The heat at his fingertips had yet to fade when Chen Wuya slowly opened his eyes. His gaze fell on the eight pebbles arranged in a bagua formation on the tabletop. Slanting sunlight glimmered across their surfaces, like iron plates scorched by fire and then cooled. Without changing expression, he drew his right hand back into his sleeve. Misaligned Force circled once between his knuckles, as if an invisible power were quietly extending along his meridians.
Yesterday's string of utter nonsense had actually allowed the broken qi channels within him to reconnect faintly. He finally understood—this "Misaligned Practice Connects to Spirit" cared nothing for right or wrong. It only cared whether something "sounded plausible." The more absurd and bizarre it was, the more easily it could deceive the laws of Heaven and Earth and fill in the gaps in his incomplete mental method.
He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes again. Fragments from the surviving pages of the Canglang Art surfaced in his mind: "Those who rush against the current live; those who follow the current die." The passages he had originally been unable to understand now seemed faintly connected thanks to last night's crooked interpretation. If martial principles were hidden within the words of a trigram, then heard through another person's ears, remembered by another person's mind, and practiced by another person's body, wouldn't that amount to cultivating in secret?
Once he had made up his mind, he raised a hand and lightly nudged the pebbles, moving the "Kan" position onto the Qian Palace. In a low voice, he murmured, "When yang reaches its extreme, yin is born. When yin reaches its extreme, yang returns. Heaven and Earth inverted—life emerges from reversal."
As his voice fell, a warm current rose from the soles of his feet and shot straight up his spine. He knew the system had filled in another section of the route.
At that moment, footsteps approached from afar.
Xiao Rou stood before the stall, her brows faintly furrowed. She clutched half a coarse flatbread in her hand. "Sir, my father practiced as you instructed, but his chest felt stifled this morning. His qi seemed to be blocked in his throat, and he didn't dare continue."
Chen Wuya did not lift his eyelids. His fingers continued to draw lightly between the pebbles. "That's normal. After stagnating for too long, once it is cleared, it will naturally surge like a tide. The cold qi has occupied your father's body for many years. Now that yang qi is surging upward against the current, it is like an ice river thawing. The cracking sounds are a good sign."
"But... he's afraid of losing control and going berserk."
"Then let him." Chen Wuya finally opened his eyes, his tone calm. "Ordinary people fear losing control because they always want to 'control' everything. But your father is different. He is sick and trapped by stagnation; the more he tries to control it, the closer he comes to death. He must let it rush wildly and break through that rigid shell."
Xiao Rou froze. "Rush wildly?"
"That's right." He nodded. "At midnight tonight, have him sit cross-legged with his palms pressed against his knees. In his mind, he must silently repeat eight words—'Kan Water Backflows to Kunlun.' He must not guide the direction of his qi or control the rhythm of his breathing. He should only imagine black water surging up from the soles of his feet, rushing all the way upward, smashing through his lumbar vertebrae, crashing open the back of his neck, and pouring straight into the crown of his head. Even if his head grows dizzy and his brain feels swollen, he must not stop."
Those eight words were pure fabrication. In truth, they corresponded to the most dangerous section of Misaligned Force's reverse-flow route: gathering momentum at Yongquan, bypassing the broken point of the Ren Meridian, and forcibly linking into the Governing Vessel Meridian to surge upward. If an ordinary martial artist truly followed those instructions, they would vomit blood at best and become paralyzed at worst. But Chen Wuya knew that as long as someone sincerely believed in them and attempted to circulate them, the system would automatically correct the deviation and complete the missing true-qi channels.
With every sentence he spoke, something within his body trembled. When he said the words "backflows to Kunlun," Jiaji suddenly grew scorching hot, as if a rusted chain that had corroded for years had been violently torn apart.
He had opened another section.
Xiao Rou bit her lip and hesitated. "But the old physician in the village says qi and blood must never flow against the current..."
"That is for treating the living." Chen Wuya cut her off. "Your father is already close to death. Ordinary methods cannot save him. Only by treating error as truth and breaking stagnation through reversal can he have a sliver of hope."
He paused, then lowered his voice. "Do you believe me?"
Xiao Rou stared at him for a long while. Then she suddenly pulled a copper coin from her clothes and placed it on the table. "I'll believe you this once."
