Dragon Canon

Chapter 40: Learn Well

The next couple classes were A History of Tang, Heaven and Earth Theory, Fortune Theory, and Technique Theory respectively.

Setting A History of Tang aside, Heaven and Earth Theory and Fortune Theory were cultivation courses. Heaven and Earth Theory addressed the cyclical movements of heavenly timing and geography. It also taught how to adapt to environmental changes during cultivation to more efficiently absorb the essences of heaven and earth, thereby accelerating one’s cultivation speed.

The first lesson of Heaven and Earth Theory took place on a mountain outside of the Enlightenment Hall. The instructor had left them to search for their ideal cultivation spots after teaching them the theory. There was no single best location for everyone as everyone’s foundation, talent, and future path was different. Thus, everyone had their own ideal cultivation spot.

Wei Yuan discovered that the higher the elevation, the faster he cultivated. Thus, he chose to cultivate at the mountaintop. Unfortunately, he arrived at his destination a little too late. The spot had already been claimed by Bao Yun and Xiao Yu.

The girl strode up to him as soon as she saw him and grabbed his hand. She said affectionately, “You’re here, Junior Brother Wei. Let’s cultivate together!”

Her hand felt cool, slippery, and so soft that it was almost boneless to touch. For whatever reason, Wei Yuan felt fidgety and restless when he held her hand. He wanted to pull away, but Bao Yun kept a firm grip on his hand. His etiquette lessons taught him that throwing her hand off was an incredibly rude gesture that would almost certainly invite criticism, so he had no choice but to endure it.

They were walking for a bit when suddenly, Bao Yun staggered as if she accidentally tripped on something. Wei Yuan hurriedly reached out to catch her, but he had just lifted a foot when his whole body suddenly floated into the air. The next thing he knew, he had flown over the mountaintop. He rolled down the slope uncontrollably for a dozen zhang or so before he was finally able to arrest himself.

Bao Yun hurriedly ran over to him and supported him. She said anxiously, “Are you okay, junior brother? You’re not hurt, are you? How can you be so careless?”

As the incident was sudden, Wei Yuan couldn’t tell if he fell because he was just careless, or some other factor. In any case, he couldn’t find a reason to turn down Bao Yun’s goodwill and so allowed her to pull him to his feet. After that, she carried him to a fairly flat area and sat down.

To Wei Yuan’s surprise, this new spot was almost as good as the mountaintop for his cultivation. Thus, he decided to just stay. Bao Yun would coo at him and instruct him to take better care for himself for a bit before finally returning to the mountaintop.

Their first lesson on Heaven and Earth Theory ended just like that.

Fortune Theory was a course that only became popular in the past three hundred years. It was also the newest course out of everything. Over a thousand years ago, people who were blessed with fortune were extremely rare, and almost all of them had become titans in their own right. That was why the sect always gave it their all to nurture such people. If someone like that were to appear in a mortal court, then they were either the founding figure of a country or an important minister

A person who was blessed by great fate was called a Chosen One. They were existences that even immortal sects wished to obtain and the cause behind countless schemes and bloody conflicts.

For generations, the average number of people who were blessed with fortune were relatively stable. Sometimes there were more, and sometimes there were less. This state of things lasted until four hundred years ago where the total amount of fortune in the whole world suddenly began increasing dramatically. People who were blessed with fortune began emerging en masse, and even Chosen Ones were appearing at a rapid rate. Today, the total amount of fortune was still increasing, and so was the average number of people who were blessed with fortune.

Because of this, the way the sects treated someone who was blessed with fortune had changed. In the past, such people would have received the full support of the entire sect. Now, they were just given a little more attention and afforded a little more resources than normal.

In the past, someone who boasted a fortune of one zhang in the aptitude test would have been called a Chosen One and heralded as the future of humanity. But today, Wei Yuan’s term alone boasted six people with a fortune of one zhang. In fact, two of them failed to make it on the Palace of Absolute Beginning’s priority list because their foundation wasn’t up to snuff. If this was a thousand years ago, forget a slightly subpar foundation, they would have showered even an utterly talentless person with enough resources to become a bonafide genius of their age.

