Chapter 26: Hello

Niu Youdao and Yuan Gang had only just reunited and had far too much to talk about, so they drifted to the very rear of the column.

Up ahead, Shang Chaozong happened to hear Shang Shuqing still murmuring the words "planes and tanks." He glanced back at the two men riding far behind and laughed. "They don't want to explain, yet Qing'er is still thinking about it? Why didn't you keep questioning them until you got to the bottom of it?"

Her expression could not be seen beneath the gauze-veiled hat.

"They don't want to say," Shang Shuqing replied, "but I don't feel that Niu Youdao is the sort of person who spouts nonsense without reason. Those words slipped out casually, yet they gave me a strange feeling. It didn't seem like an accidental slip so much as if there were certain things he simply couldn't be bothered hiding from us. Yuan Gang looks at us with a similar kind of disdain."

Shang Chaozong looked puzzled. "Qing'er, that sounds contradictory. I'm not sure I understand you."

"I can't quite explain it either." Shang Shuqing considered her words. "It feels like contempt in their state of mind. As if they can casually say certain things because, in any case, we wouldn't understand. In some respects, when they face us, they seem to possess a kind of psychological advantage, as though looking down from above."

Shang Chaozong chuckled. "Maybe it's because they think of themselves as cultivators and regard us as ordinary mortals."

"Perhaps." Shang Shuqing murmured thoughtfully, then turned to Lan Ruoting. "Mr. Lan, what do you think it meant that he first agreed to take us into the village, then suddenly refused?"

"Perhaps he was protecting the villagers," Lan Ruoting said. "This Yuan Gang may genuinely not want us to have contact with them."

Shang Chaozong said, "We already know where the place is. If we want to make contact later, wouldn't it be easy?"

Lan Ruoting replied, "Did Your Highness not notice what happened just now? If there truly is a village hidden in these mountains, it clearly isn't simple. You could hear it from those whistles alone. The village has rigorous measures for protecting itself. Outsiders may be noticed the moment they approach. Perhaps, just as they said, repeated looting by government troops frightened them into this."

The party left the side road and continued galloping along the main road. Niu Youdao and Yuan Gang rode side by side at the back, telling each other what had happened over the years. They were delighted to be reunited. Even eating dust behind the rest of the column did not bother them now. Niu Youdao had nothing to hide from Yuan Gang. Starting with waking in the ruined temple and meeting Dong Guo Haoran, he told him the entire story up to his present departure from the mountains. He did not even conceal the fact that he had discovered the Qiankun Art inside the bronze mirror. Yuan Gang had not expected Niu Youdao to have been kept under house arrest for five years.

"Master Dao, from what you're saying, the Shangqing Sect wants to harm you?"

Niu Youdao sighed. "Nine chances out of ten. Judging from all the signs, plus Tu Han's warning, they probably want me to die sooner rather than later. I still don't know how I offended them. I'm no threat to them. Why are they determined to make trouble for me? I haven't figured that out even now."

Yuan Gang asked, "When you were still inside the Shangqing Sect, it would've been easy for them to act. Why drag things out until now?"

"That's what I can't understand either."

"How are you planning to deal with it?"

"The people ahead don't look all that safe to follow either. Let's wait until we've passed Nanshan Temple. Once the Shangqing Sect believes I'm dead and we've cut off that future trouble, we'll ditch this group immediately and leave. After that, the world is vast. With the two of us together, we can travel wherever we please and see what there is to see."

The two discussed the matter for a while. Then, to pull Yuan Gang's thinking beyond the limits of that mountain village and give him enough understanding of this world to better protect himself, Niu Youdao began explaining what he knew about the cultivation world.

Unfortunately, the Shangqing Sect had not allowed him to take its books on cultivation-world affairs when he left. Otherwise, he could have saved himself all this talking. Yuan Gang had spent years alongside him in the "archaeology business" and had no trouble reading Small Seal Script.

After listening and thinking for a long while, Yuan Gang suddenly said, "People from the cultivation world interfere with ordinary society and even involve themselves in the struggle for supremacy between states. I find that hard to understand."

Niu Youdao chuckled. "What's so hard to understand? Only ignorance makes something seem incomprehensible. Just because you don't know about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You've read *Investiture of the Gods*, haven't you? Think about the war between Shang and Zhou. How many cultivators got involved? Jiang Ziya, Nezha, Yang Jian, all those people. It's basically the same as the world we're in now. Just imagine we've walked into the world of *Investiture of the Gods*. Your mind will adjust soon enough."

Yuan Gang looked somewhat speechless. He frowned. "Master Dao, by that logic, are there really immortals in this world who can fly through the sky?"

"That depends on how you define an immortal." Niu Youdao smiled as he rode. "If you only mean the ability to fly around, then yes, there should be people capable of it. There just don't seem to be many in this world who have cultivated to that level. Anyone with cultivation like that would already stand at the top of the food chain. There should be plenty of people below them funneling benefits upward, so ordinary matters probably aren't enough to make them show themselves."

"They can really fly?" Yuan Gang shook his head. Even though this was coming from someone he trusted, he still found it hard to believe. "That's not scientific."

Niu Youdao spread one hand. "It's perfectly scientific. You just haven't come into contact with the underlying principles, so you don't understand them."

Yuan Gang looked at him in surprise. "Scientific? What's scientific about it?"

Niu Youdao thought for a moment, considering how to explain it. Once he had organized his thoughts, he said, "Before we came here, I was the same as you. I didn't believe in immortals either. But after cultivating at the Shangqing Sect for five years and comparing the two worlds, I think I've roughly understood where the mystery lies. Watch."

