Golden *Qi*

"What a pity, what a pity! Such a terrible pity!"

Seeing that the atmosphere in the carriage had grown somewhat subdued, Deng Baiyi shook her head and let out an exaggerated sigh. With a hint of boastfulness, she patted the thick stack of talismans. "What a pity that these Qi Talismans this heroine worked so hard to draw and inscribe never got the chance to show their power! If we'd fought just now, I'd have made them piss their pants and crawl away!"

Xie Xuanyi could not help but snort. "A few talismans like those probably wouldn't be enough."

Deng Baiyi blinked, then sat upright again, resuming the attentive posture of a student listening to her teacher.

"A Qi Refiner's 'Qi Talismans' may perhaps be useful against ordinary commoners and ignorant civilians."

"But against desperadoes willing to risk their lives... they aren't very effective."

Xie Xuanyi said calmly, "People who have cast their lives aside will not retreat. Think carefully—if a real fight broke out, and they endured your few talismans and charged right up to you, what would you do?"

Deng Baiyi froze.

Yes, once thrown, these talismans containing Qi were tremendously powerful, enough to blow apart an ordinary person's limbs.

But there was more than one opponent. If they got close, she had yet to reach the Foundation Establishment Realm, where Qi could be refined into the body.

Being cut, being killed—both were entirely possible!

At that thought, cold sweat immediately seeped down her back.

In ordinary people's eyes, Qi Refiners seemed lofty and untouchable, but they were still flesh and blood. Blades and swords would still make them bleed, and still kill them!

Xie Xuanyi said each word with deliberate gravity. "Even ants can bite an elephant to death. This applies not only to Qi Refiners, but even to cultivators who have reached higher realms. The iron cavalry of the Great Chu Dynasty has trampled many extraordinary great cultivators to death. Deng Baiyi, remember this: if one day you stand atop the mountain peak, do not lightly place yourself in a desperate situation."

Deng Baiyi stared blankly at the youth before her, momentarily dazed.

After a while, she pressed her lips together and cautiously asked, "Legend says sword immortals can ride their swords across mountains and rivers. How could the Great Chu Dynasty's iron cavalry... kill such beings?"

"No matter how powerful a sword immortal is, there will eventually come a day when their toes touch the ground."

Xie Xuanyi smiled and shook his head. "Once the flying sword lands, a great formation locks them down, and then the iron cavalry charges in to kill. The Great Chu Dynasty's Dragon Shackling Formation can completely sever the Qi of an entire region. If the trapped person exhausts the Qi within their body, then who wins and who loses? Even with an endless supply of Qi, sword immortals are still human, and human strength eventually runs dry. Taking ten thousand steps back, if iron cavalry truly must be used to charge a great cultivator, there will certainly be an exceptionally powerful figure overseeing matters behind them. In a clash between those of the same realm, even the slightest disparity in aura can determine victory and defeat. Most of the time, those hundreds of cavalrymen are lives offered to the sword immortal to kill. The person behind the scenes only seeks for those lives to pile up enough of a difference to decide life and death."

Deng Baiyi listened with rapt attention, feeling as though she were there herself. Without realizing it, she gripped the talismans in her hand so tightly that she crumpled them into a mass of wrinkles.

"You have good talent for cultivation."

Xie Xuanyi brought the subject back, speaking gently. "Keep these talismans safe, and make more whenever you have the time."

He paused.

Then he sighed and spoke with a grave expression. "If you truly want to use these talismans in a fight, perhaps before long... your wish will come true."

Deng Baiyi gave a muddled little "oh," then obediently threw herself into the work of drawing talismans.

Yet her Heart Lake could not regain its calm for a long, long time.

Deng Baiyi suddenly felt that everything happening now seemed like a dream.

She had actually begun cultivating!

Her world was no longer limited to the Northern Prefecture. An enormous, enormous door had simply been pushed open before her.

Beyond that door lay a vast and magnificent world stretching as far as the eye could see.

Thinking about it carefully, it was truly ironic...

The person who had opened that door for her—she still did not even know his surname or given name.

After saying those words, Xie Xuanyi appeared to lean by the window with his eyes closed in rest, but in truth, his Heart Lake was not calm either.

The higher a cultivator's soul realm, the more accurate their intuition became.

After leaving Jade Pearl Town,

the unease in his heart had grown increasingly intense.

Drowning in the North Sea, awakening in the Northern Prefecture, the loss of his Lifebound Flying Sword... linked together, these matters made it difficult for him to believe that everything was mere coincidence.

Over these past few days with Deng Baiyi, Xie Xuanyi had already confirmed one thing.

