The Birth of a Dantian
Am I imagining it?
It happened often enough. A beginner, concentrating so hard that their senses played tricks on them, convinced themselves they could feel Qi.
But Jincheon was not the kind of condescending old fossil he so despised—the sort who dismissed such claims out of hand. He approached Kunlo, laid a hand on the boy's chest, and spoke.
"Focus on gathering those energies into your lower abdomen."
"Yes."
"Don't answer until I tell you to. It breaks your concentration. Begin."
"Hup…"
Kunlo began drawing the Qi into his lower belly. The positions of the meridians differed from a Terran's, but the internal organs sat in nearly the same places—so to grow a dantian without straining the organs, the lower abdomen was the right spot.
"Keep your breathing steady and regular. An Inner Qi cultivation method begins with the breath and ends with the breath."
Following Jincheon's instructions, Kunlo breathed and focused—and the result was startling.
A dantian has formed.
A tiny dantian, no larger than half a bean, had begun to take shape in Kunlo's lower abdomen.
Fascinating.
Was it because of the formation that drew ambient energy from the surroundings? Because Jincheon had stimulated the meridians to heighten sensitivity to internal energy? Was Kunlo's species naturally attuned to Qi? Or was the boy simply a genius?
Bone and muscle quality: upper-middle. Probably a racial trait—but deciding that with so little information would only breed prejudice. I'll wait until I know more.
"You can answer now. Do you feel something filling up inside you?"
"Yes. Something very small and round. And that round thing… ah… how do I even describe this…"
"I know what you're trying to say. Keep breathing and gathering Qi. Practice moving that round thing by your own will."
"Yes!"
"Just get it so you can move it. If you let it wander all over your body at random, your insides will end up as wrecked as an overloaded circuit that blows out."
"Y-yes…!"
From then on, Jincheon kept Kunlo at it, forcing him to continuously run the Inner Qi cultivation method. It was a foundational heart method he had forged with every scrap of knowledge he and his wives possessed, built for his own bloodline—and its efficacy far surpassed the methods of any great clan. When the masters of the Orthodox sects, the Unorthodox, the secular world, and the Demonic Cult put their heads together, stripping away every flaw and maximizing every strength, the result could hardly be otherwise.
Once enough time had passed that Kunlo could move his Inner Qi, Jincheon applied direct stimulation inside the boy's body, showing him the paths the energy needed to travel.
"Huh? The round thing got bigger."
"Remember this route. Circulate the Qi in the direction I showed you, together with the breathing method I taught you, and it will grow even larger."
"B-but it's so complicated—I couldn't memorize all of it…"
"I'll keep repeating it until you do, so don't worry about it."
At those words, Kunlo's face eased.
"Now stand up and move your body a little."
"Yes."
After sitting for so long, Kunlo braced himself on both hands and one knee, careful not to reinjure his wounded leg, and rose.
"Huh?"
The moment he pushed off the ground with both hands, he felt it—his body was different.
Light?
To keep from overloading the one good leg, he had always had to heave himself up with real effort. Now he rose with a lightness that bore no comparison to anything he had known before.
Jincheon smiled as if he already understood the confusion swirling through Kunlo, and jerked his chin.
"Lap it."
"Ah—yes."
Kunlo jogged lightly toward the entrance Jincheon had indicated.
Whoooosh—!
"Eek!?"
He had only meant to run the way he always did—and shot forward at a terrifying speed, barely managing to keep his balance.
"Hah… hah…!?"
He gasped, stunned by the change in his own body.
"A… Mister… this is…"
"A perfectly natural phenomenon. The power of Inner Qi settling into the flesh."
"W… wow…"
As expected—when it comes to getting strong in a short time, the Unorthodox path is king.
Had they trained by Orthodox methods, Kunlo could never have grown this strong this fast. Centuries of accumulated martial principle. The teaching mastery that came from raising more than a hundred descendants. The endless refinement of martial arts alongside his wives. All of it layered together had produced results in so little time.
