9: The Dilemma of Enlightenment

The days passed like the creaky old waterwheel at the village entrance, turning round and round, grinding through the morning dew and the setting sun at a leisurely pace.

Li Qinghe's life was clearly divided into three parts.

Just as the sky began to gray and the first rooster crowed, he had to get up along with his father, Li Dashan, and his three older brothers.

After hastily scarfing down a few mouthfuls of watery porridge thin enough to see his reflection in, he would shoulder a polished hoe and step onto the dew-covered ridges, plunging headfirst into the family's few acres of meager fields.

The scent of earth rushed at him, mixed with the smells of green grass and cow dung.

The sun had not yet shown its face, and the air was cool and refreshing.

Li Qinghe was small and had the least strength, so he naturally did the lightest work—weeding.

He bent over, carefully identifying weeds among the rows of lush green crops, pulling those nutrient-stealing invaders out by the roots and piling them on the ridges.

His eldest brother, LiGreen Mountain, was like a silent, powerful ox, swinging a heavy hoe to turn the compacted hard soil stroke by stroke, deeply and steadily; beads of sweat soon rolled down his dark back.

His second brother, Li Qinglin, was nimble, following behind their father to sow seeds and cover them with soil. From time to time, he would straighten his back, wipe his sweat, and crack a joke, making the nearby third brother, Li Qingfeng, chuckle.

Li Qingfeng was responsible for carrying water. Two modest wooden buckets weighed down on his newly broadened shoulders as he shuttled back and forth between the ridges and the irrigation canal, his footsteps making a thumping sound on the mud.

“Qinghe, look carefully. Don't pull the sprouts out as weeds!”

His father, Li Dashan, straightened up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried the characteristic sincerity of a farmer.

“I know, Dad.”

Li Qinghe responded. His voice was quiet, but it no longer held the vagueness of the past.

He took his weeding seriously; though he was slow, he almost never made a mistake.

Occasionally, he would look up and see the backs of his father and brothers, soaked in sweat, rising and falling in the morning light. A heavy sense of security filled his heart.

This was his root.

When the sun became harsh, Li Dashan waved his hand.

“Alright, Qingfeng, Qinghe, you two head to the Clan School. Don't be late for Old Scholar's session.”

As if granted a grand pardon, Li Qingfeng threw his shoulder pole onto the ground, grabbed Li Qinghe, and ran.

Li Qinghe patted the mud off his hands, called out a goodbye to his father and older brothers, and followed his third brother toward the east end of the village.

In the Clan School, there was still that smell of aged wood mixed with low-quality ink.

Old Scholar, Li Shouwen, was chanting 'At man's beginning, his nature is fundamentally good' in a drawn-out tone.

Li Qinghe sat properly next to Li Qingfeng, with a dog-eared copy of the 'Thousand Character Classic' spread out before him.

He recognized these characters, of course. But he had to pretend.

He mimicked the other children, brow slightly furrowed, fingers clumsily following Old Scholar's pointer across the worn pages, chanting along in a muddled voice.

Occasionally, when Old Scholar called his name to ask a question, he would deliberately wait half a beat and answer stutteringly, his eyes holding a perfectly measured look of confusion.

“Mm, he's just begun to awaken. To be able to recite like this is not easy for him.”

Old Scholar stroked his white beard, showing a bit of tolerance for his 'dullness'.

Li Qingfeng, meanwhile, was making faces and silently mouthing hints to him. Li Qinghe found it amusing but had to maintain a look of sudden realization.

After eating his packed grain cakes at the school for lunch, Li Qinghe would return to the fields if there were no afternoon classes.

His strength was still low, and he couldn't do heavy labor, so he helped pick up the clods of earth that had been turned over or followed behind his second brother to sow seeds.

During breaks, the whole family would sit in the shade of a tree by the ridge to drink water.

His second brother, Li Qinglin, would tell half-true, half-fictional tall tales he'd heard from peddlers, making everyone laugh.

Li Qingfeng would vividly mimic Old Scholar's head-swaying mannerisms, only to be swatted on the back of the head by the eldest brother.

“Show some respect!”

Li Qinghe laughed along, watching his brothers play. Feeling the heat of sweat sticking his clothes to his skin and the brief coolness of the shade, the irritation he felt from his stagnant cultivation seemed to evaporate slightly in this mundane warmth.

[Ding!]

Every day at the midnight hour, that cold notification never failed to arrive.

[Today's Intel (Lifestyle): On the old mulberry tree at the back wall of Butcher Zhang's house at the west end of the village, an abandoned beehive hangs on a south-facing branch. The remaining wild honey inside has solidified into chunks; it is edible if carefully removed.]

[Today's Intel (Lifestyle): Tomorrow, Carpenter Zhao at the east end of the village is marrying off his daughter. There will be leftovers from the banquet. If Madam Li Zhang brings people to help in the kitchen, she can obtain half a bowl of lard cracklings.]

[Today's Intel (Lifestyle): The wild onions on the sunny slope of the back mountain have grown exceptionally plump and tender due to the light rain a few days ago. They can be harvested to make pancakes.]

The information remained trivial, and Li Qinghe noted it down silently.

The next day, he 'accidentally' discovered the beehive. When he carefully retrieved several chunks of solidified honey and handed them to his mother, Madam Li Zhang, he was met with a look of both surprise and worry.

“You child, it's so dangerous to climb that high!”

The honey was dissolved in warm water, and everyone received a small sip. That rare hint of sweetness brightened the entire afternoon.

