Translator's note: This chapter involves ‘The Book of Changes', but since I am not familiar with Taoism, I have no idea what Lu Miaozi was talking about. I translated it as best as I could, but it may be way off target. Anybody has ‘The Book of Changes' and would like to help here?
Book 9 Chapter 9 - The Escaping One
Lu Miaozi said apathetically, "Before my death, can you come here to see me every night?”
Xu Ziling nodded and said, "As long as I am still here, I can accompany Mister every night to chat.”
Lu Miaozi said, "If it were Kou Zhong, he would have been very eager to learn all kinds of skill from me; you have neither greed nor ambition, and are at home wherever you are. Thirty years ago I would have chosen Kou Zhong instead of you; but today, you are my best choice.”
Knitting his brows, Xu Ziling said, "Compared to Mister, I am a complete layman; I am afraid it would be hard for me to learn anything in such a short period of time, or live up to Mister's expectation.”
Lu Miaozi smiled slightly and said, "Success or failure, you and I need not worry about it; just consider it an idle chat. Were it not for coincidentally meeting you in this time, I would not have any interest to hand down the understanding I gained during the last thirty years to you.”
Xu Ziling mused, "Supposing Kou Zhong asked me what I learned from Mister, it would be difficult for me not to tell him honestly.”
Lu Miaozi was unable to help laughing; he said, "You are very forthcoming; but what I am going to teach you is the ‘natural way'; it will be useful only for someone with indifferent attitude toward life like you, Kou Zhong will not be interested. What's the harm in telling him honestly?”
Xu Ziling breathed out a sigh of relief. "That's good,” he said, "I thought Mister was going to teach me how to build all kinds of mechanism and gadgets.”
Lu Miaozi laughed involuntarily again; he appeared to be considering the best way to unload everything in his mind to the young martial art expert with extraordinary natural ability in his presence.
Kou Zhong flew to the top of the bell tower on the Ranch Master's residence. He saw row after row of roof ridges extending continuously to the distance. There were lantern lights everywhere, and guards, maids and servants walking along the corridors connecting the buildings.
Using the technique he learned from Chen Laomou, he quickly determined which building ought to be the main building, and that building should be the guesthouse. With further investigation, he was sure he could find where Li Xiuning was staying tonight.
He could not refrain his heart from sighing.
She was scheduled to see and talk to him the next day, yet he still wanted to see her tonight; if it was not superfluous, then what was it?
But soon his mind was flooded with blazing fire of desire. He was about to fly toward his target, a cluster of courtyards, when in a distant building he saw a shadow flashed.
Greatly astounded, Kou Zhong temporarily pushed Li Xiuning's matter to the back of his mind and flew out to pursue.
Lu Miaozi slowly stood up and walked over to the window. Looking out at the steep rock wall of the opposite cliff, with his back toward Xu Ziling, he said in heavy voice, "Between the Heaven and the Earth, everything has its own law, as well as many superficial changes, but no departure from the original stand. The law has its own beginning, and also has its end.”
Xu Ziling was astounded, "The law has its own beginning, this logic is quite simple and easy to understand, but it has its end? I remain puzzled after pondering over it a hundred times.”
Turning around, Lu Miaozi smiled and said, "Didn't I just say that after spent considerable time and energy for thirty years, I finally obtained an unexpected discovery? This is precisely the answer to your question.”
Xu Ziling smiled wryly and said, "Mister keeps dangling a carrot in front of me; can't you just speak out?”
Lu Miaozi cheerfully said, "I just want you to have a deeper impression, hence I intentionally used some tricks.”
After pondering silently for half a day, Lu Miaozi slowly said, "Great spread out is numbered fifty; forty is used, nine remains. These two sentences are from ‘The Book of Changes' [Yi Jing], which has always regarded as a teaching method of divination, simply because divination uses fifty stalks, which evolved into several methods. Except for one, I don't know how many heaven and earth principles are hanging on these two sentences.”
And then he asked, "Have you read ‘The Book of Changes'?”
Xu Ziling's thick face turned reddish; he shook his head indicating that he had not.
Lu Miaozi sighed and said, "When our ancient predecessors said anything related to these methods, due to their beliefs that mysteries of heaven must not be revealed, they always ‘hid the head and showed the tail'. Due to the proceeding sentence, ‘dividing two will take the shape of two', which is precisely a divinatory diagram method, people have taken wrong steps in life, not knowing the usage of the hidden principle, and the principle of the hidden usage in the preceding two sentences; it is indeed the deepest layer of meaning of the law.”
It was the very first time that Xu Ziling had any exposure to the ‘changing principles'. His interest greatly piqued, he said, "Those two sentences sound interesting. What Heaven and Earth's secret they actually contain?”
