Now how exactly did the scroll in his hand know whether or not he was "endeavouring" to understand it or not? She had been talking about more of that aligned-with-the-world nonsense, which Junjie was still sceptical about. Even in a world of mythical powers and inexhaustible lifespans, the world knowing whether or not a person was aligned with it didn't sound very logical. What did he know, though? Everything he had found out in the past day had been rather shocking, so he was growing somewhat immune to it.
It was then that Lihua's voice abruptly interrupted his inner monologue.
"Are you just going to stand there all day? Go inside and try comprehending it already! Come out in an hour and we'll test your comprehension abilities." She was probably going to beat him.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Junjie rushed inside. Who would just sit around and wait to get thrashed? Retreating back to his room at breakneck speed, he quickly sat down and opened the Xu family's body refining technique.
Like before, the words seemed out of his reach, as if they were dancing on the surface of the scroll. Undeterred, Junjie stared at the scroll. What exactly was he looking for here? How could he "align" himself with the world and comprehend this thing?
Taking deep breaths, he calmed his mind.
'Time to throw logic out the window; that clearly doesn't apply here.'
He carefully considered what he needed to understand these magical, dancing words. He first asked himself a simple question.
What exactly is a cultivator?
Well, cultivators were, from what he heard, greedy bastards who only concerned themselves with one thing. Preserving their own life. How selfish and foreign that sounded, yet... it also sounded like something he could resonate with. Who would want to stick around for a measly hundred or so years, only to then be forever condemned to memory and eventually forgotten entirely? No one wants to be forgotten because that, perhaps, is the scariest thing in the world.
With that line of thinking, he asked himself another simple question.
What exactly is a body refiner?
It was someone who willingly underwent torture in pursuit of power. Their desire for power and longevity was not dissimilar to regular cultivators; however, there was one key difference.
When body refiners strove to better themselves, they did not steal from the world but rather made no difference. Their presence did not rob the world of its energy, but instead they sustained themselves. Did that necessarily make body refiners better than cultivators?
No, that was too arrogant to even consider. In the end, body refiners would still use the world to temper themselves just physically, not in the spiritual manner that cultivators went about. They would still use things like treasures and rob the world of its natural resources.
So although vastly different in their scales of power and method of empowerment, cultivators and body refiners are fundamentally the same thing.
Selfish bastards. The whole lot of them. What better choice did they have, though? He would eventually become a hypocrite because he too wished to make himself more powerful by using the world and its abundant resources.
Either he could come to terms with being selfish, or he could forget about immortality altogether. It was then in his mind that Junjie resolved to acknowledge his existence as a selfish hypocrite, but that was not all there was to it, though. If looked at through a different lens, one could argue that the kin of the world were merely using the resources provided to them; there was nothing selfish about that. That eased up Junjie a bit as he felt a little better about following this path of power.
Junjie was now even more determined than before to begin his body-refining journey, and that all began with understanding the scroll in front of him.
It had been 35 minutes since Junjie walked, or rather dashed, into his room and sat down. Absorbed by his thoughts for the entire time, he finally came back to reality and was shocked to find that the previously unreadable scroll had become less complicated than before.
He had found that the first few sentences became clearer to him; even though he couldn't fully understand it, its meaning was still somehow conveyed to him. It whispered in his ear of foundations and the innate link between the two paths of power. What had seemed so opposite to each other yesterday didn't seem so different today.
It was at the same time he had that thought that the scroll's first section was revealed to him.
[The Xu Family's Basic Body Tempering Technique
What is the difference between body refiners and cultivators? Truthfully, there is only one. Method. Other than that, everything is near identical, and that includes the foundation. Whether you strive to nurture an unwavering physique or a dantian as dense as the stars, one requires a strong foundation.
To build a foundation, you must first awaken your spiritual veins, and then you begin building a dantian. These are the two imperative steps one must first take before considering anything else.
To awaken your spiritual veins—]
It seemed his comprehension had only taken him this far, but this was an amazing feat. With twenty minutes remaining before his next "training session" with Lihua began, Junjie wanted to ask Xingjuan a few things.
Leaving his room and proceeding to the common area, he spotted her, who made eye contact with him at the same time. She looked slightly surprised.
"You still have another twenty minutes, or have you given up already?" She asked in an empathetic tone. She knew how it felt to be stumped and subsequently unhappy by sitting around wasting time. At least she felt like she was wasting her time in her youth.
"No, in fact, I have gleaned some of the contents of the scroll and need you to clarify a few things for me."
It was nearly unheard of to comprehend things that quickly; maybe this kid had a knack for comprehension after all?
"Hoh? What do you have for me?"
"Why do body refiners need to build a dantian if they don't rely on Qi to grow stronger?" He had been silently asking himself this ever since he left the room, as it made him question his own line of thinking about the greed and selfish nature of cultivators. Were body refiners also just as greedy?
"You seemed to have understood a lot more than I thought. I have a feeling I know what you are thinking. It's probably something along the lines of 'cultivators are greedy, and body refiners are too, but to a lesser degree, but since they build the same foundation and use Qi, doesn't that also make them just as greedy?' In simple terms, you are wrong. I would know best; I used to think the exact same way."
"But that doesn't make any sense. How, pray tell, is my thinking at all flawed?" He retorted.
"Well, while body refiners do build the same foundation, they don't actively intake Qi, as humans normally naturally produce trace amounts, so when they use their body refining techniques, they will only ever use as much as they are naturally producing, which means the only time they use the Qi of the world is when they establish their dantian. But that's not really what I think is flawed about your thinking." She said.
"Well then, what else could be wrong with what I said?" He asked out of curiosity for what she would say.
"There is no greed involved with using the world's Qi as your own. If the world really didn't want you to use its power, trust me, you wouldn't be able to. Its whole purpose is to sustain that which it gives life too, which includes us. The world isn't something we take from but rather our benefactor from which we nourish ourselves."
It seemed he had been too conceited. He was not stealing anything; he was just using what was provided to him. There was nothing wrong with using something that was presented to you.