Refining Qi into Essence

Mist and cloud drifted past, and everything dissolved into nothing once more. All that remained was a white-browed old Taoist who turned his head and fixed his gaze on Lu Zhao. He smiled warmly and said, “If the Three Flowers never gather, how would you know illusion? If you never rise on the clouds, how would you know what is real?” “This poor Taoist is Shao Yuanjie. Greetings, layman.” A Taoist? Lu Zhao's consciousness body gradually came awake. Beneath his feet was a clear, dark-ink color; all around was empty void, and an old Taoist with the air of an immortal stood in the center. He asked, “Where is this place?” The old Taoist replied, “The Buddhists call it the far shore; the Daoists call it the Primordial. In five hundred years, you are the only layman to reach this place.” Lu Zhao countered, “Then what are you?” The old Taoist calculated on his fingers and stroked his long beard. “This poor Taoist is a man of the Jiajing era of the Great Ming. I cultivated refining qi into spirit and came to this place seeking immortality. Five hundred years have passed since. I was the only one who came before, five hundred years ago, and you, layman, are the only one who has come after, five hundred years later.” Then he pointed behind Lu Zhao. Following his direction, Lu Zhao could see starlight faintly appearing and fading in a pitch-black heaven and earth. “In this world, those who refine spirit are few. Those who can enter the inner landscape are fewer still. And only you, layman, have stepped into the Primordial.” Lu Zhao understood. This was still the mental world. He had once sought out many psychic tutors to ask about it. His kind of phenomenon was rather rare, and there was no solution for it at present; he could only keep developing his life force to raise his rank. A first-rank psychic superhuman condensed a consciousness body—existing in the mental world in the shape of reality—and this was called the outer form. At the second rank, one could build on that and simulate the five viscera and six organs in the mental world, called the inner form. A third-rank psychic superhuman could construct an inner landscape and use it to resist external psychic contamination. But he made no further move and asked no more questions. He simply stood where he was and quietly watched the old Taoist. Everything and everyone in the mental world was illusory. Psychic superhumans who over-explored the mental world all went mad in the end, because they sank completely into a world of their own making and their perception was utterly twisted. This place could be the old Taoist's inner landscape, or it could be a hallucination generated from Lu Zhao's own understanding. Lu Zhao leaned toward the latter. Once, under Li Shaoqing's influence, Lu Zhao had known all of Li Dongxue's likes and dislikes and could foresee her every move. After he turned sixteen, it became one-sided mind reading. At its worst, Lu Zhao dreamed the same dreams as she did. This was a kind of psychic overflow. Its side effect on Lu Zhao was that whenever he could not sense Li Dongxue's presence, he grew irritable. His psychic power was like a ball that kept leaking air. After Lu Zhao was admitted to Dijing University, on his tutor's advice, he took the initiative to cut off contact. It was good for both of them: Li Dongxue kept her right to privacy, and Lu Zhao's mental state would settle down. Around the summer break of his sophomore year, Lu Zhao finally broke completely free of the psychic overflow. With that, he advanced a thousand li a day in the psychic field and rose to first in his department. The most effective response to a hallucination was not denial but quiet observation. A person could not prove himself, and the mind could not prove itself against a hallucination. And a hallucination was false in the end—the more it was fabricated, the more easily it showed its flaws. Seeing that Lu Zhao had not reacted for a long while, the old Taoist asked, “Layman, you don't seem the least bit surprised?” Lu Zhao shook his head. “Nothing you want to ask, either?” Lu Zhao shook his head again. “It is right for the layman to be on guard. This poor Taoist was abrupt.” The old Taoist kept his kindly smile and drew a blue-green book from his sleeve, handing it to Lu Zhao. [Refining Essence into Qi: Breathing Methods] Lu Zhao did not take it. The scene before his eyes began to blur, until he sank into complete darkness; the sound of rain reached his ears, and the stench of cigarette butts filled his nose. His consciousness returned to his body. Outside, it had started to rain again. Lu Zhao glanced at the alarm clock by his bed. The time was 5:10. “Five hours of sleep. Not bad.” Normally he could only sleep two and a half hours a day. If not for a superhuman's physique and a psychic's inhuman will, Lu Zhao would probably have