Chapter 47 The Declined Practice
Zhou Cheng nodded with satisfaction after watching Xuan Zhenzi carefully. Of course, Zhou Cheng was satisfied not only with the attitude of the other party, but also the outstanding qualification of Xuan Zhenzi's practice. After a few days of retreat, he directly broke through the mid-divine period and reached the late stage. In the world of practice, it is a master who can reach the divine period. Those who can reach the later stage of divine spiritualism are all some talented practitioners who have experienced decades of hard practice, which can be regarded as great masters. And Xuanzhenzi actually directly crossed the process that it took ordinary people decades to complete, which is really a rare strange fate.
"Xuan Zhenzi, you can break through and then make great progress. Although I have contributed, if you don't have that understanding, you will never have today's achievements. So you don't have to do that."
Of course, Zhou Cheng can't really go to Xuan Zhenzi again, so he is very polite. Moreover, Zhou Cheng was actually a little excited when he saw the legendary human practitioner for the first time, especially when he was in his fifties, and his real age was even twice as old as Zhou Cheng. If it hadn't been a coincidence, Zhou Cheng might never have been able to be with these immortals among ordinary people.
Zhou Cheng and Xuan Zhenzi communicated in the water wave cave. Through communication, Zhou Cheng knew some basic things in the orthodox practice world. For example, these practitioners are called monks, and spiritual power is called mana and so on.
In today's practice world, it is more common for some monks in the psychic and divine period. As for the masters in the soul training period, they are basically closed. If there is nothing important, they are generally not seen.
Because the masters who can reach the soul training period have gone through at least a hundred years of hard work. However, human life expectancy is short. Even in the training period, they only live dozens or hundreds more than 100 years more than ordinary people, at most less than 300 years. Ordinary monks often only have about 200 years, or even only more than 100 years. This is what people often say. Three yuan's birthday. One yuan is 60 years, and three yuan is 180 years. Therefore, even if human beings reach the soul training period, their life expectancy is not long, and these monks who will die are basically no longer in the world, seeking breakthroughs in practice to prolong longevity.
Among human monks, the psychic monks basically have a two-year life. That is to say, if there is no accident, as long as human beings can practice their mana, they can basically live to about 120 years old, and the longer they live with their cultivation, the longer they live. If you can practice until the divine period, you can live three yuan, and you can usually live 180 to 200 years.
Only in the soul training period, because practitioners at this level have achieved their minds to illuminate the body, so they can take the initiative to use magic to nourish the body and repair the inevitable minor damage in the body and the dark wounds caused by past practice, so that they can live longer and exceed 200 years, but generally It is no more than 250 years. Even if the life expectancy of some monks occasionally exceeds 250 years, they will never pass the 300 mark.
This is because the faster the human body will weaken after a long time, and even the soul and consciousness will gradually decay after living for too long, resulting in inevitable death of human beings. Even if some monks have specially created many methods to prolong their longevity, it will help. Once the deadline comes, even some masters who have trained their bodies to be extremely strong and even ageless will eventually die because their souls gradually dissipated, leaving only an empty body with a young appearance. And this is called the five declines of heaven and man, which means that when the limit comes, everything will decline, and all external things can't be stopped, only the divine soul will dissipate.
In addition, Zhou Cheng also learned that there are very few real monks in the human world, far from being compared with alien monks. For example, there are not a thousand or hundreds of alien monks in Suzhou, while there are only dozens of human monks in this area, and these dozens of people also include the reason why Xuan Zhenzi's sect is stationed here. In ordinary areas, there are only a dozen or even a few monks in the area of a city.
The reason for this is that, on the one hand, although the world is the world of human beings, the number of human beings is far from comparable to all other species combined. Therefore, although human beings are born with wisdom, the opportunity of apocalypse wisdom is slightly higher than that of aliens, but there are too many aliens. Another reason is that today's world has moved towards the trend of science and technology. Human beings are no longer so dependent on their own power, so there are fewer people who can turn on their intelligence. In addition, people's hearts are floating and the world is prosperous. People in the world don't have the thoughts of monism.
It is also because of this that in modern times, the human cultivation world has gradually begun to decline, and human beings have become more and less rare. In order to avoid the world as much as possible, the monks hid their bodies one after another, even if they were in the city, they did not show any abnormality in front of people. And this gradually caused the world to spread the theory of mony as a myth, so in the end, even if ordinary people were single-minded to practice Taoism, they suffered from no one to guide them and had to have these thoughts.
