AN: This chapter is the peak of my satire on the cultivation genre, read at your own discretion and cultivate the dao of patience please…
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The human body contained three dantians, each of which could house a core.
The lower dantian in the gut was used by body cultivators, essentially those who associated with techniques of the yang, or physical variety.
The upper dantian, located in the brain, was for mind cultivators, associated with yin.
The middle dantian, located around the solar plexus, was for those who cultivated techniques requiring a balance of yin and yang.
There were entire treatises written about which dantian correlated best with which cultivation technique, and every cultivator had their own understanding.
From Jin’s perspective, the entire debate did not so much serve to create an objective answer, but was rather a dialectic tool with which to engage to find one’s own truth, one’s own dao.
Dao was a hard concept to explain fully, a problem best exemplified by the somewhat confusing sentence of ’the dao is the dao is the dao.’
Jin’s interpretation of the Dao was somewhat limited, but he understood it to be essentially the path which one walked in life. Or rather, the principles which shaped one’s path. It was personal philosophy, however the issue was that in a world in which humans shaped their souls to become vessels and manipulators of the eternal, personal philosophy gained a meaning deeper than just being the guideline to choose between drinking that second beer or sobering up for the funeral.
One’s qi, or rather, one’s cultivation, was inevitably tainted by one’s personal beliefs and was in fact shaped by those. It wasn’t that there was a wrong way to cultivate; after all, there were those cultivating the dao of protecting the weak, just as much as there were those cultivating the dao of slaughtering the weak.
The core principle was that one’s perception of one’s dao should never deviate from one’s path. If you tried to form your path along a certain personal ideal, such as, for example, helping the poor, but then one traversed the journey of cultivation and then, upon looking back, found that one hadn’t gone out of the way to help anyone?
Well, those contradictions on Earth had been the space in which to identify mental illness; here, they immediately caused deviations in cultivation. In the best case, one would stall in one’s progress and only be able to continue, albeit with a weaker foundation, once one addressed the contradiction. Worst case, you just died as the qi in your body and soul, depending on your stage, went on a rampage to escape the false vessel.
In essence, thus, one could conclude that ignoring obvious things such as talent and access to resources, cultivation was at least partially linked to knowing yourself.
Self-reflection.
The question that would come up here would, of course, be, if cultivation was tied to the ability to know oneself, which required emotional maturity, then why were cultivators so fucking stupid?
The answer was two-fold, one a matter of logic, the other a matter of economic incentives.
Firstly, a cultivator who cultivated the Dao of the stupid did not, in fact, have to literally believe that they were stupid; they just had to believe in the righteousness of thought patterns that were, in essence, stupid, but not admitted as such.
Let’s take, for example, the act of being a traditionalist, which in this society meant that extortion through associative reputation was not theft, but justified resource management.
Obviously, if I (honoured second elder’s fiftieth cousin’s second nephew) walk up to you in the street, bump into you, and then extort all your hard-gained wage by claiming that the robe you ruined was passed down from the emperor’s concubine’s brother’s wife’s concubine’s sister’s husband’s milkman, then I would objectively -considering values such as social cohesion, human respect and morality- be a fucking clown. However, if I wholeheartedly believe the traditionalist narrative of justified extortion, then even if I am cultivating the Dao of the idiot, I consciously believe I am cultivating the Dao of the upholder of traditional values.
The dao (being a dickhead) is the dao (being a traditionalist) is the dao (being just).
In that way, everyone was cultivating the Dao of justice, because everyone believed they were in the right. After all, seldom did people do things they understood to be wrong; it’s just that everyone’s understanding of right differed greatly.
Thus, the twisted logic of why so many cultivators advanced despite assuredly having the IQ of an asymmetrically evolved snail with a vitamin D deficiency, reveals itself. The truth is that one could think one’s whole life that one was cultivating the Dao of justice, but instead be cultivating the Dao of the severely mentally disadvantaged primate. As long as one’s actions on the path then followed the guidelines of the severely mentally disadvantaged primate, there was no contradiction.
The economic principles behind the idiocy of cultivators revealed the failed application of incentives inherent to cultivation. One would think at first glance that if cultivation had to be accompanied by the Dao to succeed, then everyone would reflect, learn and grow to understand philosophical principles so as to be better at cultivating.
