“I am ridiculously weak,” Wu Shan concluded silently, underneath his breath as he lay on the cold floor of the waiting room. Where he had raw strength in droves, his technique was unwieldy and clunky. Yin Phoenix for long range and Yang Dragon for Close Quarters. Simple enough, yet not that simple.

While both of them had combat applications, they didn’t feel like they were truly his. It didn’t feel like he could ever match up against a true Yang Dragon master or a Yin Phoenix master. In fact, he felt that he sacrificed strength for versatility. While that was all well and good in most situations, he needed both to beat Zhang He.

His Dantian was limited in size. Yin and Yang Qi could never mix, so they co-existed as separate Dao Pillars.

He couldn’t compress them no matter how much he had tried. Creating the ninth pillar seemed like an impossibility unless he unbalanced himself willingly and created a 9th pillar of pure Yin or Yang Qi. He needed more Qi in a smaller space, or more so, he needed to fuse both techniques as one.

Both techniques drew from different power sources, yet he could feel that they had the potential to be so much more powerful if he could just somehow, maybe…

If he could disperse the Dao Pillars and free the Qi inside, and maintain the Qi within his body long enough to create a single superpillar of melded Yin and Yang…

Obviously not now, as it would be a risky endeavour and could lead to failure, and failure before a match could spell disaster.

Therefore, he decided that once he had finished fighting his opponent, he would get to doing just that…

…though he really didn’t know what to do with the thumb-sized pill that they gave him. Holding it in his hands, he could feel that they somehow managed to retain Qi into a small, ridiculously fragrant pellet. The only problem was that the Yin or Yang Qi he usually used to cultivate wasn’t inside of it. When he asked for a pill specifically tailored towards either Yin or Yang Qi, the event organizers looked at him with puzzled expressions.

“What good would that do you?” They asked.

Wu Shan frowned at the memory. “More than having a pill I can’t even assimilate,” he muttered under his breath before pocketing the pill. Wu Shan tried to explain his cultivation method, but in the end, they had no pill that could help him, instead just giving him a pill of a random element.

The teleporting came, and once he appeared on the arena, the crowd screamed Wu Shan’s name in unison, repeatedly.

His opponent was a burly youth with a forehead that looked like it could dent steel, but Wu Shan didn’t judge.

“On the west corner, we have our gauntlet-toting, dragon-summoning beast of a boy! The man destined to fight Zhang He, give it up for ‘Storm Fist’ Wu Shan!”

Wu Shan stretched his muscles with a few tentative punches to the air, inadvertently riling the audience up further.

“On the east corner, we’ve got the boulder-like brute of Bei lake, the prodigy that defeated his two prior opponents in one exchange! Teng Qiang!”

“As always, the match commences on go!”

--

In a single exchange of pure brawn, Teng Qiang was found lacking. Lying in a broken heap, Wu Shan was left standing, raking in the glory of victory.

Once the third round had concluded, Wu Shan was faced with the choice to pick between four different kinds of enchanted weapons. A spear, a staff, a sabre and a sword. Again, the rewards proved utterly useless to him. Although he was aware of the different Yang Dragon weapon techniques, having studied the scroll in its entirety, nothing beat a pair of fists.

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Deciding that he could gift his father a staff, he opted for one. It was enchanted with the ability to turn invisible when swung fast enough, and that it could also turn ethereal if swung in a certain way, which could be used to bypass parries and guards. Truly a magnificent pick.

In his regular Inn, he concentrated. His Dao Pillars remained strong, built up from the Qi he had accumulated through the years, but what was the purpose of the pillars?

Inside Wu Shan’s Dantian, far into the pseudo-sky was a construct of unimaginable power, having no definite shape, yet exuding the aura of both softness and toughness simultaneously. Everything and nothing at the same time. Wu Shan knew that to be the Dao.

Everything was for the Dao when it came to cultivation. Qi Condensation determined whether your Qi purity was enough to create a foundation through the Dao Pillars that determined whether you had the mental strength to support the Dao in the future. Core Formation depended on the purity and concentration of Qi accumulated, and the Nascent Soul Stage drew directly from the mental strength cultivated during Core Formation to create a Nascent Soul construct.

Dao Seeking took a little out of everything else.

The eight Dao Pillars stood proudly, each one filled to the absolute brim with Qi, even after condensing far past their usual point. The inside of the pillars were a maelstrom of energy, but the pillars themselves could be broken.

He just had to do it to himself.

Whispering a silent prayer, Wu Shan stabbed his finger into his Dantian.

Every Dao Pillar shattered at the same time, but the overwhelming energy was threatening to leak out and never return to his body, but Wu Shan held strongly. Locking all of his meridians and Qi nodes, he made sure that absolutely no Qi could be leaked.

Wu Shan imitated a mudra of perfection, interlocking the fingers in his hands, but letting his index fingers rest on each other as they pointed upwards. His father did it plenty of times when he was in a particularly tough spot in his cultivation, not that the gesture could help a non-monk like him.

The raging storm of black and white began to interlock, forming a double helix which gradually became tighter and tighter.

The moment the two streams almost touched, they repelled each other violently, causing his Qi to almost explode out of his Dantian, and cripple him for life.

“Foolish son. Try again.”

The voice came from outside his Dantian, but he could hear it clear as day. Then, he noticed it. A stray Qi wisp was about to leave his body, but what stopped it wasn’t him, but rather a dense net of Qi covering around his Dantian.

Having regained some courage, Wu Shan forcibly attracted both streams of black and white Qi, bringing them closer and closer, but before they began to touch, he rotated them in a way that although they would be close, they wouldn’t touch just yet.

Thus he began to form a Dao Pillar around the two streams. It didn’t take long, but it had to be of complete structural integrity lest the Qi inside of it rips the pillar apart like rice paper.

Once the Dao Pillar was complete, Wu Shan disregarded safety and conjoined the diametrically opposing streams. They repelled each other, but as they were locked inside the indestructible pillar, they had nowhere to go as they rotated faster and faster due to their repulsive behaviour.

While they rotated, Wu Shan consolidated the pillar further. There was still more space for Qi inside the pillar, but he feared that it was too weak to support any more without exploding. After several hours of consolidation, Wu Shan decided to take a break and opened his eyes.

His eyes were met by the disappointed glare of his father who sat in front of him, cross legged.

“I’m not mad. Just disappointed,” Lao Chen began, but Wu Shan could barely meet his eyes. “Let’s start with the glaring issue. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well… I kinda wanted to increase the risk factor. It’s said that when there’s no safety net, one is capable of doing extraordinary things,” Wu Shan admitted. Lao Chen gave a dry chuckle.

“I can barely separate fiction from reality, but even I know that could have ended poorly. Next time you are to go through such a foolhardy thing such as crippling yourself just to achieve higher results, tell me. I almost didn’t come in time.”

Wu Shan smiled sheepishly. “Alright… sorry.”

“Now… tell me why you haven’t seen me even once for the past three days! You unfilial son, I should have you disowned!” Lao Chen huffed. Wu Shan stared at the floor in shame, taking it all. “Your sister has seen me several times! She’s told me you’ve joined a tournament! Was this not important enough for you to inform me?”

“I’m sorry, father.”

“Ai, this son of mine has a rock-hard brain despite all his talent! The only time I get to see you is when you are on the brink of crippling yourself! How do you think that makes me feel?”

“I’m sorry.”

"You're 'sorry'? I know you're sorry, you-"

And he kept lecturing.

Aside from his groundbreaking discovery, Wu Shan also learned something immensely valuable that day. A skill that not even the most legendary cultivators were privy to.

Sleeping with ones eyes open.