40: Chapter 40 Opening the Dharma Teachings

A year's time flashed by in the blink of an eye.

The spirit lotus in Lotus Pier were still blooming magnificently, exactly the same as the previous year.

The few ancient pine trees in the pier remained just as they always were, their needles dripping with a verdant green. Even though the maple leaves down the mountain in Baishan County had turned crimson across half the sky, not a single yellow leaf could be found among the pine branches.

It seemed as though not a single lotus flower in the pond had ever faded; if one did not carefully look at the newly sprouted tender lotus roots beneath the stems, one could hardly perceive that another spring and autumn had passed.

The news of opening the altar had been spread three days ago.

The Wang Family dispatched more than thirty Disciples to head separately to the Loose Cultivator markets in Baishan County, Xiaoshan County, and Funiu County, handing invitation letters one by one into the hands of those Loose Cultivators who usually couldn't even manage to become Sect handymen.

There were only a few sparse lines of words on the invitation letter: "Master Chongyang will open the altar to lecture on the Dao at the southern foothills of Wogui Mountain. All Loose Cultivators of our Yue State, regardless of cultivation level, may come to listen to the lecture."

For how many years had a Foundation Establishment Immortal Master opening the altar to lecture on the Dao not occurred in the territory of the Three Counties?

The last time was when an inner Sect Elder of the Spirit Sword Sect passed through Baishan County and lectured at the county yamen for a day.

On that day, the threshold of the county yamen was trampled and collapsed by the Loose Cultivators who rushed over upon hearing the news.

And what that Elder lectured on was merely insights on breaking through bottlenecks in the Early Stage of Qi Refining; in terms of weight, it was far inferior to the Qi Refining Foundation Treatise》 that Wang Chongyang was going to lecture on this time.

Although the Qi Refining Foundation Treatise》 was named "Foundation", it was the condensation of Wang Chongyang's lifelong cultivation insights.

From guiding Qi into the body to transforming spiritual power into liquid, from the dredging of the Meridians to the solidification of the Dantian, every bottleneck that every Qi Refining Cultivator must go through allegedly had detailed analyses in this treatise.

For Loose Cultivators, this was equivalent to directly placing the cultivation insights that only Sect and Family Disciples could come into contact with right before them.

As the news spread, the Loose Cultivators of the Three Counties ran to tell each other, and in barely two days, it had spread across hundreds of miles around.

The seventh day of the tenth month, clear skies.

At the southern foothills of Wogui Mountain, a naturally formed stone terrace slanted out from the mountainside, resembling a giant turtle's outstretched paw, stepping steadily above the sea of clouds.

The stone terrace was a full hundred zhang square, and several gnarled old pines grew on its edges. Beneath the pines were bluestones smoothed like mirrors by the mountain winds all year round.

Standing on the stone terrace and looking south, layers upon layers of peaks were fully visible in a glance, with clouds and mist churning like a tide beneath one's feet.

Before dawn had broken, there were already figures of people on the stone terrace.

The first to arrive were two Loose Cultivators, one old and one young. The old person wore a gray cloth Daoist robe washed to a pale white, with frayed cuffs, and carried an iron sword wrapped tightly round and round with cloth strips on their back.

The younger one was his Disciple, around fifteen or sixteen years old, with Fourth-grade Spiritual Roots, yet his eyes were so bright as if he had seen something extraordinary.

The two of them had set out from Funiu County last night, hurrying along mountain paths for an entire night.

"Master, let's wait right here." The youth wiped a relatively flat bluestone over and over again with his sleeve, supporting the old Daoist to sit down.

After the old Daoist sat down, he groped out half of a hard spirit rice cake from his bosom, broke off half, and handed it to the Disciple.

He gazed at that empty stone terrace, his vision somewhat blurred in the morning mist.

"A Foundation Establishment Immortal Master is personally lecturing on the Dao. In all my forty years of cultivating the Dao, this is the very first time I've caught up with it. You are luckier than Master."

The youth held the cake in his mouth and said indistinctly, "When I succeed in my cultivation, I will also let Master enjoy blessings."

The old Daoist did not answer, only reaching out a rough hand to pat the Disciple's head.

