Sitting down near the River of Fate, Moxian’s clothes are still damaged but the wounds on her body have already healed with the help of a pill. She was nowhere near where she had seen Lan Jin and fought Qingshui, having used an expensive talisman to tear through space to the opposite bank of the river after regaining her consciousness in the Bright Moon Immortal Palace’s territory. She had been in no danger, but having lost so miserably, she had felt as though she lost all of her face along with losing a fight again Qingshui.

She had never lost against Qingshui before. She had won numerous times, and she had come out even with her more often than not lately, but this was the first time she had ever lost. It wasn’t even through a miscalculation of hers, it was only because Moxian’s soul was disturbed at a critical moment. And losing in that way made her furious.

“What trick did she use?” Moxian fumes, her former playful attitude gone. “It’s true that her comprehension is better than mine and she’s mastered techniques that I haven’t, but my cultivation speed and strength are far greater than hers. She couldn’t have overcome my defenses and forced that strange fire into my soul so quickly without paying a heavy price. But she still timed everything so perfectly and was able to walk away without any injuries?”

Despite spending much of the last day thinking it over, Moxian cannot understand how she lost. The Dark Moon Immortal Palace and the Bright Moon Immortal Palace have the same foundation as they both follow the teachings of the Twin Moon Divine Palace, it’s just that their emphasis on cultivation is different.

The Dark Moon Immortal Palace cultivates the dark, destructive energies of the moon whereas the Bright Moon Immortal Palace cultivates the light, life-supporting elements of the moon. But they are all lunar-yin energies, so theoretically, anything Qingshui could do is something Moxian could do, or at the very least counter, but this time Moxian was overcome completely without a chance for action or even the opportunity to understand her own failings.

Moxian grits her teeth and gradually becomes more frustrated. But as her frustration continues to build, a voice enters her thoughts.

“Hey Moxian, hope you’re not busy but I need help. Is there any chance you know of a way to get rid of Qi? It’s urgent. Thanks! It’s Lan Jin by the way.”

Moxian cocks her head, confusion filling her eyes as she first looks around her for the speaker. When she cannot find the origin of the voice, she begins to examine her own mentality while wondering if her having lost against Qingshui was so traumatic to her psyche that she developed an Inner Demon.

After several minutes of reflection, she finds that everything about her is fine other than her Qi being a little low.

“What was that voice?” She wonders and then considers something. “And who is Lan Jin? He should be the one who sent me the message, but do I know a Lan Jin?”

It’s only close to ten minutes later that she finally remembers the name she casually chose for the boy she saw swimming in the River of Fate.

“Him?” Her red eyes grow wide in disbelief. “I’m sure he is mortal, and he made it seem as if he’d never even heard of cultivation before. How can he send me his voice? Did he trick me? Does he gain something from me believing him weak?”

Her fingers begin to tap a random rhythm on the ground beneath her as her head tilts left and right and she begins to search her consciousness for any signs of a connection to him. It takes a while, but she finds the connection, a sudden rift in her soul that bridges to a place outside of her body. She doesn’t know where the bridge leads, and she cannot tell how far away it is or in which direction, but she finds that part of her consciousness exists on the other side of it. Not, as she intended when she marked Lan Jin, a slave mark to force him to submit to her, but an unrefined bundle of energy made up of her Qi, blood essence, and soul energy.

When she realizes that part of her exists somewhere else, her impulse is to take it back. But as she reaches out and tries to seize the part of her on the opposite end of the rift, she finds that she is grasping at something too far away for her to affect it.

She focuses her attention on the rift, curious to see how it works and forgetting all about Lan Jin’s urgency, but all she can discover is that it is a passage that allows her to perceive and connect with whatever it is on the other side.

“I wonder what it can be used for. Communication should be one thing. But is there anything else?”

