Oftentimes, distracting oneself was the best method to recover. For someone like Wuxian, if he was punished by his father for miscounting some records in the morning, he could shrug it off by working the fields. By focusing on the task at hand, he could ward off intrusive thoughts, at least until the evening.
And in the evening, he would no longer be upset.
Of course, the loss of his two closest friends, Mian Ji and Xiao Chong, was not something that would vanish so quickly. The fact that he was not sure of their fates was the worst part.
He did not want to mourn, for if they were alive, it would be inauspicious. But if they were alive they would certainly be in dire straights, living behind enemy lines. In this sort of situation, they really could end up dead in the blink of an eye.
So Wuxian was under time pressure. Some people thrived under this sort of pressure, activating the full potential of their minds in times of crisis. Some crumpled under pressure, failing to rise to the challenge.
Fortunately, Wuxian was one of the former. Understanding the stakes, he sought to 'learn' cultivation as soon as possible.
But the problem plaguing Wuxian was not a psychological one. In fact, his mental state was very good- he was highly motivated.
Staring down at the partially unravelled scroll, Wuxian felt the rising urge to disown his master.
'I… I can't read any of this.'
Wuxian stood up and looked around, but couldn't find Black Emperor's remnant spirit.
He scratched his head. 'How unreliable.'
After a moment of feeling lost, Wuxian sat back down. Since he couldn't understand anything written in the cultivation manual, he decided to emulate the process that had occurred previously when Black Emperor Mountain Hermit had helped him circulate the Nine Revolutions Earthfire art.
According to his master's description, it harnessed the user's innate wood qi to form fire and earth qi. However, the initial circulation his master had helped facilitate did not do so.
'I suppose the formation of fire and earth qi requires more processing of sorts. Master had only helped me with two revolutions of the technique, after all. Expecting dramatic changes after merely two uses is naive.'
Thinking back to how his master had helped him circulate qi, Wuxian closed his eyes. Previously, the qi had been transferred directly into his head to some point of energy. It was then passed along throughout the rest of his body.
Wuxian had noted that the qi gathered primarily around three parts of his body. The first was the head. The second was the chest. The third was around the waist, somewhere below the belly button.
What was interesting was that when the Nine Revolutions Earthfire art was circulated, the qi around those rings circulated a sort of inner circuit. The qi brought benefits to his body as it circulated through and since it was heavily concentrated in these three areas, the effects were greater there.
'The first step to circulating qi… is to bring it into my body.'
He tried to remember the initial soothing and ice cold sensation that he'd felt against his forehead previously. At that time, it had felt like an electric shock running down his spine and somewhat like how it would have felt if a bucket of freezing water had been poured into his body from top to bottom.
Wuxian sat there for a long period of time. The whole duration, he focused on trying to draw qi in from the surroundings into his body but to no avail. That ice cold feeling from before refused to return.
Nonetheless, he refused to take failure for an answer. Wuxian kept on stubbornly attempting to absorb qi. At one point, he looked like a beached whale, gasping for air. His skin even turned pink due to the lack of oxygen.
And then all of a sudden, he felt something. It wasn't like the pure cold from before, but rather a mix of sensations.
At first, it was like he was covered in quicksand, a muddy and sticky feeling engulfing him. Then, he felt like he was on fire- he seemed to be able to feel liquid lava running through his veins and arteries.
'This.. This isn't right!'
Internally, he tried to halt the circulation of the technique, but failed. His body not only refused to stop circulating, but even began to speed up.
The burning sensation on his body became ice cold- this was the feeling from before. But something didn't feel right about this particular coldness- it had mixed with the two previous feelings to produce something that made him uncomfortable.
Then, the coldness was replaced with dampness. He felt as if he had just been drenched by the rain. He subconsciously felt that if he looked in a mirror, his clothes would appear to be plastered to his body.
'This can't go on. I must find a way to stop the circulation.'
Wuxian had the feeling that circulating any further would have disastrous consequences. Since he couldn't control his internal activities, he decided to attempt a different approach.
He attempted to open his eyes, only to find that his eyelids appeared to be glued shut. He tried to ball up his fingers to form fists, only to find that they were unresponsive. Failing to complete these small actions, it was obvious that he couldn't stand up either.
