The night had grown deep, and An'an had long since been coaxed to sleep. She slept in some pleasant dream, smacking her little lips now and then.
Jiang Wang sat cross-legged, his five centers turned toward heaven. His mind sank into the Heaven-Access Palace, where the intricate star chart arrayed from Dao essence blazed above his head. The nameless black candle hung at the center, and the little earthworm that was his Dao Meridian True Spirit swam in slow circles about it.
Jiang Wang did not rush. He waited, patient, for the moment.
Originally, having chosen the Celestial Star-Dou Formation as his Foundation-Establishing Formation Diagram, he had expected the work to take half a year. But he had reaped no small harvest since opening his meridians.
First came the nine stances of the Purple Qi from the East Sword Art, which tempered and nourished his blood, allowing his body to bear far more charges through the meridians. Then he turned to the War School's body-tempering method, the Four Spirit Body-Tempering Art, which multiplied those charges many times over. Modest as his earthworm True Spirit was, with more charges came more of the Dao essence it could swallow and release.
After that, there was the Dao Essence Control Art passed down by Dong A, which guided the Dao essence in his body. With it, he laid out his formation diagrams almost without a single slip...
And finally, in his battle with Xiong Wen, his Dao-heart had advanced by leaps and bounds and his Dao essence had surged, until he stood at the very threshold of transformation.
The hour reached Zi — the first hour of the day, the starting point.
Jiang Wang silently worked the Dao Essence Control Art and shifted the last, roundest pearl of Dao essence into its place in the star chart, precisely at the position of the Moon Star. From the Sun Star it had begun, and at the Moon Star it would end. Then the Three Enclosures quaked together, and the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions blazed as one. The whole Celestial Star-Dou Formation Diagram cast a dazzling light that shone through the entire Heaven-Access Palace!
For an instant, Jiang Wang's very mind seemed to be struck blind.
When his perception returned, there in the Heaven-Access Palace hovered a mysterious, dreamlike whirlpool, turning slowly, countless points of starlight bobbing within it. It was less a cyclone and more a rotating river of stars. And in the instant of its birth, fully nine pearls of Dao essence leapt out from the star-river spiral.
The Daospiral was formed, and Dao essence came into being of its own.
Jiang Wang knew in his heart that the Foundation was established. From this moment on, he was truly walking among the supernormal — he had stepped at last into the Ninth-Grade Wandering-Meridian Realm!
He had opened his meridians before the Huánzhēn Temple on the fifteenth day of the sixth month, and established his Foundation here at home on Flying Horse Lane on the sixteenth day of the tenth month — four months in all.
As for the difference in effect between the Celestial Star-Dou Formation Diagram and an ordinary Return-to-Origin diagram, he could not yet fully perceive it. But he noticed that the inconspicuous little earthworm had abandoned the black candle and begun to creep toward the starwhirl. When it reached the whirl, it suddenly gathered itself and leaped!
It shot through the spiraling gyre, and a faint sheen of starlight seemed to settle upon its body. It appeared subtly more spirited than before.
A Dao Meridian True Spirit that crosses a Daospiral can be strengthened. This is one of the reasons people never judge a cultivator's future by inborn aptitude alone. But that strengthening is a long and gradual process — it should never have shown so clear a change.
Perhaps this was one more excellence of the Celestial Star-Dou Formation Diagram?
Jiang Wang could not say for certain, but he looked forward to more changes, and looked forward with great eagerness.
Having crossed the starwhirl, the little earthworm swam slowly back to the side of the black candle, looking rather spent. It coiled about the candle and did not stir again.
The beautiful wonder that had taken shape in his Heaven-Access Palace that night held Jiang Wang spellbound.
When he came back to himself, he found that the smacking sound in the room had stopped. He heard little An'an mumbling, half-asleep: "Brother, I think I saw stars. So many stars."
Jiang Wang was quiet for a moment. He knew An'an was not awake.
So he rose gently, and with soft, unhurried movements tucked her quilt in about her, then walked silently out into the courtyard.
He meant to try his hand at Dao arts — to answer for the accumulation of all that paper-tiger theory he had stored up at the arts school these past days.
Starlight spares no one who travels by night.
Jiang Wang had always been one to give a little more effort whenever he could give it. If Heaven would not carry him, he would carry himself.
