The Backlash of the Foreign Artifact
The consequence of accepting the foreign staff from the Taoist immortal recoiled directly into San San’s physical frame the following morning.
The nine-year-old boy awoke beneath a freezing pressure that seemed to originate from the deepest point of his body. His limbs were intact, his breathing remained steady, and no visible wound marked his skin. Yet something within him had become misaligned.
For several moments, San San remained motionless upon the bed.
The room was quiet. Pale morning light entered through the window and rested upon the familiar objects surrounding him. His True Scripture of the Great Fa lay beside his pillow, its pages closed and undisturbed. Everything appeared ordinary.
Only his own body no longer felt entirely familiar.
He raised one hand and examined his fingers. They trembled faintly. He concentrated and attempted to summon the golden lightning that had once answered a single thought.
A thin spark appeared between his fingers.
It trembled.
Then it went out.
San San stared at his hand.
The divine power had not disappeared. He could still sense it hidden beneath the layers of his body, like a great river flowing beneath a sheet of ice. But it no longer answered him with perfect purity. Something foreign had inserted itself between his thought and the Law.
He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing.
Perhaps he had simply exhausted too much energy during the battle at the outer station. Perhaps his primordial spirit had not yet completely recovered from the long journey across the stellar dimensions. Perhaps the protective cage had placed an unusual burden upon his meridians.
These explanations arose one after another, each sounding reasonable.
San San opened the True Scripture of the Great Fa and began reciting a familiar passage.
The first line entered his consciousness clearly.
The second line followed.
But when he reached the end of the sentence, the beginning had vanished.
San San stopped breathing for a moment.
He tried again.
This time, he remembered the sounds but not their meaning. The words remained upon the page, yet they no longer connected with the primordial spirit that had once understood them.
A third attempt produced an even more terrifying result. The characters were still visible to his eyes, but his mind felt separated from them by an invisible layer of ice.
The Fa was before him.
Yet he could no longer fully enter it.
A tremor passed through his body. The room suddenly seemed much colder. The frost did not come from the air; it radiated from the center of his own energy field, spreading outward through his limbs and pressing against his consciousness.
San San lowered the scripture.
He did not want his mother to see the fear in his eyes.
The First Collapse: The Loss of Ability
He sat upright and attempted to perform the first exercise.
The movements began correctly. His arms rose, his palms turned, and the energy in his body started to circulate. But the current soon became uneven. A strand of golden light emerged from his chest, twisted sharply to one side, and dissolved into a smear of blackness.
San San immediately corrected his posture.
The energy returned for a brief instant before breaking apart again.
He tried to send forth Righteous Thoughts.
A Falun appeared before him. Its black-and-white Taiji symbols rotated in their familiar pattern, but the edge of the disc was blurred, as though another substance had been mixed into its radiance. The rotation slowed. A faint gray film spread across its surface.
San San concentrated more deeply.
The Falun shook and vanished.
His heart sank.
He raised one hand and called upon the countless swords that had once emerged from the microscopic particles of his body. A dozen blades of light formed in the air before him. Their shapes were incomplete. Several broke apart before their points had fully solidified. The remaining swords fell to the floor of the subtle realm like fragments of frozen moonlight.
San San forced himself to remain calm.
The divine powers were still present. That was the most important fact. He merely needed to restore the connection between his primary consciousness and the mechanisms of gong.
He began to analyze the problem.
Perhaps the foreign artifact had damaged a particular meridian. Perhaps he needed to guide the gong through a different passage. Perhaps he should summon the staff again and use its power to stabilize the energy field before expelling it completely.
The last thought appeared so naturally that San San almost accepted it without question.
He stopped.
The golden staff had already been rejected once. Why would he summon it again?
Yet the more he considered the matter, the more reasonable the idea seemed.
The staff had assisted him during the battle. It had appeared to possess its own power, and its radiant surface had promised to strike down demonic entities automatically. If he used it carefully—only for a brief moment—perhaps he could draw out the foreign substance without exhausting the remainder of his own strength.
San San looked toward the corner of the room.
Nothing was there.
Still, within the subtle field surrounding him, he sensed a faint golden presence waiting beyond the threshold of his consciousness.
The False Solution
San San closed his eyes and entered the interior space of his own mind-field.
The ordinary bedroom disappeared.
