Jiang Chen looked up in surprise. In his memory, Liu Wencai had always been easygoing and confident. Why did his tone today carry a note of self-pity and melancholy?
Seeing Jiang Chen's gaze turn toward him, Liu Wencai gave a wry smile. "Brother Panshi, I think I finally understand why you secular martial artists always burn with that kind of anger, why you're always filled with such tremendous drive. Being shut out, being looked down upon everywhere—that really is the greatest motivation there is."
A trace of bitterness crept into his voice.
It was clear that his various experiences after entering the Earth Spirit Area had caused a subtle shift in his mindset.
Jiang Chen smiled and nodded. "Brother Wencai, you're a disciple of the Myriad Spirit Sect—why such resentful words?"
Liu Wencai sighed. "Brother Panshi, to be honest, I'm not really a proper sect disciple. The value of my identity as one is severely lacking. I was born into a secular hunter's family. When I was still in swaddling clothes, a catastrophe struck my family, and a deacon from the Myriad Spirit Sect happened to rescue me and bring me back to the sect. That deacon was my savior and the only elder I had in the entire Myriad Spirit Sect. But—good people don't live long. He perished during a sect activity. From then on, I, Liu Wencai, became a lone star cursed by fate, without anyone to rely on. If not for my extraordinary effort—scratching out a survival in the cracks of the sect—I wouldn't have been able to take part in this selection, let alone remain in the sect at all."
Liu Wencai had long suffered from unrecognized talent and a lack of true confidants.
At this moment, even he found it strange—why was he pouring his heart out to a secular martial artist? After finishing, he scratched his head, somewhat embarrassed. "Brother Panshi, I've rambled on and on and probably polluted your ears. It's strange, really—I'm not normally someone who loves to run his mouth. But for some reason, whenever I see you, I feel a natural sense of closeness. I hope you don't think I'm just flattering you, putting on an act? Heh."
Liu Wencai laughed self-deprecatingly. He truly wasn't trying to flatter anyone. The several times he'd sought out Jiang Chen had genuinely been driven by that innate sense of kinship.
In particular, seeing Jiang Chen brutally crush sect disciples had filled him with tremendous satisfaction. Though Liu Wencai was technically a sect disciple, at his core he carried the thinking of a secular martial artist.
Because he'd had an unhappy life in the sect. Because he wasn't an inner-lineage disciple, he'd struggled to get by even within the Myriad Spirit Sect.
After the deacon who had raised him fell in battle, his days had only grown more agonizing.
If he hadn't proven himself through relentless effort—earning this selection opportunity through sheer perseverance—one day he would have been completely buried at the bottom of the sect, never to rise again for all eternity.
Jiang Chen's gaze was calm. He gestured to the open ground beside them. "Sit."
He had never felt any antipathy toward Liu Wencai from the very beginning. Hearing his words now and observing the man before him, he could tell this was someone with a genuinely authentic heart.
Jiang Chen naturally felt a kinship toward such people.
He picked up a twig and drew several small circles on the ground, then a single large circle encompassing them all.
"These four small circles are like the four great sects, and this large circle is like the Sixteen Kingdoms Alliance. Whether we're inside the large circle or the small ones, what we can see is ultimately limited to those circles. But if we step outside the small circles, step outside the large circle, you'll find that the world beyond is vaster and broader—so vast it has no bounds. We martial artists, at the end of the day, regard the sect as merely one stop on the pursuit of the supreme Dao. There's no need to let these things trouble our Dao hearts."
A contemplative look surfaced in Liu Wencai's eyes. He stared at the small circles and the large circle, dazed, as though he was trying to absorb the meaning behind Jiang Chen's words.
Jiang Chen drew the twig in a single stroke across the circles, slicing clean through them.
"We martial artists press ever forward. If we can break through these thousand obstacles, we may attain the great Dao. If we cannot break through these rigid boundaries, in the end we're nothing but drifting clouds and yellow dust—gone in the blink of an eye."
Jiang Chen smiled and swept the twig across the ground. All the circles and lines vanished in an instant.
The Sixteen Kingdoms Alliance, the four great sects—in the grand scheme of things, they were all mere specks of territory. If any great upheaval were to occur, they could disappear just as easily as these drawings on the ground.
This wasn't just Jiang Chen speaking off the cuff. After his conversation with the elder Ye Chonglou, he had truly come to grasp just how weak the Sixteen Kingdoms Alliance really was.
Within the Myriad Realms Domain, the Sixteen Kingdoms Alliance was already on the verge of elimination, with a very real possibility of being relegated to a barren wasteland. This only proved just how precarious the Alliance's position truly was.
Liu Wencai fell into contemplation, then suddenly seemed to grasp something, casting a grateful look toward Jiang Chen. "Thank you for your wise words, Brother Rock. What you said just now was truly a slap of awakening. You're right—what does it matter what background or origins we cultivators come from? A true genius, even with the entire world arrayed against him, cannot be stopped from rising. And a mediocrity, even with the whole world behind him, will never amount to anything."
Jiang Chen let out a hearty laugh and gave a slight nod, but said nothing more.
Seeing that Jiang Chen approved of his realization, Liu Wencai felt genuinely pleased. Sitting beside Jiang Chen, he no longer felt the slightest bit uncomfortable.
He vaguely felt as though this worldly genius was like a bright lamp, illuminating the way out of his lost wandering. In an instant, the confusion that had plagued him melted away.
"This Brother Rock must be someone of extraordinary talent. Born from the mortal world yet outshining a multitude of sect geniuses—if he ever encounters the right wind and clouds, he will surely transform into a dragon. That I, Liu Wencai, can exchange words with such a person is heaven's grace upon me, using Brother Rock's insight to shake me awake from my confusion. From now on, I should seek out Brother Rock more often, befriend him, honor him as an elder brother, and continually improve myself."
Liu Wencai's heart surged with excitement. He felt that even a handful of casual exchanges with Jiang Chen had yielded an astonishing amount of insight.
Brother Rock's level of understanding, his elevated perspective—it far exceeded the scope of the mortal world, and even surpassed the cognitive realm of sect disciples.
Liu Wencai was sharp-minded and quick-witted; otherwise, he never could have carved out a place for himself among the gathered geniuses of the sect as the son of a mere hunter.
In this moment, he had solidified his judgment. This Brother Rock was absolutely a peerless genius of the highest order—his talent, his emotional depth, his level of attainment were all superior even to those first-class disciples.