Chapter 45 – A Return to the Basics

“Zhao Ren, don’t get lost in your cultivation and make sure to come meet us!” Mei Ling was sternly remonstrating Ren.

“I know we all have our own matters, and with how the sect encourages us, we are left to find our own paths. But now that we are all separated by distance and spirit beasts, it is more important than ever to remember your friends!”

“I will, I will! But if I forget, you can always come remind me!” said Ren, knowing he could be unreliable about such things. Hua was silently laughing behind Ling.

“My Master will let me come visit too, I’m sure!” Xi Yuan had gotten to be good friends with Ling in the past few days. Because she lacked any friends beyond her master’s other disciples, she was eager to meet again.

They parted ways after making plans to meet after a month at Mei Ling’s home. Before heading back to his mountain, Ren still had some matters to take care of. He had been expecting a reply from his family that should have arrived by now. He also wanted to visit the Hall of Scripture and find out how comparable it was to the library maintained in the inner sect. Finally, there were some people he wanted to meet before leaving.

The letter had arrived, and it had been written by the family head, his grandfather. He read it as he slowly walked to the library. It had the flowery and verbose style his grandfather preferred, but it essentially could be summarized as joy that Ren had survived, shared grief over Uncle Tao, and an inquiry on what Ren was planning to do next.

The tone of the letter was apprehensive. It was an unfamiliar sentiment to attribute to his grandfather, who had always seemed like a steady rock the family relied on. Yet it made sense now. Ren was a foundation establishment realm cultivator, and he had achieved it within 2 years, unlike his less talented uncle. Their standings were very far apart now, and he was no longer answerable to his family. A selfish cultivator would want to be rid of this stone holding them down.

Maybe it had to do with the large sum of spirit stones he had sent back before the trial. He had sent it in case he didn’t return from the trial. To clear his debt and move forward, he had sent back enough to at least repay his family for nurturing him and raise another generation instead. It was possible they had misconstrued it as severing ties because they couldn’t have known about his karmic cultivation method.

He contemplated actually severing ties, but he nevertheless adhered to his original inclination to continue sending back anything he could spare. Cultivators were encouraged not to get too involved in mortal matters, but his family still had roots as a cultivator clan, so it wasn’t exactly the same. He was still grateful to his family and hoped to see them prosper once again. Also, now that the debt had been settled in his opinion, anything he sent back from here on would be a personal choice.

Furthermore, over the past few days and after all he had seen, Ren had committed to his cultivation manual. The true potential of the elites and the consequences of weakness had both been burned into his mind. If he ever wanted to stand tall and weather the strongest winds, if only to shelter other saplings, then he needed to become strong.

Ren couldn’t afford to be indecisive any more. He had remained cautious and apprehensive about forming ties that might burden him with sin, or worse, feared that he was stealing providence, but the Dao of Karma was clearly more complex than that. The ties he had formed to advance to the second layer of the foundation realm had reassured him.

There was a lot he didn’t understand, terms and concepts that remained far beyond his means at this time, but even from the fragments of the original Causality of Karma, he could tell it was supposed to follow the orthodox law of balance. He had hesitated because he was unsure and afraid.

Whatever he was gaining was obviously being balanced with something. He could clearly recall the sensation of something flowing back through the connections at the moment of his breakthrough, even if he didn’t quite understand what it was. So, he was now ready to move forward.

Of course, that wasn’t a guarantee that it would always remain thus. If he formed poor connections and absorbed too much karmic sin, then it was entirely possible he would follow in the footsteps of the corrupted monk and be led astray. Yet if he maintained balance, adhered to his personal dao, and formed positive connections, then his path couldn’t possibly be a demonic one.

With that resolve, he had embraced the manual and began to be more free with forming connections. He would just have to trust that he could sever ties if a connection ever became too undesirable. His dao and the cultivation method that now supported it were extremely unusual, but the results couldn’t be denied. With 3rd order spirit roots, he was already progressing extraordinarily swiftly without any bottlenecks.

Granted that Ren’s research had informed him better about the nature of spirit roots, but his pace was still significantly faster even after he had made it to the foundation realm. Spirit roots were a necessity to begin cultivation, and they determined the speed at which one could progress through the qi gathering realm. After that, they still helped absorb qi, but the manual one followed was more important.

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A great manual like the ones the sects had offered as prizes would ensure that even a moderately talented disciple could advance to the peak of the foundation establishment realm in a few years instead of the decades it could take with a poor one. Even Ling had already said that she expected it to be a few months before she broke through to the second layer. She had 3rd order spirit roots like him, even joining the sect at the same time. So it had to be his manual that was the cause of his progress in the foundation realm, which meant it was of a relatively high quality.

Ren had long since arrived at the Hall of Scripture by the time he finally pulled away from his racing internal thoughts. Even though the ceremonies had ended just a few bells ago, the elder was back at his post with a new book. Ren peeked surreptitiously and saw the title, “Passionate dual cultivation on the star mountain.”

‘The author of the Passionate Dual Cultivation series certainly has a swift pen to come up with so many books! And why are these cultivators so obsessed with the outdoors?!’ Ren swallowed the words he really wanted to say as he bowed to greet the Elder.