He motioned for Yuan Gang to look. Turning his palm upward, Niu Youdao circulated his cultivation and pushed outward. A mass of dust kicked up by the horses ahead immediately gathered over his palm, spinning like a small vortex without dispersing.

He casually scattered it again. "What do you think I just did?"

"That was the effect of the internal force generated by the qigong you cultivate," Yuan Gang replied.

He had seen similar things from Niu Youdao in their previous life.

Niu Youdao nodded. "Qigong, yes. But once I circulate the method, where does that force actually come from? Can you explain it?"

Yuan Gang fell silent. He truly had never thought about the question in any depth. He had simply known it was qigong. He shook his head.

Niu Youdao continued, "Back when I first trained qi, once the senses of body and mind opened up, I could feel the body absorbing something indistinct from the world around me. Daoist terminology calls it the spiritual qi of Heaven and Earth. For years I understood it in that vague, mystical way too. Only after coming here and having something to compare against did I begin to think I understood what this so-called spiritual qi actually is."

Yuan Gang was usually composed, but even he could not suppress his curiosity. "What is it?"

"If I explain it with a more scientific term, you'll probably understand." Niu Youdao smiled. "Dark matter. You've heard of dark matter, haven't you?"

Surprise flashed in Yuan Gang's eyes. "You mean the kind of matter smaller than electrons and photons, something that can't be directly observed and that scientists have tried every possible way to detect?"

Niu Youdao nodded. "Exactly. After comparing the two worlds and thinking it over carefully, I suspect that what people call spiritual qi is dark matter. There's another thing from what used to be called superstition that you're certainly familiar with: ghosts. They seem to exist and yet seem not to exist. But at the Shangqing Sect, I confirmed from some of their records that ghosts genuinely exist in this world. I think so-called ghosts are actually formed from dark matter invisible to the naked eye. After a person dies, thought and consciousness remain, using dark matter as the medium through which they continue to exist. That becomes what people call a ghost. The principle should actually be much the same as what happened to you and me in these bodies. The difference between us and ghosts may simply be that the medium carrying our consciousness is different. The universe is vast and full of different forms of existence. Humanity doesn't understand far too many things, but lack of understanding doesn't mean those things don't exist. Everything has to go through a process of contact and discovery."

"..." Yuan Gang looked at him without a word.

"Don't look at me like that. There's nothing so astonishing about it." Niu Youdao smiled faintly. "If my guess is right, then differences in internal force and spiritual power are really just differences in how much dark energy can be released by controlling dark matter."

He flicked his sleeve to block a cloud of dust blowing toward them and continued, "Only after cultivating here did I realize that this world's spiritual qi—or dark matter, if you prefer—is far more abundant than in our old world. I've tested it repeatedly. Cultivation here progresses vastly faster than it did there. From some records I've read, this world didn't always have this much spiritual qi either, and naturally it didn't have so many cultivators. Later, Shang Song, founding emperor of the State of Wu, supposedly poked a hole in Heaven. Ever since, spiritual qi has continuously leaked into this world. What exactly happened, I don't know. By the way, you're still training your hard qigong, aren't you?"

Yuan Gang nodded. "I've kept at it ever since my injuries healed. You need some ability to protect yourself."

A teasing look appeared on Niu Youdao's face. "Real hard-qigong body training also uses a breathing method. That means it absorbs spiritual qi too—in other words, the dark matter you can understand. If I'm not mistaken, your progress in hard qigong these years must have been much faster than before."

Yuan Gang fell silent. Master Dao had guessed correctly. He truly had progressed far faster than before, and until now he had never been able to understand why. After Master Dao broke it down for him in such simple terms, the matter finally seemed somewhat comprehensible.

Niu Youdao laughed. "The Qiankun Art I'm cultivating is pretty good. Later I'll check your body and see whether your constitution is suited to cultivation. If it is, you can cultivate it too."

Yuan Gang shook his head. "I'm not interested in sitting still for hours on end. Given that much time, I'd rather do something meaningful."

"Don't be stupid, Monkey. This world isn't the same as the one we came from. What's wrong with getting stronger so you can protect yourself? It can also extend your lifespan, slow aging, let you live longer."

Yuan Gang still shook his head. "If I have to waste huge amounts of time sitting around just to live longer, what's the point? Life is movement."

"Monkey, I'm telling you—"

"Master Dao, don't bother. I'm not like you. You've always been obsessed with this sort of thing. I genuinely have no interest in mystical, abstruse practices. You know my attitude toward life."

"Fine. I can't be bothered arguing." Niu Youdao sighed, then pointed at him in warning. "But don't stop practicing that hard qigong of yours. I suspect the method you're using is anything but ordinary. There are clues in some old Daoist legends from our former world. The amount of spiritual qi there may once have been decent, but something happened later and it became extremely thin. Over the long years that followed, any cultivation method with weaker sensing or absorption would have produced no effect and eventually been eliminated. Any method that still worked by the time you and I were alive was probably no simple thing. In this world, it may produce effects completely different from what we saw before. Even if I don't tell you that, you should already have felt it yourself."

Yuan Gang gave a quiet acknowledgment.

After a period of silence, he asked, "Master Dao, what are you planning to do from here on?"

Niu Youdao swept his gaze across the vast world around them and laughed freely. "Since we're here, we might as well make ourselves at home. I have two words for this world."

"Two words?" Yuan Gang did not understand. "Which two?"

"Hello!"

Niu Youdao arched a brow, threw out the word, cracked his riding crop, and sent his horse surging forward.

"Hello?" Yuan Gang froze for a moment and looked around.

Then he too urged his horse into a gallop and raced after him, one man pursuing the other.

[End of Chapter 26]