However, since there was only punishment in contradiction, not simplicity, the actual incentive structure is revealed.
My path is idiotic. My dao is idiotic. This is easy, it works!
My path is wise. My dao is wise. This is hard, it works!
People inevitably choose to do what is easy, not what is difficult.
The reason why most cultivators had the emotional maturity and moral complexity of 7-month-old kindergarten dropouts was because by staying on that level, their path was easier than if they developed a frontal cortex.
Of course, cultivating requires a certain intelligence, but as the Buddha once said, you can be smart while being dumb, and you can be smart while being wise, but never shall wisdom and stupidity intersect.
Or, in other words: A monkey that can successfully launch a tech start-up which sells micro-loans to permanently alcoholised university students is certainly smart, but it is most definitely not wise.
Two questions inevitably pose themselves: What does this have to do with Jin? Was the author dropped on the head as a baby?
The answer to both questions is yes.
The topic of the Dao indeed has much to do with Jin, because Jin too is a cultivator who must express fidelity in following a path so that he may not one day experience cultivation deviation lubrication.
And thus, after much thought and consideration of my dao, I have discovered that I must indeed reject the great honour of becoming a core disciple, for the moment!” Jin finished proudly, fist clasped in his palm in front of him as he stood in front of the Elder committee.
The chubby Elder Pangzi looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, before laughing. Elder Flower looked like she’d been forced to eat a pile of crap. The elderly Elder in charge of the core ring of the Illusion Room Sect just looked confused.
“The dao is the dao is the dao?” Elder Pangzi muttered in between wheezes of laughter as his jowls quivered majestically.
“Indeed!” Jin exclaimed happily inside the wooden and solitary pagoda in which he’d been summoned once it was revealed that he’d finally succeeded in forming a core, and thus entered the core formation stage.
“As interesting as that was to listen to,” Elder Flower eventually deadpanned. “This doesn’t answer two main questions. Namely, why exactly is becoming a core disciple not congruent with your dao and secondly, why you formed your core in the middle dantian!?”
“At this point, I can only say,” Jin started with a sigh. “The heavens sure are mysterious!”
A wave of suffocating killing intent slammed into Jin, and he instinctively flinched back when he saw both Elders around Flower having to jump in to restrain her against drawing her sword and probably doing something unpleasant with it.
“I’ll show you ***** ******* mysterious ******** right up your ***** **** ********* *******!” Elder Flower screamed with bloodshot eyes as she single-handedly started forcing her way through two nascent soul cultivators.
“But I can of course try to explain my thinking!” Jin quickly interjected
“Please do!” the core ring Elder exclaimed with a red face after Elder Flower calmed down somewhat.
“The answer to why I must now reject this promotion, to avoid a violent and explosive dao contradiction, you understand, is directly tied to why I placed my core into my dantian,” Jin started quickly, at which point the Elders finally took a step back to respectively guffaw, glare and look confusedly at him.
“I have been tormented recently by the thought of leaving behind my work colleagues, with whom I have developed an excellent rapport, to leave for the core ring, which, as we know, is a tad isolated!” Jin exclaimed.
The Elder in charge of the core ring thankfully didn’t take that as a critique, which perhaps indicated that he was cultivating the Dao of the enlightened centrist. “The disciples there all have the potential to become Elders; they must not be distracted!”
“Exactly!” Jin agreed loudly. “But the problem is that I benefit greatly in my cultivation and work by being surrounded by a stable environment with people with whom I have grown familiar!”
“In other words, you’ll throw away years of potential progress for sentimentality! The rules of allowing you to access more advanced materials necessitate you being a core disciple!” Elder Flower exclaimed angrily while throwing up her jade-like, anger-red hands.
“Maybe the real core ring was the friends we made along the way?” Elder Pangzi mused philosophically.
Jin nodded happily. “Perhaps! Regardless, I am certainly attached to the idea of continuing to benefit from my positive work environment, which has recently released the widely successful Skyrim. However, I am also ambitious enough to want to advance in my cultivation; therefore, I had an idea.”
