A blur passed before Qian Chen's eyes, and he found himself back in the desolate compound where he had been staying. Moonlight like flowing water washed over the small courtyard, serene and still, while the faint chirping of insects drifted in from all around.
Sensing these familiar surroundings, Qian Chen furrowed his brow and instinctively looked up at the moon, observing its phase.
Seeing that the moon's phase was completely identical to what it had been before he entered the Reincarnation Lands, his gaze hardened, and he lowered his head to calculate.
To be utterly certain, Qian Chen performed the divination three times consecutively before confirming that this was the very instant after he had entered the Reincarnation World... He had spent several days completing his mission in another world across the void and stayed a full two days in the Reincarnation Lands, yet time in the Central Lands had not flowed at all.
It was as though everything that took place in the Reincarnation Lands had been nothing more than an illusion.
"The flow of time in the Reincarnation Lands is actually independent of the Central Lands! It seems the Lord of Reincarnation's great power is beyond even my expectations."
Qian Chen murmured with a sigh.
Now that he had returned to the Central Lands, the cultivation attainment he had painstakingly developed had not vanished, proving that what occurred in the Reincarnation Lands was no illusion cast by some supreme being. Right now, his internal qi was surging restlessly, threatening to burst through the Mysterious Gate aperture and scatter into the world. His spiritual sense, too, felt an indescribably wondrous resonance with the world's primordial qi stretching tens of li in every direction.
With a single thought, Qian Chen could let his internal qi breach the Mysterious Gate and merge with the primordial qi of heaven and earth.
By uniting internal and external primordial qi, transmuting the illusory into reality to form a breath of true qi, he would become a proper Qi Refining cultivator, no longer burdened by the awkward limitation of using mere internal qi to wield magical implements.
Yet Qian Chen knew that the closer he drew to this moment, the more steady and composed he needed to be. The first breath of true qi born from this union of inner and outer held vital sway over his foundation. A misstep here would demand immense, grueling effort down the road to slowly purge the impurities from his true qi.
Qian Chen had no desire to linger in the Qi Refining realm for decades just to make amends for an error made today.
Ordinary sects and major traditions usually maintained secluded meditation chambers for this step, equipped with formations to gather a specific spiritual qi and restrictions to ward off turbid qi. Sensing primordial qi within such a chamber shielded the cultivator from the taint of foul qi.
However, there was a drawback: it deprived them of the delicate perception of heaven and earth's primordial qi and the tempering of complex qi dynamics during the breakthrough of Sensing. Their acuity toward these intricate qi flows remained deficient. While this did not hinder their gathering of qi, compared to the true transmission of the Daoist orthodoxy, the perception of these opportunistic cultivators toward primordial qi was far too crude.
Much like someone who was colorblind and could see only black and white, they could still observe the world, but their perception inevitably lacked detail and depth.
When practicing spells and divine abilities in the future—or Daoist methods like divination and fortune-telling, which demanded sensitivity to profoundly complex shifts in qi—their aptitude would be severely lacking. That was why the two hurdles of Foundation Building and Sensing were said to dictate one's acquired roots and aptitude, directly shaping a cultivator's future accomplishments.
The "foundation" cultivators spoke of referred to precisely this.
Fortunately, Qian Chen possessed the secret method inherited from the Taishang Dao—the Taishang Sensing Scripture. Bestowed by the Taishang Dao Ancestor himself, this Daoist scripture detailed every crucial key to sensing heaven and earth. It was essential study for the Taishang Dao—and indeed for the entire Daoist orthodoxy—when breaching the Sensing threshold. To unorthodox sects, heterodox paths, and even demons, devils, Buddhists, and deities, it was a supreme, peerless secret.
It was never taught to anyone outside the true transmission disciples of the Daoist orthodoxy.
Qian Chen first released the Heavenly Net Umbrella to hover above his head, unfurling its azure silk. A veil of clear qi descended, neither obstructing his communion with heaven and earth nor allowing mixed qi, baleful qi, foul qi, or turbid qi to contaminate him, while also barring disturbances from external demons. This sheet of clear qi was extraordinarily dense; even if someone sought to plot against him while he was deep in meditation, they would struggle to breach it in eight to ten days.
He then flicked out a Cleansing Talisman, which emitted a ray of clear light that swept in a circle around the desolate courtyard. It wiped away all manner of filth and dispersed much of the dreary, murky gloom that had accumulated over long years of abandonment.
Still, Qian Chen was not entirely satisfied; the mixed qi here remained too dense. This was inherently unfavorable for Sensing. When proper Daoist cultivators broke through Sensing, they did so either in famous spiritual mountains and great rivers where spiritual energy gathered naturally, or, in the case of mortal aristocratic scions, in locations chosen for prime fengshui. Even unorthodox and heterodox practitioners would never casually pick a derelict, long-abandoned courtyard in the wilderness for a breakthrough.