...
Within the Dao arts system common to all the Dao academies, Dao arts are divided into four classes and twelve grades. D-Class arts were the very foundation of the system. And the lower-grade D-Class arts chiefly manifested in buffing states.
Take the Five Elements Dao arts as an example. They consisted of: Flame, Edge, Fortify, Clarity, and Vitality.
Flame affixes fire-elemental energy to arms; Edge strengthens weapons with metal-elemental energy; Fortify hardens the physical defense with earth-elemental energy; Clarity uses water-elemental energy to clear the mind and brighten the eyes; and Vitality uses wood-elemental energy to chase away fatigue and enliven the vitality.
Different academies might vary in the details of specific arts, but by and large these held true. So it had been in the traditions handed down by the three great Daoist sacred lands.
In theory, a Ninth-Grade Wandering-Meridian cultivator could employ every D-Class art, but in practice each person differed. Some might struggle for ages even to master the mid-grade D-Class arts; some had a gift for metal-elemental arts, others for water-elemental ones, and so on.
One point the academy instructors never tired of stressing: every cultivator should clearly recognize what he excelled at. Whether by playing to one's strengths or by patching one's weaknesses, one should form his own combat system as quickly as possible.
Jiang Wang tried Flame first. The basic mudra he already knew by heart, and here he had a full nine pearls of Dao essence to spend.
The mudra he had rehearsed countless times came together within two breaths. His left hand gripped the sword; his right hand, two fingers pressed together, swept across the blade.
Fire burst into being!
The longsword lay across the night, flame burning in the moonlight.
No talisman, no instrument had been used.
This was the power of the supernormal. This was a Dao art!
All at once Jiang Wang felt a prickling urge to weep. He wished he could go back in time and tell the child he had been: you can, you are able. He wished he could tell the father lying sick in bed: I can, I am able.
Jiang Wang flung the longsword wide and, with the energy-storing technique of the Purple Qi from the East Sword Art, shook the flame to pieces. Then came Edge, then Fortify... He almost wanted to try out every basic art he knew one by one, stopping only when his Dao essence ran dry.
Jiang Wang discovered that he grasped the different elemental basic arts all at the same speed, with no difference at all. To put it in more inflated terms: he excelled at all of them.
It was the same for water-elemental arts as for fire-elemental ones.
But a man's strength is finite; he could hardly cultivate every Dao art. The dean, Dong A, had said more than once that attainment is the root of the Great Dao, and Dao arts are but the branches that guard it. Even the genius who fancied himself inexhaustible ought to devote the greater part of his mind to the root.
Jiang Wang decided to wait until his Dao essence had accumulated again, then try the other Dao arts — wind-elemental arts, for instance, and the thunder method. Though the most basic thunder method was a B-Class art; unless something special happened, he would not have the chance to master it until the Seventh-Grade Heaven-Access Realm.
Although his talent with the Five Elements arts appeared equal across the board, if pressed on his true inclinations Jiang Wang leaned toward the fire-elemental and wood-elemental paths. The latter because his master Dong A excelled at wood-elemental arts; the former, of course, because of... that brilliant battle outside the Huánzhēn Temple, because of that man as fierce and dazzling as the midday sun.
Though Zuo Guanglie had never even known his name, Jiang Wang had learned much from him and gained much from him. And so he bore a deep fondness for fire.
It could be foreseen that whatever directions he chose among the Dao arts, his options in battle would multiply into endless variation, and the increase to his fighting strength would be far more than doubled.
For the task of clearing out the fierce beasts that was soon to begin, this was unquestionably the most welcome news.
By the time Jiang Wang had settled his initial direction among the Dao arts, the sky was already faintly bright.
Greeting the dawn, he completed his first meridian-charging cultivation of the day in the courtyard. He felt that his True Spirit earthworm, in swallowing and releasing Dao essence, now seemed much more at ease.
It was not until he had charged the meridians twice that his body felt the barest fatigue, and so he rested.
He washed, made the bed, and went out to buy An'an her breakfast.
The early-rising stalls hawked their wares with their little carts; bean curd simmered in its pot, and fried cakes gave off a wisp of steam.
The smoke of a mortal life below; the ladder to the clouds above.