The return trip to my new house takes much less time than travelling to the clothing store did in the first place. For one thing, I’m not longer distracted playing with literal fire. But the main reason is that I’m excited to get back and play around with literal fire as well as the other elements.

My entire time travelling is spent thinking about my plans. I want to figure out the fire Dao first, but I also want to see what the other Daos have to offer me. I can’t help but imagine the kind of things I’d be able to do with a ton of water. Or even a mountain of metal! And if I can control plants like I was able to control the coins in the clothing store, then I can see myself getting into some DC shenanigans like Poison Ivy.

My excitement gets to the point where I almost forget Physician Bing is still in my cultivation room as I head through my house, run into the aforementioned room, and plop myself down on the cushion. I give him a single glance before closing my eyes and thinking back to what I did in the park as well as how I could improve it.

The most notable thing for me is that, the more of my qi that is outside of my body, the more difficult it is to control. This is especially true when I’m trying to perform a somewhat complicated task with larger amounts of qi. Now I just need to figure out how to simplify the process enough that I don’t lose control of it so quickly.

“Maybe if I spin the fire qi in my body before I feed it into the ball?” I mutter, curious how using my qi differently would affect the outcome.

I try it out with a small amount of qi at first. As it’s in my body, it is incredibly easy to control, even if I try to rotate the qi at high speeds, but there is a limit at which I cannot rotate it past. I’m not sure why, but once I get the qi rotating as fast as a low quality battery-powered drill, it seems to become much more difficult to keep going.

When I look through my body, I notice that it takes a lot more of my qi to rotate it that quickly and I simply don’t have anymore fire qi to increase the speed.

“That’s inconvenient,” I grumble. “Oh well, let’s see what we’ve got with this.”

Focusing on the task, I begin to push the qi through my body toward my right hand. The rotation of the qi is fast enough that the meridians around my right arm begin vibrating, but it isn’t uncomfortable. In fact, it tickles a little bit as the first little cyclone of fire qi exits my body and immediately turns into a little red whip of burning energy flapping about the palm of my hand.

It takes a lot more conscious effort for me to control the rapidly rotating fire qi, but I am able to force it into a small ball similar to what I did earlier.

The ball of rotating fire qi takes much more qi to ignite than it did when I simply compressed it into a ball earlier. I try to figure out why that is, but it doesn’t seem to make much sense. I’m using more than enough qi, I’m certain of that, and yet the rotation of it seems to stop it from burning like I want?

Maybe the key to it really is compression? It is the gravity of a star that allows it to ignite in the first place, so maybe I need a lot more qi packed into the center of my little burning ball?

My hypothesis is good, I think, but very difficult to test as I quickly discover. Trying to compress the rotating qi is far more demanding than anything else I’ve had to do with it so far. I’d even say it is more difficult than opening the Dragon’s Third Eye, but I don’t feel as though that’s a good comparison since the Dragon’s Third Eye was located in my body and still turned out to be difficult to open.

It takes a couple of long, grueling minutes of slowly forcing my qi into the ball of energy before it finally begins to spark, but all of my aspirations are shattered as all of the qi is scattered like dust in the wind.

“What the heck?” I ask, surprised at the outcome. It’s as though I completely lost control, and contact, with my qi all at once. There wasn’t even an eruption of energy like the fireball at the lake. It just disappeared.

“I assume you are trying to replicate the image from earlier?” Physician Bing’s quiet voice fills my ears and I open my eyes.

Physician Bing still has his eyes closed and he seems to be meditating, but I know for a fact that I heard his voice just now.

“Yeah, I was trying, but I don’t know what just happened.” I explain, uncertain why he chose now to talk to me.

“I dispersed the energy.” He responds to my annoyance, but continues with, “Your control over fire is admirable, but woefully beneath the task you were trying to accomplish. While I doubt that trick of yours could have caused any damage I’m not capable of dealing with, there is no sense in taking that chance.”

He pauses for a few seconds as I consider his words and then says, “What purpose do you have for attempting something so complex? I doubt you’ve even had enough time to break through to the next level of the Mortal Foundation Realm, have you?”