He found himself standing in a vast, dim expanse. The ground beneath his feet resembled polished black stone, while a pale mist drifted through the distance. Countless points of light hovered above him, representing the different layers of his energy field and the systems of gong that connected them.
Far ahead, the golden staff floated in the darkness.
It no longer looked threatening.
Its surface shone with gentle warmth, and its radiance resembled the light of a weapon waiting faithfully for its master. The intricate patterns upon its body appeared almost compassionate.
A thought emerged without sound.
You do not need to reject me.
San San remained still.
The thought continued.
You only need to use me correctly.
The golden staff rotated slowly.
You have already fought through the outer station. You have already spent most of your energy. Why insist on relying upon your own strength when a weapon can make the task easier?
The reasoning sounded calm.
It did not resemble a demonic roar. It did not threaten him. It did not demand obedience.
It merely offered efficiency.
San San remembered the battle.
He remembered the biological tank opening fire. He remembered his head exploding in the hidden dimension and the blood splashing across the metallic floor. He remembered his limbs being torn apart by concealed attacks before reforming beneath the protection of the Fa.
He remembered the endless stream of hybrid entities rushing toward him.
He remembered how heavy his body had felt when he finally returned to the mortal plane.
The staff had made the fighting easier.
San San looked at the artifact for a long time.
It was true. He had nearly exhausted himself at the space station. If he possessed a weapon that could act independently, he would not need to expend so much energy in every battle. He could protect more people, destroy more evil, and fulfill his responsibilities more efficiently.
The logic was flawless on the surface.
That was precisely why it was dangerous.
San San raised his hand toward the staff.
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For one heartbeat, the golden artifact moved closer.
Then a clear thought arose from the deepest part of his consciousness.
Why do I need it?
The question remained suspended in the darkness.
San San did not answer.
The staff emitted a gentle radiance.
Because you are tired.
He remembered the fatigue in his limbs.
Because you are still young.
He remembered the pain in his hands.
Because your strength is not yet enough.
San San’s fingers tightened.
The thought struck a hidden place inside him.
He had fought bravely. He had not retreated from the outer station. He had destroyed the manufacturing schematics and purified countless entities. Yet beneath his courage had remained a quiet fear—that one day his own strength would no longer be sufficient.
The staff had not created that fear.
It had merely spoken to it.
San San withdrew his hand.
The golden artifact drifted backward, waiting.
The Second Collapse: The Loss of Direction
San San returned to his physical body, but the questions followed him.
He could no longer distinguish clearly between his own strength and the strength that had entered him from outside.
Had the flying swords during the previous battle truly emerged from his own cultivation?
Had the lightning answered his Righteous Thoughts?
Or had he merely been carried forward by borrowed mechanisms, external artifacts, and the intervention of higher beings?
The questions multiplied.
Each answer seemed to produce another question. The more he tried to analyze them, the farther he moved from the stillness of the Fa.
San San raised his palm again.
A thread of golden lightning appeared and vanished.
He tried to recall the precise moment when the divine shield had formed around his body during the battle with the hybrid entities. The memory flickered. The shield was there, then gone. The image of the foreign staff overlapped with the image of the Falun. His own power and the artifact’s radiance became entangled in his mind.
The Demon of Imagination had once tried to invade his consciousness by turning a simple thought into a labyrinth of suspicion.
Now San San recognized the same pattern emerging within himself.
A single doubt gave birth to three possibilities. Each possibility produced another doubt. Soon his consciousness became filled with invisible branches, all leading farther away from the original truth.
He should have returned to stillness.
Instead, he tried to reason his way out of the confusion.
He asked whether the divine powers belonged to him. He asked whether his previous victories had been genuine. He asked whether the intervention of the two great Deities meant that he had failed. He asked whether receiving assistance from a foreign artifact was truly different from receiving assistance from a higher being.
His mind-field grew darker with every question.
The golden staff reappeared at the edge of his vision.
You see? it seemed to say. You cannot even determine which power is truly yours. Why not accept a tool that makes the distinction unnecessary?
San San’s breathing became heavy.
For the first time since awakening his divine powers, he could no longer trust his own judgment.
The cold within his body deepened. It spread through his chest and reached his throat, creating a suffocating sense of despair and isolation. He looked at the True Scripture beside him, but the characters seemed farther away than before.
He was still holding the scripture.
Yet the Fa felt distant.
