Wuxian, Wan Qiushou, Shui Qianyue and surprisingly, Jiang Manyou, were gathered together, standing outside of chief Li’s office. Over the past few weeks, Jiang Manyou’s condition had miraculously undergone a 180 degree reversal- from laying in bed, unable to stand, to full of energy and unfunny jokes.
Due to their previous unresolved poor feelings towards one another, Wuxian and Shui Qianyue weren’t too talkative. Whenever their eyes met, Shui Qianyue would immediately avert her gaze, as if electrified. Wuxian’s mind, on the other hand, was elsewhere.
In the background, Wan Qiushou was humouring Jiang Manyou by ignoring everything the man said, while Shui Qianyue studied the grooved rosewood floor beneath their feet.
Internally, Wuxian was running over his cultivation progress. Only a month had passed since he’d experienced his first taste of the inner demon tribulation. In order to avoid it, he’d been procrastinating and delaying sleep as much as possible, often choosing to cultivate instead. But being a half-step immortal, he wasn’t truly rid of these constraints just yet. Only five days of non-stop cultivation had come and gone before Wuxian eventually passed out from fatigue.
Fortunately, it seemed that the inner demon hadn’t recharged yet. This meant that if he suddenly experienced another one tonight, the inner demon tribulation would take a full month to be able to gather its energy and pull him into another dream. While this was technically good news, the fact of the matter was that the longer he went on without experiencing a second round of the trial, the more likely it would be that it would crop up at an inconvenient time. But if it hit him today, then he knew for certain that for the next few weeks, he could be certain that his own arrangements would be sound, with the inner demon’s ‘attack pattern’ being a known variable.
During this month of undisturbed practice, Wuxian had improved drasmatically in his mastery over not only his meridian network, but his mystic arts as well. Natural Spirit Blood, for example, was a technique which he had originally predicted to need at least one month to advance to the next stage, but actually taken only half that time. As a result, the first half of the month was spent advancing, the second half familiarising.
With his current prowess as a Qi Condenser, he was capable of imbuing his blood with toxic and corrosive properties in under three seconds at worst. He was also able to switch from offensive to restorative blood in just under two seconds as well, though both were under controlled scenarios. On the off-chance that he was attacked from behind, there was a possibility that he might fumble or deviate from the designated meridian pathways but then again, that was the same for any technique.
What he lacked most right now in this regard was field practice. Aside from Natural Spirit Blood, his mastery over Turning Stone and Effortless Flow had improved too, along with his control of qi within his newly-expanded meridian network. Since he had been spending so much time on Natural Spirit Blood alone, not to mention cultivation itself, he hadn’t had much time to go out to the training grounds and test out his more destructive techniques like Zhurong’s Breath and Sonic Strikes. Turning Stone and Effortless flow were the only two other mystic arts in his arsenal that wouldn’t result in the destruction of his room and the compartments adjacent to it.
In all honesty, it wasn’t like Wuxian couldn’t or didn’t have the time to use the training grounds but that… well, he didn’t feel like talking to or even seeing Shui Qianyue at the moment- he’d been avoiding her like the plague, and Wan Qiushou would inevitably ask Wuxian to spar with him, using up precious cultivation time. Of course, while sparring and actual practice was something that Wuxian did need, against a martial practitioner like Wan Qiushou, it’d be overkill.
Even just a low-level supportive skill like Reactive Qi would likely cause great damage to Wan Qiushou. While Wuxian could avoid using the mystic art during their spar, that would mean that the other more powerful offensive techniques would be off the table too. In that case, the only mystic arts he’d be able to use would be Turning Stone and Effortless Flow.
So it would be a waste of time. Why go to a noodle bar if one had noodles at home? Why waste time journeying to the bar if that time could be spent honing one’s noodle-making craft?
After solidifying his realm, Wuxian’s meridian network stopped expanding. It remained at double the previous size and had gained the ability to help condense and pump qi faster throughout his body. His dantians, on the other hand, were continually ever-expanding with each breath he took and with each thread of qi that he condensed. This was, after all, the main method of progression from Qi Condensation to Golden Core.
Though the rate of expansion of his dantians was constant, the actual increments by which it grew were almost negligible. While it had become 10% larger after a month of cultivation, most of that time was active cultivation, with Wuxian manually manipulating his qi too. Undoubtedly, the Golden Core realm was a long way away.
Speaking of qi, Wuxian’s qi had undergone qualitative improvements as well. Due to the enhanced features provided by Qi Condensation dantians, his qi would be compressed automatically over time. With his current strength, he was able to refine qi up to ten times over. The first round of refinement only took half a day. The second, the full day. The third, two days. The fourth, two and a half.
Essentially, to fully refine one dantian’s entire capacity of qi, it would take roughly twelve days. And at that point, the qi would become compressed down into a smaller volume, so the rest of the dantian could be refilled and compressed again. Wuxian’s three dantians were currently of equal volume, each quarter filled with ten-times refined qi. Then, the rest of that volume was made up with qi of varying concentrations, though the majority was at just the five-times refined level.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
The Nine Revolutions Earthfire art was quite interesting in this regard. Wuxian wasn’t a proper triple element spirit root bearer, using his heaven grade cultivation technique to convert his wood qi into earth and then fire qi instead. At the Qi Refining and Foundation Building realms, his maximum refinement of qi was only once-refined. He was unable to convert qi that was too condensed into qi of other elements, since condensed qi had significantly different properties compared to unrefined qi.
