Seeking the Dao, Returning to Dust

The Dao is hidden in the dust, and the dust bears the Dao. In the morning mist of a small town in the mortal realm, Su Chen clutches the half of a green-patterned stone left by his parents. His fingertips feel dried blood and dirt. That night, blood cultivators swept through the town. The stench of scorched wood as flames licked the window, and the sudden glimmer from the stone, became his first glimpse of the Dao. He realized that the Great Dao was no distant, ethereal thing in the clouds. It was hidden in the obsessions of a mortal world steeped in blood. Winds from the nine regions of the spirit realm blew past the bone flutes of the Eastern Wasteland tribes, skimmed the coral reefs of the Southern Sea Dragon Palace, and carried the stench of blood from the Western Region’s demon caves before finally settling on the stone steps outside the Qingyun Sect. As Su Chen practiced his swordsmanship in the morning dew, fragments of the Dao’s source burned in his dantian, while the remnant soul of the Old Ghost chuckled in his sea of consciousness. “Are you cultivating the Dao, or just getting caught up in the conflicts of these nine regions?” He had seen the greed beneath the white robes of the Heavenly Dao Alliance cultivators and the struggle in the blood-red eyes of the Heavenly Demon Sect disciples. He had chewed bloody beast meat alongside a tribal girl and listened to the Dragon Palace princess speak of time frozen in the depths of the sea. At the Dao Source Conference, the magical light of three factions tore through the sky, and suddenly he understood: the so-called exhaustion of the Dao’s source was not the death of spiritual energy. It was cultivators placing the Dao on an altar and forgetting that it was meant to grow in the dust. Deep in the Myriad Demon Cavern, the broken ascension passage gleamed coldly. The Old Ghost said that the ancient immortals had sealed it to keep out demons from beyond the realm, but also because they feared later cultivators would lose their connection to the mortal world, chasing the Dao and forgetting to protect it. Su Chen placed the seven fragments of the Dao’s source into the formation’s eye. Their warmth mingled with the dust of the nine regions in his palm. So ascension was never the end. The so-called Great Dao meant protecting a patch of land and a group of people in the mortal world, and turning blood and tears, laughter and pain, into the shape of the Dao. The wind stirs the dust.