“No,” I reply. “As to why, I am trying to understand the fire Dao. It’s only that it doesn’t really make any sense so I’ve been working toward replicating the sun I saw so that I might understand it.”

Physician Bing chuckles and I stare at him in confusion.

“The Dao is not so easy to comprehend. Even I have barely touched it, and you would be hard pressed to find anyone with a greater comprehension of fire than I have.

Furthermore, the Dao is not something you can achieve by arriving at the end of a path and taking a look around, it is the path itself. You must take every step along the journey or your journey will end as simply as that.”

“That’s great, but it seems a bit esoteric for me. Can you say that in a different way?” I ask, mildly chagrined that I get what he’s saying but I don’t really know what he’s talking about.

He pauses and then says, “The first step to understanding the fire Dao is to understand the nature of fire. Without first understanding its nature, you cannot comprehend the laws that govern it. Without comprehending the laws that govern it, you cannot comprehend the Dao.

It is therefore the first requirement of comprehending the Dao that you ignore the Dao and focus on the subject itself. In this case, use your fire qi to create a fire and then see how it interacts with the environment.

The understandings you have while doing that will shape your comprehension of the natural functions of fire. This will in turn affect your comprehension of the fire laws. Finally, your comprehension of the fire laws will become your understanding of the Dao.”

I think over his words and find myself acknowledging that he’s probably right. Though I want to understand the fire Dao right away, I still can’t even piece together the meaning of that projection despite having it right in front of me and having watched it twice in high speed.

“So do I just light something on fire and watch it?” I ask, not really certain how I should employ his advice.

“I suggest you start with attempting to create fire.”

Creating fire? I can already do that.

I prove it to myself a moment later when I grab a large glob of fire qi and compress it outside of my body until it ignites into a small ball of flame.

“Now what?” I ask him.

“Now you do it again, and again, and again. You do it until the act of making fire isn’t an act of combusting your qi through pressure, but an act of making fire.”

“That makes no sense.” I sigh, frustrated. If I thought his explanation of the Dao was esoteric, that was straight up nonsense.

Physician Bing smiles, not responding to my complaint, as he continues his meditation.

‘Guess I’ll be doing this for a while,’ I complain bitterly.

***

I begin by repeating the exact same thing several times. Because I’m igniting the qi, I end up losing a little bit every time so I pace myself and watch the initial spark combusting the rest of the fire qi over, and over, and over.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

It’s definitely not the most entertaining thing in the world, but it also isn’t boring. After all, who wouldn’t like to create fire out of basically nothing just because they could?

Unfortunately, stoking my ego doesn’t get me any closer to comprehension. In fact, I notice that I begin spacing out when my emotions taint the feeling of the fire. I guess it isn’t weird that my emotions affect my ability to understand something, but it’s annoying that I can’t even focus on enjoying the fire if I want to really understand it.

Consequently, I dampen my emotions; doing my best to focus only on the qi, the spark, and the flame that forms after.

Time and time again I make a ball of flame no bigger than a plum. It gets to the point where I begin using less qi to accomplish the same thing just so I can try and understand what’s going on with a larger number of smaller attempts.

From the size of a plum, my fire gradually approaches the size of a cherry tomato before I take a break from all of my fire qi expenditure. I still have plenty of the other four elements, but with all of my messing around today, my fire is pretty tuckered out.

Not wanting to give up on making any more progress, I switch to metal. I figure it is my second favorite element right now due to the cool skin effect it gave me, so using it while I wait for some more fire qi might be fun and it would give me a chance to relax. My only problem is that it means I have to start over. Again.

I also don’t know where to start. Fire is easy because it is fire. I can see when I am making progress on my control over it even if I don’t quite get what I’m supposed to be figuring out.

Metal, on the other hand, I have no experience with. I haven’t even watched a video on it like I have with fire.

My understanding of it is so bad that, for a while, all I do is click my fingers together after channeling metal qi into them.

Over and over I clink my fingers, my qi not dissipating because it only ever touches the surface of my skin and isn’t being wasted on anything.

