In the darkness of his room, Wuxian sat cross legged. The sound of slow and regulated breathing permeated from deep within his core, sounding like the rumbling of an elephant at some times and the harping of an elk at others.

On the outside, it seemed like he was performing some sort of strange breathing technique paired with a meditation pose, but his meridian network was a different story. Each time he took a breath, a gust of air seemed to gather in his lungs, the energies it contained passing directly into his spirit body, going from physical to formless in the blink of an eye.

The three dantians were fully mobilised, pumping qi in and out like a bamboo tube tipping under the weight of falling raindrops, rising when light, dipping when heavy. The same way the heart pumped blood throughout one’s body, the dantians functioned similarly, powering the network of meridians that lay superimposed on top of one’s physical form.

The faint sound of rhythmic whooshing accompanied his deep breathing, like the howling of wind through a valley or the crashing of waves against a rugged cliff. The violence contained within the sound possessed an explosive power, the same sort of sheathed aggression that emanated from a crouching tiger’s rippling muscles before it pounced.

Waves of qi pulsed throughout Wuxian’s meridian network in both a controlled yet seemingly chaotic manner. The qi from all three dantians was released at the same time- something that he had never attempted before beginning preparation for his breakthrough.

Following the route he had devised, based on the instructions and suggestions provided by the Nine Revolutions Earthfire manual, the three elements of qi, each once-refined, formed the shape of a zig-zagging triangle. With his urging and manipulation, the various threads of qi circled through his body in a cyclic clockwise manner and with each new cycle, the qi passed through a new line of meridians.

It was only after the first nine circulations of his qi that Wuxian noticed a subtle yet significant change- the width and diameter of his meridians had increased! Not only that, but the pathways between them had widened too.

But this was no cause for panic. In fact, according to the manual, only with the expansion of one’s meridian network could they hope to progress further and harness greater powers and energies. Undoubtedly, the enlarged meridians played a role in the continued refinement and condensation of qi.

However, this was only the beginning. The first nine cycles could only be counted as one single revolution, with eight more to go. Furthermore, it wasn’t as if each cycle and by extension, revolution, was the same. The meridian pathways employed varied each time, slowly progressing from the inner meridians to those closer to the outside of the body.

As such, the length of the pathways increased too and correspondingly, so did the time it took to complete a single cycle. Additionally, the initial few cycles already took a long time since Wuxian had deliberately reduced the speed at which he mobilised qi to a snail’s pace since a single mistake would be disastrous- forcing him to restart the entire process. He’d suffer from heavy qi deviation and most of the refined qi would go to waste, forcing him to not only recover from the backlash, but also re-refine more qi for the next attempt.

According to Big North, the reason why these breakthroughs had to be completed in one attempt rather than a continual effort over a longer course of time was because unless the final step of the breakthrough was completed, the nourishment of the meridians would begin to regress, resulting in their atrophy. Usually, by the time one recovered not only from the qi deviation but also gathered enough qi to give it a second attempt, their progress will have been completely reverted back to zero.

The complexity of the operations Wuxian was undergoing was more than anything he’d ever experienced before. He felt like his brain was creaking under the sheer weight of his thoughts, somewhat afraid that he’d pass out from exhaustion before he’d even manage to complete half of his breakthrough.

After the third complete revolution, that was to say, twenty seven cycles, he began altering his operations slightly. Due to the continual nourishment of his meridians and their subsequent widening, something amazing happened.

The refined qi was not only strengthening the meridian network, but also being further refined and condensed itself. As the qi passed through various major meridians, it seemed to be reinforced bit by bit. As the meridians themselves widened, they began to act like miniature dantians, helping to pump the qi further along the system.

The meridian channels themselves contributed too. Despite becoming wider, it was also as if they’d become muscular, contracting and dilating around the streams of qi that flowed through Wuxian’s body.

What started initially as formless and ethereal threads of energy were gradually compressed down into streams of flowing liquid. From there it became thicker and more viscous, not too dissimilar to syrup.

And at this point, the next stage began. The process of qi deviation was the interaction between various types of qi going out of control and destroying the body in the process. Naturally, for a three-qi cultivator, by virtue of the Nine Revolutions Earthfire technique, like Wuxian, mobilising even just two different elements of qi at the same time could potentially lead to disastrous consequences.

Hence, the beginning of his breakthrough had been the most perilous. With three types of qi, namely; wood, earth and fire cycling around his body, one wrong step could lead to instant death. Normal qi deviations weren’t too bad, but that was because of the volume of qi used. In this case, where his entire three dantians’ worth of qi was moving through him, the consequences would be dire.

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But the condensation of qi brought about more than just a change in appearance and texture. As it partially condensed from a gaseous form to that of an aqueous one, it became less volatile, less excitable and more stable. Accordingly, condensed qi was less susceptible to triggering qi deviation.

Otherwise, the moment one projected their condensed qi out of their body, they’d set off an elemental chain reaction with the ambient qi in the air, resulting in their death! Even for techniques like Effortless Flow which used the force produced from ejecting qi out of the body to propel one’s movement, the volume of qi expended each use was so low that it barely caused a stir amongst the ambient qi in the area.

