Under One Person: Starting with the Dual Cultivation of Body and Soul

"It's not amazing. Even ordinary people can do it under certain specific conditions."

Li Chang'an said, "People who suffer from hypothermia in extremely cold conditions often feel very hot and want to take off their clothes before they freeze to death. Why is that?"

"This is a kind of manipulation of the body by the mind. The mind can regulate the body's temperature, but the mind is not under your control."

"If something is out of control, it is easy to lose control. The mind instinctively preserves the temperature of the body surface, but fails to preserve the temperature inside the body."

"Therefore, even a fat person with a lot of fat reserves can freeze to death in such a state of alternating hot and cold."

"But if you discard this external thinking and let your id take control of your body."

"You can autonomously mobilize all available energy in your body, while simultaneously raising the temperature of your body surface and internal organs, thus surviving in extremely cold environments."

"This is why some ascetics don't wear clothes all year round and don't freeze to death; they cultivate this ability."

"Ascetic monks?" Lu Lin suddenly realized, "So that's what they practice."

He had met the ascetics, and at that time he asked his grandfather why they did that.

Grandpa said this was to toughen his body and starve him, to temper his will.

At that time, he only felt that these people had a really strong will.

Unexpectedly, there was so much knowledge hidden behind this unwavering will.

If it weren't for Senior Brother Chang'an pointing it out, he might have remained ignorant of the reasons behind it his entire life.

Seeing that Lu Lin was sometimes deep in thought and sometimes lost in thought, looking as if she only half understood, Li Chang'an continued:

"You might think the idea of ​​an ascetic is too far-fetched, cousin, but you've seen madmen before, haven't you?"

Lu Lin nodded: "I've seen him. I often run into a madman on my way to school. He's always gesticulating wildly and muttering to himself."

"Sometimes he would wear a thick cotton-padded coat in the summer and go shirtless in the winter, but strangely enough, he was always very energetic and I never saw him get sick."

Li Chang'an said, "Do you know why this is? It's because he's gone mad. His thinking is chaotic, and his external thoughts can't be effectively controlled."

"In this chaotic state, his id will unconsciously make some adjustments to his current situation."

"So even though he wears a cotton-padded coat in the summer and no clothes in the winter, he is not prone to getting sick and still has a lot of energy. Some of them are even incredibly strong."

"I read a report from abroad about a person called the Balcony Killer. This killer was an ordinary person, not an extraordinary person."

"He just has schizophrenia. He's a normal person during the day, but he has an episode at night."

"When he has an attack, he can climb up an apartment building more than 30 meters high without any protective gear, climb onto the balcony, kill the person, and then climb down."

"Under normal circumstances, he would feel his legs tremble just looking down from the apartment building."

Hearing this, Lu Jin was deeply moved and interjected:

"Yes, that's true. Those madmen in the martial arts world who have gone mad from practicing their cultivation often have greatly increased strength, making them much more difficult to deal with than usual."

Li Chang'an nodded and said, "In this chaotic state, one's conscious thoughts are also chaotic and easily lose control."

"Therefore, the id-like state of mind of a madman is often only temporary and cannot last. So they may be very energetic one second and suddenly become unwell the next."

"Our spiritual practice aims to keep our true self constantly in our minds and let the mind control the body."

"If your body is controlled by your own will, and your mind is controlled by your own will, then you will be free and at ease."

After listening, Lu Lin remained silent for a long time before saying:

"Senior Brother Chang'an, I understand how to cultivate from now on."

"What's most important to me now is to analyze which thoughts are entirely my own, which thoughts are bodily delusions, and which thoughts are delusions caused by external factors."

"Then defeat them one by one, and surpass them one by one."

"That's right," Li Chang'an nodded.

"When my great-grandfather arranged the competition, he said he would treat you as my opponent. I told him that I had never considered you as my opponent."

"Because our only real opponent should be ourselves."

Li Chang'an looked at Lu Lin again, his tone becoming extremely serious:

"Although I beat you today, I don't want you to see me as an opponent. You need to find your own target."

This is also the purpose of Li Chang'an's words.

With the awareness of being in the intermediate state (bardo), Li Chang'an was very clear about his current state.

He didn't want Lu Lin to treat him as a rival, which would only waste his time.

This isn't him bragging or praising his own wares; rather, there's a precedent to follow, like Zhang Huaiyi.

Zhang Zhiwei was first among his peers, while Zhang Huaiyi was clearly second, but he preferred to play dumb rather than reveal any of his skills.

In his view, if he couldn't beat Zhang Zhiwei, there was no difference between second place and last place.

Zhang Zhiwei's golden light is powerful.

Zhang Huaiyi painstakingly crafted a sharp golden light capable of cutting through Zhang Zhiwei's golden light.

When his cultivation level couldn't keep up with Zhang Zhiwei's, he went down the mountain and used Wugensheng's methods to improve himself.

Zhang Zhiwei practiced Taoism, and he also cultivated techniques, even creating a Qi Body Source Flow that was said to be the pinnacle of techniques and whose skills were close to Taoism.

Take a closer look at Zhang Huaiyi's life.

He was never competing with himself.

He was competing with his senior.

Tragically, despite his lifelong efforts, his senior brother never even noticed them.

Even though Master pointed it out, Senior Brother didn't care about his little tricks.

It's fair to say that his senior brother never saw him.

His only consolation might be that he was better than his senior brother at selecting successors.

Li Chang'an didn't want Lu Lin to become as obsessive as Zhang Huaiyi.

That's why I brought this up tonight, so he could see who his opponent was.

Lu Lin nodded quickly: "I understand, Senior Brother Chang'an."

Lu Jin nodded with satisfaction, feeling even more pleased with her disciple. She completely abandoned the idea of ​​having Li Chang'an and Lu Lin as rivals to hone each other's skills.

At the same time, he was also thinking about the principles that Li Chang'an had just mentioned.

There are some of these principles that he has not fully understood.

Sure enough, this proves the saying: a disciple need not be inferior to his teacher, nor a teacher necessarily superior to his disciple.

He had to teach Li Chang'an what he needed to teach.

He should learn what he needs to learn from Li Chang'an.

Seeing that Lu Lin and Li Chang'an were discussing the details of cultivation, he didn't disturb them further and quietly left.

Lu Lin stayed with Li Chang'an until dawn before leaving.

After leaving, without even taking a break, Lu Lin quickly washed her face, slung her schoolbag over her shoulder, and went to school.

Li Chang'an then meditated in the quiet room for a while.

The morning sunlight streamed into the courtyard, and he got up and went to the courtyard to practice his sword.

Sword practice was also part of his daily training.

He drew the eight-sided Han sword that Lu Jin had given him years ago.

When the longsword was drawn, it emitted a crisp sound like the sound of ocean waves, clear, long, and lingering.

Li Chang'an gripped the hilt of his sword, flicked his wrist slightly, and in an instant, he thrust out more than twenty swords in succession.

The bonuses brought by the Qi transformation state of reversal are truly terrifying.

His current sword-drawing speed is much, much faster than before, to an inhuman degree.

Even ordinary slashes and thrusts, in his hands, were as powerful as lightning, easily tearing through the air and leaving visible white shockwaves in the sky, which looked quite intimidating.