‘What does metal do?’ I wonder, trying to figure out how I should try to understand the ‘nature’ of metal.

It makes stuff, I guess. It’s also good for reinforcing stuff. But I think that’s all contrived, isn’t it?

‘Metal itself is just metal so what do I do with it?’

I begin clicking my fingers faster, rubbing them up and down my arms, and rubbing the edges of my nails together to make tiny sparks. Unlike fire, the visual appeal of metal gets boring, fast.

It’s so uninteresting that I begin trying to use the qi from one nail to cut through the qi of another nail. Each time I begin making any progress, I coat the losing nail in more qi and try to keep the game going as long as possible. Finally, it reaches a point where the metal qi in my body starts diminishing due to my constant use of it to create something similar to golden claws.

The amount I use is fairly insignificant, and I can keep this going for a long time, but I begin to make some basic understandings on metal as one golden, qi-clad fingernail cuts into the other.

Metal is sharp!

The realization is so profound and yet so utterly, incredibly, exasperatingly simple that I feel like a genius and a complete moron all at the same time. What’s more, it isn’t just the act of metal cutting into metal that I realize, I also realize that ‘sharpness’ has a feeling associated with it.

It’s nothing near so powerful a feeling as the sun from earlier, but it’s so close at hand that I can feel myself understanding it more as I stop giving my fingernails denser, wedge-shaped cutting implements and start covering them with sharp, golden qi.

Over and over, I refine my understanding of ‘sharpness’ as I use dramatically increasing amounts of metal qi to sharpen my fingers into gold-clad claws. Slice after slice, I cut my golden claws against one another until, finally, my metal qi hits rock bottom and the feeling of ‘sharpness’ settles somewhere deep inside me.

I stare at my hands in disappointment as I want to continue playing with the metal qi, but I simply can’t.

“Do you know why you were able to understand the nature of metal before you could understand the nature of fire? Despite being able to create a flame on your palm?” Physician Bing asks me out of nowhere.

“No.” I shake my head. “It’s weird because I understand more about fire than metal, but I got more out of playing with metal than I did with fire.”

“Wrong.” Physician Bing states bluntly.

“What is?” I blink, not really sure how that statement could be wrong.

“You have knowledge of what fire is. You do not understand it. You lack knowledge of what metal is. Yet you could understand some small part of it.” Physician Bing pauses so I can take in his words.

It doesn’t really make sense. I think I get what he’s trying to say, but it is the same esoteric-speak that was confusing me earlier.

“What is a fire?” He asks.

“It’s combustion, isn’t it?” I think it’s a simple answer, but that should be all I need, right?

“Yes, and entirely inadequate to explain the entirety of fire. Observe.”

Physician Bing releases a large amount of fire all at once. Not fire qi, but actual fire. From the instant I can observe it after it leaves his dantian to the moment it begins to rage around his body, it is fire. It is also so far beyond my level that I can’t even imagine how he could create that much of it, enough to fill the side of the room he is occupying, so rapidly.

“How?” I ask, completely baffled.

“I didn’t ‘combust’ anything. I didn’t rely on the pressure of my qi to create a fire. I created a fire,” he states with special emphasis on himself.

He makes it seem like it is the most natural thing in the world, and yet here I am not understanding any of it.

“What you did was to rely on a process; you used knowledge to create fire out of qi. This is remarkable considering your level. In fact, it would be remarkable even if you were approaching the later stages of the Mortal Foundation Realm. But if you are trying to use that as your basis of comprehension for what a fire is, your path toward understanding the fire Dao will be short-lived.”

“Then what should I do?” I ask, still lost.

“You understand that metal can be sharp. But what is fire? Why is it that metal can cut so cleanly? What makes a fire burn?”

‘What makes a fire burn? I know it needs fuel, but that isn’t a fire. That’s what feeds the fire. They also need oxygen. And I think the last thing is heat? At least, according to science class. The sun I saw was weird, but maybe it is the same principle?’

