Notes from Those Who Came Before

Although Su Chunyi couldn't figure out what Chen Ye was really planning, she still nodded and agreed to his request.

As though a thin veil had been gently lifted, Chen Ye suddenly felt his body grow much lighter. Only then did he realize that while the two of them had been talking, an illusion spell had already been quietly cast.

No wonder even a graceful beauty like Su Chunyi had gone unnoticed in the crowd.

Now that the illusion spell had been lifted, the eyes of the passersby around them seemed drawn by a magnet, and one after another turned to look their way.

Chen Ye had been waiting for everyone's attention to gather. The moment it did, he abruptly rose, braced his hand on his signature white banner, and strode toward the teahouse counter.

"Shopkeeper, I'd like to leave this bundle in your care for the time being. I'll come back to collect it in a few days."

At Chen Ye's words, the gray-haired shopkeeper couldn't help looking surprised.

"Daoist, our little shop sees a lot of traffic, and it's hard to keep an eye on everyone's belongings. If anything were to happen..."

Before the refusal was even halfway out, Chen Ye raised an arm, and several pieces of silver tumbled onto the counter.

"This is for the storage fee."

With that, Chen Ye turned and beckoned to Su Chunyi.

Under the escort of the crowd's awestruck, envious gazes, Su Chunyi moved with light, graceful steps to Chen Ye's side.

In an instant, two streaks of silver light flashed into being. Like nimble serpents, they wrapped tightly around Chen Ye and Su Chunyi. Then, with a whoosh, the two of them shot straight out of the teahouse and streaked toward the vast firmament, like meteors chasing the moon.

When had ordinary people ever been lucky enough to witness such a miraculous sight? One by one, they gaped in shock, frozen like wooden statues.

The shopkeeper, who had just been refusing Chen Ye's request to leave his bundle behind, seemed like a different person now. He clutched the shabby bundle tightly in both arms and thought to himself, This is a treasure left behind by an immortal. I mustn't let so much as a scratch mar it!

This was exactly the effect Chen Ye had wanted. After today, the name of the Little Immortal would be even more firmly etched in people's hearts.

At dusk, two streaks of silver light flashed across the sky like lightning.

For the first time in his life, Chen Ye soared through the heavens.

It wasn't quite as he'd imagined—not surfing on a flying sword with his feet planted on it—but instead, he was gently enveloped by sword light and borne aloft. Even so, the thrill was every bit as intense.

White clouds scattered like startled flocks of sheep, rushing past him, while the city below shrank in the blink of an eye until it was no bigger than an anthill.

He had seen the sky from great heights in his previous life, but back then, he'd been strapped into a seat, able to gaze out only through a tiny window.

Now, standing on sword light and soaring into the sky through the power of a human being, the feeling was entirely different.

To defy the pull of heaven and earth with a mortal body, to dart freely through a sea of clouds like a flying bird—that was what cultivators pursued.

In the end, Chen Ye couldn't hold himself back. Completely forgetting that Su Chunyi was right beside him, he threw his mouth open like a child and whooped at the top of his lungs.

Seeing Chen Ye's childlike behavior, Su Chunyi not only felt no contempt; instead, a faint smile curved her lips, and she said softly, "The first time I flew into the sky with my master, I was just like you, fellow Daoist. I shouted until my voice went hoarse. Back then, I felt that heaven and earth were boundless, and I kept thinking that one day, I'd be able to ride a flying sword on my own, journey to the ends of the world, and see all its wonders."

Chen Ye chimed in enviously, "Miss Su, you can ride a flying sword now. You can go wherever you want. That's true freedom."

Su Chunyi shook her head gently and sighed. "The further one travels along the path of cultivation, the harder it seems to get. Though I can ride a sword now, I spend the whole year cultivating in seclusion in the mountains, meditating and practicing swordsmanship. My daily lessons are so demanding that I hardly have any free time to go out and enjoy myself."

Chen Ye deeply sympathized with Su Chunyi's lament.

Perhaps only cultivators who felt their strength failing them had time to relax.

Take his master, Mo Ci, for instance. After possessing too many bodies, he had no hope of advancing in this life. Only with his lifespan nearly exhausted did he think to take on a disciple.

But young fellows like Chen Ye, who had only just entered the Qiling Realm and still had over a century to live, instead cultivated day and night, their hearts set on making further progress.

Immortality was hard to attain, and becoming an immortal was harder still—harder than scaling the heavens. Yet as long as there was even the slimmest hope, what cultivator would willingly let it slip by?

The two fell silent for a while, until the sword light, like a weary bird returning to its nest, gently landed on a small hill outside the city.

The terrain around Cui County was flat, so a small hill standing abruptly apart from the rest was a rare sight.

