The Soul-Opening Qi Stage
The tiny fragment of spiritual energy lodged in my upper dantian was then injected into the jade slip.
Only then did the jade slip finally reveal its true nature to me.
Whoosh!
Emitting a faint glow, the jade slip immediately carved a cultivation art called the Chaos Heaven Secret Law into my mind.
As if engraving characters into stone or wood, it stamped the Chaos Heaven Secret Law deep into my consciousness.
Because of that, I could understand at a glance not only the formula itself, but also the meaning hidden within it. This was nothing like the study of a martial manual, where one had to read the text over and over, savoring its meaning bit by bit before one could barely hope to master it.
For a moment, I was simply awed by cultivation arts themselves, but soon I began to focus on the contents contained within the Chaos Heaven Secret Law.
First Verse, Soul Opening Qi Refining: Forge qi to open the soul, and let the first light settle within the body.
Second Verse, Expanding the Soul to Form the Foundation: As the soul receives qi and becomes the foundation, body and soul shall be linked as one.
Third Verse, Refining Qi and Injecting the Soul: Inject qi into the soul, and the passage between body and soul shall open.
Fourth Verse, Expanding the Soul to Condense Form: When the soul takes shape and sends roots into the earth, the shadow of the Great Dao shall fall.
Fifth Verse, Refining Qi to Connect the Soul… Sixth Verse, Expanding the Soul to Connect Flow… Eighth Verse, Expanding the Soul to Unite with the Dao…
The formulas were built from the repeated alternation of refining qi and expanding the soul.
According to the Chaos Heaven Secret Law, the cultivation of the Qi Refining stage seemed to be nothing more than the repeated process of infusing qi into the dharma soul formed within my body, then nurturing that dharma soul again and again.
There were a full fourteen verses, which suggested that Qi Refining itself was divided into fourteen stages.
Unlike martial manuals, where each character could carry layered meanings and sometimes even required breaking the characters apart to interpret them, this cultivation art had already engraved the meaning directly into my mind, so its concise formulas alone made it clear how I was supposed to cultivate.
Since the creation of the dharma soul itself was the foundation of Qi Refining, the First Verse, Soul Opening Qi Refining, contained the method of pouring qi into that dharma soul.
To “forge qi and open the soul” meant, quite literally, to open a channel for qi within the dharma soul and send qi flowing into it.
For me, who had already experienced finding the qi located in my upper dantian by following the flow of qi connected to the dharma soul, it was not a difficult process.
So, as I slowly sank inward again with thin, long breaths, the dharma soul made of light that resembled me finally appeared once more.
At that, I immediately began moving my qi to open the passage above the dharma soul’s head. Since I was already accustomed to circulating inner force, even the process of moving a speck of qi to widen the passage above the dharma soul’s head was not difficult for me.
It was like rolling a tiny, hard grain of millet with one’s finger, boring a hole through a large, soft rice cake.
The channel for qi slowly, steadily began to widen.
One moment of faltering concentration would have been enough to scatter that millet-sized qi, but my iron focus would not permit it.
Thanks to that, after a very long stretch of time in which I had not slept a wink, nor even remembered to eat or drink, I finally succeeded in creating a channel worthy of the first verse of the Chaos Heaven Secret Law.
All that remained was to draw qi into the channel I had opened.
But the instant I pulled the heavy mass of qi surrounding me toward my dharma soul, I felt the qi, which had already seemed heavy, become boundlessly heavier still.
Then I realized that the qi had stopped dead in place, rejecting my will entirely.
What’s more, that was not the only change.
Clang-clang-clang!
Like the battlefield of my war against the Martial Alliance, a harsh metallic shriek had begun to drill ceaselessly into my head.
And that clashing, blade-on-blade sound eventually shattered my otherwise unyielding concentration, scattering the heavy mass of qi that had come to a halt before me.
So when I finally opened my eyes after that fruitless failure, I was greeted by a ravenous hunger and a blurry, wavering field of vision. It seemed I had gone far too long without a single bite to eat or sip to drink.
But I was a martial artist.
For a situation like this, there were familiar ways to resolve it with inner force.
In the end, once I quickly sent a mouthful of true qi through one full cycle within my body, my blurred vision sharpened and a little strength returned to my limbs.
Yet the hunger did not disappear.
I had forced strength into my body with inner force in place of vitality, but the vitality I had lost had not been restored.
So, swaying as I rose to my feet, I walked to the jar containing the grain pills and took out three of them, then shoved them into my mouth on the spot.