The ordinary world outside the window continued as usual. People walked along the street. A bird landed upon the roof and quickly flew away. Somewhere in the house, his mother moved quietly through the morning chores.
No one in the mortal world could see that a life-and-death crisis had already descended upon the nine-year-old child.
The Mother’s Question
His mother entered the room and immediately noticed the pallor of his face.
She did not ask what had happened.
Instead, she stood beside the bed and observed the turbulence moving through his mind-field. Her expression grew increasingly serious.
“Did you execute an improper maneuver during the exercises?” she asked.
San San remained silent.
His mother studied him for another moment.
“Or did you accept the Fa-staff from that Taoist entity?”
The question struck the center of his consciousness.
San San’s fingers tightened against the blanket.
He did not answer aloud.
But the smallest movement of his head was enough.
His mother’s expression did not contain anger. It contained the strict compassion of a practitioner who understood that an error at the level of the energy field could become a matter of life and death.
“The divine instruments and the mechanisms of gong are closely interlaced with the cultivation of moral character,” she said. “No Second Cultivation Way is not a minor rule. It is the foundational principle of our discipline.”
San San lowered his eyes.
The words sounded simple.
Yet they passed through the layers of confusion in his mind like a blade of clear light.
He had been searching for a technical explanation. He had treated the crisis as though an external object had malfunctioned inside his body.
But the staff had not entered him by accident.
He had accepted it.
He had welcomed its radiance.
He had believed that an external instrument could make him more capable of fulfilling his responsibility.
The error had not begun when the staff revealed its demonic form.
The error had begun when his heart had reached toward it.
The Coordinate of Moral Character
San San opened his Celestial Eye and looked toward the upper atmosphere of the subtle realm.
There, beyond the visible sky, stood the cosmic coordinate axis that measured the moral character of every spirit.
He had seen the system many times before. It resembled an immense vertical structure extending through countless dimensions. Golden lines crossed its surface, recording the position of every being according to the level of that being’s heart-nature.
His own golden gong pillar was connected to the axis.
It had once risen steadily through the heavens, its radiance calm and pure.
Now its upper section had collapsed.
Not shattered.
Not violently destroyed.
It had simply sunk, as though the pillar itself had lost the authority to rise.
San San stared at it in silence.
The foreign staff had not merely entered his body.
It had entered the space where his own choice should have stood.
He suddenly understood that the artifact itself was not the deepest issue. If he merely expelled it because he feared its consequences, he would still not have understood the origin of the crisis.
He needed to look directly at the thought that had called it there.
San San turned his Celestial Eye toward the moment when the golden staff had first appeared.
He saw the Taoist immortal standing before him.
He saw the radiant artifact floating between them.
But this time, he did not stop at the image of the immortal.
He looked deeper.
Beneath the artifact lay his own thought.
If only I had a weapon in my hand.
Beneath that thought lay another.
If I possessed a stronger weapon, I would not need to endure so much fatigue.
Beneath that one lay the thought he had never admitted:
I am afraid that my own strength is not enough.
San San’s face became pale.
The Taoist immortal had not forced the staff into his hand.
The opening had begun inside him.
The artifact had not created the selfish Ego.
It had merely given that Ego a shape.
The Battle Within the Mind-Field
San San returned to the inner space of his mind-field.
The black ground and pale mist had disappeared. He now stood within an immense white expanse, empty except for the golden staff floating in front of him.
Behind the artifact appeared images from the previous battles.
He saw the wild bird disintegrating beneath the purple radiance. He saw the serpent collapsing beneath thousands of swords. He saw the golden lightning strike the demonic fireball. He saw the outer station burning beneath the radiance of the Minghui interface.
One by one, the images transformed into scenes of praise and victory.
In every scene, San San stood at the center.
The golden staff waited before him.
“You are not rejecting power,” a thought emerged from its radiance. “You are rejecting only one form of power.”
San San looked at it.
“No.”
His voice was weak at first.
The staff trembled.
“You have responsibilities. You must protect the innocent. You must eliminate evil. Why should you refuse a tool that helps you accomplish those things?”
San San watched the images behind it.
The argument was not entirely false. That was what made it difficult to reject.
“I do not reject you merely because you are dangerous,” he said.
The golden light brightened.
“I reject the thought that called you here.”
The images behind the staff began to distort.