She is wary of probing something she cannot even begin to define, but the longer she thinks it over the more curious she becomes. Her greatest weakness had always been the fact that she gets bored easily and could never help but seek out new ways to entertain herself. In fact, the only reason Qingshui could even come close to her level in cultivation was that Moxian only put in about one-tenth of the effort in as Qingshui, yet she had still always been ahead.

“It shouldn’t hurt to figure it out, right?” Moxian’s small toes begin to curl in and out as she thinks about it, her eyes shining as she considers the dangers and potential rewards of playing with something new. Eventually, the thought of the dangers wins out, and she can’t help but hope something happens so she could overcome it.

“I’ll just take a peak. If it’s anything bad, I can get my master to save me.”

***

Lan Jin struggles to fight his nerves as he hopes for Moxian to contact him. After remembering that many of the objects that appeared in the Omega Browser had sound attached to them, Lan Jin figured that it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for him to be able to search for sounds as well as words. After that, it was only a few quick seconds of trial and error to discover that he could use the purple star to record his thoughts. Once he learned how to control it, he immediately sent Moxian a request for help.

Normally, Lan Jin wouldn’t want to take the risk of contacting Moxian again— at least not unless he was strong enough to not be made into her pet— but after he learned how to see Qi with the help of the stone monument, he found that his entire body was practically bursting at the seams with thick, green Qi. The same Qi that he now knew had been present in every single one of the pears he had eaten over the last two days.

If that wasn’t enough, the burning sensation he had felt after absorbing all of the purple mist earlier was much more noticeable now than it was then— presumably because of the passage of time and the fact that he had eaten another pear on the way to going fishing.

Time passes, and Lan Jin has no choice but to ignite the remnants of the fish he had eaten with the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame and use his bamboo pipe to absorb the purple mist released by the leaves around him. The main reason for this is that it takes some of the purple star's energy to record his thoughts, and sending that one message into Moxian’s blood bubble had depleted what little energy was left in the star after finding the stone monument. In order for him to send any more messages, he would need to top up the purple star with more mist.

Though, he did learn two things in the process of burning the leaves. First, he learned that it wasn’t the leaves themselves that were burning to become purple mist, but the meager amounts of Qi within them that was becoming the purple mist. And the reason why he was only getting tiny amounts of purple mist with each leaf he burned was because there was almost no Qi within them.

If he were to burn the pears entirely, he would get much more purple mist— a fact that he had already been aware of but avoiding because the pears had been his only source of food— but even knowing that the pears were full of Qi to turn into purple mist, he chose not to do so because he didn’t know if they would be helpful in the future

Second, he learned that the purple mist didn’t directly enter the Omega Browser’s Space after he swallowed it, but instead, it traveled throughout his entire body at a fast speed before it left his vision after traveling upward through his chest and, he thinks, to his head.

Time passes and Lan Jin grows more anxious. The fish had already been burned into nothingness and he had absorbed a decent amount of purple mist, but it was nowhere near the amount he had absorbed earlier after igniting the giant echidna.

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He wonders if he should continue burning things using his hand to hold the flame, but as he considers that, Moxian finally contacts him.

Her voice enters his mind from the blood bubble, a pleasant sound taken in the backdrop of all of his concerns, “What is this place?”

When he hears the message he grows frustrated immediately.

Looking at the purple mist he had collected, Lan Jin struggles to decide what he should do. He thinks he has enough to send a couple more messages after he combines it with his purple star, but he wants to use those messages to explain the situation.

“Can I convince her to help me with two messages? And can she even understand what’s going on?”

He looks at the numerous vein-like tracks of green Qi running through his body and grits his teeth.

“The only other person I have to ask is Qingshui, and I already know she wants to kill me. I’ve got no choice but to try to answer Moxian while explaining my situation to her in two messages… No, I’ll try to explain everything in one message and leave the second message for clarification if I need it… I really hope she helps me out.”

Thinking about what he should say to describe his current predicament, Lan Jin anxiously twitches his right foot and sends another message into Moxian’s blood bubble.

