Ascension Is a Hook - Chapter 5

The Man Who Would Not Cultivate Immortality

That day, three hundred and seventy-two members of the Xuanwei Sect ascended.

The histories would call it:

*The Great Xuanwei Ascension.*

Three hundred and seventy-two immortals from one sect. Radiance lit the Nine Provinces; heavenly music rang for three days.

No one wrote about the hooks.

No one wrote about the struggling.

No one wrote about Lu Xingzhou either.

Because he failed.

The last time I saw him, he had climbed to the edge of the clouds. Half his body reached into the dark.

His hand seemed to have caught something.

A piece of white flesh.

Or a scale from the sky.

He looked back at me once.

There was no regret in that look.

Only sorrow for what he had left undone.

Then the clouds closed.

The line snapped.

He vanished into the sky.

The sect leader vanished too.

He had not been hooked.

He had leaped up to bite of his own accord.

A man who knew the truth had reached out before anyone else when the scent of bait fell from that crowded sky.

So even those who were awake could hunger.

Qinghe took me down the mountain, fleeing.

The spiritual energy there was terrifyingly dense.

The surviving disciples were ecstatic.

More than three hundred of their seniors had ascended, they said, leaving boundless blessings. The Xuanwei Sect was sure to prosper.

Below the mountain, commoners knelt and kowtowed, proclaiming that the immortals had shown their power.

One child did not kneel.

He crouched beside a ditch, watching a little fish the rain had washed ashore.

It flicked its tail in the mud, close to death.

After a moment’s hesitation, the child cupped it in his hands and returned it to the water.

I watched from a distance and suddenly remembered myself as a boy.

“What do you want to do now?” Qinghe asked.

I touched the fish scale tucked inside my robe.

Master’s.

And the battered copy of *The Fish-Rearing Scripture*.

“I want to write it down.”

“For whom?”

“For those who come after us.”

He smiled a little.

“They may not believe you.”

“Then at least let them have heard it.”

He regarded me with a complicated expression.

“Jiang Zhao, do you know that writing a book is bait too?”

I stared.

“Some seek everlasting life,” he said. “Some seek the Great Dao. Some seek to be remembered.”

“Cultivators feed themselves to heaven.”

“Writers feed themselves to human hearts.”

“If you insist on writing, perhaps one day a different kind of hook will come for you.”

I was silent for a long time.

Then I said, “I’ll write only as long as I can still stop.”

Qinghe did not try to dissuade me again.

He handed me his old lamp.

“Don’t look up for too long.”

Those were his last words to me.

That night, he died.

Quietly.

There was no heavenly lightning.

No radiant light.

No immortal music.

He sat beneath an old pagoda tree at the village entrance, his back against the trunk, the broom still in his hand.

I examined his throat.

There was no hook mark.

I buried him beside the river.

A small grave.

A small stone.

I did not carve “Master” upon it.

Only four characters:

*The man who would not cultivate immortality.*

Truth Is Bait Too

For many years afterward, I traveled through the mortal world.

I visited many sects. Witnessed many ascensions.

Every time, the scene was the same.

Radiant light.

Heavenly music.

Worship.

A lowering hook.

A fish taking bait.

Sometimes one person ascended. Sometimes a group.

Sometimes an entire sect was fished empty.

Yet the cultivation world never declined.

Whenever the powerful ascended, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth grew richer.

New geniuses appeared. New cultivation arts emerged. New hidden realms opened.

And people believed more firmly than ever that the Great Dao was real.

I tried burning those manuals.

I smashed ascension platforms too.

I copied *The Fish-Rearing Scripture* three thousand times and scattered the copies across the Nine Provinces.

And what happened?

Some called me a fiend of the demonic path.

Some called it a test by inner demons.

Some said that if ascension really was a lie, that was all the more reason to ascend and see for themselves.

One man even attained enlightenment after reading what I had written.

“So all living beings are fish,” he said. “If I can know that I am a fish, haven’t I already gone beyond being one?”

Three days later, he broke through.

Decades later, he ascended.

On the day of his ascension, he smiled at me.

“Senior Jiang, I’ll find out what’s behind the hook for you.”

I watched him being caught and said nothing.

At that moment, I finally understood.

Truth itself could be bait.

Tell someone there is a hook above the water, and he may not keep away.

He may only want more desperately to discover what lies behind it.

People do not take the bait only because they are ignorant.

Sometimes they take it because they want the answer too badly.