The praise became fear. The victories became exhaustion. The weapons became chains of light wrapping around San San’s limbs.
The staff spoke again.
“Without me, you will be weaker.”
San San lowered his hands.
“Perhaps.”
The golden artifact moved closer.
“Without me, you may fail.”
“Perhaps.”
“You may suffer greater pain.”
“Perhaps.”
“You may even die.”
San San closed his eyes.
For a long moment, he felt the cold press against his consciousness. He remembered the explosion at the outer station. He remembered his head shattering beneath the biological cannon. He remembered returning to the mortal world with every limb heavy from exhaustion.
Then he opened his eyes.
“But if I preserve you because I fear weakness,” he said, “then the weakness already belongs to my heart.”
The white expanse fell silent.
San San continued:
“I do not need an external weapon to prove that I can fight. I do not need borrowed power to complete the responsibility placed before me. My Master is the Holy King. The Great Fa created the universe. No foreign entity, no external instrument, and no selfish fear possesses the authority to define my path.”
He took one step forward.
“I choose the single path.”
Another step.
“I choose the Fa.”
The Purging of the Deceptive Phantom
The golden staff began to shake.
Dark cracks spread across its radiant surface. Its gentle light twisted into a violent red-gold glare. A demonic face emerged from its center, its features warped by panic, hatred, and resentment.
The staff no longer resembled a sacred instrument.
It mutated into an ugly monster bearing an inverted bowl-shaped mustache caked in dark energy. Its eyes opened wide as it frantically swung its limbs toward San San.
It had lost the authority to remain concealed.
San San did not summon swords.
He did not call forth golden lightning.
He did not request the assistance of any external Deity.
He simply held his consciousness steady.
“You have no authority over my path.”
The words were quiet.
Yet the entire mind-field responded.
A pure radiance emerged from the center of San San’s primordial spirit. It did not explode outward like a weapon. It spread with the quiet inevitability of dawn, dissolving every dark substance it touched.
The monster screamed without sound.
Its body collapsed inward. The mustache, the eyes, the limbs, and the layers of dark energy all disintegrated together, turning into fine black dust before vanishing into the void.
The golden staff was expelled from San San’s body and thrown beyond the boundary of his energy field.
At the same instant, the cold pressure within his limbs loosened slightly.
The connection between his primary consciousness and the Fa was not yet completely restored, but the foreign obstruction had been removed.
San San remained still.
He did not celebrate.
He understood that throwing away the artifact was only the first decision. The deeper attachment—the belief that an external weapon could complete him—had to be abandoned as well.
The Five False Warriors
The void had barely regained its stillness when five armored warriors appeared upon magnificent warhorses.
Each warrior carried a radiant weapon. One held a sacred blade, another a golden spear, a third a jade bow, a fourth a thunderous hammer, and the fifth a translucent sword that seemed to contain an entire celestial realm.
Their armor shone with a noble brilliance.
Their horses stood upon clouds of seven colors.
The warriors lowered their weapons in a gesture of benevolence.
“You rejected one artifact,” they declared. “That does not mean you must enter the coming battles unarmed.”
San San studied the weapons.
For one heartbeat, the old fascination moved through his heart.
The weapons were magnificent. They were more beautiful than the golden staff, more powerful in appearance, and far more suited to the battles that awaited him.
Then he recognized the temptation.
Its appearance had changed, but its essence had not.
San San shook his head.
“I do not need another answer from outside myself.”
The five warriors remained motionless.
“You will be weaker without us.”
“I may be.”
“You will suffer more.”
“I may.”
“You will face enemies that cannot be defeated by an empty hand.”
San San’s expression became calm.
“Then I will face them with the heart I have cultivated.”
A sharp crack resounded through the white expanse.
The five warriors vanished into the void without leaving a single trace.
The celestial weapons disappeared with them.
San San’s gong pillar trembled once in the far distance. It did not immediately return to its former height, but the downward collapse stopped.
That alone was enough to show that the choice had been recognized.
The Sacrifice of the True Vanguard
The self-examination of San San’s moral character did not end there.
After returning to the mortal plane, he remained seated beside the bed for a long time. His mother had left the room to prepare the morning meal. The house was quiet except for the faint sounds of ordinary life.
Later, San San heard his father calmly share his stance toward Fa-Rectification:
“I deploy my entire gong. I sacrifice everything required. I do not preserve a private reserve for the sake of comfort.”
