Dou Qi Vortex

"Second Brother, you still haven't told Father?"

"How would I dare say that... I kept putting it off, and here we are."

"So what's your plan?"

"Take people and run."

"Huh?!" Xiao Yan was stunned.

Xiao Li's eyes widened. "Keep it down, would you!"

"No, I mean, who are you supposed to take with you..."

"People? How could I possibly be short on those? Just this Coming of Age Ceremony alone, plenty of people got stuck at the sixth stage and were eliminated. They're the ones I'll be trying to win over." Xiao Li smiled rather sinisterly.

"Hiss—You've already contacted them all?"

Xiao Yan looked Xiao Li up and down as if he were meeting his Second Brother for the first time. "Something's off. Something's definitely off."

Since when did Xiao Li have that kind of brain and those kinds of methods?

"Heh~ Eldest Brother arranged all this, didn't he? I knew it!"

Looking as though he had seen through everything, Xiao Yan patted Xiao Li on the shoulder.

Good brother, you—I know you all too well~ "Hey? You! I told you to keep it down!"

"Second Young Master..."

Someone called softly from the corner of the wall. Xiao Li, who had been twisting Xiao Yan's head, suddenly hunched his neck like a thief and slipped along the base of the wall. "Xiao Yan Zi, I'll go take care of things first."

"Mm-hmm, go on, go on~"

Xiao Yan rubbed his neck, feeling as if threads had been twisted into it. "Always getting physical. I must've lost my mind to come see him."

"Wasn't Brother Xiao Yan the one who wanted to come?" Xun Er couldn't hold back her laughter.

"Wasn't that because you said... uh?"

"Brother Xiao Yan—"

Xiao Yan still wanted to be stubborn, but a human cannonball slammed into his arms. "Ugh... cough, urgh..."

"Brother Xiao Yan, I'm at the third stage! I really reached the third stage! You're seriously amazing!"

"Xiao Mei..." Xun Er's eyelids twitched.

The little girl who had been sharing her joy paused, then turned her head and met her gaze.

Then...

She burrowed a few more times into Xiao Yan's arms. "I thought I'd be stuck for another few months, but I didn't expect Brother Xiao Yan to solve it with just a few casual pointers! I like you the most!"

"Huh?"

Xun Er's gaze instantly sharpened, a little bristling.

But before she could flare up, Xiao Yan reached out with a pained expression and pushed his younger female cousin away. "Don't touch... I feel a little awful."

"Huh? Brother Xiao Yan, what's wrong? Are you okay!" Xiao Mei froze for an instant.

Xun Er moved close in a flash, taking her place and supporting the injured party.

"It's nothing~ I just got hit by you~ It hurts so much!"

"What! I..."

Xiao Mei's expression changed in an instant. She wanted to reach out and support him, but pulled her hand back as if she'd been shocked. "I didn't mean to. I really didn't think..."

"I know."

Xiao Yan suddenly raised his head with a wicked grin and reached out to give her a sharp knuckle rap. "I was just teasing you~ Look how scared you got."

"Ah—Brother Xiao Yan, you only know how to bully me!"

This time it was Xiao Mei's turn to make a fuss.

"..." Xun Er silently withdrew her hand and cut in somewhat stiffly, "Xiao Mei, you should be calling him Cousin."

"Aiya~ Calling him Cousin sounds so distant."

Xiao Mei hugged Xiao Yan's arm.

"We're all family." Xiao Yan agreed with this as well. "All that cousin this, cousin that sounds kind of unpleasant. I was the one who brought it up."

"Hehe."

Xun Er didn't want to say anything more.

For one of the very few times in her life, she had the urge to kick these two to death.

"Eldest Brother!"

When Xiao Li saw that figure in a white robe in the woods, he could hardly hide the excitement and thrill in his heart.

"Yo-ho?" Xiao Ding took off his hood. "Didn't expect you to actually recognize me. Looks like I didn't dote on you for nothing when we were kids!"

"That's a must!"

Xiao Li looked at his eldest brother's all-white outfit and didn't dare say much.

How had he recognized him? Nonsense! Other than you, what idiot would wear pure white every single day as a mercenary? What, did washing clothes not take effort? "How are the preparations going?"