His cultivation art utilised unrefined qi’s volatile and reactive nature to spur on the five phases cycle, converting his qi in this manner. Condensed qi was much less reactive than unrefined qi. Perhaps, with enough manual effort on his own part, he’d be able to convert once or twice refined qi into the following element, but ten-times refined qi was impossible, and even if he did manage to convert condensed qi, it’d end up in an uncondensed state again, hence, he figured that the best thing to do was to just convert uncondensed qi before refining them altogether.
This way, he’d be able to let his dantians convert qi automatically too, since when he wasn’t actively participating in the conversion or refinement of qi, it was slower and had lower efficacy. While he might be able to convert twice-refined qi manually, his dantians couldn’t do so if he left them to their own devices.
“Alright, come in everyone.”
Hearing chief Li’s warm voice, Wuxian snapped out of his self-analysis.
“Let’s head in then, you lot.” Jiang Manyou said, being the first to swing the door open with his leg, holding it open with his heel for the others to follow him in.
The room was as modest as ever, containing few items of personality or decor, though it somehow managed to give off a feeling of understated refinement. It was said that one could tell the level of discipline an individual had by looking at the room in which they spent most of their time. A room like this which contained few, if any, distractions showed that the primary occupant cared little for memoirs or comfort. When they came here, they were here to work and get things done.
Chief Li stood facing away from the door, gazing out at the snowy sky, hands clasped behind him relaxedly. Though Wuxian couldn’t see chief Li’s face, he was certain that the man wore his ever-present smiling-but-not-really expression. The group entered together, unanimously giving quick martial salutes to the chief’s turned back before sitting down.
After they had sat, chief Li turned around slowly, scanning his gaze across each person’s face, briefly stopping at Wuxian’s with no visible change, before continuing over to Wan Qiushou’s.
“Do you know why I’ve called you here today?” He asked.
“No.” Wan Qiushou replied.
Chief Li glanced at Qiushou, who had become more and more talkative as of late, as well as slightly disobedient. His smile adopted a tinge of helplessness, as if to say, ‘he’s in his rebellious phase’.
“A case from the city guard has been passed up to us. The case itself is not particularly significant, but it has alerted us to the possibility of a foreign incursion into the city by enemy forces.” He introduced.
The three gold badge Nightwatchers, excluding Wan Qiushou, frowned or wore looks of concern. For Jiang Manyou and Shui Qianyue, Cang’An was their home. An attack, now, when they were at their very weakest, with the majority of their manpower over in the wilderness fighting the war, could very well prove to be devastating. For Wuxian, the city itself was of no concern to him. Whether it prospered or declined was of no consequence- the only thing that mattered was its ability to provide him with the shelter he needed to become stronger.
“Over the past few months, kidnappings and missing persons cases have been on the rise. The majority have been taking place within the western district, but in the past month, they’ve been occurring in the other districts as well. The city guard suspects that they’re all related to a group known as the Yellow gang. They were previously active on the outskirts of Eastern Lanxing, but for some reason, have decided to shift their activities over to Cang’An and its neighbouring territories.”
“Their time of arrival also coincides with the first recorded case of the new disease that Jiang Manyou here contracted earlier. Cases related to gangs and criminal organisations are usually under the city guard’s jurisdiction, whereas things like plagues and famines are things that only sect elders are qualified to handle. Since both we and the sect are understaffed at the moment, and since the spread of the disease has been mostly limited to the western district, it had managed to stay hidden and under our radar just long enough for it to have infected at least one in three people residing there.”
“Still, while a disease, no matter how severe, is usually of no concern to us, constable Tie of the eastern district’s inner gate guards has many connections. He’s indicated that it is likely that the plague and the Yellow gang’s abrupt migration are very likely to be related to one another. Additionally, they claim to have a miracle cure for the plague, something which the constable and his detectives have managed to verify. The Yellow gang has been using this information to round up less well-off citizens of the western district en masse, shipping them off to camps that are hidden across the surrounding wilderness.” Chief Li paused, letting the information sink in. “While the Yellow gang may not necessarily be responsible for the spread of the disease, at the very least, they are profiting off of it, jeopardising the security of the city at the same time. ”
“The self-contained nature of the plague, which is at odds with its prolific spread, the sudden appearance of the Yellow gang, and their ability to produce a cure for it on a large scale, despite the fact that the disease has only been around for a few months, are indicators that somebody has made a move from behind the scenes. Your mission is not to stop the Yellow gang, nor is it to attempt to find the cure to the disease and how to produce it.” He shook his head. “No, your mission is to gather as much information as you can on the Yellow gang as possible. Using the full extent of the Nightwatch’s resources and remaining manpower, infiltrate, coerce, manipulate… do whatever it takes to find out what connections the gang has, to whom and above all else, make sure that you do not get compromised.”
“If they find out that we’re onto them, they might decide to pack up and leave. If they do, we’ll lose our only lead on the puppeteer orchestrating things from the shadows. Under no circumstances can this be allowed to happen.” Chief Li smiled with an enigmatic look, his deep gaze emphasising the importance of secrecy.