementary formula.

Hm?

Bai Xiang focused and read it carefully, then realized this seemed to be… the actual combat method?

So the earlier formula was the cultivation method, something to practice, and the finer marvels of it had to be grasped for oneself.

But the combat method was Emperor Feng’s summary of practical experience.

Was that what he had used to strike the soul right out of the nine-headed giant python with a single palm?

Bai Xiang’s eyelid twitched slightly. If that move had also belonged to Soul Mastery of the Empty Kalpa, then Emperor Feng’s understanding and attainments on the path of the soul were absolutely horrifying. They had reached a truly terrifying realm.

The reason was simple. Soul-path cultivators were already as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns in the Void Realm. Even if such people attained the Dao through dreams and created some treasured method of their own, most of those methods could never act directly on an opponent, especially not by bypassing the body’s defenses and directly harming the soul.

At most, they could produce an Illusory God effect. In other words, they worked by deception, by bewildering the heart and mind.

Who had ever heard of knocking a soul out directly through the body?

It was absurd. One of the body’s great functions was to serve as the soul’s root and its wall of protection. The body shielded the soul from the turbulent flows of the void. It was precisely because cultivators at the Immortal Venerable level had the body as a shield that they dared claim they could cross the void without relying on a vehicle.

It was only that flying vessels were more enduring, and in the long run more efficient. But they were not afraid of being torn apart directly in the void.

Yet Xuandi, Emperor Feng… he could do exactly that.

Staring at those words, Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes and sank into thought.

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All the ideas and experiences were sorted and summarized under the workings of the Jade Spirit. Gradually, she began trying to fuse the mysteries of the technique into the Vibration Art, and into the sword formulas she had created herself, constantly calculating and rehearsing in her mind whether it could be done.

“In theory, in principle, it should be possible.”

After a long stretch of thought, she returned to herself and took a short rest.

“For me, letting the soul leave the body is definitely too dangerous. That’s the cultivation method, something that can only be used to improve myself in ordinary times.”

“As for the combat method, its principle is to use the Golden-Pupil Illusory God to transmit the concept of the Empty Kalpa, that is, the concept of neither thought nor non-thought, to the opponent.”

“But something like that…”

Bai Xiang frowned. Could someone really do such a thing?

If it were during seated meditation,

if it were entering a meditative state in the middle of cultivation, then for her, that would not be difficult.

But this had been in the middle of battle.

At a moment like that, Emperor Feng had actually managed to enter a state of neither thought nor non-thought?

That in itself was already incredibly difficult. And on top of that, he had to imprint a copy of that state and use it to interfere with and control his enemy.

Wasn’t that action itself already a “thought”?

If you already had that “thought,” then how could it still be called “non-thought”?

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So yes, she said it worked in principle. But as for how to actually apply it, she would still need to study it carefully.

“What a pity Emperor Feng didn’t survive to the present. This man was an absolute monster on the soul path. Even calling him a genius is nowhere near enough.”

The more Bai Xiang studied Soul Mastery of the Empty Kalpa, the more regretful she became. She felt as though she had been born too late.

In this world, she had not yet met a single person who possessed such understanding of the soul path. If she could have spoken with him, exchanged ideas with him, then perhaps she might have drawn out even more marvelous uses of her soul-abilities, perhaps even uncovered the truth behind her transmigration.

And then there was his philosophy.

At that thought, Bai Xiang’s brows finally drew together.

All the records said that Xuandi’s philosophy was “demons and humans governing together.”

Yet when those people attacked him, they had all carried deep hatred on their faces, as though they themselves were the side of justice.

Why was that?

It did not look as though mere hatred alone explained it. Could there have been some hidden truth behind it?

Boom…

At that moment, a shudder ran through the flying vessel.

Bai Xiang’s train of thought was interrupted. She stood up, let the hem of her skirt fall back into place, opened the door to the training room, and stepped into the corridor, intending to see what had happened.