The bitter, rough, unmistakable taste of the grain pills spread through my mouth, no different from the ones I knew from the martial world, but the effect was certainly faster here.
I had only eaten three grain pills, each smaller than my fist, and already a considerable sense of fullness was spreading through me, along with a swift return of vitality. It seemed the medicinal ingredients here were more potent than those of the martial world.
After easing my hunger and recovering my strength, I checked once more for my master, who still seemed not to have come down from the third floor, as well as the vast sea of mist still spread beyond the lattice window, then attempted to regulate my breathing and restore my breath.
Cutting down on sleep was not a choice but a necessity if I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.
And so my training resumed, with the short period of breath regulation serving in place of sleep.
The problem might have been that the passage above the dharma soul was still far too small, so I once again used the millet-sized thread of qi I possessed to widen it.
It was undoubtedly a grueling, exhausting process, but in the end I succeeded in opening the channel a little further. Then I began drawing in the surrounding qi once more.
This time, too, the beginning was smooth. The process of gathering the qi filling this place and pulling it toward me under my own will had aspects similar to the method I used to draw on inner force through my upper dantian.
But the mass of qi that reached me once again began to grow heavier, and at last it stopped moving altogether. As if waiting for that exact moment, a sharp metallic shriek once again started drilling into my head.
Clang-clang-clang!
Still, since I had already guessed something like this might happen the instant the mass of qi ceased moving, I clenched my teeth and held on without letting my concentration waver.
The problem was that, once I endured it with my jaw locked, the metallic sound did not stop—it only continued.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
Raging as though it would burst my skull open, the noise finally became too much for me to bear, and I lost my grip on the mass of qi. The shriek stopped at once, so the shock to my body was not great, but the mental blow I felt was by no means small.
Just like that voice from the time I was driven out as I rose toward immortal ascension.
I had the sensation that heaven itself was rejecting me.
Of course, I still had martial arts.
There was no need for me to become obsessed with the power a cultivator could obtain.
And yet the very fact that I could not have what I wanted felt like agony to me.
So, with a small sigh and a deep furrow between my brows, I slowly got to my feet and walked back to the jar of grain pills.
This time I took out two pills and put them in my mouth, and again, thanks to their rapid effect, I soon began to feel full.
How wonderful it would be if qi could be obtained so easily as well.
Like eating grain pills…
At that moment, I suddenly thought of the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill.
And the tiny speck of qi I had gained from it, as small as a grain of millet…
But I quickly shook my head and cast the thought away.
For now, I had no way to obtain such elixirs anyway.
Besides, I had only just begun cultivating this art.
In truth, my senses, honed by long years of martial training, were already telling me that gathering the world’s qi as things stood would be difficult.
But difficult was all it was. It had not yet been proven impossible.
If it required more time and more effort, then I was more than willing to put those things in.
It was just not now.
For the moment, the first priority was escaping from the so-called master who had kept me trapped here.
To do that, I needed a power I could use immediately, not something like a cultivation art whose mastery could take who knew how long to learn. I needed the other power that had once forced the world to its knees before me: martial arts.
Of course, even in martial arts, I would still need to solve the problem of insufficient inner force if I wanted to raise my current level.
But fortunately, unlike this cultivation art whose solution I could not even begin to imagine, I clearly knew how to handle matters of martial arts.
Because I was the leader of the Divine Religion, the one who had once conquered the world.
I knew most of the divine arts and peerless techniques in the martial world.
And among them was a very special martial art that was certainly worth trying in my present situation.
Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic!
This, which had originally been a martial art of the vile Blood Religion, was a truly vicious demonic art that turned its practitioner into a lust-crazed fiend obsessed with women.
Yet, as was true of most demonic arts, this one was exceptional at building inner force.
In fact, it was even faster than the Yin Moon Vibration Classic I had already been practicing in the Divine Religion.
And the reason I had still chosen to cultivate the Yin Moon Vibration Classic rather than this one was simple:
the lust that penetrated all the way into one’s marrow the longer one cultivated it.
Compared to the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic, where desire surged higher and higher, the Yin Moon Vibration Classic—despite its own limits—offered a far more stable path of growth.
But stability mattered less now than escape.
So I had no choice but to lay my hands on this vile demonic art.
In the end, I sat back down in the full lotus position and began to recall the verses of the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic.
Heaven-Defying Soul Split: break the soul, reverse the vital force, and at last be born anew.
As befitted a wicked demonic art, the very first verse already carried the notion of defying heaven.
But that did not simply mean going against the heavens.
