Dou Qi

Dou Qi

Bang!

A child who looked only five or six years old swung his fist with all his might, striking a tree trunk.

Half a tree's worth of withered leaves fell along with strips of bark.

"Fourth Stage of Dou Qi... the improvement really is huge." Xiao Yan clenched his fist, feeling that wondrous power flow over it.

The first three stages of Dou Qi were like genuine physical strength.

When you swung your fist with force, it would rush to your fist; when you kicked, it would cover your leg and foot. You had to "exert yourself" first before you could "release power."

But from the Fourth Stage onward, Dou Qi slowly became clearer, more like some tangible existence that could be consciously sensed, stored within the body and driven bit by bit through will.

"Too slow, and too hard. No wonder it takes so long to cultivate."

Compared with energy that flowed all through the body, this vague thing comparable to athletic performance was far too difficult to train.

Could you precisely know your running time today? No.

If you trained today, would you run a chunk faster tomorrow? No.

At a low realm, you just so happened to be unable to take pills, so you could only grind away slowly... several years of time would fly by just like that.

Not to mention there was also the Dou Qi Vortex, which could be called a cultivation nightmare.

Your Dou Qi was unsteady? Then you definitely could not succeed.

Fine, then I'll temper it for a few more years.

You're older now, huh~ How could Dou Qi that had lost its vitality gather together!

Your meridians were fragile? You couldn't withstand it.

Fine, then let the Dou Qi seep into the body to protect the meridians. That should be enough, right?

Sorry, the total amount of Dou Qi left wasn't enough. Start over! The golden period for cultivation was wasted away just like that. For those great factions, they could just keep their heads down and raise their realm directly, swallow one Qi Gathering Powder, and everything would be fine. Where would they need to go through so much trouble?

"No resources, no faction. It really is annoying..." Xiao Yan pinched the ring at his chest.

When his mother had passed away a year ago, he had thought about asking the person inside this ring for help, but clearly, he had not succeeded.

If the Nalan Family could have extended a hand, perhaps everything would have been different.

"Heh—"

Rather than think about that, he might as well think about if the Ancient Clan had lent a hand back then... how would the Xiao Clan ever have fallen to where it was today?

Xiao Yan was quite impressed with Gu Yuan himself.

Soul Emperor had been gravely injured for a thousand years, yet your Ancient Clan just had to keep up that strategic ass-power until he recovered. A whole pile of ancient jade had fallen into your hands, and you just stuck the thing in the ancestral hall.

In the end, Soul Emperor advanced steadily and faced off against the world, while you were still idling and slacking off.

The Yao Clan was destroyed! Your prospective son-in-law was chased down the whole way! In the end, you only acted to save him once he had fled into the Ancient Clan's territory...

Was your butt glued to the chair? Your activity level with a perfectly sound body was actually lower than someone who already had one foot in the coffin.

Soul Emperor lay in bed like a corpse and schemed for the world, while Gu Yuan's strategic ass-power accomplished nothing.

Oh right, actually, it was not as if he accomplished nothing. He took time out to have a daughter.

Soul Emperor: Surround and attack Xiao Xuan! A thousand-year grand plan! Door of Silent Death! Living-corpse Dou Sheng! Nihility Devouring Flame! Exterminate clans and seize the jade! Secret-realm gate! Divine Pill Transformation Art! Devour Central State! Soul Devouring Life Extinction! Blood Emperor Body! Emperor-Slaying Ghost Blood! Sacrifice the entire clan! Gu Yuan: Slack off, have a kid. Good thing I was one move better~ "Soul Emperor."

The moment he thought of that fellow, Xiao Yan felt his chest clog up.

Battle Through the Heavens was completely a timed dungeon. The claws of the Hall of Souls had already reached into the Jia Ma Empire; even if the Xiao Clan kept hiding in this Wutan City, there was no way to avoid them.

In fact, no matter how the ancient jade was handled, it would end up in Soul Emperor's hands.

Without a child of destiny descending from the heavens to save the scene, the Emperor Clans simply could not win. After the Soul Clan unified the world, they would inevitably sweep through everything as if digging three feet into the ground. Unless they relied on the Ancient Void Dragon to make a move and exile the ancient jade into the depths of endless void, being found was only a matter of time.

Either way, it was an apocalyptic ending.

What rested on his shoulders was not only the Xiao Clan's survival.