"You can rest easy! I've contacted everyone, and there are even two who passed the test and want in."

"Oh~ really~"

This time, Xiao Ding was genuinely a little surprised. In the past, every time Xiao Li got into trouble, he had been the one to clean up after him. This time, he really had grown up and become reliable. "How many people are there in total again?"

"Uh, let me think..."

Xiao Li got a little stuck, counting on his fingers in his head.

"It's twenty-three people, right?"

"Mm! Right, right!" Xiao Li was overjoyed. "Eldest Brother, how did you kno... uh?"

His own dear eldest brother had taken off running at some point, and now all he could see in the distance was a white dot weaving and leaping through the forest.

"..."

Xiao Li fell into a long silence. Only after a good while did he slowly turn his head as though he had made up his mind.

The person standing behind him was exactly who he had expected.

"It was Xiao Yan Zi who snitched, right?"

"Of course not."

Xiao Zhan patted his shoulder as if to comfort him. "I'm not blind. You huddled in the corner with people muttering for half a day, looking sneaky and furtive. Did you think I was air?"

Xiao Li pondered it over and over. "If I'd known, I would've brought an umbrella."

"Sigh, Li'er..." Xiao Zhan said earnestly, "you're different from others. Don't waste your thoughts on these things—are you ready to receive your reward?"

"Dad, I have one last request."

"If it's your last words, spare me."

"No." Xiao Li's eyelids kept twitching. "I mean, don't let my eldest brother get away."

Xiao Zhan: ...

If the two of you team up to become mercenaries, are you really not going to get all your own brothers killed? ...

Xiao Yan sat in his old spot again.

"What exactly is up with that girl today?" Xiao Yan couldn't figure it out. They had clearly been getting along just fine, so why had she suddenly changed face? No matter how he asked, she refused to answer.

Her personality looked like it was about to develop in a moody, unpredictable direction.

"A little hard to please, huh~"

Xiao Yan simply gave up thinking about it. If he couldn't figure it out, then he wouldn't. Wasn't it tiring to let his brain spin for nothing?

He raised his hand and clenched his fist. The brimming Dou Qi brought him abundant strength, and with a light swing, he could stir up a sharp gust in the air.

"Looks like I really can't stuff any more in."

Starting from the Seventh Stage of Dou Qi, Dou Qi basically spread throughout the entire body. It was just that the higher the realm, the more densely it was packed in.

Upon reaching the Ninth Stage, the entire body was like a bottle of cola, filled to the brim with thin Dou Qi.

Advancing to Dou Zhe meant compressing all this Dou Qi into a vortex. If it succeeded, that was naturally best. If it failed, then like letting the gas out of cola, a large amount of Dou Qi would be lost, and one might even fall back to the Eighth Stage, left with no choice but to cultivate back up again, wasting a great deal of time and effort for nothing.

Xiao Yan had already advanced to the Ninth Stage a month ago, and was now in the stage of polishing and accumulation, striving to advance in one go so he wouldn't have to go back and forth.

"If only I had a Qi Gathering Powder, there wouldn't be so much trouble."

Xiao Yan couldn't help grumbling.

But though he said that, if a Qi Gathering Powder were really placed in front of him, he naturally couldn't possibly eat it.

It wasn't like he had nothing better to do.

If he ate it and advanced, then turned around and got drained dry by Yao Lao in a couple of moves, he would have wasted a fourth-tier pill for nothing. Even if his family owned a mine, they wouldn't dare eat pills like that.

The original novel didn't say when Xun Er started refining Qi, but in one year she went from the Ninth Stage to Dou Zhe, and that was while calling him "brother" this and "brother" that every day, without putting much effort into cultivation.

As for eating a Qi Gathering Powder, that was probably impossible. After all, once eaten, it would make her a one-star on the spot, and with a full experience bar too. Cultivation at the Dou Zhe stage was very fast, so after a year, she would at least be five or six stars no matter what.

So directly copying Xiao Yan's results of refining Qi at four and becoming a Dou Zhe at eleven, Xun Er starting cultivation would be placed at eight or nine years old, which was when Xiao Yan was nine to ten.