Unlike the cultivation art, whose meaning was clear and precise,
the formulas of martial arts were generally composed of characters containing multiple layers of meaning.
Forcibly reversing the energy that began in the lower dantian and drawing it upward through the upper body—that was what “defying heaven” originally meant in the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic.
According to that verse, when the inner force rising in the opposite direction of a normal small circulation shot straight toward the Baihui acupoint at the crown of the head, I felt such pressure from the sudden rush of inner force that it seemed as though my head might burst and my eyeballs might pop out.
Mad Desire, Reversed Mind: desire shall summon qi, and delusion shall muddy the soul.
The second verse of the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic was to draw that inner force, which pressed so heavily on the head, back down into the lower dantian once more.
And in that process, it passed through the middle dantian in the chest.
That was the hidden meaning buried in the character for “heart reversal.”
The problem was that, unlike the ordinary small circulation, which moved smoothly in a gentle circle inside the body, this reckless, almost straight-line method of circulating inner force was bound to bring yet another problem with it.
Thud! Thud-thud!
The noise within my body, the veins bulging up over my skin.
The reckless method of circulating inner force in the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic was already bringing about cracks in my meridians.
Mad Dao, Chaos in the World: madness shall burn qi, and chaos shall become the Dao.
To my surprise, the third verse of the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic was to violently release the inner force brought down into the lower dantian into those cracked meridians. It was a vicious method, like sprinkling salt into a deep wound. Naturally, there was no way it could be painless…
Clenching my teeth at the pain that felt as though swarms of blazing ants were gnawing through my entire body, I immediately moved on to the fourth verse.
Qi and Blood Become Steel: weave the flow of qi into iron-hard strength, and let the blood follow it.
This was the stage where the inner force spread throughout my body was condensed into my limbs and bones.
Then, instead of the pain that had filled my whole body, a scorching rapture surged up.
It came from the rapid restoration of the meridians throughout my body, which had been packed with inner force, forcibly drawing up the vitality of my flesh and blood.
As that breath filled with heat rushed out in a whooshing exhale from my nose, all manner of stray thoughts began to seethe in my mind.
That was precisely why those who cultivated demonic arts so easily fell into deviation.
The body, having slipped beyond control because of the demonic art, then tried to seize even the thoughts in the mind.
But I forcibly swept away such distractions and focused once more on the fifth verse.
The Extreme of Indulgent Joy: at the end of pleasure, devour qi, and let the soul breed greed.
Originally, this was the hardest part of the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic to master.
Without a master, it was hard enough simply to grasp what this verse even meant.
But I understood very well what this seemingly arbitrary verse was saying.
This fifth verse was linked to the second verse, Mad Desire, Reversed Mind.
If the reason the verse said “desire shall summon qi” was because it connected to the verse “devour qi at the end of pleasure,” then what I needed to do now was send the condensed qi gathered in my limbs and bones back into the middle dantian once more.
And the middle dantian, having accepted that condensed qi, sent tremors through my entire body and made my blood surge madly.
Drip.
Two streams of blood ran from my nose, and the manhood swollen with concentrated bloodflow flaunted its presence to the fullest.
That was why those who entered the fifth verse before resolving the rapture created by the fourth verse would instantly become deranged lust fiends.
Even the final verse of the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic was no different.
It too was far from a method for calming the blood coursing wildly through the body.
Heaven’s Way in Reverse: defy the path of heaven and open your own road anew.
The final verse simply drove the condensed inner force that had gone to the middle dantian straight into the lower dantian, without any separate detour to stabilize the meridians.
Of course, even after carrying out this process, the excitement and boiling blood that filled my body remained exactly the same.
It was a thoroughly demonic method, devised solely to rapidly build inner force, and along the way designed around the idea that becoming a lust-crazed fiend was of no concern so long as the circulation of power could be completed at the fastest possible speed.
In the end, once I had completed a full circulation of inner force according to the verses of the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic, even catching my breath was difficult, but my inner force had undeniably increased.
Especially since the energies I had not fully absorbed when I took the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill last time had remained in my body, and most of them were now absorbed according to the verses of the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic, which cruelly dragged in the surrounding energies.
This was the result created by the demonic art called the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic: completing one full circulation faster than any other inner-force method and swallowing in energy at a monstrous speed.
Of course, because it devoured energy so indiscriminately, the qi gathered within me was far from pure.
But for me now, it mattered more that the increase in inner force would give me more things I could actually do than whether that inner force was pure.
Once I reached the level of a first-rate expert, I intended to attempt my escape immediately.
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