Just after the Chen hour, the people on the stone terrace began to increase.

Loose Cultivators either steered dilapidated Flying Swords to land crookedly, or rode first-rank or half-rank Spirit Beasts as they bumped along to arrive.

More people relied on their own two legs, draping themselves in morning dew and mountain wind to show sincerity, climbing up step by step from the foot of the mountain.

By the early Si hour, no less than a hundred people had gathered on the stone terrace, which almost encompassed the vast majority of Loose Cultivators in Wanshan County.

They wore diverse clothing: some were hunting Cultivators in coarse cloth short garments, some were down-and-out aristocratic Family scions wearing faded long gowns, some were mysterious women wearing bamboo hats and black gauze covering their faces, and there were also a few desperate outlaws still carrying a bloody scent on their bodies, obviously having just crawled out of the Yao Beast Forest.

But today, everyone tacitly put away their past guard and hostility.

No one drew their sword, no one quarreled, and even the scramble for seats that most easily triggered conflicts on ordinary days appeared much more polite.

Those who arrived early consciously sat on the bluestones in the front row, those who arrived later went to the back rows, and those who arrived even later simply sat cross-legged under the pine trees at the edge of the stone terrace.

In a gathering of over a hundred people, it was so quiet that only the rustling sound of the mountain wind passing through the pine needles and a few cries of cranes coming from afar remained.

After another hour, Cultivators from slightly farther places also slowly arrived, and the number of people had reached two hundred.

Directing one's gaze to the front of the stone terrace, a three-chi-high stone platform had been temporarily erected.

The stone platform was unadorned, simply piled together from several bluestones, with an old rush cushion spread across its surface.

Standing by the side of the platform were several Disciples dressed in Wang Family attire. The leader had a cyan jade pendant hung at their waist, which was precisely the personal token of Wang Yaozu, symbolizing the identity of the Wang Family head.

Wang Yaozu stood under an old pine on the east side of the stone platform, with his hands behind his back gazing at the increasing number of Loose Cultivators on the stone terrace, his expression as calm as water, but actually blooming with joy in his heart.

The formal attire he wore today was only worn during the Wang Family's ancestor worship: a cyan background with silver patterns, and a blue lotus embroidered on the cuffs.

The morning light fell upon his graying temples, making those few strands of white hair shine slightly.

A Shou-generation Disciple hurried to his side and said in a lowered voice.

"Family Head, there are already over two hundred and thirty people on the stone terrace, and people are still hurrying up the mountain path."

"The Loose Cultivators coming from Funiu County said that on the way, they ran into people from the Ning Family of Xiaoshan County. The two sides almost came to blows, but they were persuaded apart by our people."

Wang Yaozu nodded slightly: "Pass on my words: today, regardless of whether they are Loose Cultivators or Family Cultivators, whoever manages to ascend the mountain is a guest of our Wang Family."

"Let them temporarily put aside their grudges; whoever stirs up trouble during the lecture period will be considered an enemy of our Wang Family."

That Disciple acknowledged the order, turned around, and left in quick steps.

Wang Yaozu's gaze slowly swept across the stone terrace, landing in an inconspicuous corner.

Two Loose Cultivators sat there: one had a fair and beardless face, wearing a somewhat old cyan gown, looking like a failed scholar.

The other had a lean figure, squatting beneath a pine tree, holding a long saber wrapped in tattered cloth in their arms, their eyeballs spinning around briskly.

Outwardly, the aura of these two people did not look high, being indistinguishable from the ordinary Loose Cultivators around them.

However, Wang Yaozu had managed the Wang Family for decades, so his vision and life experience were naturally not ordinary. No matter how well the two disguised themselves, Wang Yaozu still perceived that they were fundamentally not Loose Cultivators, and their cultivation levels were not low, being at least Cultivators who had stepped into the Late Stage of Qi Refining for many years.

The members of the Wang Family were busy maintaining order at this moment; the Yao-generation were fine, but the Shou-generation were somewhat flustered and overwhelmed.

After all, it was the first time Lotus Pier was entertaining so many Cultivators simultaneously.

"If Ren'er were here, that would be great. With his prestige among his peers, he would definitely be able to arrange everything properly."