Don’t Dwell on Past Achievements
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Shifu said with a smile as he drank alcohol and munched on meat. “None of the weaklings were worth my time.”The first reveal of this chapter happened through B1nN0v3l.
Shifu detailed every single match enough to easily visualise.
The three factions that the branch members formed during the period Grandmaster disregarded sect affairs were “Sword Sanctuary”, “Hall of Gods”, and “Asura Path”. On account of Mount Daluo’s long history, they managed to learn a plethora of disciplines, but they were unable to match those who returned from self-study in Vast Sea Submerged Pearl Hall. Since it was impossible for them to achieve mastery of every discipline, they chose to focus on particular elements.
Sword Sanctuary focused solely on developing their swordplay, sorting out numerous lost swordplays in the process. Although Grandmaster’s “Ultimate Swordplay” rendered their decades of toiling for naught and became a trauma they couldn’t shed, nobody would’ve taken Mount Daluo serious when it came to swordplay before Grandmaster developed Daluo’s Five Divine Styles Manual. Sword Sanctuary would’ve been competitive up against the likes of Mount Hua, Kunlun and other sects that predominately focused on swordplay.
Hall of Gods focused on internal disciplines and palm techniques – primarily using Moon Weaver Palms, Empty Palms, and other Mount Daluo palm disciplines as their foundation. Their internal discipline was based off Cast-off and an assortment of other disciplines. Their plan was to start on internal disciplines and raise a disciple who excelled in both internal and external disciplines.
Asura Path didn’t have any preference for what disciplines they learnt as long as it was practical. Their members chose to train in dangerous terrain on the mountain, spar without holding back, and would fight until someone was bloody. That was why, despite not leaving any new knowledge behind, they were the best at combining everything among the three factions.
The two manuals conveyed the same things notwithstanding them appearing nowhere remotely similar. No matter which manual you followed, you should’ve achieved the same results. You could say that it was basically having Shifu teach you personally as people would still get it wrong even if he did personally teach it to them – which wasn’t to say that it was impossible to learn correctly. Shifu’s mind just worked too differently to the normal man.
I heaved a big breath. Having Zizi continue down his current path of learning Pure Yang One Qi would only get him past Zhao Tiankui and Yuan Kou by a smidge; he wouldn’t have been able to crush all three branch factions in a short year as Shifu did.
“What is the matter, Shifu? That was a big sigh.”
As I stared at the inquisitive boy, it dawned on me that... it was likely impossible for him to replicate Shifu’s success. For all I knew, there was probably only one freak of nature of that calibre in Mount Daluo’s history. Nonetheless, achieving 30% of what Shifu achieved would’ve been plenty.
“I have good news.” I smiled. “I finally understand these two manuals in their entirety.”
What I couldn’t comprehend was different to what the others couldn’t comprehend. I didn’t read internal disciplines’ manuals through the lens of a student. Instead, I read them from the perspective of the end product and reverse engineered how to get there. Since I had learnt numerous internal disciplines, I didn’t need to learn every single one. I just needed to read it once, circulate true qi a few cycles, and I’d be able to formulate a rough idea of the system.
Normal manuals would focus on the learning process, while less than 10% of the contents would be dedicated to the end result. In contrast, Pure Yang One Qi’s original text used a huge chunk of bizarre content to describe the end result of mastering it. The common denominators in the two manuals that didn’t seem remotely related were the degree of innovation and bizarre descriptions. From my perspective, the descriptions resembled qi deviation more than awesomeness following mastery. That was what baffled me.