And this was only because Jincheon had not poured out his full essence in earnest. Had he truly set his mind to it, it would not have stopped here.
Even so, his adaptation to Qi is fast. He clearly has a natural gift for sensing and circulating energy.
At first Jincheon had only meant to use him as a convenient source of information—but the boy was more useful than expected.
Teach him a little more, get him serviceable, and he'd make a fine subordinate.
No matter how strong Jincheon was, extra hands never hurt. And Kunlo was sharp enough that Jincheon wouldn't have to handle every trivial chore himself.
With this power… I won't have to live in fear anymore!
Meanwhile, as Inner Qi reinforced his flesh and let him see the same world through entirely different eyes, Kunlo rejoiced that he no longer had to live trembling.
"Hic… khh…"
But the joy soon spilled over into tears.
Ever since his parents had died, he had lived in nothing but despair. Days spent wondering when he would be robbed, when he would be used as bait. He had even been taken as bait in truth, and come close enough to death to feel its breath. The relief of finally escaping those days—of having power—shattered the dam of emotion he had been holding back all this time.
Jincheon understood, at least in part. He too had known the exhilaration that came with gaining power—a thrill no ordinary life could ever deliver.
KRRRRRRRUMBLE—
"Hm?"
Suddenly a massive noise rolled in from far to the right—the sound of something heavy cascading down in a torrent. Jincheon had not surveyed the entire city, so he had no idea what it was.
"Huh? Is it already that time!?"
Hearing the noise, Kunlo hurriedly wiped his tears, his face turning urgent.
"What time?"
"Once a week, all the trash inside the city gets dumped at the scrapyard! We have to get there fast and dig up anything useful if we want to make money!"
Jincheon had wondered how an orphan like Kunlo could afford even the cheapest synthetic rations. The scrapyard was the answer.
"If you dig through that place all day, how many credits do you make?"
"Uh… on the worst days, about ten credits. If I'm lucky, maybe thirty."
A quick search on the Bio Device showed that an ordinary employee at a major corporation earned somewhere between one thousand and fifteen hundred credits a month. Cheap synthetic rations—nutritionally adequate but foul-tasting—ran three credits apiece. There were improved versions with better flavor, but the price swung wildly depending on whether they tasted like anything or not. The middle class and the wealthy didn't eat synthetic food at all; they enjoyed real vegetables and meat, and a single meal could cost as much as hundreds of synthetic ration packs.
That was this planet's situation, of course. On other worlds, prices shifted with local conditions.
"From now on, stay out of the scrapyard."
"What? But if I want to make money…"
"Hunt in the White Shriek Forest and you'd earn hundreds of times that. Why waste time in a filthy scrapyard that barely pays?"
"Ah… ah…!"
Thanks to Jincheon, Kunlo realized how deeply the bottom-rung mentality had soaked into him—and decided becoming a hunter was the better path. There were no licenses required, no qualifications. Anyone with the skill could do it.
"I looked it up. They've helpfully set prices by species."
After checking the known animals of the White Shriek Forest—photographs and payouts—Jincheon was certain that hunting was currently the fastest way to make money.
The most valuable animals in the White Shriek Forest were the herbivores, but reaching them meant pushing into the forest's heart. And was the hunt itself the end of it? Getting out safely was several times harder than getting in. Only hunters with exceptional skill, hard-won know-how, and proper gear could take herbivores or rare beasts and score a real payday. Those without the skill did what Kunlo's captors had done—grabbed orphans with no one to miss them and hunted the animals driven out to the periphery.
"Bag a few of the ones on the outer edge and you'll make more than days of digging through trash. Better to spend that time getting even a little stronger."
"Yes!"
Electronic devices were nearly useless in the White Shriek Forest. But with superhuman power, the equation changed entirely.
That aside—Cheer doesn't seem to be coming back.
Jincheon had wondered whether that Cheer named Guotan might drag other fish along with him, but apparently the man's connections were thinner than expected.