And then the wetness suddenly changed to another feeling. Each of those water droplets he could feel in and on his body suddenly felt like the edges of knives. Wuxian felt that if he moved even slightly, he'd turn into mincemeat. His already irregular breathing became extremely laboured- he was afraid that too much movement would cause his chest to be cut into ribbons.
More time passed and even Wuxian's thinking became uncomfortable. He knew that he was done for.
A sudden headache arrived. This was closely followed by a sharp pain in the chest. A feeling of weakness seeped into his body.
But all of a sudden, the pain went away. The mixture of volatile energies in his body became meek, like kittens in the face of a top predator. A strong suction force emanated from his head, absorbing these wild energies and pulling them out of his body.
After an extended period of time, Wuxian's body felt completely empty. It was then that cold wood qi poured back in, filling the void that was just left behind. Though he had been cleansed of rampant energies, his body felt sore all over.
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"Open your eyes." Black Emperor Mountain Hermit said.
Wuxian complied, greeted with the sight of an unhappy ghost floating before him.
"Do you know what just happened?" His master asked, hand raised in anger.
Wuxian shook his head, throat too sore to speak.
"You suffered from qi deviation! Why did you attempt to absorb qi directly into your Shen dantian? Did you not read the manual I gave you?!"
Wuxian shook his head again.
"I can't read the words written in the manual, so I tried to copy the circulation you helped me with the first time."
Black Emperor wore a blank gaze. He then stroked his beard in confusion.
"Ai? Is the education standard so bad nowadays? But that's not right, my incarnation clearly said you could read… what's going on?" He muttered under his breath.
Wuxian wanted to palm his face, but his body was in too much pain. In the end, he sighed.
"Master, did you ever consider that the script immortals and mortals use might be different?"
Black Emperor blinked twice before a sheepish grin emerged on his face.
Wuxian let out another sigh, knowing that his master had indeed overlooked things. He then decided to change the topic.
"Master, you said that absorbing qi with my Shen dantian was a mistake, yet when you helped me with cultivation and even just now, all movement of qi passed through that dantian specifically. If not with the Shen dantian, what should I absorb qi with?"
"A-ahem, good question, dear disciple! In fact, that is very simple to answer.
It's like this. The spiritual energy that permeates the air we breathe contains qi from all five elements. Now, this leads into why some people are able to cultivate and some cannot.
When each person is born, there is a small chance of producing a spirit root. These take on a specific one of the five elements. For example, my spirit root is of the wood element, as is yours. In some cases, a spirit root can mutate and accommodate two or even three elements, but that's something else to explain.
Now, what is the purpose of a spirit root? The spirit root is a metaphysical organ that rests beneath the brain and protrudes into the back of the throat. When you take a breath of air, the qi of all five elements flow into your body. The spirit root acts as a filter, absorbing some qi and letting the rest through."
Wuxian had a look of understanding, nodding along to the words in contemplation.
"I am enlightened. However, I am still confused as to why rootless mortals cannot cultivate. Why must qi be absorbed through a root and not directly into the body through the skin or the dantian?"
Black Emperor chuckled and stroked his beard.
"Think about the five celestials, the five elements. Metal begets water and overcomes wood. Water begets wood and overcomes fire. Wood begets fire and overcomes earth. Fire begets earth and overcomes metal. Earth begets metal and overcomes water.
When one possesses a spirit root, they absorb only one type of qi. This single element flourishes within the body, unimpeded by anything else. However, when all five elements are absorbed, they produce a negative reaction, causing all qi within the dantians and the body to fluctuate rapidly, ending in qi deviation and the death of the cultivator.
You can think of it this way. Each element will simultaneously beget another, while also overcoming another at the same time. The force produced by this endless reaction will damage the internal organs and the rest of the body until death.
Now, it is somewhat untrue to say that the body only absorbs through the spirit root. Even you and I with our wood attribute roots absorb other elements. However, the efficiency of absorption of other types of qi is far too low to be consequential. From birth, your spirit root rapidly fills your dantians with wood qi, leaving no room for any other type.
But for rootless mortals, they do not have any specific attribute of qi within them. In most regions, aside from those areas of extreme qi imbalance, the distribution of qi within the spiritual energy is relatively even and the amount of ambient qi absorbed without a spirit root is too low to cause qi deviation. Normally, a mortal is unaffected by this, but the moment they use a cultivation technique, the imbalance triggers an endless cycle of the different elemental qi begetting and overcoming one another.
