Chapter One: The Fox Companion

Night deepened. Xu Zhong closed the window, and the lamplight grew brighter.

A sheet of rice paper lay open before him, still blank. His right hand, holding a brush, rested thoughtfully against his chin, while his left tapped absently at a thick stack of books on the desk, lost in contemplation.

“Chii chii chii!” A strange call broke the silence, and Xu Zhong’s face lit with delight as he hastened to open the window.

But before he could reach it, a white, sharp-snouted little head had already nudged the window open. With a flex of its forepaws, the creature leapt to the desk, landing squarely on the rice paper.

It shook itself, scattering snow everywhere.

It was a small fox, its fur pure white as new-fallen snow.

“Why are you so late today?” Xu Zhong brushed the snow from the rice paper, then used his wide sleeve to wipe the melting flakes from the little fox’s fur.

“Chii chii…” The fox could not speak, but its lively eyes seemed to say the snow was too deep—so deep that it sank entirely into the drifts and was thus much slower than usual.

“Are you cold?” Xu Zhong asked gently.

The little fox nodded first, then shook its head.

Xu Zhong cradled it in his arms, then pondered aloud, “Perhaps it’s the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic.”

The fox, brimming with intelligence, was like one of those magical creatures from tales of the strange—except, regrettably, it could not speak, nor transform into a beautiful maiden.

When they had first met, Xu Zhong mistook it for a mischievous spirit and tried to catch it, for whenever he read, it would cover the text with its little paws, and when he wrote, it would blot his work with ink. Adorable, certainly, but trouble all the same.

The first night he caught it, but the next day it inexplicably escaped, only to return a few days later of its own accord.

Things changed when, weary from reading the Four Books and Five Classics, Xu Zhong picked up the Zhuangzi.

The fox listened with rapt attention, and when the reading grew animated, it even responded with little cries, “woo woo waa waa.”

Gradually, Xu Zhong grew fond of the fox. Whenever it visited, he would set aside the classics and read from the teachings of the Yellow Emperor and Laozi instead. Since the fox only came at night and stayed for an hour or two, it hardly disrupted his studies.

The little fox heard many books read aloud by Xu Zhong, but it especially loved a passage from the “Discourse on Primal Truth” in the Basic Questions: “In ancient times there were true men, who grasped heaven and earth, mastered yin and yang, breathed the essence of the winds, stood alone and guarded their spirit. Their flesh and bones were as one, so they could endure as long as heaven and earth, never reaching their end. Thus was their path born…”

Whenever Xu Zhong read these lines, the fox would always respond with excited cries, tumbling about and bumping into him with all four paws, as if performing therapeutic acupuncture.

But tonight, the little fox did not move as usual. Instead, it tilted its head, gazing earnestly at Xu Zhong.

“You want to know how the ancient sages breathed and mastered the changes of yin and yang, so that they could live as long as the heavens and earth?”

The little fox nodded eagerly.

“How should I know?” Xu Zhong tapped the half-rolled book against the fox. “That was the age of antiquity—one hundred twenty-nine thousand six hundred years ago.”

“Do you know how long that is?”

The fox shook its head.

“I don’t know either. So, like you, I have no idea how the ancient sages cultivated their path.”

The fox seemed a little crestfallen.

“But I recall the Master Embracing the Unhewn once said: ‘The mysterious way is found within; it is kept without; used by the spirit; forgotten by the body.’”

“It means: the mysterious way is realized from within, preserved by what is outside; those who wield it skillfully can let their spirit roam freely, but those who forget it become trapped by the body.”

“I think the sages sought inwardly within themselves and outwardly in accord with heaven and earth…”

The fox shook its head vigorously.

“You think I’m wrong?”

The fox nodded, “Chii chii chii…”

“You mean, to seek oneself outwardly and verify heaven and earth within?”

The fox nodded again.

“How could that be? How can one seek oneself outwardly, or contain heaven and earth within the body?”

The fox drooped, at a loss itself.

“You little fox…” Xu Zhong laughed.

He continued reading aloud, explaining each phrase as he went.

The little fox listened intently, those bright eyes shining with starlight, striving to remember the meaning of every word.

As the night wore on and the first rooster crowed, the lesson ended. The fox slipped out the window, dove headlong into the snow, and vanished from sight.

Xu Zhong smiled. “Time to sleep.”

He settled under the heavy quilt and quickly drifted into deep slumber. His breathing was calm, his body utterly relaxed.

With each breath, he seemed to lose himself, as if his soul had wandered away, his body empty and his heart ashen.

Yet within, life burned bright—a flame shining fiercely.

The little fox, having doubled back, crept soundlessly onto Xu Zhong’s chest.

In its eyes, while Xu Zhong slept, every breath drew in the essence of heaven and earth. His soul drifted outside his body, cradling the forces of yin and yang.

The fox snuggled close, attuning itself to Xu Zhong’s breathing and gathering the ambient energy.

It had once been a wild fox in the mountains. One day, while hunting, it fell into a ravine and accidentally swallowed a mysterious elixir, awakening its spiritual intelligence.

