Chapter Seventeen: The Versatile True Qi

Jiang Pingchuan began to invoke the Heavenly Thunder Incantation. According to ancient texts, this incantation channels the primordial lightning from the clouds through the operation of a cultivation technique, containing it within a circular formation to attack any living creature ensnared within.

Between Jiang Pingchuan's hands, faint currents of electricity began to snake and crackle, tearing through the air around him. He could sense the embryonic form of lightning taking shape between his palms. He mobilized the seven transparent Dao Crystals within his body, driving the Heavenly Thunder Incantation to its utmost limit. Above his head, a small vortex of wind swiftly whirled, laced with flashes of lightning. Jiang Pingchuan parted his lips lightly.

“Heavenly thunder, heed my command—gather!”

A deafening rumble erupted.

Outside the Scripture Repository, dark clouds amassed, thunder roared, and the skies vanished beneath an inky, impenetrable shroud. Bolts of lightning slithered between the clouds, each accompanied by thunderous peals, as if countless thunder dragons of varying size were spiraling through the heavens. A howling gale swept forth.

Atop the Scripture Repository, the building's roof sat directly in the hurricane’s eye. Below the heavens, the clouds, driven by the wind, spun into an enormous vortex. At its center, lightning flickered and thunder crashed, each flash momentarily illuminating the darkened earth, casting myriad shadows across the land.

Some fled in terror; others curled up on their beds, trembling at each punishing thunderclap. Among mountains and valleys, the living creatures raised their voices in low, fearful roars toward the storm, as if to ward off the lightning and thunder, or perhaps to steel themselves against fear. The myriad tree shadows bared their fangs, swaying from side to side.

“Heavenly thunder, heed my decree—strike!”

Jiang Pingchuan felt the world changing outside. Though he had never witnessed a cultivator with six green Dao Crystals in the Qi Refinement Stage casting a spell, he could sense that his own spell was even more powerful. It seemed his transparent Dao Crystals were not inferior or defective as he once thought.

Jiang Pingchuan began to suspect that the Dao Crystals within him were not among the conventional four colors, nor did he follow the standard number of Dao Crystals. His internal Dao Crystals had already surpassed the usual limits; they did not conform to the laws of heaven and earth.

A deep rumble echoed. Jiang Pingchuan hurriedly withdrew his hands, halting the incantation. In that instant, his body felt utterly drained, devoid of all strength.

The seven Dao Crystals ceased their rotation. A massive pillar of lightning, like a slumbering flood dragon baring its fangs, tore through the clouds and struck the towering greenwood tree in the courtyard of the Scripture Repository.

Jiang Pingchuan shielded his eyes as the dazzling electric flare seared his vision, leaving him dizzy. He felt the earth trembling beneath his feet.

“No!” Jiang Pingchuan roared at the doors of the Scripture Repository. He distinctly remembered not placing the greenwood tree within the circular lightning formation. Why, then, did the colossal thunderbolt descend from the heavens to strike it directly?

Another thunderous crash. Jiang Pingchuan watched as the enormous greenwood was enveloped in a dense web of lightning, battered again and again.

Beside the main trunk, a smaller greenwood was struck and erupted in a brilliant green flash, its trunk shattering and vanishing with the light. The great greenwood’s blackened, dying trunk endured the burning of tens of thousands of lightning strikes.

The trunk, once blackened, now glowed red-hot. Jiang Pingchuan’s heart was gripped by a terrible premonition which, as reality would have it, came true.

With a thunderous roar, the crimson trunk burst into roaring flames that reached for the heavens. As the Heavenly Thunder Incantation ceased, the retreating storm clouds gave way to a surging column of black smoke. Jiang Pingchuan sighed and turned back into the formation.

He tried once more to summon his seven Dao Crystals, only to find them unresponsive, as if the connection between them and himself had been severed.

Jiang Pingchuan lay on the ground, closing his eyes to contemplate his doubts. At that moment, golden characters began to assemble rapidly in his mind, forming a treatise.

Only then did Jiang Pingchuan realize why he was so exhausted after casting the Heavenly Thunder Incantation, unable to sense his seven Dao Crystals. It turned out that every time a cultivator in the Qi Refinement Stage cast a spell, some internal vital energy would be consumed. The stronger the technique, the greater the consumption. Lost energy could be gradually replenished, depending on the strength of a cultivator’s auxiliary techniques.

If one lacked such methods, the spent energy could only be recovered through seated meditation, absorbing it slowly from heaven and earth. Jiang Pingchuan, upon understanding this, secretly wept in his heart.

He bitterly regretted his reckless use of the Heavenly Thunder Incantation. Not only had he burned the greenwood tree, but also expended, in a single moment, the vital energy he had cultivated for eleven years. He suddenly felt he had been wasteful beyond measure.

He closed his eyes and began to meditate on his cultivation methods. Though he had memorized the myriad techniques of “The Ten Thousand Arts,” he had not truly practiced any. He discovered that only the techniques at the very beginning required the Qi Refinement Stage; the further he read, the less he understood. The latter techniques were simply inaccessible, as if sealed away in his mind.

Jiang Pingchuan pursed his lips. He found “The Ten Thousand Arts” to be a tasteless morsel—too little within his current power to practice.

“The Bodhi Text” was the first restorative auxiliary technique Jiang Pingchuan had encountered in “The Ten Thousand Arts.” It was not his fault for being inexperienced. The copy he found was incomplete, containing only the first half and the final page, the rest deliberately destroyed. Yet upon reading that last page, written in Sanskrit, Jiang Pingchuan nearly coughed up blood from frustration.