As the amount of fortune increased, so did the number of fortune-related researches and fortune-based cultivation arts. Today, there were many mature cultivation methodologies that were based on fortune. In fact, fortune no longer just referred to the fortune of an individual. It was now separated into great fate, fate, fengshui, and destiny. It encompassed astrology, physiognomy, fengshui, and many other fields of knowledge. It was an extremely important part of one’s cultivation.

A so-called Chosen One referred to someone who was blessed by great fate. Great fate was such a great, vast thing that it was completely beyond the ability of a human to withstand. This was why the world was unchanging for eons. Forget a couple Chosen Ones, the entire human race itself was just a small splash in the eternal river of existence. They could go extinct, and it wouldn’t affect the world even a little.

As the amount of fortune increased, its effects on an individual also diminished proportionally. That said, it was still better than having no fortune at all. Thus, some aristocratic families eventually invented fortune-transferring methods to extract one’s fortune and apply them to their own clansmen. From that point onward, being blessed with fortune was no longer purely a benefit. Such a person had to seek out opportunities and avoid the watchful gazes of the aristocratic families. Otherwise, everything they had accumulated might just fall into another person’s hand.

Over time, people came to realize that being born in the right womb was also a kind of fortune. The top-tier kind.

Finally, Technique Theory was a course on the various techniques one would use during their cultivation journey. It wasn’t just combat arts either. The art of healing, artifact forging, pill making, talismans, shamanic practices, gu poison and more were taught as well.

The Palace of Absolute Beginning wasn’t just godlike in terms of Dao arts. The Mastercraft Hall was famed for their artifact-forging, the Mother Nature Hall bore generations of pill-making legacies, the Xuanming Hall was founded on the art of healing, so on and so forth. Thus, the class delved quite deep into the Dao of pill-making and artifact-forging.

Alas, the Palace wasn’t perfect. Their mastery of shamanic practices and gu poison were shallow, and it was reflected in their teachings.

Cultivation was a cultivator’s highest priority during the Body-tempering stage. Everything else was secondary. That was why the Palace had lumped all of these not-so-important subjects into one course.

A week went by like that, and the students had finally completed the first round of their curriculum. On the eighth and ninth day, it was back to A Comprehensive History of the Human Race and Foundational Studies of the Path to Immortality.

Daoist Di Xia didn’t show up to teach Foundational Studies of the Path to Immortality, however. Instead, it was Feng Chutang who took his place.

The instructor was smiling and looking as amiable as ever. He took no offense even when a student had played a joke on him. For this lesson, he didn’t pick up where Daoist Di Xia had left off. Instead, he jumped all the way to the cut-off point between the Ancient Eras and the Present Era—a.k.a the founding of the Great Tang Dynasty and the advent of the Sect Unified Examination—and began his lesson there.

“Daoist Di Xia is currently in secluded cultivation, so I’ll be talking about the origin of the Sect Unified Examination and why it was treated as the dividing point between the Ancient Eras and the Present Era.”

Every student stood up straight and concentrated intently. Feng Chutang had to have a reason for making his declaration, and the students had already learned during the previous two lessons that much of the contents of his lecture could not be found in the history books at all. Or rather, one had to go through a ton of history books and compile countless historical accounts into one to paint a rough picture. Although it was just a rough picture, it was undeniably an important part of history. One could even go as far as to say that one had not truly learned their history without it.

The students who hailed from aristocratic families had received careful education since childhood and thus understood why many history books were unwilling to explain many historical events in full detail. To put it simply, it was to avoid incurring the wrath of a Son of Heaven or a venerable one.

But this was precisely why they realized just how sharp and knowledgeable Feng Chutang was, and why they all paid him their full attention no matter how harmless or genial he acted. After all, the stuff he taught in class could not be found in any history book, and their own seniors might not necessarily be experts in history.