Uncle Nine looked at his young disciple's eyes, bright enough to burn, then listened to the words spilling from his mouth and nearly lost his breath. He had finished reading the Basic Qi Refining Manual? And he thought it could be improved to make cultivation easier? Did this brat even know what he was saying? That Qi Refining manual was a foundational method passed down through countless generations of Maoshan disciples. It had been refined by innumerable predecessors until it was already complete and flawless, meant to lay the foundation for newly initiated disciples. How could it be altered so casually?
Yet the phenomenon of Purple Qi Comes East for Thirty Thousand Li was still vivid in his mind, and the ancient, noble aura around Mo Yuan—an aura not yet fully restrained and enough to make even his heart tremble—could not be faked. Uncle Nine took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the storm in his heart. With a stern face, he struggled to maintain the image of a strict master. "Nonsense! How can a foundational method be treated as a child's game? You have only just entered the sect and have not even developed a sense of qi, yet you dare speak of altering the method passed down by our patriarchs?"
Though his mouth rebuked him, his hand instinctively accepted the thin Basic Qi Refining Manual Mo Yuan handed over. His gaze swept over the pages, and Uncle Nine's pupils abruptly contracted. The blank spaces on the pages had somehow been filled with dense little notes written in charcoal. The handwriting was messy, yet it carried an indescribable spiritual quality.
Mo Yuan scratched his head and grinned, without the slightest hint of fear. "Master, I'm not fooling around. I just think the book says, 'To draw qi into the body, one must calm the mind and guard the Dantian.' This process of 'calming' and 'guarding' feels a little too rigid. Qi is naturally lively and flowing, so why can't we guide it like streams flowing into rivers, following the current? And this Heavenly Circuit route seems to take a bit of a detour. If it turned here directly and made a slight bend..."
As he spoke, he gestured across the page with his finger.
At first, Uncle Nine kept his brows furrowed, intending to interrupt this ignorant brat's nonsense at any moment. But as he listened, his expression changed from stern to doubtful, then from doubtful to utterly shocked! The few "small issues" Mo Yuan casually pointed out and the "small changes" he proposed sounded heretical at first. Yet upon closer consideration, they faintly aligned with the natural principles of the Heavenly Dao. The simplified qi circulation route not only had no hidden dangers, but even seemed... more efficient, more aligned with the fundamental laws of how qi and blood flowed through the human body!
This... how was this possible? Could a six-year-old child who had only just touched the threshold of cultivation come up with such things? This was no longer mere genius. This was a monster! A freak!
The hand holding the manual trembled slightly. Uncle Nine suddenly looked up and stared hard at Mo Yuan. "These... were truly all your own ideas?"
"Of course!" Mo Yuan blinked his large eyes, looking utterly innocent. "As I read, these thoughts just popped into my head. I thought they seemed quite reasonable. What do you think, Master?"
Uncle Nine fell silent. Looking at his young disciple's pure yet slightly sly eyes, then sensing the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy in the air faintly resonating with Mo Yuan's words, his premonition that this child would overturn the Three Realms grew ever stronger.
He swallowed with difficulty, forcing back the exclamation that had nearly escaped him. In a deep voice, he said, "The path of cultivation can go wrong by a fraction and deviate by a thousand miles. Your ideas... are quite novel, but you must not try them rashly. Today, first sense the flow of qi according to the original method. Wait until I... carefully examine it before we discuss this further."
He needed to calm down and properly process this inconceivable situation.
"Oh, all right." Mo Yuan did not insist and nodded readily. He had only mentioned it in passing anyway. With Primordial Comprehension, he could make even the original method bloom with new possibilities in an instant.
That night, the moon shone bright amid sparse stars.
Mo Yuan sat cross-legged on his crude little bed, but he did not immediately begin cultivating the Basic Qi Refining Manual. His consciousness sank into his sea of consciousness, where the Shangqing Thunder Method - Fragment he had received from signing in emitted faint arcs of electricity.
"Primordial Comprehension, analyze!" Mo Yuan willed it.
In an instant, the profound and obscure words of the thunder method seemed to come alive. They transformed into thunder talismans that flowed, broke apart, and reassembled within his mind. The incomplete portions were rapidly deduced and restored. The essence of the thunder power that had originally required immense cultivation and specific hand seals to invoke became incomparably clear in his eyes—it was merely the manifestation of fierce friction and collision between yin and yang qi in Heaven and Earth.
"So that's how it is... The core of thunder methods lies in 'stirring' and 'guiding'..." Mo Yuan realized. With the innate affinity of his Chaos Dao Body, coupled with an insight that saw through to the essence of things, perhaps... he did not need to make it so complicated?
He extended his index finger, his thoughts stirring slightly. He tried directly mobilizing the faint yin and yang particles drifting through the air around him, lightly "rubbing" them together according to his own understanding.
Crackle!
A soft pop, almost too faint to hear, sounded. A thread of white electric spark, thinner than a strand of hair, flashed at his fingertip and vanished, leaving behind a faint numbing sensation.
He had succeeded! Though pitifully weak, it was truly thunder power! He had bypassed all the complicated incantations, hand seals, and cultivation restrictions to touch directly upon the source!
Mo Yuan was overjoyed. This Primordial Sign-in System, combined with Primordial Comprehension, was practically a heaven-defying cheat!
Just then, Uncle Nine, who was meditating and regulating his breathing in the next room, abruptly opened his eyes with a trace of confusion on his face. "Strange. I seemed to sense an extremely faint thunder aura just now. Was it an illusion? There are no signs of a thunderstorm near this funeral home..."
He shook his head, assuming Mo Yuan had unsettled his mind so much that day that he was hallucinating. He closed his eyes again and resumed meditation.
Meanwhile, the culprit, Mo Yuan, was like a child with a new toy. He happily began studying the game of making sparks jump from his fingertips, while also splitting his focus to sense the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy according to the original method of the Basic Qi Refining Manual.
The result held no suspense.
Almost the instant he focused his mind to sense it, the pores across his body seemed to open automatically. The spiritual energy between Heaven and Earth was no longer like wisps he had to laboriously catch. Instead, it actively and joyfully surged into his body like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea! That efficiency was not merely a hundred or thousand times greater than that of ordinary disciples!
The Chaos Dao Body had affinity with all methods. Cultivation was simply an instinct to it!
The dense spiritual energy surged merrily through his body along his meridians. In practically the blink of an eye, it effortlessly completed its first Heavenly Circuit. A warm current rose from his Dantian and spread through all four limbs and every bone in his body.
Qi Refining Stage 1 came as naturally as water flowing into a channel!
Mo Yuan opened his eyes, sensing the faint yet undeniably real feeling of qi within his body. The corners of his lips rose uncontrollably.
"Now this is more like it." He murmured softly. His gaze turned toward the boundless night sky beyond the window, his eyes bright with anticipation. "Maoshan, Three Realms... I, Mo Yuan, have arrived!"
Next door, Uncle Nine, who had only just calmed his emotions, abruptly opened his eyes again. His face was filled with disbelief as he sharply turned toward Mo Yuan's room. "This spiritual energy fluctuation... how is that possible? He... succeeded in drawing qi into his body already?! And that rate of spiritual energy absorption... damn it! What kind of monster was this brat reincarnated from?!"
That night, Uncle Nine was destined to remain sleepless.
Before you continue