In the time I spent playing around with my metal qi, I’ve regained enough fire qi to try a couple of things. It isn’t much, but if heat is all I need to make a fire, then I might be able to pull it off.

I start by sending a small amount of fire qi through my body and paying close attention to it. As it usually does, it increases my body temperature by quite a bit. While this is nice, it isn’t what I need. So I keep looking.

I need all of, or at least a lot of, the heat to be in one place if I want it hot enough to turn into fire. The problem is that I don’t know how to do that without compressing it into a little ball. Though that method works, it apparently isn’t what I want to do in order to understand the fire Dao.

The qi won’t all fit into my meridians at once, which I know from spinning it at high speeds, so I have to figure out how to gather enough of it that the heat of it turns to fire without affecting my qi itself.

I’m fairly confident that I wouldn’t be able to do this outside of my body, but maybe inside of my dantian? I normally let my qi do what it should, but maybe this is a time when I need to actively encourage it to do something different?

Deciding that I might be on the right track, in part because Physician Bing’s flame came from his dantian and also because I don’t know where else to gather all of the qi, I begin pushing every last bit of fire qi into my dantian.

It’s a near instantaneous process, and when it’s all there I begin looking for ways to gather all of the heat. I can’t shove it in the egg because the egg sort of does its own thing, so it’s down to me to find a way to achieve my goal of ‘making fire’ instead of finding a convenient tool to help.

Because all of my fire qi, diminished as it is, is in one place, I can see that it is actually putting off a lot more heat than I am comfortable with. I’m pretty sure I could handle it for a few seconds, but it’s definitely hotter than an oven inside of my dantian right now.

‘How do I contain the heat though?’ I wonder as the qi floats freely in my dantian.

Then I remember the hand sign that also floats freely in my dantian. If I recall correctly, it took the place of a sun in one of the visions I had. While I doubt it was supposed to be a literal representation of fire, it might be a starting point for me to contain all of the heat.

With a plan, even if I have no clue how good it is, I immediately get to work by pushing all of my fire qi toward the glowing hand sign in my dantian. Unlike my hope for it, the qi does not just deposit all of the heat there, but watching my failure makes me think of something else.

Supposedly, the hand sign in my dantian is some sort of extremely powerful technique for divination. What’s more, I know it uses my soul in order to function properly. If that’s the case, then it might also be true that the hand sign inside of my dantian is made up of my soul.

If I’m correct, then I ought to be able to form pseudo-physical ‘things’ inside of my dantian with my soul energy. Considering that I’ve already formed a soul umbilical cord to feed the egg, my idea should be running along the right lines.

Curious to see if I’m correct, I send a second streamer of soul energy down from the spot where my Dragon’s Third Eye is and direct it toward my dantian. This time, instead of linking it to the egg, I form a large bubble out of it.

As soon as the bubble is done, I start throwing all of my fire qi into it. Inside of the enclosed space, the fire qi begins generating more heat than it did while floating freely in my body or my dantian. In fact, it is a lot more heat than I had hoped for.

It only takes a few seconds for the slightly damp ground beneath the bubble to start turning red, so I stop pushing my qi into it and quickly move the bubble from floating above the ground to floating in the air a good deal away.

With the heat far away from anything I consider important, regardless of how bad a condition the important things are in, I continue pushing my fire qi into the bubble. It takes all of my fire qi and then some more that I absorb with my breathing technique before I finally start seeing results.

The bubble, which is full of red energy and an enormous amount of heat, begins to blaze. Unlike the red ball of energy that needs a ton of pressure to ignite and uses a lot of qi to maintain itself, the bubble is simply a lot of qi in one place that is generating enough heat to create fire.

My only problem is that I don’t know what it’s burning. My first thought is that it’s burning my qi, but my qi levels are static despite the fact that I’m using all of it right now. Then I think that it’s burning my soul energy, but my soul feels fine. My dantian also feels fine, so that’s out.

I sigh, not really sure what’s going on or what to do now that I’ve ‘made fire’. And with all of my fire qi devoted to keeping up the heat, I can’t really play with it at the moment.