It is precisely because of the scarcity of people that there are no more than hundreds or even thousands of monks in the ancient practice world. Nowadays, if there are more than a dozen monks in today's practice sect, it can be regarded as a regular sect, and even there are only three or five people in some small sects. The most unbearable one sect is that has only two masters and apprentices or directly inherit because the master can't receive disciples. If there are dozens or hundreds of monks in this sect, it can be called the gate sect.
When Zhou Cheng learned about this situation in the practice world, he couldn't help but secretly glad that he had not killed Xuan Zhenzi. You should know that there are only a few monks in a sect, so the first one is extremely precious. If one is killed by himself for no reason, then Xuan Zhenzi's sect will not come to revenge itself like crazy. Even if you are not afraid, it is always extremely troublesome.
And Xuan Zhenzi's teacher is a major school. Although he is not the first in the world in today's practice world, he is also famous. This sect is called the Xuanmu School. According to the classics of the sect, this sect is a Taoist immortal named Xuanmuzi more than a thousand years ago.
Xuanmuzi is the ancestor of the Xuanmu sect, but this sect is formed by his disciples. According to the classics, Xuanmu's ancestor had proved immortality when he practiced for a hundred years, and suddenly disappeared 50 years later. From then on, he never appeared in the world, and even his disciples did not know his trace.
In addition to the Xuanmu sect, there are eight other major schools in the practice world. Each school has more than 100 disciples, and a total of nine major schools are recorded. In addition to these nine sects, there are also many small sects, large and small. The disciples of each sect range from a few to dozens, and the total number of monks in the practice world is less than 10,000. These thousands of monks account for about 30% to 40%, and each small sect accounts for about 40%. Less than 20 of them are family monks or some strange people in the form of scattered cultivation or father to son.
And the mountain gate of the Xuanmu School is located somewhere between the west of Suzhou City and Taihu Lake. Usually, the monks in the school generally do not go out except for those who are sent and go out to travel, so there are often dozens of disciples in the sect, but some disciples are those with low cultivation. However, some highly cultivated people will travel or stay in a dojo all year round. And Xuan Zhenzi is the monk of the Xuanmu sect stationed in Xuanmiaoguan.
Zhou Cheng originally thought that Xuan Zhenzi was a teacher from the mysterious view of Suzhou City, but it was not until this time that he understood what the situation was. It turns out that this mysterious view is not the Taoist temple or mountain gate of a certain sect, and the mysterious view itself is not a sect in the practice world, but a Taoist temple common to all sects in the surrounding area of Suzhou City, or this mysterious view is similar to the office space designated by a joint organization in the secular world.
That is to say, all the religious sects near Suzhou will send one or two monks with profound cultivation to the Xuanmiaoguan to stay there for a long time. But this is because:
First, now there is a decline in the human practice world, and different monks gradually begin to be rampant, not only to cause trouble in the secular world, but also to eliminate demons. Therefore, there is such a place for uniting monks of all factions, which is intended to deter alien monks from making any shocking changes.
Second, it is difficult to find disciples in today's practice world, and this mysterious view is very famous near Suzhou City, so there are many tourists, tourists, and the incense is extremely vigorous. Among these massive tourists and incense, there may be some ordinary people who are qualified to practice and are dedicated to Taoism, and those monks stationed here come for this.
And the significance of this second point is far greater than the previous one, because although the human practice world has a decline, the world is always dominated by human beings, and alien monks can't turn up much waves no matter how rampant they are. Not to mention that although the number of human monks is small, because human monks have inherited and teachers, they can learn to practice secret or magic power, and there are many magic weapons handed down from the human practice world. Although high-quality and rare, general low-grade magic weapons are very common, and almost every school has a few Piece or more. Therefore, the number of alien monks has exceeded that of human monks, but in terms of strength, even human beings have surpassed that of alien monks.
It is precisely because of this that the deterrence of aliens has become secondary. The reason why all sects send highly cultivated disciples to stay in Xuanmiaoguan is aimed at robbing those potential disciples. After all, if enough disciples can't be found, the inheritance of the sect may be slowly cut off, which is the most terrible thing.