Mud Cult
There are two reasons the Mud Cult is called the Mud Cult.[1]
The first is that the Mud Cult holds that the human world is a muddy swamp. The moment a living being is born, it sinks deep into a sea of suffering and cannot pull itself free. The has no lack of followers, yet no one has ever seen one of them truly ascend and leave the toil of this world behind. Rather than pin their hopes on metaphysical Daoist Techniques, the Mud Cult says you should first find a way to live well, even if it means struggling in the mud, ugly as that is. The six Dharma Kings each govern one of the Six Paths, and each Path stands for a different way of living.
The second is that they dug up a mud Hot Spring at their base, Six Paths Canyon. The followers all love to soak in it, until they are covered in mud from head to toe.
Jianghu folk find the Mud Cult's people suspicious: they soak in mud and chant wicked scriptures, and on top of that the Hungry Ghost Path and the Hell Path run wild everywhere. So they are seen as the new Demon Cult after the Supreme Bliss Cult.
Six Paths of Reincarnation
The Six Paths of the Mud Cult are the Heavenly Path, the Asura Path, the Human Path, the Hell Path, the Beast Path and the Hungry Ghost Path. Three Good Paths and Three Evil Paths: this comes from the Buddhist teaching of the six paths of reincarnation. The beings of the Six Paths each go their own way and have always kept to themselves. Some hold aloof from the world; some do evil without end.
The Dharma King of the Heavenly Path, Che Xuanyuan, stays deep in Six Paths Canyon and never comes out.
The Dharma King of the Asura Path is unknown. His followers hid among the Song army; at the siege of Jiangling they coordinated with the Beast Path from within, cut the Jiangling garrison in two in one stroke, drove off the Cavalry Command and isolated the Commander, but they were exposed right after. The remnants were left without a leader and scattered in all directions.[2]
The Human Path took the form of Jinxiang Palace, sheltering women who had nowhere to turn, and enjoyed a good reputation in the Jianghu. But at the Fengyu Mountain Assembly Nangong Qian exposed them, and the Dharma King, Lady Wen, and Nangong Yuan Died for Love.
The Dharma King of the Hell Path, Zhao Kui, comes and goes like a ghost in Western Shu, answering to no law. When his thousands of Ghost Soldiers pour out in full, it is as if the Ghost Gate of the seventh month has been thrown open. They seize people everywhere and drag them back to the "Underworld" for private trial and torture, and both the righteous and the wicked suffer for it.
The Dharma King of the Beast Path, Wang Erzhuang, hides within the new faction of the Beggar Sect. They right wrongs and are deeply respected by the commoners of the city, until at the siege of Jiangling they suddenly turned on them, in league with the Asura Path, and no one could guard against it. In the end the Dharma King was killed by Li Fugui, righteousness cutting down kin, and the old faction of the Beggar Sect rose again.
The Hungry Ghost Path, the White Shark Gang, runs rampant on the East Sea, making a point of opposing the and the Imperial Court. The Dharma King, Liu E, tops the Wanted Notice today, with a bounty even higher than that of the . The Imperial Court has sent troops to sea to wipe out the pirates more than once, all to no avail, and to this day no one knows where these pirates make their base.
Five-Colored Mud
The Mud Cult's people sometimes heal the villagers, and their most famous medicine is the Five-Colored Mud. It carries the fragrance of lotus blossoms and cures a hundred ills; taken by one who is not ill, it lengthens life.
This medicine works much the same wonder as the Tang Clan's Panacea Oil, but the Panacea Pill fights poison with poison, and harms anyone who is not poisoned. The Five-Colored Mud has no such limit: applied outwardly it stops bleeding, taken inwardly it nourishes health, and its restorative effect is marked. It is a wondrous medicine for the benefit of the world, gathering the best of ancient and modern medicine.
Yet this very medicine is nothing short of deadly poison to the people of the Tang Clan. The Tang Clan relies on medicinal meals, warming their Internal Breath with poison day and night, so that their whole bodies are poison. Taking this medicine by mistake instead causes dispersal of inner strength.
Secret Manuals
Notes
- Judging by the Yang-Warming Blood-Activating Talisman, and by the fact that the Mud Cult's Physician comes from Six Paths Canyon, the Heavenly Path may have studied medicine.
Studying medicine cannot save the Great Song - As described in the Blood Letters of Battle, the Dharma King of the Asura Path ought to be a general on the battlefield, a guardian deity of the Great Song.
- At the Fengyu Mountain Assembly, Shi Ming slandered the Tang Clan as the Asura Path and as the Dharma King of the Asura Path. Laugh it off.
- 's original plan was that after the Beast Path, the Mud Cult would fall in the order of the Hell Path, the Heavenly Path, the Hungry Ghost Path, and finally the Human Path, but in the event the Human Path was the first to go. From this line one can tell that in the Apricot Blossom Immortal's mind the Asura Path was already counted as destroyed.
- All six great sects have deputies. Bird Bear says the Mud Cult may have them too, you just don't know it. Their trusted hands may look like perfect passersby, but their strategy and martial arts are first-rate.[3]
- Although Liu E has been to Jinxiang Palace, the Heavenly Path, the Hell Path and others, not every Dharma King has spent time in each of the great Paths.[2:1]