The fire in my dantian floats about without a care in the world while I spend my time wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do with it. Aesthetically, it looks nice. It’s a relatively large ball of fire floating above a devastated landscape. But in reality, all it does it take up space. I don’t even understand what it is I’m supposed to learn from this thing!

“Hey Physician Bing,” I ask, “what am I supposed to do with the fire after I make it?”

“I suggest you worry about that after you’ve arrived at that point,” he says. “When placing one foot in front of another, you should worry about the foot you are stepping with now, not the foot you will be stepping with next. Doing otherwise it how you trip.”

“Yeah… that’s great and all, but I already made the fire.” I reply bluntly.

Physician Bing opens his eyes for the first time since he began meditating and looks at me. His eyes are two raging infernos in his face and I flinch backward as I see them.

“You’ve succeeded at making fire? Already?” He actually sounds shocked. I’m pretty sure I’ve surprised him before, but I don’t think he’s ever reacted this… stunned.

“I’m pretty sure I did. At least, I made a fire in my dantian.”

“Inside of your dantian? Describe the steps you took.”

I tell him everything I did in order to get the little ball of flame. He nods along with the pace of my story, his expression curious but unconcerned.

“Very good, very good,” he says. “Though you completely failed when it comes to the fire Dao, being able to create a Soul Fire in the Mortal Foundation Realm is not a bad result.”

I stare at him for a few seconds and ask, “What do you mean I failed? How did I fail? I created a fire!”

“Yes…” he nods his head. “However, you used your qi to create a fire. You did not create a fire.” He supplies extra emphasis on the word ‘you’ as I stare at him with what I’m sure is a very frustrated look.

“Oh come on!” I groan. “That’s so bogus! I used my understanding of fire to create a fire. Isn’t that what the fire Dao is all about?”

Physician Bing chuckles at my frustration and shakes his head. “Not even close. Creating a fire, solely with your comprehension of the fire Dao, is, in my opinion, the first step to understanding the fire Dao. Relying on anything else to help you merely means that you have an insufficient understanding of the fire Dao.”

Shaking my head, I let out a heavy sigh of frustration. “Physician Bing, that makes no sense! How am I supposed to gain comprehension on the fire Dao if understanding the fire Dao requires me to already have some understanding of the fire Dao? I’m pretty sure that’s circular logic or something like that.”

“And now you are aware of one of the greatest issues faced by all cultivators since the dawn of time.” Physician Bing lets out a quick laugh.

“Now, I would like to see the quality of your Soul Fire. Do you know how to control it?”

It takes me a minute to let go of my frustration for long enough to answer him. “No, not yet. I was planning on waiting until I got some of my qi back before I start messing around with it.”

“There should be no need for that,” he replies. “Soul Fires, much as their name implies, are controlled with a cultivator’s soul. So long as your will is strong enough, you will be able to manipulate it. Furthermore, because you are the one who created this Soul Fire, I imagine it will require very little effort for you to control it.”

“Alright…” I mutter. I’m still disappointed about the whole fire Dao situation, but Physician Bing seems impressed by the Soul Fire, so hopefully I didn’t completely lose out on my cultivation efforts for the last while.

Turning my attention back toward my dantian, I focus on the ball of flame floating high above the ruined soil. Unlike almost everything else about my dantian, it at least seems to have have some semblance of life to it. Compared to the sedentary egg, the alien presence of the hand sign, and the literally everything else, it is something that I’m actually pleased with… even if it is a complete fail.

I’m not sure how exactly I’m meant to ‘will’ this flame to do anything, but I at least have practice with both my qi and my soul, so hopefully it isn’t anything too different.

My first, most hopeful, attempt is to just think ‘Hey you, get your ass moving and get out of my body!’ That, as I expect, does literally nothing. Oh well. It was worth a shot.

My next attempt is to make another tether of soul energy from my forehead and connect it directly to the ball of flame. It’s also at this point that I realize I have three umbilical cords feeding things of my own creation inside my stomach. One of qi and two made from soul energy. The thought is momentarily amusing, but it distracts me from being able to get anything done so I push it aside.

After failing my first attempt, I know that my Soul Fire isn’t going to obey my thoughts. With my soul energy now connected to it, more connected to it than acting as a bubble, at least, I begin trying to operate it like an imaginary limb.

It is not a ‘very little effort’ kind of situation as Physician Bing led me to believe. Instead, I am forced to use what little soul energy I have after feeding my egg and making the soul bubble to try and push a strand of Soul Fire out of my dantian and into one of my meridians.

I fail. Repeatedly.

