“Obtaining the topmost degree of talent in sword arts in the world requires giving up 72 years of lifespan, which leaves you with only five more years of your life. At the same time, you will never be able to feel love, kinship, and friendship, and you’ll end up leading a lonely life until your death, unable to procreate, or to have any descendants. “From now onwards, everything related to happiness in the human world shall no longer be of your concern. Are you willing to accept this?” “Hahahaha, I’m already alone bereft of all support, my hopes dashed to pieces, shouldering only absolutely irreconcilable grudge and hatred, why would I disagree? Why would I not want it? I couldn’t ask for anything better!!” His sword sweeps across the Divine Continent for seven days and nights, moving 90,000 miles through the starry skies, unhindered. He slays saints and buddhas in Heaven, slaughters demons and devils in Hell, sweeping away all the grievances in his heart!
‘People with great lifespans possessed great spirits, and there was nothing they could not achieve.
‘People with great destiny possessed great fortune and were unrivalled.’
Fang Xingjian opened up to the first page of the Mountainous Sea’s Book of the Way, and these two lines were written on it. It wrote about the abstruse relationship between lifespan and destiny, and seemed to contain an extremely profound theory.
He flipped through the pages one by one and discovered that the Mountainous Sea’s Book of the Way was truly extremely obscure, deep, and profound. This was especially because the cultivation method recorded in it seemed to be the complete opposite of the way Knights cultivated.
Or rather, it could be said that the Friars across the entire Western Land valued one’s lifespan over fighting prowess.