Su Chunyi led Chen Ye into a cave. He looked around and saw nothing but crisscrossing, razor-sharp sword marks covering the rock walls.

Only then did Chen Ye understand what Su Chunyi had meant by "quiet room." She had simply used her flying sword to hack a cave ten zhang across straight out of the mountain rock.

Chen Ye was secretly amazed. How sharp must Miss Su's sword light have been to carve out such a vast space?

The cave was spacious, but very bare. It contained only a meditation cushion and two oil lamps suspended in midair, which looked to be some kind of magic treasure.

"Please make yourself comfortable, sir. I'm not skilled in alchemy, but my sect has some relevant texts. They might be of some help to you in forming your qi sea."

Su Chunyi lifted her jade-like hand and set several ancient books in front of Chen Ye for him to consult.

Chen Ye casually flipped through a few books and could tell at a glance that these were not secret manuals of the Qinghe Sword Sect. Rather, they seemed to be books Su Chunyi had collected privately. He was already familiar with two of them; they were the same ones Mo Ci had taught him. Apparently, they were ordinary texts known throughout the cultivation world.

However, two other manuals on forming a qi sea caught Chen Ye's eye.

One of them studied how the dantian qi sea rotated.

The topic instantly piqued Chen Ye's interest. He had never considered that a qi sea's rotation could be clockwise or counterclockwise, much less that the difference might hold hidden subtleties.

The author had clearly devoted a great deal of effort to the subject. At first glance, it seemed that whether a qi sea rotated clockwise or counterclockwise made little difference to the speed of cultivation. But through painstaking, thread-by-thread research, the author discovered that a clockwise-rotating qi sea refined spiritual energy with greater efficiency, while a counterclockwise-rotating one allowed spells to be cast more smoothly.

The research data recorded in the book, however, was rather crude. The author was likely a lone, unorthodox Rogue Cultivator, without a sect's abundant resources to back them. They could only make inquiries here and there and rely on their own deductions, so their conclusions were naturally less precise.

The other manual, which also explored qi sea rotation, was just as unusual and interesting.

The author boldly began by asking: why did a cultivator have only one dantian qi sea? If they could have two, wouldn't their cultivation speed increase dramatically?

The author was also a decisive sort, daring to experiment on themself.

Forming two dantian qi seas sounded like an absurd fantasy, but the author claimed the process was no great difficulty. One only had to follow the same steps as before and repeat the process of forming a qi sea.

But the results were less than satisfactory.

After taking two Qi Condensation Pills, the author successfully formed two dantian qi seas. But before they could enjoy the achievement for long, the two qi seas began attracting each other like magnets and effortlessly merged into one. It was only slightly larger than before.

That was utterly pointless, since cultivation from then on was already about continuously growing the qi sea.

Using Qi Condensation Pills to open a second qi sea brought no additional benefits after they merged. Compared with taking ordinary pills to enlarge a qi sea, it was even less effective, with increasingly obvious side effects and a tremendous cost in resources.

After all, Qi Condensation Pills were far more expensive than ordinary pills for enlarging a qi sea. Going to all that trouble was simply not worth it.

Clearly unwilling to give up, the author poured even more time and resources into trying again.

This time, they meditated in seclusion for a long stretch, relying on sheer force of will to desperately keep the two qi seas from merging, all in the hope of realizing their dream of absorbing spiritual energy at twice the rate.

But reality dealt them a heavy blow. In the end, the result was no significantly different from forming a single qi sea.

Chen Ye gave it a little thought and immediately saw the crux of the problem. This experiment was essentially a simple problem of exponential growth.

Suppose a single dantian qi sea doubled in size each year and took thirty years to advance to the next realm. If one formed two dantian qi seas at the start, and both still doubled in size each year, how many years would it take to reach the next realm?

The answer was twenty-nine years.

Seen that way, the difference between one qi sea and two was negligible. Meanwhile, preventing the two qi seas from merging required a great deal of effort and precious resources. It was simply not worth it.

After confirming this, the author eventually abandoned the research, deciding it was like drawing water with a bamboo basket—an effort that came to nothing. The notes were filled with regret over how years of effort had gone to waste, ultimately producing nothing.

Chen Ye didn't see it that way. Instead, he thought both authors were fascinating people, capable of such ingenious ideas. So a qi sea's rotation had a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, and it was even possible to try forming one multiple times—Mo Ci had never mentioned any of these details.

Although the final conclusion was that neither experiment made much difference, in Chen Ye's eyes, cultivation was like a discipline encompassing countless fields and requiring meticulous attention to detail. Only by delving deeply into the nature of cultivation could one avoid detours—or even carve out a path to the heavens that was uniquely one's own.

After carefully reading the notes in both manuals, inspiration suddenly struck Chen Ye. "What would happen if two dantian qi seas rotating in opposite directions were formed at the same time?"