This girl who had spent three days and nights with him had not had her mind bewitched by any demonic art. And the Deng Household servants willing to leave Jade Pearl Town with him for Azure Prefecture were also perfectly ordinary people.

The one truly worth suspecting was the mysterious white-robed Daoist Deng Baiyi had mentioned.

A single prophecy had bound Deng Baiyi and him together.

Now, if he wanted clues to his Lifebound Flying Sword,

he had to go to Carp Tide City.

Xie Xuanyi knew very well that if there was nothing strange about the Deng Household, then the road to Carp Tide City would not be peaceful.

That apparent coincidence of a "cry for help" just now—

Xie Xuanyi did not believe it had been accidental.

That was also why he had told Deng Baiyi to draw more talismans. They would come in handy.

Xie Xuanyi had always trusted his intuition.

He felt that the earlier "cry for help" incident would not simply end because the Deng Estate convoy had departed.

It was obvious.

Ever since awakening in Jade Pearl Town, he had been caught within some scheme.

Deng Baiyi was a chess piece, and so was he.

Xie Xuanyi tried hard to piece together these messy clues, racking his brains, yet finding no answer...

He suddenly felt some regret.

Back then, he had cultivated only swordsmanship. In his remaining time, he would rather drink and sleep than study any arts beyond the sword.

At this moment, if he knew even a little of the arts of strange gates and the Eight Trigrams, and could use divination to glimpse a thread of heaven's secrets, he would not be so passive.

"There's no use overthinking it. Given the current situation, I can only take one step and see what comes next."

Xie Xuanyi shook his head, no longer dwelling on these vexing matters. Instead, he focused all his mind on cultivation.

Never in his wildest dreams had he expected that this would become another vexing matter—

Qi gathered rapidly, yet it could never enter his body!

In a sense... even Deng Baiyi, who had only just entered Qi Refinement, cultivated faster than Xie Xuanyi.

The expression on Xie Xuanyi's face did not change.

His mindset was good. If once did not work, he would try ten times. If ten times did not work, he would try a hundred times. Over these past days, he had attempted to use Qi to break through his acupoints nearly a thousand times!

Nearly a thousand attempts to absorb heaven and earth's Qi, all without success... this could already be called "having no talent."

Back then, Xie Xuanyi had successfully broken through an acupoint on his first attempt.

But now, after nearly a thousand attempts, he had only barely "moistened" a single acupoint.

The Laogong Acupoint in his palm.

The moment this acupoint opened, Xie Xuanyi immediately sensed something unusual.

He calmed his mind and carefully observed the acupoint. Upon looking inward, he discovered that the Laogong Acupoint was actually emitting a faint glow!

The Qi that had merged into this acupoint differed from the heaven and earth's Qi outside. It flowed with a faint golden radiance!

"Wait... Golden Qi?"

Xie Xuanyi stared at the golden light in his palm, faint sweat forming on his back.

Cultivators had distinctions in realm, and naturally, Qi did as well.

The Qi that normally drifted through heaven and earth had neither form nor shadow, neither color nor scent. Once cultivators forcibly gathered it through methods of the soul, it would take on a pale white color.

The greater its density and purity, the closer the color of heaven and earth's Qi came to silvery white!

After being absorbed into the body, heaven and earth's Qi became part of the cultivator's body.

The cultivation of the overwhelming majority of cultivators could be said to revolve around cultivating that single breath of "Qi"!

Only great cultivators beyond the Grotto-Heaven Realm possessed so-called "Golden Qi"—

Xie Xuanyi suddenly realized a possibility.

It was not that his body could not merge with heaven and earth's Qi. Rather, the naturally produced Qi of this world was of too low a quality.

This body was a picky eater.

Over these past days, each of his nearly thousand attempts had been effective!

Every time, his body had been "eating"!

It was only after gathering the consumption from a thousand instances of Qi that he had barely condensed a wisp of high-grade Qi!

This discovery plunged Xie Xuanyi into complete silence.

"So... I need to condense Golden Qi in every acupoint before I can enter the Foundation Establishment Realm?"

He silently stared at that rice-grain-sized point of light in his palm.

Absurd. Utterly absurd.

Trying to fill his acupoints with heaven and earth's Qi?

That was simply the dream of a fool!

Even if a Daluo Golden Immortal used this cultivation method, it would be absolutely impossible!

"To advance into the second realm, I must solve the problem of 'Golden Qi.'"

Xie Xuanyi took a deep breath and murmured inwardly, "Trying to rely on the Qi normally scattered throughout heaven and earth to complete my advancement... is simply impossible."

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