The Dissipation of Qi

In the blink of an eye.

Zhu Zhengwei was already sixty.

The first batch of Servers, the classmates of the Zhujing Village Alumni Group, were now truly facing the fate of dying of old age.

Zhu Zhengwei could not help but descend the mountain and head to Zhujing Village. "There is no use continuing my secluded cultivation. It is time to come down and take a walk."

Whoosh.

A motorcycle sped past, and the cool young women nearby all turned to look.

In this era of civilizational regression, owning a motorcycle was already an immensely impressive thing.

"The first batch of Servers is about to dissipate. The infant NPCs born alongside me back then are already sixty. One by one, they are basically beginning to grow old and die."

At night, Zhu Zhengwei walked through the streets.

"After death, their computing power will no longer be concentrated in individuals, but dispersed throughout heaven and earth. They will become true Cloud servers."

During his sixtieth year, Zhu Zhengwei felt many formerly obscure things become clear before his eyes. Years of accumulated knowledge had finally brought about a period of rapid breakthroughs, and his research into the Qi Consumption Method had also advanced by leaps and bounds!

Many thoughts became clear the moment he considered them, comprehensible at the slightest hint!

As he traveled across this land, he pondered what future this Local Area Network world, no bigger than a few towns, would develop into.

After several days of sightseeing, he arrived before a farmhouse in a remote area. Zhu Zhengwei saw several teenage girls playing and roughhousing in the street.

"Them?"

Zhu Zhengwei smiled.

Suddenly sensing something, he narrowed his eyes at a figure nearby, then took out some money and asked the owner of the house whether he could stay for the night.

The farmhouse owner was an honest farmer. He was startled upon seeing the visitor. The guest possessed a gentle, scholarly air and an exceptional temperament. The farmer could not help but privately speculate that he was a person of immense status and no small background, so he said, "Of course."

Night fell.

Three in the morning.

Suddenly, strange noises sounded.

Zhu Zhengwei rose and followed the sound to the front room, where he found two girls tied up and gagged, whimpering helplessly, while their parents had been knocked unconscious inside.

"Who the hell are you? Stay out of other people's business." The tattooed man, clearly the leader, sat on a tricycle blocking the doorway.

Understanding dawned on Zhu Zhengwei's face. "Human traffickers?"

Such things had become exceedingly rare in the future. Human traffickers were something unique to this era.

Just as he had expected.

This place was also the Root Dream of the young women, complete with their own parents and neighbors.

Although every person's Birth Dwelling was like a fragment of a dream Puzzle Piece, carried by an umbrella and dropped onto this land like a massive battle royale map.

Once they returned to their childhood births, however, the tragic events in some people's past lives still had not changed.

"Where are you taking them?"

Zhu Zhengwei asked, though based on the circumstances of the young women in the future, he already had a vague guess.

The tall, thin man looked at Zhu Zhengwei and chuckled. "The moment you chose to stay overnight in this house, I had a feeling that you had noticed us brothers. If you had pretended not to see us, that would have been fine. But you chose to seek your own death."

Zhu Zhengwei looked at the criminal's scornful expression, fell silent for a few seconds, then suddenly burst out laughing!

"What are you laughing at?"

Before the bandit's words had even faded.

Zhu Zhengwei suddenly drew a dart from his waist and hurled it with all his strength.

Pfft!

The dart perfectly sliced across the man's cheek, drawing a line of blood.

"Who are you?" The criminal panicked, covering his bleeding face as he asked in a trembling voice.

"Look at my right eye," Zhu Zhengwei said.

The criminal instinctively looked into Zhu Zhengwei's right eye.

It was a beautiful eye, with a Tear Mole at its corner.

"What is there to look at?"

The criminal sneered, quickly snapped back to his senses, and immediately drew a blade from the tricycle. "Brothers, he's tough. Get him!"

Soon, several highly skilled criminals surrounded Zhu Zhengwei, long blades in hand.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

A bloody battle erupted, blades flashing and shadows crossing, shaking heaven and earth.

Ultimately finding themselves at a slight disadvantage, the bandits had no choice but to seize the two girls as hostages. "Let us go, or we'll kill them!"

Zhu Zhengwei said solemnly, "Gentlemen, you have strayed onto the wrong path, but after exchanging several moves, I know you all have your reasons. Release the girls, and I will let you leave."

"Magnanimous! I trust you, sir."

The criminal clasped his fists, retreated some distance while holding the two female hostages, then released them before driving the tricycle off into the night.

The tricycle continued down the road through the darkness.

The bandit leader dressed his wound and picked bone fragments from it, yet did not cry out in pain. He could not help but say admiringly, "There are actually such masters in this world! What a pity that our paths differ, and we cannot work together! Brothers, let us go!"

The night was tranquil.

"So this is how they sleep."

"I think I understand the principle from back then."

Zhu Zhengwei sat leisurely in a chair, closed the book in his hands, and watched with an amused smile as the criminals lying on the ground slept.

Beside him, the two girls were terrified. "How did they...?"

Stop looking.

You were sleeping like that back then too.

The moment those traffickers saw his right eye, they had already been hypnotized. Everything that happened afterward was merely a scene from their dreams.

"Another chivalrous dream like those young women's, only this one even carries the Jin Yong martial arts style of this era, talking to me about magnanimity and flashing blades."

