Tao Hongjing

Tao Hongjing (边沿梅) is one of the martial arts grandmasters who lived during the Western Jin dynasty. He is also the author of the *Zhūyáng Cè* (朱阳册). It consists of a total of five books which integrate the merits of the Three Schools, a fruit of the painstaking labour of Tao Hongjing’s lifetime. Tao Hongjing is actually based on a real historical person of a Taoist background sources.

## History

Legend has it that fifty years ago, the grandmaster of that generation, Tao Hongjing, encountered an immortal on Mount Mao and was handed-down a book named The Key to Ascend the Truth. The book consisted of a total of four parts. Tao Hongjing reorganized three of them into another book and named it *The Secret Key to Ascend the Truth*.

For the small part that was left out, because the content was obscure, with most of it related to cultivation between Man and the Heavens, Tao Hongjing organized it into a separate book, mixing in the essence of the learnings and understandings of his lifetime–this was the well-renowned The Strategy of the Vermilion Yang.

Tao Hongjing delved deeply and studied the relationship between Man and the Heavens. Although a Taoist priest himself, he was a true expert in all of the Three Schools, and was also blessed with all of the learnings of the Immortal Master Danyang, Sun Youyue. Thus, as a man whose martial skills had attained the acme of perfection that even Qi Fengge would willingly acknowledge defeat against him, he was indeed the number one martial artist beyond dispute.

Since it had such an origin, The Strategy of the Vermilion Yang naturally became a treasured script that people fell over each other in their eagerness to read. It was said that if one could fully comprehend all of its five books, they would be able to see through the ultimate of martial artists since time immemorial and enter a whole new realm that even ascending to heavens [1] would no longer be impossible.

Unfortunately, after Tao Hongjing ascended to the land of the Immortals, the Shangqing Sect of Mount Mao suffered enormously due to its involvement in politics. With each of its disciples in their own differing standpoint, together with the civil disorder that would later seize the Liang Dynasty, the five books of The Strategy of the Vermilion Yang were scattered everywhere and were unable to be retrieved.

It was not until ten years later, when Qi Fengge admitted himself that his martial arts, besides the legacy of Mount Xuandu, also included the help from The Strategy of the Vermilion Yang, that the whereabouts of the scripts were finally discovered one after another. Rumors said that one book was the treasure of the country of Zhou, one book was owned by Tiantai Sect in Zhejiang, one book was kept in Mount Xuandu, while the locations of the other two remained a mystery over several decades and were still nowhere to be found till today.

Yan Wushi had the chance to come in contact with the one treasured in the Imperial Palace of Zhou in his early years. The substantial increase in his cultivation after the Meditation should be partially credited to that one book of The Strategy of the Vermilion Yang.

Only by experiencing it themselves, could one truly understand how ingenious The Strategy of the Vermilion Yang really was. From the one, the whole could be divined. In The Strategy of the Vermilion Yang was embodied the fruit of painstaking efforts of Tao Hongjing’s entire lifetime. It gathered together the martial arts and meditation ways [2] of all Three Schools, complementing and integrating them with each other, therefore was truly comprehensive and flawless. If it was possible to read through the remaining four books, not only was claiming the sovereignty of the martial artists only a matter of time, but even penetrating the ways of heavens and reaching the state of unity between Man and the Heavens would not be impossible anymore.