The elixir had been found on a weathered skeleton, together with a scroll of scripture.

Thus endowed with wisdom, the fox instinctively knew the scripture was precious, and after hiding it away, descended the mountain to seek out human teachers.

But most scholars spoke only in empty formulas, their words lacking true vitality. The greatest scholars, with their awe-inspiring moral force, shone like suns—impossible to approach.

Wandering the city with nowhere to settle, the fox eventually came to the outskirts and encountered Xu Zhong, who had repeatedly failed the provincial examinations.

Xu Zhong possessed a gentle radiance—a righteous energy, but not blinding like the sun, more like warm sunlight. From that moment, the fox set its sights on him.

After a few inauspicious encounters, its cuteness finally won Xu Zhong over, and by various means, it managed to extract the meaning of the scripture from him.

Yet, instead of mastering the Daoist arts described therein, the fox inadvertently taught Xu Zhong the art of breath and energy cultivation.

Unbeknownst to Xu Zhong, as he slept, his breathing became rhythmic, drawing in the essence of the world. By mimicking him, the fox could also absorb a bit of this energy and thus barely continue its own cultivation.

It lay atop Xu Zhong’s belly, swaddled in a steady flow of energy, the comfort suffusing every strand of fur.

Perhaps because their cultivation complemented one another, Xu Zhong had nearly learned to understand the fox’s language. In a little while, the fox might even master the art of speaking aloud.

Just then, a cry pierced the air outside the window.

The little fox looked out.

Night receded. The sun rose, the first beam of light blossoming at the horizon and driving away the darkness.

As if sensing this, Xu Zhong’s breathing paused. A sound, faintly like thunder, rumbled from his abdomen—first the belly, then the heart, then, in sequence, each internal organ echoed with the same mysterious resonance. In an instant, his lower dantian opened and spiritual energy coursed through his body.

A moment later, his spirit left his body—a tiny figure, condensed from sparkling motes of light, only the size of a palm, drifting in a daze as if still dreaming.

His breath resumed, and the thunder ceased, replaced by the roaring of spiritual energy surging through him like crashing waves.

In a flash, the spirit grew larger, lips parting to take a deep inhalation.

The energy of heaven and earth seemed to respond, streaming toward Xu Zhong. Threads of purple qi descended from the sky like glowing clouds, finally merging with his blood and saturating his internal organs.

With each alternation of sun and moon, yin and yang converge, and purple qi is born.

At first it gathers as clouds, dispersing in wind, dissolving in water; thus, cultivators often perform their methods at the very moment of dawn and dusk, drawing in purple qi to advance their practice.

Unlike ordinary spiritual energy, purple qi does not merely enhance cultivation; it subtly improves physique and changes one’s destiny.

The little fox stretched luxuriously.

Until now, Xu Zhong had never drawn so much purple qi; today, he nearly gathered all the energy above for a hundred miles—a remarkable occurrence.

The fox pressed its ear to Xu Zhong’s heart.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

It sounded like war drums, with a hint of fire, the vibrations ringing in the fox’s ears and leaving them burning.

“He’s opened the hidden store of the heart and formally entered the Five Luminaries stage!”

Heaven has five luminaries, earth five elements, and man five organs; the three correspond.

The scripture described three great stages of human cultivation.

The first is called Sowing the Dao.

In this stage, one attunes with heaven and earth, gathers energy to lay roots, opens the body’s meridians and the dantian.

Once the dantian is full, energy is directed inward to irrigate the five organs, establishing the foundation of the five elements. This is the first step of the body attesting to heaven and earth.

After the Five Luminaries comes the Guarding Unity stage.

Unfortunately, only the scroll for Guarding Unity survived; it taught that at this stage, one stops cultivating spiritual energy and cultivates magical power instead.

“No wonder today’s cultivation made such a commotion.”

Xu Zhong, practicing in his dream, had already crossed the Sowing the Dao stage and entered the Five Luminaries, opening the hidden fire store in his heart.

The little fox felt a pang of disappointment.

“If I told Xu Zhong the truth, with his talent, he’d progress by leaps and bounds.”

But then it reconsidered.

“Cultivation requires a mind free of distractions. Because he doesn’t know he’s cultivating, his heart remains empty; if I told him, he might lose his chance.”

Once the heart is clouded, single-mindedness is hard to achieve.

Comforting itself, the little fox ended its night’s cultivation.

It slipped out the window and burrowed into the snow.

A trail of tiny paw prints stretched from Xu Zhong’s secluded bamboo hut into the mountains, across frozen foothills and monkey-haunted forests. In the wilds far from human habitation, the little fox dashed joyfully, finally arriving at the edge of a high cliff.

It leapt boldly into the abyss, drifting down on a wisp of cloud, riding a breeze between the cliffs. When the cloud dispersed and the wind died, a hidden cave mansion appeared ahead.

The fox was about to enter when, in the next instant, it stiffened in terror, every hair standing on end as its demonic energy coiled around it. A plume of azure vapor spewed from its mouth and transformed into a roaring wind.

A hand extended from within the cave, lightly dispelling the demon wind, and then drew the fox inside.