"What are the Six Arts of the Gentleman?" the Black and White Sisters asked, looking at Yanyan with a mixture of confusion and doubt.
"..." Yanyan fell silent. Good grief, these two knew absolutely nothing about the Confucian School!
"According to the *Rites of Zhou: Office of the Winter Official*: 'To nurture the sons of the state with the Dao, one teaches them the Six Arts: first, the Five Rites; second, the Six Music; third, the Five Archery; fourth, the Five Chariot-driving; fifth, the Six Writings; and sixth, the Nine Calculations.'" Yanyan had no choice but to educate the two of them on the Confucian Six Arts.
Yet the crystal-clear and utterly clueless looks in the Black and White Sisters' eyes told him they still had no idea what any of that meant!
At the same time, Lesser Master of Fate, who had already caught up, was standing on a nearby treetop, her pair of purple, starlit eyes staring straight at Yanyan.
Looking at the three women, Yanyan was utterly dumbfounded. So it wasn't just later generations who misunderstood the Confucian School; even the ancients themselves didn't really understand it!
However, Yanyan was being a bit unfair to the ancients here. The Six Arts of the Gentleman were originally the training blueprint for the children of the Zhou royal nobility, but the very definition of "Zhou royalty" was quite vague.
The nobility of the Zhou royal house consisted of only five ranks—Duke, Marquess, Count, Viscount, and Baron—unlike the twenty military ranks of the later State of Qin. The minimum standard for the Six Arts was the cultivation of a *guohzi*—a noble of the viscount rank or higher—which meant only those at roughly the grand master level or above could ever hope to access them.
After all, the Six Arts included archery and chariot-driving. Most ordinary grand masters could not even afford to keep regulated military hardware like bows, crossbows, and war chariots in their homes.
Consequently, among the Hundred Schools of Thought, not just any school could gain access to them.
Most crucially of all, the Six Arts of the Gentleman demanded a balance of both literary and martial accomplishments—absolute versatility!
Yet the standards of the Six Arts were so extraordinarily strict that, in the eyes of the other schools, even if you dug Confucius up from his grave, Confucius himself couldn't have mastered all six to perfection.
Thus, the various schools came to view the Six Arts of the Gentleman in the same light as the Confucian ideal of the Great Way in action and the world belonging to all—as grand, empty nonsense that no one would ever truly practice.
To put it simply: if you could hit two hawks with a single arrow, or loose nine beads in succession from a bow, what army or state wouldn't treat you like a priceless, miraculous archer? Yet within the archery component of the Six Arts, these were merely two techniques out of five.
Merely mastering one such skill was enough to make a stellar name for oneself in any state or army, let alone the Confucian requirement of mastering all six!
Even within the Confucian School itself, very few lineages taught their disciples the Six Arts of the Gentleman. Most simply broke the Six Arts apart and required them to master only one or two.
As a result, to the rest of the world, the Six Arts were seen as nothing more than six run-of-the-mill Confucian skills, and even some Confucian disciples thought the exact same way.
After all, if specializing in just one could bring me such success, why bother exhausting myself to learn all of them?
It was only poor, ill-fated Yanyan of the Confucian School who had been hoodwinked by the Yan Family into mistakenly believing that the Six Arts were the fundamental, all-inclusive skills every Confucian disciple was required to master.
Yet none of this stopped Yanyan from casting a look of utter disdain toward the Lesser Master of Fate and the two sisters.
"As expected, the Yin-Yang School pursues the ultimate limits of heaven and humanity; it's only natural that you wouldn't understand!" Yanyan looked at the three women with a sympathetic gaze, as if caring for the mentally disabled.
"Why don't you just say you know hard qigong? What's with all this nonsense about the Six Arts of the Gentleman!" The Black and White Sisters rolled their eyes.
They had been given a fright, thinking it was some terrifying Confucian secret technique, only for it to turn out to be mere brute-force conditioning!
"..." Yanyan was speechless. Truly, it was impossible to explain things to people who read so few books. To compare the Six Arts of the Gentleman to a brute's hard qigong—they were truly one of a kind!
And yet, he seemed unable to refute it either. The Six Arts really *did* seem to amount to nothing more than hard physical conditioning!
