The world calls him peerless in both Confucianism and martial arts, a genius unseen in a thousand years.
A lie.
Xiao Jingyan has never practiced martial arts. He merely uses Confucian literary qi to imitate the circulation of true qi. His combat strength is real, but his realm is false. Commanding armies through military strategy? He borrows the authority of the imperial dynasty. Cultivating immortality and breaking formations? He relies on investigating the nature of things. Everything comes from the Confucian Path, everything is borrowed.
The ironclad law of this world: the five paths are fundamentally different and cannot be practiced together. The Confucian Path enters the mortal world and becomes a prisoner; the Martial Path burns away one's life and humanity; the Military Path turns saints into slaves; ascending to immortality through cultivation means exile; and the Gu Path mutates into a catastrophe. Each path demands a price, and no one can have it all.
He governs alongside the Seventh Prince and debates the Dao with Lin Qinghan, falling in love with her. Yet in the Northern Wilderness War, he burns through all his literary qi and falls in realm. Even imitation has its limits.
On the day he reaches the pinnacle as a Literary Sage, he finally learns that the ultimate Confucian Path is a prison of civilization: to live as long as all living beings is to be bound together with them. Immortal, yet unable to leave.
So he establishes a new order: let the five paths coexist, and let no single one rule alone.
> “I use the Confucian Path to imitate all techniques, only to tell the world this: all techniques return to Confucianism, and Confucianism, too, is imprisoned by all living beings.”
