So You Are at the Qi Refining Stage

Su Tingxue said all of this while eating shaved ice. When the shaved ice was finished, she had finished talking too. The timing was perfect. The two of them rode their bicycles back to school. After hearing the account of the cultivation world, Zhou You felt unusually light at heart. A door into a new world was slowly opening before him. Even the evening did not feel hot and stifling; there was something refreshing about it instead. The treetops overhead rustled, as if in time with Zhou You's leaping mood. By now he no longer felt so stuffed. He only felt bloated, and a little uncomfortable. Had wolfing down shaved ice in this heat upset his stomach? Before he could think of a way to let the gas out, the bloating turned into a stream of pure spiritual power and traveled all through his body. His acupoints opened. His meridians flowed freely. His body underwent a marvelous change he had never felt before. His pores opened. His mind grew clear and his eyes bright. He felt made entirely new, and even pedaling the bicycle had more strength behind it. A professional happened to be right beside him. Zhou You told Su Tingxue what was changing in him. Su Tingxue braked hard, ran to a little shop by the roadside, and bought an unopened bottle of mineral water. "Twist it open with one hand." Zhou You gripped the bottle in one hand, quite uneasy inside. He knew what this meant. He pinched the cap between his thumb and index finger, held the bottle with the other three fingers, and kept increasing the force. The cap, which had looked as if it were cast in one piece with the bottle, began to loosen. When Zhou You clenched his teeth and pushed the force to its limit, the connecting bridges snapped. Pop. The cap was twisted completely off. One of the marks of the Qi Refining stage: the one-handed bottle-cap twist. "Have I reached the Qi Refining stage?" Su Tingxue nodded, unwilling. Excitement showed on Zhou You's face. He had finally advanced to the Qi Refining stage! When she first heard Zhou You describe what was happening to him, Su Tingxue had already been mostly certain that he had advanced to the Qi Refining stage. The small share of doubt that remained was there because she had common sense. Now that the cap had been twisted off, that last share of common sense vanished like smoke. She thought back to how, in order to advance to the Qi Refining stage, she had gone through closed-door cultivation and seated meditation both, and only succeeded in one stroke after preparing thoroughly. And Zhou You? He had broken through while riding a bicycle. And the bicycle he rode was hers. The two of them returned to school. Before they parted, Su Tingxue took out her phone. "Let's add each other on QQ, so it's easier to keep in touch. I'll scan you." Zhou You turned both pants pockets inside out to show her. "I didn't bring my phone." "You didn't bring it?" Su Tingxue was astonished. Were there still people these days who didn't carry a phone? Although No. 2 High had expressly forbidden bringing phones, it was a day school after all, and quite a few students carried phones to and from school. "It's just that at school I have to study, and I also have to find time to cultivate. I was afraid that if I brought my phone I'd only play on it and hold up both cultivation and studying, so I simply stopped bringing it." Hearing Zhou You say this, Su Tingxue felt a little ashamed. Sometimes she secretly took her phone out during breaks between classes and played with it for a bit. "Just add my QQ, then. 29..." Su Tingxue searched the QQ number. One result popped up. The name was "Swimming This Week?" and the avatar was a little figure swimming with all its might. "Right. That's me." ... When Zhou You slipped back into Class Three, evening self-study had not yet begun. Chu Xiaoyao was secretly reading the comic Zhiyin Manke that had been offered up to Zhou You. She blocked it with a big stack of textbooks. The comic was open on only one side, the other folded behind, so less of it showed and the chance of a teacher noticing it was smaller. At the same time she kept glancing toward the door, on guard against the homeroom teacher appearing all of a sudden. Zhou You had meant to sneak over and give her a scare, but if Chu Xiaoyao could spot even the homeroom teacher, how could she fail to spot Zhou You? "Back from driving out ghosts?" For some reason Chu Xiaoyao's tone was odd, all huffy. Zhou You sat down without noticing anything unusual and, in high spirits, told the whole story from beginning to end: how accidents often happened at the intersection, how Su Tingxue had called him along to deal with the Eye-blocking Ghost, and how both of them had then had their eyes covered by the Eye-blocking Ghost. It had been tense and thrilling. Nuomi listened off to one side. Putting herself in the Eye-blocking Ghost's place, she found it thrilling too. Contrary to what he expected, when Chu Xiaoyao had heard it all she only curled a corner of her mouth and gave a scornful laugh. "Su Tingxue's cultivation falls short. She's only trained the Yin-Yang Heavenly Eye as far as the surface. Once her eyes are covered, she can't deal with a ghost?" Zhou You was taken aback. "What do you mean?" "How can one who practices immortal cultivation be bound by the five senses? How would that differ from a mortal? Take the heart as the eye, crown it with yin and yang, and one can see through heaven and earth. How could a mere Eye-blocking Ghost cover the heart-eye?" Zhou You opened his mouth, but he did not rashly offer a view. These words of Chu Xiaoyao's seemed to hold a deep meaning, one he could not understand. Seeing that Zhou You had been overawed, Chu Xiaoyao was very satisfied with what she had just said. A Mount Longhu disciple, nothing more—far short of the Grand Elder of the Carefree Sect. She twisted off the cap of a bottle of mineral water, tipped the bottle down, and filled the cap without spilling a drop. Her hands were practiced. Chu Xiaoyao lifted the water-filled