Shen and Jiang Ziya studied Taoism together for 40 years. Why are they not as strong as Shen?

Because Jiang Ziya's talent is insufficient, and Shen was once cultivated secretly. In the novel Romance of the Gods by Xu, a novelist in the Ming Dynasty, we described the story of a kindred spirit who made different choices in the face of the world trend and thus lived together in one room. The two protagonists of the story, Shen and Jiang Ziya, are fellow disciples who entered the Taoist school in the early Qing Dynasty. Surprisingly, they were all beloved disciples of the Buddha in the early Yuan Dynasty. Why is Shen's magic high and praised, while Jiang Ziya has studied hard for decades, but he is far less than Shen? This is not unreasonable.

First of all, because Jiang Ziya is good at Taoism, he lacks skills. In the original "Romance of Gods", we can see that Jiang Ziya can pinch and calculate, and can predict the fortunes. As for the prediction of the future, even some old immortals, even those who receive gods, are slightly inferior to him. But in fighting, Jiang Ziya lost everyone. Therefore, it can be said that Jiang Ziya's talent points are all added to Taoist cultivation, but he is not so outstanding in artistic attainments, which is understandable. After all, not everyone can understand everything, and manpower is sometimes poor.

Secondly, Shen was secretly trained by the Buddha. Does the ancient myth of China only end at the end of the Romance of Gods? Of course not. In The Journey to the West, we can see a lot of celestial situations that are quite different from the Romance of the Gods: for example, the old gentleman on the throne seems to have lost his magic, and the Tianshi is missing, leaving only the Tathagata in the west. In fact, all this stems from the hands of the original Buddha: after the establishment of the list of gods by the three religions, the original Buddha also concealed a big plan to change the pattern of the three realms, and Shen was part of this plan, so the original Buddha had secretly cultivated him.

In this way, Jiang Ziya, who lacks artistic talent, can't surpass the sinking of private cultivation of Yuanshi Tianzun.