The Science of Cultivation [Xianxia]

Chapter 199: Converging Streams

Early one morning, knocking could be heard at Li Lang’s door. He opened the doors to find Xiao Dong there.

“Have you stabilized your cultivation?”

“Yes, Teacher, but I don’t feel that I have the accumulation to break through, yet. Didn’t Teacher Long accumulate over a year?”

“From what I observed, his Qi capacity didn’t increase from the time he reached the peak of Energy Gathering to when he began his breakthrough. Neither did mine throughout all this time. I believe everyone in the ninth stage is capable of breaking through.”

“Believe?”

“Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to say with certainty regarding any matter. Your participation now will help with that, but enough about that. Come in.”

Xiao Dong took in a deep breath to renew his determination as he stepped inside. He found the interior more spacious than he expected. It was due to the lack of furnishing Li Lang had added, despite having one of the four large houses to himself. Compared to the students’ dorm where they had to share a smaller house, the contrast was stark.

Another factor may be due to the lack of servants in the house. A traditional rich merchant household would employ many such servants to cater to their needs. However, Li Lang’s manor only hired cooks to address their nutritional needs, while the other tasks were left to the inhabitants themselves.

This was because the group decided they had too many secrets to involve too many outsiders. Cooks could be confined to the kitchen area, but regular servants would frequent the entire estate. They couldn’t afford one of them accidentally overhearing something they wanted to keep hidden.

After all, there were numerous unknown cultivator techniques to make mortals talk. It was the height of foolishness to believe a mortal could keep secrets from a determined cultivator.

Li Lang led his student toward a wooden platform he used for cultivation. It was like a low coffee table, but large enough for both of them to sit on it with some room to spare.

“I’ll cut to the chase,” Li Lang said. “What I’ll have you do starting today is to create a certain technique that is customized to you alone. The goal of this technique is to aid you in breaking through, which means directing the flow of Qi to your dantian. To give you a refresher, here is a sketch of what your meridian channels look like based on our previous tests.”

Li Lang picked out the sheet of paper with Xiao Dong’s name on it and handed it to him. Through the usual training, he had gotten each of his students to practice the Tracing Origin Art and mapped out their meridians. It was a complex three-dimensional mess, but having it drawn made it much easier to understand.

“Anything I should be worried about?”

“Hmm, to be honest, I have no idea. It’s one of the reasons why I haven’t tried going through with it myself. I’ve only tried sections of the technique separately.”

This caused Xiao Dong to visibly gulp.

“If anything happens to me, I want to be buried—”

“Woah, woah. Calm down there. Let’s not become too pessimistic right away. I’ve made ample preparation to deal with any situation. Still, here’s a contract I drafted with everything laid out neatly. Read it over. Let me know if there are any parts you can’t understand. Remember, you don’t have to proceed if you don’t want to.”

Xiao Dong had previously not known how to read or write at all. Since he had been recruited, he had quickly learned. It only took him a few moments to read over the risks and terms listed. He signed it and handed it over back to Li Lang.

It was just a formality, as the piece of paper wasn’t any sort of binding contract. Li Lang only created it to remind the participants of the risks and test their determination. Once everything was settled, Li Lang began going over the technique.

“So you have grade two aptitude with thirty-two spiritual roots. That means there are a lot more entryways to your meridians, and the network is also more complex. There’s a total of eight pathways that converge to your dantian.”

“Does everyone’s meridian network converge in the dantian?” Xiao Dong curiously asked.

“I can’t say for sure, but I assume that is true except for the rarest of cases. It’s why every cultivator talks about this crucial area of the body where Qi resides. From what I can tell, a breakthrough happens when enough of this energy is packed into this dantian, causing a qualitative change. This is our goal.”

Li Lang proceeded to explain a set of martial arts techniques to invoke specific movements in the flow of Qi. With each person’s meridian channels being unique, they had to test out each move one by one to see how it reacted to Xiao Dong.

That took the two a full week to finish.

Once they knew the type of reaction each move created, they could then put together a choreographed sequence of movements to guide all the Qi in the body to converge. It sounded easy and straightforward, but what they were essentially doing was not far off from imploding their meridians. Li Lang didn’t know how this could affect something as intangible as the meridians. The risks were very real.

“Okay, Xiao Dong. Let’s give it a try. We’ll start off easy and try to converge just two pathways with each other in your hand, here.” Li Lang pointed toward the web in the hand, between the thumb and index finger.

He then jotted down the correct sequence of movements for Xiao Dong to follow and began observing attentively. In the background, even Long Yi was there.

Receiving the new sequence of instructions like a musician getting a new score, Xiao Dong carefully played out the moves in his mind. After seeing nothing wrong, he proceeded to execute the stances.

He jumped and twirled, stretched his leg high into the sky, and consecutively made several eccentric poses. If one wasn’t aware of what they were doing, they may have concluded Xiao Dong to have lost a bet and was made to perform a strange dance.

Despite the eccentric outer appearance, what truly mattered was what was going on within him. Only he knew the situation, as others couldn’t use the Tracing Origin Art on someone else’s Qi within their bodies.

Jumping left and right around the room before coming to a squat, Xiao Dong soon approached the last few moves.

Unsurprisingly, he could feel his energy stir and begin to flow more rapidly. He could clearly sense two different streams of energy on a head-on collision course around his arm. He shut his eyes tightly and prayed everything would work out for him.

Without waiting for him, the two flows clashed, and a brief moment of sharp pain made Xiao Dong flinch.

“Ouch, that hurt!”

“Hold it in. I need to examine it first!”

Li Lang rushed to examine his student’s arm. He found nothing wrong except the sudden sense of pain, so the test continued.

The next target, he picked somewhere along the meridian channels where three passages converged.

This time, the pain was even more intense and lasted longer.

Seeing how there hadn’t been any physical damage so far, they trekked on.

Their little tests quickly escalated, until all that was left to test were all eight passageways, which had the potential to kickstart Xiao Dong’s breakthrough.

“Xiao Dong, are you okay? Do you need a break?”

No answer came as the student in question continued to breathe normally. He was evidently lost in thought, but he managed to squeeze out a few words.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. Let’s continue.”

The final moment of truth finally arrived after some setup time. Xiao Dong was to test converging all eight of his Qi passageways toward his dantian. It made Li Lang slightly jealous of how good Xiao Dong had it.

In comparison, Li Lang’s five spiritual roots resulted in a much simpler layout, with only three passageways converging at the dantian.

Having gotten used to the technique, Xiao Dong swiftly reached the critical point of his breakthrough. The ambient energy around him swirled and his skin began to pulse with light. Just as the eight streams of Qi started converging, they each tried their best to exert their dominance. The flow of Qi violently picked up, causing Xiao Dong to fear for the worse.

The different streams of Qi became more dangerous as they closed the distance.

This time, it didn’t end with just some phantom pain, but Xiao Dong was sent back flying. He remained on the ground and a pool of blood began to form underneath him.

The scene made Li Lang freeze for a moment at the sudden carnage. Loads of blood were constantly leaking from his orifices. There were tiny holes everywhere leaking out blood. Xiao Dong himself was unconscious.

Quickly snapping out of it, Li Lang rushed to his student’s side and took out a pill bottle. He didn’t hesitate to put a Recovery Pill into Xiao Dong’s mouth and made him swallow it. It made the wound he sustained heal in real-time. Li Lang watched as the holes mended themselves before carrying Xiao Dong off to a bed.

There was only one word that rang out in his mind.

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