dropped dead long ago. Half sitting up, he lit a cigarette and thought back to the hallucination in the mental world. “Mind and breath lean on each other; spirit returns to the void, form returns to nature.” A memory that was not his own suddenly welled up—something about refining qi into essence—and Lu Zhao unconsciously recited the oral formula. His body seemed to have some mechanism switched on, and a current of qi began to circulate through his meridians. Focus the mind on the dantian; let the breath grow fine; let mind and breath merge. Visualize the qi as white light pouring into the dantian, turning into white vapor that travels through the whole body. Lu Zhao's breathing suddenly changed. With every breath in and out, he could feel a current of qi circulating through his body, finally gathering in his abdomen. Only when his head swam and a fierce hunger surged into his skull did Lu Zhao stop. He gripped the table to keep from falling, then opened the refrigerator, picked up a bottle of life supplement with three hundred milliliters left, and gulped it down. That was still not enough. Lu Zhao had to open another bottle; at first he drank only a hundred milliliters, then simply drained the whole bottle. Normally, if he did not train, a hundred milliliters was enough for a day. Now five hundred milliliters did not even make him feel bloated. Only after three bottles in a row did the hunger begin to fade, and his brain could finally start working again. Lu Zhao pinched himself. Pain was the hardest thing to fake in a hallucination. There was also the substantive change working on his body; a rise in life force went beyond what a hallucination could simulate. At least in that respect, Lu Zhao could still tell falsehood from reality. But this too was beyond his knowledge. An old Taoist who had lived for hundreds of years in the mental world was unheard of. Lu Zhao's thoughts raced. He stopped fretting over whether the old Taoist existed and began observing his own changes. “Three bottles—at least thirty thousand kilocalories—and still no feeling of fullness. This technique is real, so that old Taoist may be real too.” “But I never even read the technique. Did the old Taoist initiate me?” The essence of life was eating, digesting, and excreting. Life-force development came down to two things: the calorie conversion rate, and how many kilocalories one point of life force required. With every point of life force gained, the conversion rate dropped and the total calorie requirement rose. The first rank was 10 to 50 points, the second rank 50 to 200 points, and the third rank 200 to 600 points. Life-force development. Lu Zhao, with thirty-five points of life force, was at the first rank. Ordinary food could no longer be used for life-force development; it could only maintain metabolism. With that thought, Lu Zhao dug a palm-sized blood analyzer out of the drawer. It was like a blood glucose meter: take a drop of blood with a needle, wait five minutes, and get the life-force data. [Life Force: 35.5] “It went up by 0.1.” Lu Zhao's eyes went wide, and his breathing grew heavy. Maintaining daily metabolism was simple, especially with modern material abundance; taking in enough calories was easy. But developing life force depended on the conversion rate—the rate at which energy was converted. Lu Zhao was considered gifted, but limited by resources, he could only take low-grade life supplements; raising his life force by one point took a hundred days. Now that he had the technique, he was no longer limited by meager resources. If he gained 0.1 a day, in a little over a month he would reach forty points of life force, and another hundred days would bring him to fifty. Once he stepped into second-rank superhuman, he would have the right to work locally, and with his record and merits he could leave the Chen family's sphere of influence. There was nothing in the world that life-force development could not solve; if there was, then it was something that had to be overthrown with superhuman power. The fastest life-force developer on record in the Yan Federation gained 0.1 point a day when he was at thirty points of life force. This man was Wang Shouzheng. He graduated from Dijing University thirty years ago, took charge of the Hall of Martial Virtue as Chief five years ago, and was titled Heavenly Marquis. And my speed on low-grade life supplements matches the Chief's. Lu Zhao smoked another cigarette to calm himself for a moment. The hand holding it trembled faintly without his noticing. Pies do not fall from the sky—but he had already run out of options. “Even if there are nails in the pie, I'll swallow it!” The hand holding the cigarette stopped trembling. Lu Zhao tidied up the scattered belongings and saw his smashed phone on the floor. For now, the plan was to borrow money from Old Zhang to buy a phone.