cap, which trembled in her fingers, as if she were holding a cup of tea. She rocked her head, blew gently across the cap, and then, with a slurp, drank it all down. It tasted pretty good. "What happened after that? How did the two of you deal with the Eye-blocking Ghost?" Zhou You went on to tell how his soul had left his body, how he had first given the Eye-blocking Ghost a beating and then eaten it, and how he had eaten until he was a bit too full. When Nuomi heard this, she curled into a ball and shivered. The sect master wouldn't get so hungry that he ate her too, would he? Seeing as she was the deputy sect master, he wouldn't do that, would he? "Oh, right. After I finished digesting it, I advanced to the Qi Refining stage." Zhou You had no thought of showing off. After all, the Carefree Empress was right here; he could hardly boast in front of her. Seeing that Chu Xiaoyao showed no surprise when she heard this, Zhou You felt greatly reassured. It seemed that eating a ghost did not mean something was wrong with his body. Chu Xiaoyao spoke offhand, not minding in the least. It was all a small matter. "Normal. You are nourished by whatever you eat. When people eat meat, they grow strong. When your soul eats a ghost, it raises the soul's strength, nourishes the flesh in return, and in the end raises your realm. The principle is the same. On the Hongmeng Continent, this is called dietary supplementation." "So that's how it is." "What changed after you reached the Qi Refining stage?" Chu Xiaoyao asked. Zhou You moved his body about and rolled up his sleeves, revealing muscles that could not really be made out. "Strength, speed, reflexes, and the rest. My physical condition has improved in every respect." Speaking of the changes, Zhou You grew rather excited. It could not be compared at all with the half-step Qi Refining stage. Thinking it over carefully, the half-step Qi Refining stage was, in the end, nothing but a mortal who had only just begun to cultivate. Could that count as an immortal cultivator? Only the way he was now made him a proper immortal cultivator. "As for the soul leaving the body, I'll give it a try." Chu Xiaoyao had said that after one reached the Qi Refining stage, the soul leaving the body no longer came only halfway out, but came all the way out. Zhou You tried it the moment he said he would. He controlled his soul. His body suddenly felt light, and he took a step backward. His whole self peeled completely free of his body, faintly transparent, very much like Nuomi's state. "It worked!" Zhou You looked toward Chu Xiaoyao. As always, she could not see him. He looked toward Nuomi, who was so frightened she thought he meant to eat her. She hurriedly raised a hand and, crying, called out to the sect master, trying to make Zhou You recall a bond between fellow disciples that did not exist. "Sect Master, I'm the deputy sect master! I don't taste good." Zhou You was speechless with exasperation. "I wasn't planning to eat you." Strange to say, he had seen Nuomi so many times and never felt hungry, yet after seeing the Eye-blocking Ghost he had been starving. Once his soul had completely left his flesh, Zhou You sensed a rope connecting body and soul. It seemed to be there and yet not. When he tried to perceive it carefully, it was not there, and was hard to detect. When he walked the other way, farther from his body, the feeling of that rope grew ever clearer. He had taken no more than three steps when the rope gave him a sense of being drawn taut, pulling at Zhou You and refusing to let him leave. Zhou You turned thoughtful. It seemed a soul could not stray too far from the body. Three steps was the limit. Perhaps once his cultivation improved, the soul would be able to go farther? Zhou You returned his soul to his body and told Chu Xiaoyao all of what he had just experienced. "This is different from the marks of reaching the Qi Refining stage that Su Tingxue told me about." The question had been pent up in Zhou You the whole way back. At last he could get an answer from Chu Xiaoyao. Chu Xiaoyao did not answer. Instead she slurped down a capful of water, and only then asked, unhurried, "What did she say the marks of the Qi Refining stage were?" "She said there were two. One is an improvement in physical condition. I've felt that myself, so there's no problem there. But the second mark is inward vision of one's own body, and being able to see the meridians." "Su Tingxue said inward vision of one's own body comes of itself, but I can't do it." Chu Xiaoyao slurped another capful of water, frowned, and instructed him, "Then try using the soul leaving the body to look at your body." Zhou You did as she said. His soul left his body. He stepped half a step back out of it, then bent over and thrust his head inside. The organs within, the blood and the vessels—he could see every bit of them clearly! "Hey, I can see the meridians!" Zhou You said after his soul had returned. Chu Xiaoyao's brow smoothed. She said in earnest, "Then it matches. Your physical condition has improved, and you can manage inward vision of your own body. That completely fits the marks of the Qi Refining stage. So you are at the Qi Refining stage." But Zhou You was still puzzled. "Still, the inward vision of one's own body that Su Tingxue meant isn't like what I just did, is it?" Zhou You felt that when Su Tingxue spoke of inward vision of one's own body, she did not mean one's soul crawling into the body to look at the course of the meridians. Chu Xiaoyao waved a hand. She had the answer in mind now, and this time she had no need to drink water to feign composure. "What this seat taught you is the method of immortal cultivation from the Hongmeng Continent. What Su Tingxue learned is this world's method of immortal cultivation. The methods of the two realms differ only a little. In the end, different paths arrive at the same place, and both point to the Great Dao." "So that's how it is." Hearing this, Zhou You suddenly saw the light. He had known he could get an answer from Chu Xiaoyao.