36
Purification of the Vessel · 煉形 · lian xing
Level 36: The Reworked Vessel
換骨 · huan gu
The physical body is remade to carry what now inhabits it.
Description
Reconstructed. Classical alchemy speaks of "washing the marrow and changing the bones" (xi sui huan gu) — a thorough physical reconstitution. Thirty-six is a natural place to mark it: half of seventy-two, and the count of the Heavenly Stars in Chinese lore that pairs with the seventy-two Earthly ones.
Practice
- Reconstructed.
How it is tested
Unknown.
Notes
- The 36/72 pairing is almost certainly why the ladder has seventy-two rungs at all. See Why Seventy-Two?.
Sources for this entry
- The classical neidan corpus — Zhong-Lü texts, Wuzhen pian, Longmen commentaries, and the wider internal alchemy literature — the actual technical parent of Mo Pai's methods.
- Chinese numerological and literary tradition — The 36/72 pairing, the seventy-two transformations, the seventy-two disciples — the cultural source of the number.