Sunflower Manual
The Sunflower Manual (葵花寶典) was written by a eunuch and was first discovered by two members of the Mount Hua Sect (Yue Su and Cai Zifeng) during a visit to Shaolin Monastery. In an attempt to copy the manual, each of them reads half of it and memorises his part before returning to Mount Hua. When they try to compile their parts, they find it incomprehensible. Each believes his memory and interpretation of the manual is better but neither can come up with something substantial. Yue and Cai subsequently become rivals and the Mount Hua Sect is divided into the Qi (氣宗) and Sword factions (劍宗), respectively led by them.
The abbot of Shaolin recognises the evil nature and inherent dangers of practising the manual's skills. He sends a monk Duyuan to act as a mediator between the two factions and dissuade them from practising the manual's skills. The two rivals apologise for their folly and enlist Duyuan's help in understanding the manual better. Duyuan is able to make logical conclusions from Yue and Cai's recollections and he compiles a comprehensible version of the manual, which later falls into the hands of the Sun Moon Holy Cult during a raid on Mount Hua.
At the same time, Duyuan gradually becomes obsessed with the manual and his mind is corrupted by it. He secretly creates his own copy of the manual on his kasaya and renounces his vows as a monk, returning to secular life and assuming his former name "Lin Yuantu". The manual he secretly copied became the 'Bixie Swordplay' Manual (辟邪劍譜), which bears similarities to the original Sunflower Manual. One such similarity is the requirement for one to castrate himself before practising the skills in the manual.
Read more about this topic: Dongfang Bubai
Famous quotes containing the words sunflower and/or manual:
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