Remaining tranquil and calm, Lu Miaozi said, "Fifty is the perfect number. When the number reaches fifty, all living things under the heavens are on their places; there is no movement. However, if one number is missing and becomes forty-nine, there will be a lot of empty positions open. The other forty-nine will thus be on the move, there will be thousands changes and ten thousands usage; there will be no limit.”
Xu Ziling slapped the table and shouted with praise, "This explanation is exquisite beyond compare.”
Lu Miaozi was astounded, "Do you really understand what I was saying?” he asked.
"What's so difficult to understand?” Xu Ziling asked in consternation, "Just like fifty chairs will seat fifty people. If these people are not allowed to change position, or allowed to go somewhere else, naturally there won't be any changes. But if there was one less person vacating one chair, it's only natural that there would be a lot of changes.”
After staring blankly at him for quite a long time, Lu Miaozi sighed and said, "You, this kid, indeed have superior natural talent; probably there won't be any second person in the present age with that thought. What you just understood is precisely the essence of the law. It is called the ‘escaping first'; what has escaped is precisely this ‘one'. All the things that those river diagrams and stream books are talking about are no more than nature [innate] and nurture Bagua [eight divinatory trigrams of the Book of Changes]. From nature and nurture, the heaven and the earth exchange position, the universe turns around, and thus the change begins.”
After a short pause, he continued proudly, "Any knowledge between the Heaven and the Earth, including martial art and life, in its highest realm is how to find back this escaping ‘one'. Only after this ‘one' is found will everything begin to return to the perfect ‘before the Heaven and the Earth discerned it' realm. This is the greatest discovery I made after thirty years of hard thinking.”
Xu Ziling's body shook severely; his tiger-eyes shot an unprecedented level of flashes. In that instant, he grasped one kind of mystery within a mystery, relating to the secret principle of the Heaven and the Earth.
Kou Zhong pushed his speed to its limit.
Inside his body, like flashes of lightning the vortex of cold energy traveled back and forth at an astonishing high speed within his meridians, enabling him to move nimbly with the same freedom of action of the fish swimming in the water; compared to before, the difference was like the Heaven and the Earth.
His feet landed on the back of a building's roof, and he swiftly slid down to the ground. Passing through a moon gate at the entrance of a side garden, he swiftly moved across toward the back of a thicket, barely missing an elderly maid's sight, who had just opened the window to look out. Somersaulting over the perimeter wall, he flitted diagonally to the top of a building nearby, and then ricocheted toward a horizontal branch protruding from a big tree next to the building. Borrowing the elastic energy of the branch he flew toward the top of another building, from where he just caught sight of the shadow was shooting up at an angle toward the top of the Inner Castle's external wall.
Kou Zhong jumped in fright; but then immediately realized that the opposite side must have used flying rope with hook or similar tools; otherwise, other than Ning Daoqi, Bi Xuan, or other martial art masters their caliber, who could leap straight onto the city wall over fifteen zhang high?
Who was this person?
Kou Zhong's toes pushed on the branch of an old Banyan tree by the wall; unleashing his qinggong and exerting his entire strength he flew to the top of the wall just like a fish leaping out of the water.
He was still about a zhang away from the top of the wall when he ran out of momentum. While Kou Zhong was groaning inwardly, suddenly he felt the vortex of cold energy within his body grew and multiplied without end, giving him a boost of power.
Greatly delighted, he raised a mouthful of true qi and lightly set his feet on the wall.
Due to its geographical advantage of inaccessible natural barrier, the Flying Horse Ranch's defense was concentrated on the outer wall; they guarded against the outsiders but not against the insiders. Therefore, the Inner Castle defense was not as tight. Anybody who was familiar with the situation and knew how to avoid several sparsely located sentry posts and lookout towers, plus in possession of first class shenfa, would be able to enter.
Kou Zhong was an expert in escaping and hiding. As soon as he reached the top of the wall, he lay prostrate while craning out his neck to look back and forth.
The mountain town's chain of buildings below the city wall extended all the way until the outside city wall.
Beyond that wall was the vast pasture, with tents everywhere and where the horses and the sheep whinnying and bleating.
After entering a small house with a courtyard, the dark shadow did not reappear. Kou Zhong sighed inwardly, knowing that he had to cancel his desire to meet Li Xiuning privately, a rare opportunity in thousands of years.
Leaping down the wall, he darted toward the building where the dark shadow disappeared.
Lu Miaozi's face was radiant with a divine light, as he spoke word by word, "This ‘missing one' or ‘escaping one' is circulating around the world continually, it roams around incessantly, while at the same time exists inside all living things. Laozi [Lao-tze] called it Dao [Tao, ‘the way'], Sakyamuni called it Fu [Buddha/Buddhism]. The idea behind Fu is consciousness [Buddhist enlightenment]; thousands changes and ten thousands usage, there is no limit.”