“Master, I don’t understand,” said Zhang Wei, his brow furrowed as he polished the immaculate porcelain toilet in the celestial realm’s meditation chamber. “Why must an immortal cultivator spend three hours each day maintaining a toilet that no one uses?”
Master Wu stroked his wispy beard, his ethereal robes floating despite the absence of wind. “Tell me, young disciple, what do you see when you look at your reflection in that gleaming surface?”
Zhang Wei peered into the pristine white porcelain. His face, distorted by the curved surface, stared back at him. “I see myself, but… different. Warped.”
“Exactly!” Master Wu’s eyes twinkled. “Reality, like that reflection, is merely an interpretation. We polish this toilet not because it needs cleaning, but because it shows us the malleability of our perceived truths.”
“But surely there are more efficient ways to achieve enlightenment?” Zhang Wei protested, his cloth making circles on the already spotless surface.
“Efficiency?” Master Wu chuckled. “Is that what you seek in immortality? Tell me, in your hundred years of cultivation, has rushing toward power ever brought you closer to understanding?”
The young cultivator fell silent, remembering his countless failed attempts to breakthrough to the next realm. Each time, the golden core within him had trembled on the precipice of transformation, only to retreat.
“Your predecessor,” Master Wu continued, “spent thirty years polishing this toilet before he achieved enlightenment.”
“And where is he now?”
“He became the toilet.”
Zhang Wei’s hand froze mid-polish. “What?”
“Oh yes,” Master Wu nodded sagely. “He finally understood that the distinction between the polisher and the polished was merely an illusion. In that moment of perfect clarity, he transcended form itself.”
“So this toilet… was once a person?”
“Is it a toilet that was once a person, or a person who chose to become a toilet? These distinctions matter less than you think.” Master Wu sat cross-legged in the air. “Every day, countless cultivators seek the Dao through grand gestures - slaying demons, gathering treasures, performing miraculous feats. Yet here you are, closer to the truth than any of them, simply by contemplating the nature of existence through the lens of a porcelain throne.”
Zhang Wei stared at his reflection again, wondering if somewhere in those distorted features lay the face of his predecessor. “But Master, what’s the point of achieving immortality if one ends up as… bathroom furniture?”
“Ah, but what is the point of remaining human? Are we not all vessels in some form or another? Your predecessor didn’t become a toilet - he became free from the constraints of predetermined form. The toilet is merely the shape he chose to teach the next disciple.”
As realization dawned on Zhang Wei’s face, the toilet began to glow with a soft, otherworldly light. Master Wu smiled and faded away, leaving his final words hanging in the air: “Remember, young one - the path to enlightenment isn’t about ascending to heaven, but about embracing the profound truth in even the most mundane objects. Now, if you’ll excuse me, even immortal masters need to use the facilities sometimes.”
Zhang Wei stared at the luminescent toilet, finally understanding that the joke was on him - he had spent all this time looking for profound wisdom, when the profoundest truth was sitting right beneath him all along.