“My mind. Need help fast. Qi hurts inside body. See green veins. Only one message.”

Seconds pass and Moxian replies. “This entire place is your mind? Why is it so empty?” She pauses before continuing, “It’s a shame you can see Qi because it means one of two things. One, the Qi in your body has reached a point where it has crossed the threshold into the physical world and you’re about to die. Two, there is something wrong with your head because you can see Qi naturally and you still chose to absorb enough of it that your meridians are inundated with it. In that case, you’re about to be a cripple at best.”

Lan Jin’s teeth clench more tightly. He doesn’t want to respond because it will take him quite a while to make enough purple mist to send another message and doing so will definitely exhaust the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame. Not having many options unless he wants to waste his last message, Lan Jin chooses to wait instead.

Seconds pass agonizingly slowly. He can feel the burn under his skin and, though it doesn’t seem to have reached a critical point, the more he thinks about it the more he notices it.

“There is a way to fix it.” Moxian’s voice enters his mind again, her tone teasing and seductive, but without being able to see her face, Lan Jin isn’t distracted by it. “If you want me to help, you just have to use that last message to call me master. And in the future, you will have to listen to me and keep me entertained… Or I will find ways to make you more entertaining. Either way is fine by me.”

Lan Jin pauses. He is afraid of what will happen if he lets the Qi continue to run unchecked in his body, but he is just as afraid of Moxian and her strange personality. In fact, comparing the two, Lan Jin at least has an idea of how he’d suffer if he doesn’t fix the problem with the Qi running through his body, but he has no clue how he’d suffer in Moxian’s hands if he has to obey her.

He thinks it through for a minute before realizing that, even if he had to suck it up now and make her feel good by calling her his master, she wouldn’t have any way to make him do anything. In fact, no matter how he looks at it, just by letting her stoke her own ego, he can save his life.

“Dammit, never thought I’d be calling a girl my master…”

Lan Jin sniffs in disdain toward himself before shaking his head.

“Fuck it. Let’s get this over with.”

Turning his attention inward, Lan Jin has to force himself to send another message to Moxian. Except, despite only being one word, the message bears down heavily on his pride and self-esteem.

“Master.”

He immediately hears laughter coming from Moxian’s blood bubble and his face flashes red in embarrassment, but he sucks it up and waits while hoping Moxian follows through with her promise this time.

“Good!” More laughter follows. “You might not be worth much now, but I have a lot of free time and I can shape you up well!”

Lan Jin’s face twitches and he’s already sure he made a big mistake.

It takes a while for Moxian to settle down, her childlike delight so obvious that he even feels a little guilty for planning on taking advantage of her despite being fairly certain that he’s going to be the one suffering for it.

In the end, Moxian does follow through with her promise as she begins to explain the necessary steps of what Lan Jin needs to do to save himself.

“Given that you’re not dead yet, the reason why you can see Qi should be due to a natural gift of yours. Therefore, it should be easy for you to find the spot half a palm’s length below your navel where all of the Qi in your body will eventually pass.”

After pulling up his shirt, Lan Jin inwardly acknowledges that Moxian is correct as he finds that point.

“What you need to do is solely focus on the Qi that crosses through this point and try to use your spirit to make it rotate slowly. Doing so will allow you to control it to a small degree, but the main point that you need to focus on now is not to keep it in one spot, but to prevent it from running unhindered throughout your body. Given that you can see it and that you already have enough control over your spirit to contact me, I don’t expect this to take much time for you. I will continue my explanation in a minute.”

“In a minute?” Lan Jin groans and tries to quickly replicate what Moxian described. But, try as he might, one minute is not enough for someone like him who has only relief on the Omega Browser to do anything with cultivation.

Before he can even begin rotating the Qi, Moxian continues speaking and he has no way to ask her to slow down.