The only benefit of using my soul for this is that it is remaining in my body. It is certainly tiring, but I don’t feel as though I am any worse off after ten failed attempts at wiggling a bit of my Soul Fire out of my dantian.

Thankfully, I am making a little bit of progress. At first, I couldn’t even get a tiny bit of the Soul Fire out of my bubble, but now I’m not only able to wiggle a strand of Soul Fire out from the bubble, but I am also able to extend it toward the limits of my dantian.

It takes another several tries of soul-tiring, mind-numbing focus to grab the thinnest strand of fire that I had ever seen and connect it to one of my meridians. By this point, my soul is exhausted and I don’t know whether I’ll have enough energy to feed the egg later, but at least I finished the hard part. I think.

I’m wrong.

Trying to drag the fire through my meridians is an exercise in futility. Unlike when it is in my dantian and secure in my bubble, now it is exposed to the collective wrath of the other elements. The only thing that keeps me from giving up completely is that I can urge the other elemental energies to avoid the fire while it slowly creeps its way through my body and toward my right palm.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I’m drenched with sweat by the time I finally succeed, and the only thing I have to show for my efforts is a tiny pinprick of fire floating above my hand letting off an almost insignificant amount of light and heat.

“Very good,” Physician Bing praises, and I get the sudden urge to smack him upside the head.

“How is this good?” I groan. “I’d be surprised if this thing could light a candle! Why was it so hard to drag out such a small fire?”

Physician Bing looks between me and my tiny fire with a raised eyebrow. “While it certainly isn’t that impressive if you are only considering its size, that you could even do it in the first place is worth mentioning. That you could do it well enough to avoid internal burns is even more impressive.”

“Internal burns?” I take another look at the flame and realize that it is letting out enough heat to create a tiny haze around it. It’s just that, much like the tea I had earlier, I’m not feeling the heat.

“Hey Physician Bing, do people normally adjust to the elements they are using?” I ask.

“Adjust how?” He returns.

I think over exactly what I want to know and clarify, “I noticed that heat isn’t bothering me. I don’t think it’s that I can’t feel it, but more like my tolerance to it is getting high enough that I just don’t notice it. I didn’t even notice the heat coming off of my fire until you mentioned it just now… and I didn’t do anything to avoid burning myself.”

Physician Bing scrutinizes me for a few seconds before closing his eyes. It almost feels like he is ignoring me, but the crease between his eyebrows tells me that he’s probably thinking about something.

“Some people do, over time, acclimate to their elemental energies. However, for you to be acclimating this quickly is… unusual. Are you practicing a body cultivation method?”

“Yeah,” I respond. “But I haven’t actually started cultivating my body yet. I need snake blood in order to do that, but I haven’t had the opportunity to look up how much it costs or even where I can buy it from.”

Physician Bing goes back to thinking for a few minutes before asking, “Is there anything in your essence cultivation method that might have these results?”

Really, I should have checked that myself, but I’m glad that Physician Bing was available to bounce my questions off of.

I open up the webpage on the Divine Dragon Ascension and read over its affects.

“There is something, but it isn’t supposed to start affecting me until something called the Elemental Symbiosis Realm? There is also something in the body cultivation section of my cultivation practice that would let me resist heat and cold to a certain degree, but that wouldn’t come into effect until after I started refining my organs and meridians.”

“Hmm…” Physician Bing grows silent for a moment before saying, “I’ve noticed that your qi seems to be diffusing throughout your body rather than just flowing through your meridians. Is it possible that you have a bloodline technique that you are unaware of?”

“Bloodline technique?” I ask. “What is that?”

“Bloodline techniques are abilities that run down a family line. For some, they increase a cultivator’s compatibility with certain elements. For others, they provide a powerful method of attack or defense that can be called upon when certain conditions are met.

If your body is diffusing elemental energies in the way it is, then perhaps you have a bloodline technique that is affecting you physically.”

Considering Physician Bing’s words, I immediately think he is dead wrong. No one in my family has ever had something that would let them do what I’m doing right now. But then, even if it’s impossible to be a bloodline technique, the rest of his reasoning might not be wrong.

There is nothing in the Divine Dragon Ascension that would explain what is happening to me at this moment. But, if that’s the case, then the only thing I can think of that I’ve done that deviates from normal people is the breathing technique I learned to begin cultivating in the first place.

I don’t actually know what the effects of using the breathing technique are, but I already know that it is feeding my body somehow. It probably wouldn’t be too big of a stretch to assume that there are going to be some changes from the elemental energies infusing themselves into me, right?