Beads of sweat began dripping down Wuxian’s forehead. Though the most dangerous part of the breakthrough had come and gone, he was in actuality only part way through. The initial transformation of his qi into a condensed form was all well and good, but if he remained in such a way, wouldn’t that mean that every time he wanted to condense qi, he would have to risk qi deviation?

If in battle he was running dry on qi and needed to condense it on the spot, wouldn’t he be better off laying down with his hands behind his head and surrendering? At least in that scenario he’d have a chance to live.

No, the breakthrough didn’t only include the transformation of his meridian network, nor just the condensation of his qi.

With all his focus, Wuxian began the most important step of the breakthrough. Slowly but surely, the three streams of condensed qi began returning to whence they came, circling around his dantians and getting closer and closer. Inevitably, due to the large volumes of the qi, they ended up touching and mixing slightly, but that was thankfully of no issue due to their condensed states.

Concentrating hard, Wuxian filtered the three elements of qi back into their respective dantians, wood in the Shen, earth in the Qi and fire in the Jing. Using the newly-strengthened qi, Wuxian began rubbing them against the walls of his dantians, pushing them and expanding them outwards moment by moment.

The sound of breathing lightened while sounds of whooshing and crashing gradually morphed into ones that sounded more like the stretching of rubber or like that of chalk scrawling loudly onto a blackboard.

After an unknown amount of time, Wuxian’s eyes opened. Overwhelmed by hunger and fatigue, he barely managed to summon a fasting pill and swallow it before fainting onto the bed.

The room returned to quietness, the sound of regular breathing signalling the completion of the breakthrough. But if one were to place their head next to Wuxian’s chest, they would be able to hear the beating of four hearts, not just one!

Unbeknownst to him, as he slept comfortably and soundly, qi had begun to automatically circulate throughout his meridian network. Emulating his physical body to an extent, qi had condensed and become something like the blood of his spirit body, while the dantians had become his brain, heart and stomach.

As a Foundation Builder or a Qi Refiner, the refinement of qi and its circulation was a conscious activity. Now, with the Shen dantian acting as a coordinator, these processes were automatic activities. From here on out, cultivation was slightly less autonomous- while there was always the benefit to manually manipulating the qi, having it run on its own in the background while Wuxian was engaging in various other activities meant that he could stop worrying about the fear of ‘wasting proper cultivation time’.

In the future, when casting more complicated techniques, this small amount of automation would aid in ensuring that he wouldn’t miscast and in some cases, allow him to activate the mystic art in the first place.

———

Wuxian felt a sense of grogginess and a slight headache pulsing through his head. Rubbing his forehead, he took in a few breaths to relax himself. Judging from the ambience, he seemed to be in a strange environment, both familiar yet alien at the same time. His every breath was interrupted by the creaking of wood and the groaning of axles, accompanied with the uncomfortable juddering of an uneven road.

At once, his mind registered the discrepancy of the situation. Sobriety returned to him in an instant as he went into a state of alert. He felt as if he’d been bathing in a river during the summer only for the world to skip seasons to winter on the spot, causing the water around him to freeze in a matter of seconds.

Looking around him, he realised he was seated in a carriage. He wasn’t alone- on either side of him and across from him sat several other passengers, their bodies covered in darkness. Turning his head to the right, he realised that it was night time and that the only source of illumination came from in front of the carriage, no doubt in the form of lamps.

Wuxian squinted his eyes, gradually adjusting to the darkness of the carriage. Despite this, he still couldn’t see the faces of the people around him as they all had their heads hung low or turned to the side. From the regular rising and falling of their chests as well as the sound of intermittent snoring, he could tell that they were asleep.

‘Whoever kidnapped me has managed to do so in Cang’An city… they managed to smuggle me out without alerting neither myself nor Big North, or any of the dozens of Nightwatchers around the headquarters in the middle of the city. On top of that, I was in the gold badge dormitory, where Wan Qiushou, Shui Qianyue and Jiang Manyou would have been. And to round things off, chief Li was in the same building too.’

Shaking his head slightly, he reigned his speculations in.

‘Regardless, there are two possibilities. Either I have been kidnapped by masters of stealth, cultivators with extremely high cultivation realms, or by the Nightwatch themselves. Thinking about this now won’t make a difference- what’s most important is my own condition.’

Wuxian looked down at his hands, only to find that they were also hidden in darkness, much like the faces of the people around him. He crossed them together, attempting to feel for his interspatial rings.

Nothing.

Feeling a sense of bitterness, he knew that it was unlikely that the Northern Dark Edge was in his close proximity either. It was most likely that one of his captors had either taken a liking to Big North’s vessel, or it had been directly appropriated by someone higher up.

But now wasn’t the time for moping or drowning in self-pity. Wuxian was a man of action and it would take more than taking his belongings to defeat him. Besides, his greatest strength lay in his own cultivation and techniques- material belongings could be restored at a later date. Of course, the loss of Big North was a heavy blow to not only his confidence, but also his combat capability.

‘Speaking of which, given the likely strength of my captors, it would be wise to sit back and slowly ascertain my situation. This can be most easily done by asking my fellow prisoners, but not at the moment. It’s the dead of the night and they’re all asleep- waking them to ask them will only aggravate them. Besides, it’s not like I’m going anywhere right now- I can afford to wait.’