Deep in the gloomy slums, the two figures racing forward suddenly came to a stop.
"Why have you stopped?" Zheng Qian asked in confusion as he looked at Lu San, who had suddenly gone still.
The two of them were Zheng Qian and the stiff-faced middle-aged man.
Along the way, the other man had also told Zheng Qian that his name was Lu San, and that he came from Qinghe Commandery, which bordered Xishan Commandery.
Although it was obviously a fake name, Zheng Qian did not care. After all, the name he had given the other man was fake as well: Zhang Wei.
"We're here!" Lu San said quietly, pointing at a terribly dilapidated shack in front of them.
"We're here? This is your hideout?" Zheng Qian asked in disbelief as he looked at the shack, which could hardly have been any more broken-down.
"That's right. We'll talk inside." Lu San nodded, then pushed open the shack's drafty, battered door and crawled inside.
That was right—he crawled in rather than walked in, because the doorway was less than a meter and a half high.
Seeing this, Zheng Qian could only follow him inside with a helpless sigh.
There was no one inside the shack. A damp, rotten stench filled every corner, and the space was extremely cramped, measuring less than three square meters.
In such a tiny place, there were not only no tables or chairs—there was not even a bed.
There was only a black straw mat riddled with holes in the corner, along with a simple stove made by piling up several stones. It was just as blackened as everything else.
That was everything in the shack.
Lu San's target did not seem to be the shack itself. He walked toward the ruined straw mat in the corner and flipped it up in one motion.
Beneath the mat was an extremely narrow opening, much like a dog door, barely wide enough for one person to crawl through.
As the straw mat and the hay beneath it were moved aside, an intensely foul, rotten stench immediately gushed out of the hole, showing that the air inside must have been exceedingly bad.
As soon as the opening appeared, Lu San climbed down without hesitation and gestured for Zheng Qian to follow.
Zheng Qian gritted his teeth and crawled in after him.
Once inside, he discovered that the passage grew wider the farther in they went. Before long, they could even move forward hunched over.
After advancing for more than ten meters, the two arrived in an underground room roughly three meters high and five or six square meters in area.
There was only an oil lamp, a straw mat, and some daily necessities such as dried food and water. Apart from those, there was nothing else.
"This is the Morning Sun One Qi Art. I originally planned to hide here for a few days after purchasing it, then disguise myself and leave Ziyang City once the commotion died down. I never expected..." Lu San explained as he took out an ancient-looking book and handed it to Zheng Qian.
That book was none other than the Morning Sun One Qi Art, worth ten thousand gold pieces!
Zheng Qian had only just taken it and had not yet had time to look through it when Lu San crawled back up the passage. As he climbed, he explained, "I'll go block the entrance again..."
Zheng Qian was not worried that Lu San might harbor ulterior motives. The cultivation art was already in his hands. Whether Lu San truly intended to block the entrance, planned to escape, or wanted to lure the pursuers there, Zheng Qian was confident he could get out alive.
Thus, he did not stop him. Instead, by the faint light of the oil lamp, he began reading the Morning Sun One Qi Art in his hands.
Soon, a trace of delight appeared in his eyes.
That was because he had found something in the manual that he needed most at present—the Morning Sun Acupoint Nourishing Art!
This also explained to him why those Half-step Grandmasters could wield astral qi. They likely knew similar methods of nourishing their acupoints.
According to the incomplete Morning Sun One Qi Art, there were three steps to breaking through from Xiantian Peak to the Grandmaster realm.
The first step, and the easiest, was to compress the Innate True Qi in the body into astral qi and store it.
The second step was to learn a method of nourishing the acupoints, then use the stored astral qi to circulate that method and continuously nurture the acupoints in the body, allowing them to withstand the powerful impact produced when astral qi opened them.
The third step was to open the body's nine major acupoints and connect them into a stable Lesser Heavenly Cycle, allowing astral qi to be continuously refined.
The day the Lesser Heavenly Cycle took shape was the day one officially broke through to the Grandmaster realm.
However, there were several difficulties along the way.
First: the amount of stored astral qi.
The amount of stored astral qi did not have much impact on the nurturing of the acupoints, only affecting the speed at which they were nourished.
However, the amount of stored astral qi had an enormous effect on opening the acupoints.
According to the records, opening the first acupoint consumed the least astral qi, but even that required at least twelve strands of astral qi, and the process could not be interrupted. Otherwise, one would have to start over from the beginning.
After that, each additional acupoint increased the total astral qi consumed by roughly one-third compared to the previous one.
In other words, if opening the first acupoint consumed twelve strands of astral qi, then opening the second would require at least sixteen strands, while opening the third would require at least twenty-two strands...
Following that pattern, to open nine acupoints and officially break through to the Grandmaster realm, one needed to have at least 128 strands of astral qi stored in the body!
Yet Zhou Yang had only forty-eight strands of astral qi stored in his body, and he had already reached his physical limit.
The 128 strands needed for the breakthrough were nearly three times his current reserves, far exceeding the limit his dantian could withstand.
However, each acupoint that was opened could also become a new reservoir for storing astral qi.
Thus, as more and more acupoints were opened, the total amount of astral qi the body could store would rise accordingly.
But whether he could ultimately gather 128 strands of astral qi remained unknown.
Moreover, that was only the minimum requirement.
Because everyone had a different constitution and cultivated different techniques, the amount of astral qi required to open their acupoints also differed. The exact amount could only be known once they actually began opening them.
That was only the first difficulty.
The second difficulty: the acupoint cycle diagram!
There was a strict order to opening the acupoints. Opening them recklessly could lead to qi deviation in mild cases, and ruptured acupoints and death in severe cases.
Therefore, to open the acupoints, one had to know at least one complete Lesser Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagram.
These were the closely guarded secrets of aristocratic families and sects. Obtaining one was extraordinarily difficult.
But Zheng Qian now possessed all of those things.
In addition to recording the Morning Sun Acupoint Nourishing Art, the incomplete Morning Sun One Qi Art in his hands also contained two and a half Lesser Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagrams.
Acupoint diagrams were divided into three levels: Lesser Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagrams, Middle Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagrams, and Greater Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagrams.
The relationship between the three was also extremely close. Three Lesser Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagrams could be combined into one Middle Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagram, while three Middle Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagrams could be combined into one Greater Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagram.
Above the Greater Heavenly Cycle Acupoint Diagram was the complete diagram of all 108 acupoints.
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