Bright Moonlit Journey - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I was three before I could walk a straight line without wobbling all over the place, and five before I could say, “Father, Mother, I want to eat,” without tripping over the words.

In our tiny village, I was the heavy signboard hanging over my parents’ hearts.

And carved on that signboard were two words: simple-minded.

My mother would hold me and let her tears fall. “Her father, let’s save up a little more. In the future, we’ll find Jiaojiao an honest, dependable man to marry into our family. As long as he can take care of her for the rest of her life, that’ll be enough.”

My father would look at me, heave a long sigh, and knock his pipe bowl against the table with a heavy clack, clack.

Everyone in the family, myself included, thought my life would probably be just like that.

Like a knot of elm wood, left in the wind and sun, slowly growing old, then chopped up for firewood. Ordinary to the end.

Until one day, an old Daoist with a white beard, dressed in a threadbare robe washed nearly colorless, wandered past our house and asked for a drink of water.

I was sitting on the threshold, watching ants move house on the ground. I looked like I could watch them all afternoon.

After the old Daoist finished drinking and thanked us, his gaze casually swept in my direction.

That one glance caused a disaster.

The water bowl in his hand fell to the ground with a clang and shattered.

He pointed at me, his finger trembling. “A-a genius blessed by the heavens! Pure and flawless, with the innocent heart of a child! This is a once-in-a-century seedling for cultivating the Ruthless Dao!”

My parents froze on the spot. The ladle in my mother’s hand nearly dropped too.

Her voice shook. “Immortal Master, are you sure you haven’t made a mistake? My daughter, she… she isn’t very quick in the head…”

“Foolish! Ignorant!” The old Daoist looked as if his heart were breaking, his white beard quivering.

“It is precisely this unopened chaos, this heart free of worldly dust, that best aligns with the great path of ruthlessness! Untroubled by the seven emotions, untouched by the six desires, her cultivation will advance a thousand li in a single day!”

“This girl is destined to enter my sect and inherit my mantle!”

And just like that, still confused and muddleheaded, I was carried straight up the mountain by that red-faced, excited old man and became his personal disciple.

Only after going up the mountain did I learn that the old man was the sect master of the greatest sect in the cultivation world, the Taishang Wangqing Sect.

Apparently, on the day I left, my parents held the little box of dowry silver they had saved for me and cried, then laughed, then laughed until they cried again.

After arriving at the Taishang Wangqing Sect, I finally understood why the Sect Master said I was “suitable.”

The Ruthless Dao, as the name implied, required one to sever emotions and cut off love.

When other senior brothers and sisters entered the sect, they first had to painstakingly learn how to cast aside distracting thoughts, suppress inner demons, purify their hearts, and abandon desires. The process was so agonizing it was like being flayed alive.

I did not need to learn.

I was naturally without desire.

When my master lectured on the Dao, he spoke of how Heaven and Earth were not benevolent and treated all things as straw dogs. The disciples below either frowned in deep thought or showed visible struggle.

Only I listened until I kept yawning. In the end, my head nodded lower and lower, and I fell asleep on the spot, nearly drooling onto the Daoist scripture.

The strange thing was, once I fell asleep, the spiritual energy around me not only failed to disperse, it began circulating on its own.

It was even greater and purer than the spiritual energy drawn in by those senior brothers and sisters cultivating bitterly with their eyes wide open.

Stroking his beard, my master was not angry at all. Instead, his face filled with gratification. “Look, look! This is what talent is! Without thought or worry, one naturally accords with the true Dao! Marvelous!”

And so, I became an extremely special existence within the sect.

What was cultivation? For me, sitting around in a daze every day was cultivation.

When I ate slowly, counting each grain of rice one by one, spiritual energy swirled around my chopsticks.

When I slept deeply, my snores light and even, moonlight fought to burrow into my body.

My cultivation soared while I lay down, sat around, and stared into space, leaving the disciples who had entered the sect with me eight streets behind.

The little courtyard I lived in was called Jingxin Courtyard, and it quickly became the one place in the entire sect where no one dared to quiet their mind.

Because there was always a sword cultivator who came by every few days to cause trouble.

That was my junior brother, Ling Zhouxun, a genius of the Sword Dao.

Supposedly, he had something called an Innate Sword Bone, the kind that made ten thousand swords hum in unison when he entered the sect.

The first time Ling Zhouxun came looking for me was during the sect’s junior competition three months after we joined. He had lost to me.

At the time, I was standing on the platform, still thinking about how I did not seem to have finished that bowl of plain rice porridge at breakfast. What a waste.

He finished displaying a dazzling sword technique, sword energy sweeping everywhere and earning cheers from the whole crowd.

Then it was my turn. I did not know what I was supposed to do, so I just looked at him.

After thinking for a moment, I felt his sword energy was quite pretty, like the little firecrackers the village fool set off at the entrance to our village.

So I raised my hand and copied the motion of setting off a firecracker, using spiritual energy to go whoosh and blast both him and his sword off the platform.

The entire crowd fell deathly silent.

Ling Zhouxun crawled up from the ground, his handsome face flushed scarlet, and pointed at me. “Y-you! What kind of demonic trick was that?!”

I answered honestly, “Spiritual energy.”

He choked, unsure whether he should argue with a fool like me.