The result is, as previously mentioned, qi deviation. Death.
And for us, we already have a massive excess of one type of qi. Forcefully engaging in dantian-absorption results in said imbalance, ending in qi deviation.
So, that is why directly absorbing qi into a dantian is dangerous. Please don't do it again. Your master is old and cannot handle any more emotional damage!"
Wuxian rolled his eyes, but internally felt extreme gratitude. He had another item to add to his list of debts to his master who had just saved him from dying of qi deviation.
Black Emperor Mountain Hermit then procured another cultivation pillow from out of thin air and sat down facing Wuxian.
"Alright, master won't rest and take it easy anymore. After you leave this place, I'll have the remainder of eternity to rest anyway." He chuckled, his eyes squinting.
Seeing Wuxian's solemn expression, Black Emperor decided to begin teaching.
"Now, let's begin. Our cultivation art is very special compared to other techniques. Unlike the others that are limited to utilising the qi that the cultivator is attuned to, we can turn our qi into two other elements.
Have you noticed that there are three dantians within your body? How many elements of qi does the Nine Revolutions Earthfire technique use?"
"Three. Is this one for each dantian?" Wuxian asked.
Black Emperor nodded with a smile.
"Correct. Yellow grade techniques will be ones that focus on specific aspects. For example, the Dovesong Sound technique only fills the Shen dantian- the one in your head. It leaves the other two dantians alone and focuses on sound and mental based attacks.
Naturally, having only one dantian to store and draw energy from is a huge limitation. The other limitation is that its only real purpose is to attack. It is a two-dimensional technique with few applications.
However, there are some upsides to this kind of dantian allocation. By only using one dantian for one technique, a cultivator can learn another technique of the same element using the other two dantians. Of course, this is simply much worse than just having a single heaven grade technique that uses all three dantians and covers all bases.
Then, as you can guess, an earth grade technique uses two dantians. There's not much else to say about this or heaven grade techniques otherwise."
Wuxian nodded in understanding before asking another question.
"You said that the Nine Revolutions Earthfire technique can utilise three types of qi, yet we absorb only one type. The other heaven grade techniques you mentioned store only one type of qi in each dantian- why can they not use multiple types of qi like us?"
Black Emperor gave a thumbs up, happy that Wuxian's questions were all relevant and addressed the problems accurately.
"Because our technique circulates qi in a special manner. We pass our wood qi through a specific set of different meridians which allows for an internal reaction that causes the generation of fire qi from wood, and then the generation of earth qi from fire.
This happens in between each of the three dantians. In the Shen dantian, wood qi is refined and stored. As it passes various meridians to the Qi dantian, ambient fire qi is drawn in along with it- it is attracted by the pure wood qi that we have refined.
In the Qi dantian, that small amount of fire qi burns through the pure wood qi. Some of that wood qi is converted into more fire qi, while the rest contributes to the refinement of this new fire qi.
Now, the next part is slightly different. While the general process of drawing in earth qi is the same, the conversion process that occurs within the Jing dantian is different.
Earth qi itself is rather special amongst the five qi, remember, it is from earth that metal is produced. It is practically impossible to find pure earth qi in nature- it is almost always mixed with traces of metal qi.
These metal qi traces are drawn in along with the earth qi, and both are processed in the Jing dantian. Saying that the Nine Revolutions Earthfire art can only manipulate wood, fire and earth qi is true but at the same time false, since it has some supplementary applications for metal qi too."
Black Emperor paused, allowing Wuxian some time to digest this information.
"As for why other arts can't do the same… well. First, they'd have to use wood qi. Then, they'd need to circulate the qi through the same pattern of meridians as us. Then, all of a sudden, their technique is exactly identical to ours!"
The session continued like so. Wuxian soon put theory to practise under his master's watchful gaze, circulating the qi within his body according to the newly-translated manual.
After the first three circulations, the wood qi in his Shen dantian was purified. After another three, it was completely converted into fire qi in his Qi dantian. After three more times, it became earth qi, with hints of metal qi, within his Jing dantian.
After the nine revolutions of qi, the wood qi stored within his Shen dantian was empty and he began the cycle again. Drawing in wood qi, converting it once, twice and then restarting.
Black Emperor looked on with a fond look and a silly grin.
"Hahaha, not only are my descendants talented, but I am also a great teacher!"