“After you’ve started rotating the Qi crossing that point, you should have found that the Qi following behind it has also begun to slowly rotate. This is a good thing, but it is also slightly dangerous because the Qi will begin to expel its impurities as it travels through your body. Normally, you would get rid of these purities as you absorb the Qi in the first place, or you would refine them out before beginning to absorb them, but now, you will have to pay close attention to rotate the Qi slower in places where the impurities look like they are about to be expelled and faster in places where the Qi looks stagnant.

However, the ultimate goal behind doing this is to make your Qi reach a constant state of rotation throughout your body and you will suddenly increase the rate of rotation as the Qi approaches your mouth. You will then try to exhale only the impure Qi while keeping the pure Qi within your body. You can tell which is which by its color— pure Qi is clear while impure Qi takes on the colors of nature. For your current self, any colored Qi is bad.”

Moxian continues talking and Lan Jin grows more and more stressed. Even as she goes for longer than five minutes, Lan Jin still hasn’t managed to make the Qi inside of him begin to rotate while Moxian is talking about attempting to form a cloud within that spot half a palm’s length below his navel. He starts missing parts of her speech, and he grows frantic as he imagines himself dying not because he didn’t have a way out, but because he was too slow to follow along with a plainly-worded explanation.

Eventually, in a fit of panic, Lan Jin realizes that Moxian had been talking about purifying impure Qi while the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame is supposed to be able to purify all things. Not knowing what else to do and desperate to follow along with Moxian’s instructions, he manipulates the fire and sends it directly to the spot below his navel in hopes that it will bridge the gap between his inability to follow along and Moxian’s increasingly complicated instructions.

He lets out a sigh of relief when, first, he is able to send the fire to his stomach and then, as the fire begins to burn the green Qi that passes through it. Rather than coming out clear, it is, expectedly, purple, but Lan Jin can’t complain about it right now because he’s still struggling to make the Qi inside of him rotate slowly.

He can’t help but pay more attention to Moxian than trying to make the Qi rotate, but thankfully, most of what she is talking about is using the purest portions of the rotating Qi to slowly form a cloud within himself.

Not having to worry about the rotational speed of the Qi as much, Lan Jin begins to show some progress and finds it easier to control the purple mist forming inside of his stomach than it was to control the green Qi. In addition, because he doesn’t need to try to capture the purple mist after it forms, he can just casually let everything inside of him flow through it and he can still collect all of it.

Though, unlike normal, with him trying to make it rotate in his body, it doesn’t just disappear and enter the Omega Browser’s Space. Instead, as he increases its speed of rotation, it slowly starts to deposit itself in that spot below his navel. He can even see it clearly as the purple mist collects and forms a single, tiny cloud that the remaining portions of mist flow into as he continues to purify the Qi running through his body.

While he does so, he pays more attention to Moxian again.

“You will know how well you’ve done based on the purity of the Qi within the cloud in your Dantian area. If you don’t see any green in the cloud, then you’ve done well. If you can see less than one-part-in-ten of green Qi per clear Qi, then you can consider yourself to have done not bad. If it’s between one- and two-parts in ten, then you’ve done poorly and need to spend more time purifying the Qi in the future to make up for it. If you’ve done worse than that, then you should give up on cultivating because you are worthless.

Also, as the amount of Qi inside your body grows, the cloud will eventually split into pieces. One cloud means you are on the first level of Qi Gathering. Two clouds means you are on the second. This continues all the way to nine clouds and once you reach this point you will start working toward the Qi Condensation stage. But until then, you must make sure that you maintain or improve the purity of your Qi as much as possible or you will never amount to anything.”

Lan Jin looks at the single large purple cloud floating about in his Dantian. It is uniform in color without even the tiniest speck of green or even a hint of clear Qi running through it and, given that it was formed from the Qi of more than a dozen pears, was even more plentiful than the large amount of purple mist he had shoved into his soul earlier. But, as he considers its uniformity and Moxian’s warning, he can’t help but wonder.

“Did I do well or really, really bad?”