Yet the circumstances were what they were. Moreover, Qian Chen possessed the secret transmission of Louguan Dao, so he did not need to be overly reliant on external conditions for the Sensing hurdle.
After all, he only needed to gather a single breath of external qi that was supremely refined and pure, free from the contamination of mixed qi. The surrounding complexity of qi flows would merely temper his perception further.
Silently reciting the Taishang Sensing Scripture, Qian Chen attained the pinnacle of emptiness and steadfast stillness, relinquishing all sense of self. Drifting into a profound, indistinct tranquility, he merged with heaven and earth, his mind sensing a hidden location. With a soft shout, he expelled his internal qi, crashing through the Mysterious Gate. Yet this Mysterious Gate was neither the fontanelle atop the head nor the Bubbling Spring beneath the feet; it was neither the Niwan nor the Dantian. It was a space concealed within the void, three inches before the tip of his nose.
Here, Qian Chen's internal qi broke through the aperture, establishing an external aperture.
Within this external aperture, divine spirit and qi fermented together—the most wondrous realm of cultivation, hence named the Mysterious Gate aperture.
As the internal qi of his entire body surged forth to reside inside the Mysterious Gate aperture, Qian Chen felt completely empty within, like a room cleared out after thieves had fled. At that moment, the entire world suddenly cleared in Qian Chen's mind. His perception detached from his eyes and gradually sank into the essence of primordial qi. Every blade of grass and tree, every stone and speck of soil shed its superficial form, reflecting back its fundamental nature of primordial qi.
Qian Chen's spiritual sense immediately caught the myriad delicate attributes of primordial qi. Within the spilled moonlight alone, complex strands of primordial qi were intertwined, each with its own subtlety. Following the Qi Discernment Method, Qian Chen differentiated and categorized the yin qi, cold qi, and others. The yin-natured primordial qis could be roughly divided into thirteen varieties. Nine of them were relatively mixed and impure, tainted with gloom or overly somber.
In short, they did not align with the nine virtues of spiritual qi described in the Qi Discernment Method: numinous, clear, pure, clean, wholesome, fine, gentle, harmonious, and life-bearing.
They were unsuited to nourishing living beings or sustaining creation.
Among the remaining four kinds of primordial qi was the pure yin qi of the lunar essence—Extreme Yin primordial qi; a relatively pure variety bearing the attributes of both yin and cold—Ice Soul primordial qi; and the others were Lesser Yin primordial qi, Guanghan primordial qi, and the like.
Probing deeper with his spiritual sense, Qian Chen found that even Extreme Yin primordial qi held many distinct qualities.
It was said that when the Taishang Dao Ancestor lectured on the Dao in antiquity and discussed sensing primordial qi, he classified the count of one Yuan—a staggering 129,600 varieties. The Lingbao Dao Ancestor had once remarked with a smile that the count he could perceive surpassed this by tenfold. Yet once the sermon concluded and the Lingbao Dao Ancestor returned to Biyou Palace, he suddenly had an epiphany and confessed with embarrassment to his attendants, "I am not Taishang's equal!"
When disciples under the Lingbao Dao Ancestor inquired why, they learned that the qi of one Yuan classified by Taishang each possessed unique properties, representing the ultimate limit of subdivision in heaven and earth. Although the Lingbao Dao Ancestor could sense over ten times as many, many of those primordial qis exhibited no true distinctions in nature. Or rather, differences so infinitesimally subtle held no meaning to anyone other than a Dao Ancestor.
The Taishang Dao Ancestor had trimmed away the excess to simplify, paring away primordial qi attributes useless to the functioning of heaven and earth and simplifying the properties of qi.
With this teaching, Taishang established the Dao for heaven and earth. By the time Lingbao returned to Biyou Palace, he discovered that the Dao of heaven and earth had become clearer; those useless attributes no longer existed in the cosmos, and the operation of the Great Dao had become vastly smoother...
Only then did he realize that Taishang merged with the Dao while Lingbao expounded the Dao—a fundamental difference in realm between them.
From then on, the Lingbao Dao Ancestor followed Taishang's example, no longer merely expounding the Great Dao of heaven and earth, but intercepting the Dao to act...
Thus, while Qian Chen could also sense various subtle distinctions within the Extreme Yin qi, this served only to test the acuity of his spiritual sense. Below the realm of the Primal Spirit, these deeper nuances of Extreme Yin qi held no practical significance.
Just as when writing on paper, one had no need to distinguish whether the sheet was off-white, ivory, pale white, or milky white.
"Of the subtle attributes in this Extreme Yin primordial qi, I have discerned only seven. The Dao contains Nine Yins, so I am still a ways off from the nine varieties a Primal Spirit True Person can perceive." Qian Chen smiled faintly... and turned instead to gather a clear, spiritual qi within his spiritual sense—the Pure Qi of the Nine Heavens. Refined and unadulterated, it was an external qi of the highest grade for harmonizing with reality during Sensing.