It read: “The Bodhi has no tree, nor is the bright mirror a stand. Fundamentally, there is not a single thing. Whence could dust arise? From nothing, something can be born; its use is inexhaustible.”

The final page revealed the profound mystery and power of “The Bodhi Text”—that if the technique was perfected, one’s internal energy would become endless and inexhaustible. Jiang Pingchuan gazed resentfully at the incomplete text in his mind.

Not only was the classic incomplete, but he also seemed unqualified to cultivate it. Only those with “composite vital energy” could master the technique. Jiang Pingchuan erased “The Bodhi Text,” arranging his golden characters to search for information about composite vital energy.

He learned that composite vital energy was the most unique form of vital energy among cultivators of the primordial world. Those who possessed it could cultivate any technique without restriction.

Composite vital energy encompassed five types: offensive, defensive, restorative, auxiliary, and toxic. Among these, restorative energy was extremely rare, while composite vital energy was even more so—a veritable rarity.

Restorative vital energy could repair energy damage on its own, and as the cultivator’s realm increased, so too did the speed of restoration.

Jiang Pingchuan read through all the information about composite vital energy, but failed to find what he most wanted to know—what such miraculous energy actually looked like.

Despite reading through the material a dozen times, there was no description of the state of composite vital energy. There were records of vital energy with special colors, but none for composite vital energy.

“How strange,” Jiang Pingchuan mused, gazing at the golden words in his mind. “They say so much about composite vital energy, yet not a single concrete description. Could it be that no one has ever seen it? That’s why there are only guesses, but no specifics.”

As he meditated over the golden characters, Jiang Pingchuan gradually felt vigor returning to his body.

Opening his eyes, he tried to rotate his seven Dao Crystals. They spun rapidly, and the liquid aura in his Dao Field grew denser and purer.

He felt the energy inside him surging, seemingly more abundant than before he had used the Heavenly Thunder Incantation. Closing his eyes, he contemplated the contents of “The Bodhi Text.” As he absorbed its meaning, his vital energy seemed to receive a command. It ceased its agitation and instead wandered gently through his body.

The lightning-burned eyes now glimmered with a faint silver light. Though Jiang Pingchuan wondered why his purple pupils no longer appeared, he was content to simply savor the serenity brought by the “Bodhi Text.”

Immersed in this gentle current, eyes closed, Jiang Pingchuan failed to notice the golden “Decree” character at his brow was changing. The gold slowly faded, revealing its true color—or perhaps transforming—becoming transparent, suffused with silvery light, and floating between his brows.

Reading the third chapter of “The Bodhi Text,” Jiang Pingchuan realized something startling: the very technique he thought useless was functioning smoothly within his body, activated by his own vital energy. This could only mean he possessed the composite vital energy necessary for such cultivation.

He thus gained new understanding of his transparent Dao Crystals and the colorless vital energy flowing inside him.

A sizzling sound issued from above his head. Jiang Pingchuan sensed a burning sensation deep within his Dao Field. The positions of the seven Dao Crystals suspended above it began to shift.

Once, six rotated at the base with the slightly larger seventh at the center. Now, the seventh moved out of the center. Jiang Pingchuan’s body sizzled as the liquid aura forming a small lake in his Dao Field began to tilt, flowing toward the new position of the seventh Dao Crystal. He felt as if half his body had become weightless, his lower half nearly floating off the ground.

Just as all the liquid energy seemed about to gather beneath the seventh Dao Crystal, the flowing energy suddenly halted, then shuddered violently.

An unexpected scene unfolded. The energy, which had been drawn to the seventh Dao Crystal, now seemed irresistibly attracted elsewhere, rolling and tumbling in the opposite direction.

Jiang Pingchuan’s heart skipped a beat. On the far side of the Dao Field, opposite the seventh Dao Crystal, a faintly discernible eighth Dao Crystal began to materialize, identical in size to the seventh, as if evolved from it.

With the appearance of the eighth Dao Crystal, the once-turbulent lake calmed. The seventh and eighth Dao Crystals established a balance, and Jiang Pingchuan’s half-raised body settled solidly onto the ground.

Sensing his internal energy had stabilized, Jiang Pingchuan exhaled a long breath—when suddenly, a large golden character appeared in his mind: “Danger.”

“Danger?”

Jiang Pingchuan stared at the golden character, perplexed. He felt perfectly fine, with no trace of peril; everything was going smoothly. He couldn’t understand why his golden characters had manifested such a warning.

A great crash thundered above him. Jiang Pingchuan looked up to see the roof of the Scripture Repository’s main hall torn away, startling him to his core.

Above him appeared the very scene from when he had cast the Heavenly Thunder Incantation. In truth, it seemed his estimation of the incantation’s power had been too high—the vortex overhead spun with ever greater force and precision.

Within the flickering thunder, he saw a cage. Jiang Pingchuan’s heart clenched, his eyes reddened. He sensed that this lightning-formed cage was targeting him.

Around the cage, lightning danced incessantly. In the vision reflected in his eyes, Jiang Pingchuan saw not only the cage but also a pair of enormous hands, their palms inscribed with mysterious runes. He could not decipher them, but sensed their immense danger.

Looking up at the trembling cage, Jiang Pingchuan frantically searched his memory for a defensive spell from “The Ten Thousand Arts.” Images flashed rapidly before his mind’s eye, and he caught a glimpse of a defensive technique—but it vanished in an instant, disappearing just when he needed it most.