“Oh, please not another fuckin-…”
“Consulting myself on my dao, I have determined that I can stay in the inner ring for the length of one more project, during which I can fully master my fundamental skills and create a scenario meritorious enough to also allow my core companions to advance to core disciple!”
“Your two friends are close, but the requirement is not strictly based on lifetime sect contribution points,” the elderly Elder pointed out. “It is also based on cultivation. Becoming a core disciple without entering the core formation stage is out of the question.”
Jin nodded. “During this time, I will be putting in all my effort into helping my colleagues advance in their cultivation, knowing that I will save more time and effort in the future as they work off their immense debt to me like the talentless slaves that they are.”
“And what if they fail, will you die without complaint if these lost years are what eventually prevent you from reaching the final step?” Elder Flower asked sarcastically.
“That is up to interpretation, after all, having reflected on my dao, my fear is that I will rather face a large setback in cultivation if I do not try when I could,” Jin shot back.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a disciple that refused a promotion,” Elder Pangzi mused.
“Objection, your honour!” Jin exclaimed. “Delayed a promotion!”
“Of course,” the fat man said with a roll of his eyes.
“And the middle dantian?” Elder Flower asked, seeming finally more tired than angry.
“Well, considering that I recently realised that my dao consists of walking the middle path, I decided that the middle dantian was the place (for my core) to be.”
“There has never been an Illusion Room Sect cultivator who did not cultivate the upper dantian,” Elder Flower said slowly.
Jin obviously knew the real reason why he’d picked the middle dantian, but he couldn’t reveal that right now by shouting ‘Then every Illusion Room Sect cultivator up to this point was wrong!’ Instead, he simply bowed his head.
“Elder Flower, I simply foolishly believed that I could combine the way of the warrior with the way of the illusionist. Please forgive my impertinence!” He bowed.
“We can’t force him, can we?” Elder Pangzi asked.
“If his cultivation actually deviates…” the elderly Elder muttered quietly.
Elder Flower threw Jin one more glare, indicating they’d be having words about this later. “Meeting! Adjourned!” she screamed through gritted teeth.
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Jin stepped back into his apartment and paused as he beheld the scene there.
A cake, sake and cups on the table, Hashimi and Francis sitting down.
“Congratulations!!!” They shouted together happily, seemingly already deep in their cups.
Jin shook his head, immediately bringing a halt to the celebrations. “No need!” he exclaimed, putting his hands on his hips. “I refused!”
Silence.
“You primate!”
“It should have been me!”
Jin raised his hands to quiet down the room. “I have made a revolutionary decision from the depths of my magnanimous soul,” he announced calmly.
“And what’s that, you fucking ass!?” Francis shouted.
Jin pointed at the two of them with his two pointer fingers. “I have decided that we’re doing one last project together to gather points, during which I will whip you two talentless sloths into cultivation shape! You’ll owe me for the rest of your fucking eternal life, you bipedal dogs! My evil plan is to enslave you through gratitude and have you slave away on my scenarios for the rest of your miserable life!”
“You shouldn’t have!” Francis complained while pulling at his white hair.
“You fucking idiot!” Hashimi shouted with a red face.
“Shut up!” Jin screamed right back, walked over to the desk, slapped both of them on the head with his now core formation elevated force, picked up the bottle of sake and took a large gulp. He slammed it down, breaking the container and spilling alcohol everywhere. “I made this decision for you, so you better appreciate it! I’m the strongest now, so I do what I fucking want, when I fucking want it, to whomever I fucking will it!” he shouted.
Then, for emphasis, one last scream.
“That’s my ninja way!”
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The End.
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AN: I’m joking of course, this isn’t the end, but, I do have to announce one thing. At chapter 96, I think I have officially reached the second part of the story, for which I am currently plotting away. This and being sick actually deleted my entire VGC backlog recently. I literally do not have chapter 97 yet, which is very rare for me. For these reasons I will have to skip one update of VGC to collect myself, before continuing with the regular schedule after. I have to do a deep dive on researching Monster Hunter too. Thank you for your understanding! I will replace the chapter with a POV poll to still offer something that week. Otherwise consider this the end of a massive Book 1 clocking in at about 300k words (for which I have never before in 2 years missed an update!)