In October 2024, Ji Yunsheng came across an even more fascinating video on his mobile phone. Over the past year or so, the fires of war had raged in Russia and Ukraine, a civil war had broken out in Myanmar, the United States had launched airstrikes on Syria and surrounded Iran, fierce battles had erupted along the Indian-Pakistani border, the Korean conflict was on a knife-edge, and the war between Palestine and Israel was blazing with artillery fire. While surrounding countries were busy fighting wars, China was actually busy catching ghosts underground. 700 meters underground at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, a 41-meter-diameter acrylic sphere successfully captured ghost particles, also known as neutrinos. It was said that neutrinos could exceed the speed of light within mesons and travel through all matter. Following the discovery of this video, Ji Yunsheng often found himself thinking: "If metaphysics is real, could I actually practice cultivation?"
Days passed, and Ji Yunsheng occasionally reminisced about things that had happened in the past. One time during his childhood, he and a friend rode their bicycles to the riverside to pick up his friend's girlfriend. As they played until dusk and the sun was about to set, they rode their bicycles to the banyan tree corridor, which was the only way back. He was in a pretty good mood at first, but when he rode to the middle of the banyan tree corridor, his bicycle suddenly refused to budge. His friend, completely fine, had already ridden past the banyan tree corridor, yet his own bicycle for no apparent reason could not be pedaled. He got off the bicycle and checked it several times, finding nothing wrong with it, but still he couldn't pedal it forward. After trying two or three times with the same result, he looked around—given that the banyan tree corridor was flanked by graveyards on all sides, could he have run into a ghost?! He swallowed hard, tried two more times, and this time the bicycle could be pedaled. He immediately hopped back on and rode away in a hurry. When he finally caught up with his friends and told them what had happened, they actually didn't believe him. To this day, Ji Yunsheng still couldn't figure out what on earth had happened, and that incident still felt extremely bizarre to him.
Another time, after primary school let out, he and a friend went to play in another village until dark. On the way back to his grandmother's house, they passed the road behind the primary school, which was also flanked by a graveyard. Ji Yunsheng remembered that it was exactly nine o'clock at night and pitch black. When passing that graveyard, no matter how he walked, he couldn't get out; he kept walking forward, only to find himself back at the starting point. After walking like this for about an hour, his mobile phone rang. His grandmother called and asked, "Yunsheng, where on earth did you go to play? Why are you still not back this late?" Ji Yunsheng answered very strangely, "I went to play in my classmate's village, and I've already come back." Hearing Ji Yunsheng's reply, his grandmother was finally reassured and said, "Hurry up and get back to sleep; it's already almost ten o'clock, and you still have school tomorrow!" Ji Yunsheng answered in surprise, "Okay." Only after hanging up the phone did he look at the time on his mobile phone and see that it was already nearly ten o'clock. Hadn't he already come back by nine o'clock? Why was it almost ten now? Normally, walking from his classmate's village past this place to his grandmother's house only took ten minutes; how could it possibly take so long today? The more he thought about it, the more a chill welled up from the bottom of his heart.
Ever since he began practicing meditation and came into contact with metaphysics, Ji Yunsheng thought of something that had happened once in a dream. The imagery in the dream was exceptionally vivid: Ji Yunsheng was dueling a male cultivator. At first, the two of them were merely sparring with sword techniques, but after a long time, their powers began to escalate. As a result, they accidentally overexerted themselves and shattered a realm, causing a massive fragment of the realm to fall toward the mortal realm's planet. Neither of them cared too much as they gave chase to that realm fragment. When they finally caught up with the realm fragment, Ji Yunsheng said, "How about we race to see who can deal with this realm fragment first?" The other cultivator replied with an indifferent expression, "Fellow Daoist, let's see who wins." Just as the cultivator finished speaking, seeing that the speed of the realm fragment was too fast—before he could even react, it was about to crash into the mortal planet—Ji Yunsheng directly swung his sword at the realm fragment. As the sword qi slashed across the realm fragment, it had yet to disintegrate, and then the cultivator gave a wave of his hand, batting the fragment away toward another dead star to crash into it, saying, "Fellow Daoist has impressive methods. Good thing Fellow Daoist reacted quickly, or else it would have been a disaster. We shall spar again if we have the chance, farewell!" Then Ji Yunsheng woke up. This dream was also very strange because it wasn't the only time he had dreamt it.
On November 11th, while Ji Yunsheng was meditating, a strange concept suddenly popped into his mind: why do humans cultivate faster than animals? As he pondered this, an idea struck him: if the human body is compared to the universe, human form seems to naturally carry the Yin-Yang, Five Elements, and Eight Trigrams of Chaos, which is why humans cultivate faster than animals. The more he thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed. Humans are roughly divided into males and females. The human head, two hands, and two legs can be viewed as the Five Elements; males are Yang and females are Yin. The two points on the chest of a male and female, along with the differences in reproductive organs combined with the head, two hands, and two legs, form the Eight Trigrams. The fingers and toes of a human are all five in number, which can also be called the lesser Five Elements. Cells are like stars in the universe—there are many, many of them, but they cannot exceed a certain limit; once exceeded, the body develops illness. The birth of a human is just like the birth of the universe, going from Xuwu to Hongmeng, and then transforming into Chaos. Before Chaos is separated, a human is merely a cell inside a mother's womb. Chaos then separates into Yin and Yang, which is how human genders come to be. Human males are extreme Yang lacking Yin, while human females are extreme Yin lacking Yang, which is why Yin and Yang attract one another. Yet once Yin and Yang complement each other, they become Chaos once again. The reason human form allows for faster cultivation than other living beings is that humans are the creatures most resembling the state of the universe; thus, humans are closer to the universe. Although other living beings are also children of the universe, to the universe, they are like cells on the verge of going bad. Therefore, other living beings take a long time to cultivate, and when their cultivation reaches a certain level, facing Tribulation Transcendence is far more dangerous than for humans. The more Ji Yunsheng thought about it, the more he felt as though he had figured out something profound!