On the day of the kitchen help, he followed behind his mother and obediently washed dishes in Carpenter Zhao's backyard.

After finishing the work, they indeed received half a bowl of glistening, fragrant lard cracklings.

Madam Li Zhang brought it back like a treasure. That evening, she chopped them up and mixed them into the wild vegetable porridge. That tiny bit of oily flavor brought a rare sense of satisfaction to the whole family's dinner.

Li Dashan chewed his pancake and muttered a compliment.

“Qinghe has become sensible.”

The days slipped by in this blend of mundane labor, study, and the improvements brought by occasional bits of 'good luck'.

A month's time had left its mark on Li Qinghe.

His face had more color, no longer the deathly pale of before. Though his limbs were still thin, they seemed sturdier.

His relationship with his three older brothers had also become closer and more natural.

The eldest brother was honest and spoke little, but he would help pull the distant weeds that Li Qinghe couldn't reach while weeding.

The second brother loved to tease him, often handing him a freshly caught grasshopper or a particularly round pebble.

The third brother, Li Qingfeng, treated him as a 'comrade-in-arms' in their shared struggle against Old Scholar's 'chanting' and the heavy farm work.

Only in the dead of night, when he sat alone on the blue stone in the stream bathed in the cold moonlight, would the anxiety masked by his daily life clearly resurface.

It had been a month!

Under continuous cultivation, the 'seed' in his Dantian had indeed grown by a circle, and the warmth it emitted was much more stable and clear.

Every time he performed Guiding Qi into the Body, that stream of heat was also slightly thicker than at the beginning.

However, deep within the center of his brow, that place of Chaos—the [Enlightenment] pulse gate that he spent countless efforts trying to construct every night—remained like a stubborn dead knot!

That faint speck of light remained, like a stubborn and fragile little spark.

Every night, he carefully guided that slightly strengthened Spiritual Qi from his Dantian, following that minute path that almost didn't exist, struggling upstream to strike at the Chaos in his brow.

Every time the Spiritual Qi reached its destination, he exerted all his strength, using his will to 'hammer' and 'condense' it, trying to shape it into a stable foundation stone.

But every time, the result was the same!

Either the Spiritual Qi would hit an invisible bronze wall, exhausting its strength without moving it an inch before collapsing back to the Dantian.

Or it would barely leave a slightly brighter mark in the Chaos, yet it remained far from becoming a truly stable 'Gate'! Moreover, that mark could not be communicated with at all, unable to guide even a shred of power to circulate through his body.

Failure! Failure! Still failure!

Sweat slid down Li Qinghe's temples and dripped onto the cold blue stone.

He opened his eyes tiredly, looking at the stream reflecting the stars and moon, a surge of frustration trapped in his chest.

Why? The Legacy diagrams were crystal clear, and the construction method was written plainly. Why wasn't it working?

He forced himself to calm down, no longer rushing to try another attempt.

His mind sank deep into his consciousness, carefully 'reading' the Spirit Enlightenment Volume of the Moon Lake Spirit Stream Chapter imprinted in his mind.

[...The Gate of Enlightenment is the place where the spiritual light first shines, a bridge connecting the internal and external. Constructing this gate is not the work of a single day; it requires a copious amount of Qi, like a converging stream, to have the power to break through the walls and open the light...]

[...If the Qi is as thin as silk, forcing a breakthrough is like an ant trying to shake a tree—it merely exhausts the spirit and harms the Origin...]

[...Guiding Qi into the Body is the foundation, but to open the Spirit Gate, the Qi in the Dantian must be as full as a small pond. When channeled, it should have the momentum of a surging river...]

Li Qinghe's gaze was fixed intensely on the lines: 'Qi as thin as silk, forcing a breakthrough... merely exhausts the spirit', 'Qi in the Dantian must be as full as a small pond', and 'momentum of a surging river'!

It was like a sudden Enlightenment!

He suddenly clenched his fists, his nails almost sinking into his palms!

It wasn't that the method was wrong! It was that the 'material' wasn't enough!

The Spiritual Qi he had obtained from Guiding Qi into the Body was, at most, a tiny trickling ditch—pitifully thin! To construct the [Enlightenment] pulse gate, what was needed was the power of a river capable of forming a 'surging momentum'! It was the accumulation of a full pond!

Using the flow of a tiny ditch to strike a heavy dam and build a stable gate?

Wasn't that just a fool's dream?

No wonder every attempt ended in a bloody head and no results!

It wasn't that the gate was too strong; it was that he himself was too weak! The power simply wasn't sufficient!

“So that's it... so that's it!”

Li Qinghe murmured to himself, his voice barely audible over the splashing water, yet carrying a bitterness of sudden realization.

In the path of Spirit Enlightenment, the first step of Guiding Qi into the Body was the threshold, but the second step of constructing the pulse gate was the true test!

And the core of that test was accumulation! It was slow, painstaking work!

It was the process of making that tiny bit of Spiritual Qi in the Dantian grow from 'silk' to a 'stream', and then to a 'river'!

This required time and a massive accumulation of Spiritual Qi!

It was much longer and more difficult than he had previously anticipated!

He looked down at his hands—thin, with calluses from farm work.

The path ahead remained clear, yet it was far more rugged and long than he had imagined.

The moonlight was cold, and the stream flowed ceaselessly.

Li Qinghe took a deep breath of the cool, damp air, suppressing the impatience in his heart.

It cannot be rushed.

Then, I shall continue to accumulate.