The instant the copper coin struck the tabletop, Misaligned Force surged thunderously through Chen Wuya's body. It exploded from his dantian and split into two streams, one rising and one descending, each racing along one of the two hidden meridians among the Eight Extraordinary Meridians that had long since been severed. He could almost feel those incomplete channels being rewoven by some invisible force.
Before Xiao Rou turned to leave, she asked in a low voice, "Should I come ask again tomorrow?"
"Come." He spoke lightly. "I'll be here at this time every day."
The crowd gradually gathered around. A vegetable seller craned her head forward and asked, "Sir, my son has been having nightmares lately. Is his fate plagued by Baleful Intent?"
Chen Wuya picked up two pebbles and rubbed them in his palm before looking up. "It isn't Baleful Intent or a ghost. It's Liver Qi Stagnation. The liver governs the ethereal soul; when it stagnates, sleep becomes restless. Go home and tell him to stand barefoot on the ground for three quarters of an hour before bed, imagining the earth drawing the turbid qi from his body. At the same time, have him silently repeat the words 'Trembling Thunder Splits Wood.'"
Someone beside her muttered, "This again? Why does he tell everyone to recite incantations?"
"This isn't an incantation." Chen Wuya's voice rang out. "It's a method of regulating qi. The movements of Heaven and Earth all occur within a single breath. The matters you ask about may seem unrelated, but in truth, they all concern qi—an ill-fated marriage means insufficient heart qi; a poor harvest means the earth qi is obstructed; a child who dreams too much has unsettled soul qi."
As he spoke, he rearranged the trigram formation with the pebbles. His fingers moved slightly, and Misaligned Force flowed out with his words, circulating backward once along the Shaoyang Meridian. With every absurd statement he made, his body became a little more unblocked.
"Look at this 'Xun' trigram. Wind travels across the earth and should ordinarily pass without obstruction. But what if a stone gets stuck in the middle?" He pointed to a raised pebble in the formation. "It's like the meridians in the human body. Once they are blocked, wind becomes baleful wind. So what you need to do isn't pray to gods or Buddha. Every morning, slap beneath your armpits seventy-two times and shake that 'stone' loose."
The onlookers understood only half of what they heard, but no one questioned him anymore. Some began taking out copper coins, asking about their children's studies, the good or ill fortune of marriages, and the auspiciousness of traveling. He answered them one by one, never straying from "qi," "meridians," "reversal," and "breaking stagnation." In truth, every sentence was reconstructing the surviving fragments of the Canglang Art.
When he spoke of "Li Fire Descends to the North Sea," the end of his Ren Meridian suddenly trembled, and an aperture that had been blocked for years faintly loosened;
When he spoke of "Taiyin Reverses to Taiqing," the meridians in both arms felt as though they had been washed by hot water, and the severed sections faintly joined;
When he smiled and told an old farmer, "Your knees hurt because your kidney qi isn't rising to support them. Before you sleep tonight, imagine hot water flowing from your lower back into your legs," Misaligned Force had already quietly broken through the three yin meridians of the hand.
More and more people stopped to listen. Some said he was a divine fortune-teller, some said he was a madman, and others quietly memorized his words, planning to try them at home.
Chen Wuya remained seated upright and motionless. His words grew more audacious, and his reasoning more crooked. Yet the more it went on, the more smoothly Misaligned Force circulated within him, as though everyone in Qingyang Town had become his sparring partner, using their trust and doubts to complete a cultivation that should have been impossible.
The midday sun hung high overhead, and the blue cloth banner snapped loudly in the wind. A scorched yellow edge of paper still protruded from the corner of the table, unnoticed by anyone.
Xiao Rou's figure appeared at the end of the street once more.
She hurried over, her face somewhat pale. "Sir, I just got back... My father has already begun practicing according to your instructions. But he asked me to ask you one thing—if 'water truly flows uphill,' then what in this world cannot be turned upside down?"
Chen Wuya raised his eyes, the corners of his mouth lifting faintly.
He did not answer. He merely reached out slowly and swept all the pebbles on the table into disarray. Then, word by word, he said, "If water can flow backward, why can't fire sink downward? Why can't qi flow against the current? Why can't fate be changed by one's own hand?"
The instant his voice fell, a meridian within him that had lain dormant for years suddenly burst open. An unprecedented warm current shot from Weilu straight to Baihui. His scalp prickled and went numb, as though countless fine needles were tapping it lightly.
He knew that another fragment of the art had been completely restored.
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