Basics of Inner Purification
<Moon Goddess Sutra Chapter 1 - Inner Purification>
"A practitioner of the Moon Goddess Sutra must commit themselves to becoming a Pure Yin Body, embracing the Yin and foregoing the Yang. Only then can one be considered to have completed Inner Purification in the Moon Goddess Sutra…"
The chapter then began to outline the first technique of the Moon Goddess Sutra: [Moonlight Absorption]. By opening oneself to natural moonlight, inner purification of the internal body through pure Yin baptism could be achieved. James carefully memorized the entire process, going over each line countless times.
~I might as well prepare to begin tonight…~
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After several hours of careful memorization, evening arrived, as did his family. James joined them at the dinner table, but his mind was elsewhere. His mental preparations for his first foray into cultivation had already begun.
"How was your day, James? Hopefully you didn't spend all day playing that game of yours…" His father commented between mouthfuls of soup, The game he was referring to was "Kingdom Clash", a mobile game featuring Daoist characters that had become massively powerful just a year after the Awakening.
"I haven't been on Kingdom Clash at all, Dad, I just went for a walk around town, and looked around in the markets."
James' mother laughed, shaking her head. Her fiery red hair shook behind her, pale features dotted by the characteristic freckles of her Irish descent.
"That's not much more productive, but I'll give you credit for spending time off of your tablet."
He smiled and nodded absently, returning to his soup. His sister glanced back and forth between her phone and her meal, evidently not done socializing despite her full day away. Their parents simply sighed at this, clearly having given up attempting to focus the family on the meal. Drinking a final spoonful of the soup, James stood and pushed in his chair, before running up to his room. The Moon Goddess Sutra still sat on his bed, opened to Chapter 1, on a page which began to outline the specific steps of [Moonlight Absorption]. He glanced out his window, staring at the half-risen moon.
"Only once the moon rises to the peak of the sky, with a clear and unobstructed view, can one begin the process of [Moonlight Absorption]."
James settled in for a long wait, still repeating the steps within his mind to ensure that he would not miss a single thing.
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At last, as the outside view turned pitch black, the time had come. His parents and sister were long since asleep, but James was just getting started. Sliding his window open slowly and quietly, he clambered out of it and up to the rooftop. He stared at the pale moon that shone above him, pausing for just a moment before beginning the task at hand.
"First lie in the shape of a five-pointed star, with each of your limbs as one of its points."
James quietly muttered each of the steps under his breath, mimicking them carefully as he did so. His arms and legs were spread equidistant from one another on the flat surface of the roof, with his head extending straight out, forming a perfect star shape.
"Focus on the location of your Dantian, the reservoir of your Qi, located roughly three finger widths below your navel and two finger widths behind it."
Closing his eyes, James began to focus on the area in which his Dantian was supposed to be located, faintly feeling a tingling sensation as he did so.
"Once you have located your Dantian, attempt to form a connection between your Dantian and the moon in the sky. Draw a line between the two in your mind, and imagine the Yin energy flooding into your Dantian, purifying it."
Drawing an invisible sphere around the tingling sensation in his mind, James began to connect the sphere with the moon above him, imagining the Yin energy that it emitted. As he envisioned this, the line that he imagined began to pulse with a pure white glow, bursts of energy flowing down the line and into the sphere inside his torso. The tingling grew stronger and stronger, yet it was still concentrated exclusively within the sphere that he imagined, rippling and shifting inside the sphere.
This tingling remained for countless minutes, the moon slowly sliding across the sky as time passed. As the moon began to cross the horizon once more, the tingling began to fade, until it disappeared entirely. James finally opened his eyes, though he had managed to remain awake throughout the entire process thanks to the strange tingling. He should have felt tired, after remaining awake for almost 24 hours - yet somehow he felt more awake than ever, an odd energy warming the lower half of his torso and draining fatigue from his body. James climbed back down into his room, closing the window softly behind him. Tip-toeing over to his bed, he slipped under the sheets, shutting his eyes and waiting for the rest of the family to awaken.
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*Knock-Knock-Knock*
A fist rapped againts James' door, and his eyes shot open as the doorknob turned.
"James, breakfast is ready downstairs. Your sister will devour it all if you go back to sleep!"
His Dad glanced at him before nodding, apparently satisfied that James was suitably awake. As he walked away, the door clicked shut, and James hopped out of bed. Tucking the Moon Goddess Sutra into his jacket, he changed clothes and donned the jacket, heading downstairs to breakfast. The warm feeling that James had noticed after his time under the moon had still not disappeared, and seemed to be a permanent, but certainly welcome addition to his life. As he descended the stairs, the final sentence of Chapter 1's first section came to mind.
"If you have successfully formed a connection between the moon and your Dantian, and the tingling sensation of your Dantian grows drastically in intensity before fading completely, congratulations! This is the sign that your Dantian has been completely cleansed of impurities. You have met the basic requirements of cultivation, and have officially become a Bottom-tier Inner Purification Cultivator."