If that’s true, then not only is my body going to have some sort of tolerance to heat, but I’ll probably see similar effects happening due to my absorption of the other four elements. Right? And that doesn’t even begin to cover the different shades of colors I’ve seen in people like Qiang Yu who didn’t have a normal blue qi but a light blue qi.

Turning back to Physician Bing, I say, “I think your explanation makes a lot of sense. I wasn’t any more tolerant to heat until this morning, and that was several hours after I began cultivating fire qi. But is this a bad thing? What if I can’t feel heat but it still harms me?”

Physician Bing looks me over and holds out his hand. “Let me see your hand,” he says.

I put my hand in his and he sends a stream of fire qi into my body.

“Let me know if you feel any change in temperature or growing discomfort.” He orders and I nod.

For several minutes, nothing happens. I watch as his qi enters my body and dissipates throughout it like I’m used to. My only concern comes from Physician Bing’s eyebrows slowly coming closer together.

“Is everything alright?” I ask, nervous.

“You’re absorbing my qi,” he replies.

I blink in surprise as I pay a little more attention to what’s happening inside me and notice that I am, in fact, absorbing a good deal of the qi he is sending into me.

“Sorry,” I apologize. I try to stop absorbing his qi, but my breathing technique does not comply with my orders as I attempt to temporarily stop it from running.

My own eyebrows grow closer together as I focus harder on my task, but despite my best efforts, my qi continues to flow throughout my body. This also means that Physician Bing’s qi is subsequently devoured by my body as it, also, begins flowing through the path I set up for my qi to follow with the guidance of the Heaven’s Gaze.

“I can’t stop absorbing your qi,” I tell Physician Bing.

He immediately stops sending qi through my body and pulls the rest of it back before my body can absorb it.

“That… was one of the most unusual bloodline techniques I’ve ever come across,” he tells me while shaking his head. “Unfortunately, it also means that I’m unable to safely test the exact nature of your heat tolerance without putting you in danger. That being said, and this is only an educated guess based on my past experience with… somewhat similar techniques, most bloodline techniques do not cause harm to their host so long as they are used correctly.

What this means is that your body will continue to adapt to the qi running through it, but it also means you need to be careful about absorbing types of qi you are not compatible with. For example…” Physician Bing pauses and looks at me more closely and I feel his gze intensify a moment later.

“I have no good example to give you,” he finally says. “You have all five primary elements running throughout your body in what appears to be a controlled manner. To be frank, I have no clue what this will lead to and I don’t want to give you any advice that may or may not be helpful to you. If anything, I will just advise that you pay attention to any further changes in your body and come to me if you have any questions.”

I nod my head to Physician Bing’s explanation and reply, “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“With that being said, I do have a question for you.” Physician Bing states and I pay him more attention. “You said you intend to cultivate both your body as well as your essence?”

I nod my head in response. “Yeah, the cultivation practice I found is meant to help with my body, essence, and soul.”

He raises an eyebrow at me and says, “Are you aware that cultivating each aspect is far more difficult than the sum of cultivating them separately? The difficulty of cultivating will only go up exponentially if you try to accomplish all three.”

“I wouldn’t say that I’m ‘aware’ of that, but it isn’t hard to imagine. But I do know that I want to cultivate all three of them and I think I’m mentally prepared for that… even if it does turn out to be more difficult that I thought.”

“Very well,” he replies. “I know very little when it comes to body cultivation practices, but I know a great deal when it comes to soul cultivation and essence cultivation. If you experience any bottlenecks when it comes to these two aspects, I can help guide you through them.”

“Thanks again, Physician Bing.” I respond. Then I remember something else I meant to talk to Physician Bing about so I say, “By the way… you know that low-grade spatial rings cost up to dozens of qi crystals… right?”

Physician Bing blinks. “They do?”

I nod my head.

“Hmm… I suppose you won’t be getting one for now, then. But… I’ve already promised to teach you alchemy. If that’s what you want, then we can begin looking into that after you’ve rested and recovered some of your soul energy.”

“Seriously?” I ask and he nods. “That’s awesome! Can I make a lot of money with pills?”

“In time, yes,” he replies. “Of course, there’s no way I would allow you to supply the people of Qiang City with pills that could lead to lasting harm, so it’s more likely than not that it will take longer than you are hoping before you begin seeing any significant returns.”

I sigh.

“Yeah, well, I guess I shouldn’t be disappointed that a physician actually gives a fuck about people.” I give him a weak smile as he shakes his head slowly, but I can tell from his small smirk that he didn’t not appreciate my joke.