Cultivation—the faster, the better! Bang! Bang!

Xiao Yan slammed punch after punch into the tree trunk. The cultivation of Dou Qi could only be carried out in such a simple and crude way.

Eat and rest, recover Dou Qi, then attack while wrapped in Dou Qi, spending it all to strengthen the body and unearth his potential.

It was just like a natural spring. Once the pond was emptied, groundwater would automatically seep out from the silt below.

"Is there really no way to speed this up?"

After only a few minutes, Xiao Yan felt a dull ache in his fist.

His Dou Qi had been exhausted...

Repeatedly striking day and night could only trade time for progress by brute force. At this rate, he would at most reach the Ninth Stage just over half a year faster than in the original work.

The Dou Qi Vortex depended entirely on luck. Maybe his overly rapid progress would end up dragging the time right back again.

He could not count on Yao Lao.

If the other party had awakened long ago, then it was to test his temperament, and before achieving his goal, he would not possibly expose himself of his own accord.

If the other party was still asleep, then anything he said would be a waste of breath.

"Continuous consumption, temper the body, expand the meridians..." Xiao Yan lay on the ground with his head pillowed on his arm, resting as he muttered about cultivation and drew triangles in the dirt.

All of a sudden, it was as if something clicked for him.

"Continuous! Tempering!... Pressure."

A strange light instantly appeared in Xiao Yan's eyes. He scrambled up from the ground, picked a direction, and hurried off.

A waterfall!

This was the perfect cultivation tool for Dou Qi! A constant, steady impact that required him to keep Dou Qi covering his body at every moment to push back upward, while the circulation of his Dou Qi would also be forced under that impact...

It was an absolutely perfect fit.

"Boom—"

Amid the churning, surging spray, something that looked suspiciously like a corpse floated up.

"Cough, cough... Looks like it's still too difficult." Xiao Yan crawled onto the bank, spitting out water, feeling as though his internal organs were about to be shaken apart.

The impact of the flowing water was nothing like he had imagined.

Rather than a steady, continuous output, it was more like irregular waves of impact, sometimes strong, sometimes weak, shifting at high frequency, even mixed with scattered sand and stones rushing down.

Every second required intense focus. He had to rapidly alter his Dou Qi according to what he sensed just to barely withstand the slightest bit of it.

"Pah. Again!"

A trace of fierceness rose in Xiao Yan's eyes.

Though Xiao Ding and Xiao Li were not exactly reliable, some of what they said was quite right. In cultivation, if you were not ruthless, you would not make it.

If you kept thinking about preserving a little strength and leaving yourself a way out at every turn, you would eventually stop moving forward.

"Boom—"

"Glug glug... Pwah! I refuse to believe this!"

"Boom!"

"You want to go against me, huh?! Again!"

Waterfall: ...Hold on, just who exactly is going against whom right now?...

"Xiao Manor."

Before the Xiao Clan's main gate, a refined and gentle-looking middle-aged man looked up at the plaque, his eyes carrying a vicissitude that did not match his appearance. "Does Xun Er like this place?"

The little girl holding his right hand looked up, her complexion a pale, indifferent white. "Xun Er doesn't know."

The middle-aged man sighed somewhat wearily. "Didn't you just look at it from the sky?"

"Xun Er is afraid of heights."

The little girl leaned against his leg.

Really? "Sigh..." He sighed helplessly, as though he could not bear to do it but had no choice. "I'll take you to meet Xiao Zhan... Uh, from now on, just call him Uncle."

Thinking about it carefully, rather than saying Gu Yuan did nothing, it was more like he had the attitude of a good man not lowering himself to fight with a dog.

This was not meant as an insult or anything. It was just that, from his perspective, Soul Emperor seemed a little like a hysterical madman.

After all, a genius like Xiao Xuan had gambled his entire clan on it and still fucking failed, and he had clearly told him that there was no Origin Qi left in the world, so how could you possibly succeed?

As for Tuoshe Cave Abode... It was not as if the Ancient Clan had never had a God either, and they still had not left behind any decent inheritance.

Who would have known that Tou She Ancient God had left behind the full set—God body, Emperor Array, Emperor Artifact, Emperor Pill—and even a Heavenly Flame Seed and Fighting God Inheritance... There was even a matching secret art for sealing a Fighting God plus a plaza...

All that could be said was that the plot demanded it, and the grandeur had been filled in with someone's feet.