The words remained in San San’s mind.
During the battle at the outer station, he had not merely used a protective cage because he was tired.
He had used it because a part of him wanted to complete the task while preserving a separate refuge for himself.
He had wanted the victory of a true vanguard disciple without completely surrendering the safety of an ordinary child.
He had wanted to eliminate evil, but he had also wanted to remain untouched by the price of the battle.
San San lowered his head.
The selfishness was not hidden in some distant demon.
It had been present in the thought:
I will fight, but I must still protect myself first.
He finally understood why the foreign staff had found him.
The artifact had not created the selfish Ego.
It had merely given that Ego a shape.
A true Deity did not mean that pain would disappear. A true Deity did not mean that exhaustion would never occur. It meant that when the universe required everything, the heart would not secretly reserve a portion for itself.
San San looked at his hands.
They were still small. They were still the hands of a nine-year-old child.
Yet the responsibility placed upon them belonged to a much greater scale.
He had been eager to display divine powers, but he had not yet completely understood the standard required to carry them.
Destroying an evil entity was only the surface manifestation.
The deeper battle was whether he could surrender the part of himself that demanded safety before responsibility.
The Trap of Ordinary Comfort
The enticement of ordinary comfort launched another assault the following dawn.
Seeing her child exhausted after crossing the life-and-death threshold, his mother whispered gently:
“If fatigue remains, sleep for another hour.”
The suggestion carried no malice.
It arose from family affection and concern.
San San looked toward the bed.
For a moment, the invitation seemed harmless. His body was indeed tired. His mind had only just escaped the shadow of the foreign artifact. An additional hour of sleep might restore his strength.
Then he suddenly saw the same pattern hidden beneath it.
The staff had promised him external strength.
The protective cage had promised him personal safety.
The extra hour of sleep now promised him private time.
Each temptation wore a different face.
Each one protected the same thing:
the small, separate self that still wanted to reserve something for itself.
A pale mist drifted across the room.
Master’s Law-body appeared within a blazing aura of radiance.
“Time is dwindling,” He said. “Countless matters, once missed, offer no second opportunity. The losses that follow may become immense and impossible to repair.”
San San jolted upright.
For one moment, he remained seated upon the bed.
Then he remembered the staff.
He remembered the protective cage.
He remembered the part of himself that had always wanted to fight without fully surrendering.
Before Master’s Law-body spoke again, San San placed both feet upon the floor.
“I understand,” he said.
His voice trembled, but his consciousness was clear.
“This time, I will not wait for the temptation to become a calamity.”
The radiance surrounding Master’s Law-body became slightly brighter.
The compassionate presence did not praise him. It merely remained for a brief instant before dissolving into the air.
San San stood.
The body was still weak. His mind had not completely recovered. The golden pillar of moral character had not yet returned to its former height.
But for the first time since the crisis began, he no longer attempted to hide from these facts.
He did not need to pretend that he had never been tempted.
He did not need to pretend that he had never feared weakness, exhaustion, or death.
He only needed to stop allowing those fears to choose his path.
San San stepped down from the bed, crossed his legs, and straightened his back.
He entered the exercise.
The first movement began.
The energy in his body remained faint and uneven, but he no longer forced it. He allowed the Fa to guide the circulation. He did not summon a foreign weapon. He did not construct a separate refuge for himself. He did not preserve an invisible reserve for the sake of comfort.
He simply maintained a clear and unmoved consciousness.
Eliminating evil spirits through divine powers was merely the surface manifestation.
The genuine ladder of cultivation lay deeper:
to preserve unwavering Righteous Faith;
to guard the No Second Cultivation Way;
to surrender the selfish Ego;
and to let the Fa determine every thought before it became an action.
San San closed his eyes.
This time, he did not cultivate in order to become stronger.
He cultivated so that nothing foreign, fearful, or selfish could stand between his heart and the Fa.
Far above the mortal world, the golden pillar of his moral character began—very slowly—to rise.
Canto 110 — The Scale of Moral Character
The frozen words erase the borrowed guide,The foreign staff reveals the heart inside.The pillar sinks beneath the hidden fear,The single road grows absolute and clear.
Five false riders offer sword and steed,Yet none can move the heart from righteous creed.Comfort fades beneath the Master’s sign,The Fa alone now guides each step divine.