Gathering this primordial qi was the accumulated practical wisdom of Daoist predecessors across countless ages. It guaranteed the purity of one's true qi without making the gathering process so demanding that one's refining of magical power became sluggish and recovery difficult.
If one sought refinement within refinement, making it ten times purer, that primordial qi would correspondingly be ten times scarcer.
The magical power others refined in a single day would equal ten days of your toil. By the time they broke through to Primal Spirit, you would still be bitterly cultivating just to amass enough primordial qi for Core Formation.
This pure, spiritual qi of the Nine Heavens possessed another advantage as well.
The distribution of primordial qi across the world was uneven. Near water, water-attribute primordial qi was naturally more plentiful; gathering water qi in a desert was ten times more difficult. If the distribution of primordial qi chosen during Sensing was too extreme—such as for the cultivators of the Arctic Great Bright Palace, who condensed Ice Soul primordial qi—then outside the Arctic, where Ice Soul primordial qi was a hundred times scarcer, cultivation became nearly impossible.
As a result, most cultivators from the Great Bright Palace were trapped in the Arctic, earning them the nickname "Cold Whales."
It carried the meaning of a whale unable to leave the ocean, mocking how they were stranded in a single place.
In truth, most cultivators faced similar plights. The mortal realm's primordial qi was mixed and impure; if they entered it, gathering and refining qi proved difficult, leaving them no choice but to stay far from mundane dust and dwell where spiritual qi abounded. Yet straying too far from the mortal world made it difficult to temper their state of mind...
The benefit of condensing the pure, spiritual qi of the Nine Heavens was that although it was relatively sparse on the earthly plane, one only had to fly upward. The higher one soared, the more abundant the pure spiritual qi became. Being pure and light, it floated in the Nine Heavens. Ascending from any corner of the Central Divine Continent allowed one to easily harvest this pure spiritual qi and refine it into true qi and magical power.
Qian Chen already possessed a flying treasure—the Flying Cloud Pouch. Each day, he needed only to ride the clouds into the sky to gather the pure spiritual qi of the Nine Heavens.
Back on the ground, he could slowly refine it, never delaying his cultivation no matter where he went.
Hence, a popular saying circulated among unorthodox cultivators: "The stranger the qi, the faster you age; the scarcer the qi, the earlier you die!" It mocked those whose condensed qi was so obscure that they were confined to their caves or specific regions, unable to make fellow Daoist acquaintances, their wits growing numb from cultivation over time.
It also mocked those whose ambitions reached the heavens, who gathered primordial qi that was far too scarce and refined, only to spend their entire lives unable to accumulate enough, failing to break through and left with no choice but to pass away in meditation.
Qian Chen gathered the refined, pure spiritual qi of the Nine Heavens from around him strand by strand into the Mysterious Gate aperture. Often, it took dozens of breaths before his spiritual sense could capture a single wisp.
This aperture had been forged by him into something akin to a pill furnace, containing distinct chambers within, one of which was dedicated exclusively to holding this qi. After several two-hour periods, he finally gathered enough pure spiritual qi. He brought that breath of pure spiritual qi together with a breath of internal qi into the furnace of the Mysterious Gate aperture. Like the cycling of yin and yang or the ascent and descent of the clear and turbid, he refined them through nine cycles before uniting the inner and outer qi as one.
As if refining an elixir, he forged a single breath of true qi.
That breath of true qi returned from the Mysterious Gate into Qian Chen's body, instantly coursing through him like a trickling stream. When Qian Chen opened his eyes, a flash of light flared across the dark, empty chamber, bathing the entire room in white. With a flick of his finger, the Flying Cloud Pouch resonated with his true qi and leaped from his robes, turning into an auspicious cloud that lifted Qian Chen aloft, soaring straight into the azure heights...
The Flying Cloud Pouch rose higher and higher, soon reaching hundreds of zhang above the ground.
The chill winds at high altitude grew fiercer. Previously, Qian Chen would have found it unbearable long ago, but now that he had formed true qi, he could truly unleash all the wondrous functions of the Flying Cloud Pouch. With a shield of cloud qi, the freezing gale naturally parted around him.
Only when he had reached the cloud layer did Qian Chen steady the Flying Cloud Pouch, closing his eyes to draw in the pure spiritual qi of the Nine Heavens.
In a fraction of the time—a hundred times faster than before—Qian Chen gathered a second breath of pure spiritual qi. Combining and refining it with his internal qi as before, he swiftly produced a second breath of true qi.
From the breaking of dawn to the moon reaching mid-sky, and from the setting of the moon to the midday sun overhead, Qian Chen divided his attention between steering the Flying Cloud Pouch and cultivating with single-minded focus. Only after he had refined nearly half of his internal qi, when the true qi inside him flowed steadily like a brook, did he lower the cloud and return to that desolate courtyard to rest and recuperate his spirit.
Chapter 38