The experiment had repeated itself before his eyes.

The reason why the young women had behaved that way before was now perfectly clear.

The moment he met someone, he made them sleep. Once asleep, they would reasonably continue the story of their encounter with him according to various factors.

This ability was indeed rather interesting!

Zhu Zhengwei stood and left directly, only leaving behind one sentence. "They are asleep. As for how to deal with them, wait until your parents wake up."

Behind him, the two girls did not dare make a sound.

They only felt that this mysterious, refined man was unfathomably deep.

Especially those eyes of his. They were sinister.

At the same time, the girls shuddered with fear. If they had been abducted that night, they had no idea what tragic fate would have awaited them.

"May we ask our benefactor's honored name?" the two called out at his retreating back.

Zhu Zhengwei did not stop, walking farther and farther away.

He could only change their restarted lives, allowing them to live out the lives they wanted here. He could not change the tragic suffering that had already happened to them in reality.

The two stared blankly at his back.

Those eyes seemed vaguely familiar, carrying the feeling of a Previous Life encounter.

That man had a Tear Mole.

Elsewhere.

In Zhujing Village.

Several years had passed since his eldest brother's death. His third brother, Zhang Zhi, had also grown thoroughly old, now over fifty.

"People of our generation are leaving one after another." Like Zhu Zhengwei, he seemed to share an unspoken understanding as he traveled outside to visit old friends from those years.

Before him, he was seeing an old friend off.

This was a friend three years his senior, Zhang Xia, one of the co-founders of their school. Learned, sharp, and intelligent, he had been an infant born in the same year as Second Brother.

At this moment, the old man was critically ill and making arrangements for the future. His family wailed all around him.

Yet some people still could not help but respectfully say:

"Old Master Zhang."

"Old Master Zhang, you came."

Zhang Zhi waved his hand, indicating that there was no need for formalities.

He went in and looked at the old man lying in bed. Life was visibly draining from him. Zhang Xia's lips moved faintly as he made his final arrangements to his children, but he seemed not even to have the strength to speak.

Zhang Zhi sat down and exchanged a few simple words with him, then left the house with one of his students and stood at a distance, gazing at the scenery.

He knew that the final moments should be spent with family seeing him off.

Watching yet another familiar old friend depart, Zhang Zhi was overwhelmed with mixed feelings and deeply empathized.

"Bitter memories of life only add regret; smiling at the mortal world, it is but drifting clouds and smoke."

Zhang Zhi looked toward the room and suddenly smiled with carefree ease. "I remember the hardships of founding the elementary school with him. It truly was a wonderful story. But without Second Brother, who swallowed wind and consumed qi like an immortal, healing his leg, there would have been no story afterward."

This old friend's thoughts truly had been wildly unconventional.

Every so often, he would blurt out strange chat phrases such as "dancing on graves," "this game is toxic," and "I love rich women," without even knowing why he was saying them.

Perhaps people truly had Previous Lives.

There were simply too many mysteries in this world.

In his later years, Zhang Zhi had many sentiments. Looking back on One Lifetime, he vaguely recalled the mysterious child from his early years who had always sat cross-legged in the courtyard.

"Second Brother, what are you doing?"

"Cultivating the Qi Consumption Method."

Qi Consumption. Such an incomparably simple and ancient name.

Yet it was a goal that he and his eldest brother had pursued all their lives without ever attaining.

Looking at the blue sky beyond the window, he suddenly remembered the scene of his elder brother's final moments. Was it not much like what lay before him now?

Ill in a bamboo bed, speaking of final affairs.

Until his death, Eldest Brother had lain in bed arranging his affairs with his children. Even now, Zhang Zhi could not forget the fear in his brother's final gaze, the pleading expression as he clutched his hand tightly, repeating that scene to him countless times: "Above heaven and below earth, I alone am supreme." It was an image Eldest Brother had witnessed in childhood, branded into his heart and into the end of his life.

Mortals consume grain; heavenly beings consume qi.

It was a mysterious realm he had never set foot in, and also Eldest Brother's inner demon. Had he never seen it, he would not have felt such loss. Yet after the divine being of their family descended into the mortal world, there arose a pure and simple yearning for life and immortality.

"Old Master has passed!"

As a wail resounded throughout the room, those withered, dark hands fell limp.

"Another old friend has left us. Let us go."

Leaning on his cane, dressed in a black windbreaker and with his hat brim lowered, Zhang Zhi slowly turned around and left the weeping behind him.

Suddenly, as though sensing something, excitement appeared on his face.

He abruptly turned to look at the old man's corpse. Invisible strands of qi were dissipating, drifting through heaven and earth. He exclaimed in immense excitement, "That is qi. Qi is dissipating? Drifting through heaven and earth?"

It truly was an artifact, a first-generation Server. NPC Zhang Xia was dissipating.

"Teacher, you...?" His prized student, Zheng Linshou, was full of confusion.

"Rosy Cloud Qi."

Zhang Zhi stood frozen, staring blankly at the sky. "I can cultivate the Qi Consumption Method?"

Over the years, he had seen and sent off many dead, but this was the first time he had witnessed such a magnificent and mystical phenomenon. Though the sun was setting at dusk, it was as though the five-colored dawn clouds of sunrise had spilled across the sky, a beauty that did not seem to belong to the mortal world.