"Bringing me along just makes me dead weight, and you still aren't running? Are you waiting for the Mohist School to catch up? Or do you want to put on a show of the Yin-Yang School's infighting and mutual slaughter right in front of me?" Yanyan sighed. Truly: Those who know me say I have grave concerns; those who do not ask what I am seeking!
The Black and White Sisters glanced at Lesser Master of Fate, then back at Yanyan, leaving behind only a parting remark: "See you in the Chu capital!" before flashing and vanishing into the forest.
Lesser Master of Fate also gave Yanyan one deep, lingering look, and finally sped away in the direction where the Black and White Sisters had disappeared.
"Sigh... What a mess!" Yanyan sighed. An unprovoked disaster, and now he had to rely on his own two legs to walk all the way back to the Wu Family Trading Company's camp.
"So he's that ill-fated wretch from the Yan Family?" As they watched Yanyan's retreating figure, two figures emerged from the forest.
"Do you truly believe the Confucian Six Arts are nothing more than six routine physical conditioning skills?" Lord Chu Nangong, with his long white beard, asked Dongjun in return.
"Does Nanong believe otherwise?" Dongjun asked, her brows slightly furrowed.
"If he is able to cultivate the Confucian Noble Qi, then the Six Arts are six immensely profound martial arts. And within the entire Confucian School, the only ones who have ever cultivated the Noble Qi are this little fellow right here and that old codger in Lanling!" Chu Nangong stroked his beard, seemingly remembering something as a hint of wariness crept into his eyes.
As the foremost sage of the Chu region, he had himself studied Confucianism first before later transitioning to the Hundred Schools. His understanding of the Confucian School ran deep, making him all the more aware of its terrifying nature.
At the very least, Noble Qi was something he could not cultivate, yet he knew all too well how terrifying it was once achieved.
And he strongly suspected that old codger who spent all day proclaiming himself a scholar of the Confucian literary faction and claiming he knew no martial arts had already cultivated Noble Qi.
As the former Libationer of the Jixia Academy, the current Magistrate of Lanling, and the ultimate literary master after Chunyu Qun, no one dared to believe the man truly possessed no martial prowess at all. One had to remember that bloodshed at the Jixia Academy was far from rare—could someone who served as Libationer have no tricks up his sleeve?
If that old man had indeed cultivated Noble Qi, then as long as he drew breath, the Confucian School must never, ever be provoked.
Otherwise, the outcome would be a pack of wolves tearing apart a tiger, while warning the beast: "No matter how strong you are, you might not be able to kill every single one of us by yourself!"
Though the Confucian School loved empty rhetoric, anything they recorded in their classical scriptures was fundamentally without error.
If they stated that Noble Qi was supreme and unyielding, then it was absolute, unyielding power incarnate!
With this thought, Chu Nangong suddenly appeared right in front of Yanyan, blocking his path.
"Little fellow of the Yan Family!" Chu Nangong looked at Yanyan with a beaming smile.
Seeing the figure blocking his way—long white beard, dwarf stature, holding a blind man's walking stick, looking for all the world like the God of Longevity—Yanyan instantly recognized the newcomer: the sage of the Chu region, Lord Chu Nangong!
"Shudong of Yushan pays his respects to Nanong!" Yanyan hurriedly bowed.
This old monster, much like Master Xun, was one of the most terrifying old men alive in the world today.
"What does the little fellow think of the Lesser Master of Fate?" Chu Nangong asked with a smile.
"???" Yanyan looked at Chu Nangong in bewilderment, completely missing his drift.
"As the senior disciple of Yushan Academy, surely you can see the Lesser Master of Fate's problem!" Chu Nangong asked meaningfully.
"Nanong surely doesn't think this junior has a way to solve a problem the Yin-Yang School cannot!" Yanyan hesitated.
He naturally knew what ailed the Lesser Master of Fate, but since even the Yin-Yang School couldn't fix it, he didn't believe he could.
If he could use Master Yangming's School of Mind to enter a state where the heart is detached from external things at will, then the Lesser Master of Fate had likely locked herself away inside a world belonging exclusively to her own mind.
To put it simply, she was in the ultimate state of social anxiety—to the point where she couldn't even speak!