I was hoping to test this out this time.
He toyed with the laser pistol taken from the hunters he'd dealt with, feeling a twinge of regret.
In this world, optical weapons came in two types. The first were true laser weapons that fired at the speed of light. The second released their laser through Zolveran gas. The former were mainly used on mecha and massive weapon platforms; the latter equipped everything from infantry to fighters. According to his search, the Calsorn Empire had never needed infantry warfare, so their infantry-related technology lagged—and they had settled on forming a laser and launching it through gas. Even so, the result still far surpassed anything the current galaxy fielded.
As a side note, the firearms in common use were hybrid guns—weapons that combined rail acceleration with gunpowder. Unlike ordinary powder weapons, they produced a distinctive firing sound, like rough iron being struck hard.
For now, there are bikes, vehicles, and weapons left over. I'll sell those, restore my strength, and then head into the White Shriek Forest.
He would have loved to climb into a mecha right away, but his starting point was the worst imaginable. Precisely because of that, he needed to reclaim his power, accumulate knowledge, and wait for his opening.
"Um… Mister."
"Hm?"
"Could you do that again? From earlier?"
Kunlo was brimming with the desire to learn more of the Inner Qi cultivation method. Jincheon could hardly fault him—he himself had seized every spare moment to circulate energy and regulate his breath, hungry to grow even a little stronger. Kunlo asked carefully, clearly worried he might be a nuisance, and Jincheon gave a light nod.
"Sit."
"Yes!"
Jincheon slowly stimulated the meridians, showing Kunlo the paths carefully enough for the boy to remember them.
Once he's useful, I'll put him to work as an assistant.
Jincheon intended to raise Kunlo to a serviceable level and use him as a helper when hunting in the White Shriek Forest. Even just having someone to carry the game in his place would be a significant help.
Kunlo kept circulating the Inner Qi cultivation method, growing his energy little by little, until late into the night, when exhaustion finally forced him to stop. For the first time since the war—no, for the first time in his life—he fell asleep expecting a future, his heart full of hope.
Well then. Time to start reclaiming my power.
The "power" he meant was not Tushinryeok—Battle God Power—but the cells that had been put to sleep.
If I hadn't suppressed my strength for the sake of dying, I never would have lost to the me who came from a parallel world.
The more Jincheon trained, the more he could feel his lifespan extending. The proof was plain: even after every one of his wives had passed, his body still poured out a vitality more intense than in his youth, an endless spring. For that reason, after bidding farewell to all of them, he had stopped training and put his cells into dormancy so that his power could grow no further.
Suicide might have seemed simpler—but the death Jincheon wanted was the death that came at the end of a full lifespan, not the coward's exit chosen by the broken and the desperate. The problem was that even with only enough active cells left to barely maintain his body, he had continued to live in perfect health.
But that reason is gone now.
His parallel-world self was on a journey to return to his original dimension. Jincheon himself had wanted to escape a world where there was nowhere left to climb. Once they parted, they would never meet again. And yet Jincheon had come to this dimension without clinging to a rematch, without regret—because of one certainty.
If that bastard makes it back to his original world, he will come looking for me.
Because the parallel-world version of himself was also a powerhouse who had transcended the human species. Those who had surpassed rank, who had surpassed kind itself, eventually drowned in solitude and longed for an opponent worthy of their strength. For now he was on a long journey to find the world he could call home—but once that journey succeeded, he would want to unleash his power without restraint. And when he wanted an opponent equal to that power, the first person he would think of would be Jincheon.
Until then, Jincheon simply needed to keep himself in peak condition and enjoy this world.
Making petty excuses after a loss isn't my style. But thanks to that, he still doesn't know my full strength.
He looked forward to the rematch—if only to see the look on that bastard's face.
"Huuup—"
Settling into a full lotus position, Jincheon sank into meditation to reclaim the power he had forced down for so long. Before long he entered a state of no-self, and his body began to rise into the air.