Resisting Feudal Superstition

"Enough!"

Tang San abruptly shut his eyes, unable to watch any longer.

Watching Su Yun suffer humiliation at the hands of a clown who traded self-harm for a meager edge, watching the mocking glances from the mediocre crowd around him, Tang San felt a fire burning in his chest.

"Outrageous... absolutely outrageous!"

"A meditation technique this trashy, a method this stupid—hurting yourself to win—and it's actually enough to beat Brother Su?"

Tang San's hands clenched his pant legs, his knuckles white from the strain.

If only...

If only he could teach Brother Su the formula of the Mysterious Heaven Skill...

No need for deep comprehension, just a change in breathing rhythm, a few meridians cleared.

Brother Su's cultivation speed would instantly skyrocket tenfold!

He could immediately stomp that blood-faced fat bastard into the dirt!

But...

In Tang San's mind, suddenly surfaced the towering Ghost Sorrow Cliff of the Tang Sect in his past life in Bashu.

The cold stone stele appeared, along with the elders' ice-cold ancestral decree:

Tang Sect secrets, passed only within the sect, never without.

Those who steal teachings—killed without mercy!

Those who leak them—death!

In his past life, as an outer disciple who had stolen inner sect secrets, he was forced to leap from the cliff to prove his resolve, dying to atone.

That despair, that reverence for the sect's rules, had long been etched into the depths of his soul.

Brother Su gave me a new lease on life, he's my guide in this world...

But the Mysterious Heaven Skill is the foundation of the Tang Sect's existence.

If I pass it to an outsider, I betray my masters and ancestors, I betray the Tang Sect!

I, Tang San, have lived two lives—am I to break my own oath and principles for a moment's pride?

On one side, the ancient sect rules and faith carved into my soul.

On the other, the benefactor Su Yun, who treats me with sincerity and now suffers an undeserved wrong.

These two thoughts clashed violently in Tang San's mind, plunging him into an unprecedented, agonizing inner war.

His face was even paler than Luo Bu's on the stage, his body trembling slightly.

Earth Command Center.

The atmosphere was a bit awkward.

Dozens of meditation cushions were neatly arranged in the hall's center, each occupied by none other than towering figures from every field in Huaxia.

A high monk in a kasaya sat with eyes closed and curtains drawn, a Taoist master with an immortal air pinched his fingers in a meditation seal, and even two Olympic gold medalists, faces flushed red, tried to follow the three-long-two-short breathing method taught by the otherworldly Teacher Li on the screen to sense the so-called primordial energy.

Lei Zhan stood with arms crossed, pacing before the command console with a furrowed brow, his anxious gaze sweeping over these big shots who usually commanded wind and rain.

Half an hour had passed.

"Ahem..."

A white-haired biology authority finally couldn't hold back and opened his eyes, rubbing his numb, arthritic leg as he looked helplessly at Lei Zhan.

"Captain Lei, I can't do it. Forget light particles, I didn't even feel static electricity. Aside from getting dizzy from holding my breath, there's no reaction at all."

Beside him, the Taoist master who had cultivated for sixty years shook his head with a bitter smile, flicking his whisk and sighing:

"Blessings and boundless heavenly veneration. Layman Lei, we must trust science. From a materialist perspective, Earth's atmospheric composition is very stable."

"Seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty-one percent oxygen, the rest noble gases, water vapor, and some PM2.5 particles. I just carefully sensed the surroundings—there are no free high-energy particles as described in that world."

The Taoist paused, then earnestly advised:

"This idea that meditating can make you stronger is pure feudal superstition. We should resolutely resist it."

Captain Lei stared at the old Taoist in his robe and whisk, a giant question mark slowly forming on his forehead.

"?"

That Earth's environment didn't support cultivation was expected.

But the problem was, if Earth couldn't verify the meditation technique, they couldn't provide technical support to Su Yun.

Were they really supposed to just watch Su Yun take that bare-bones 1.0-speed account and fight for his life against natives with built-in cheats?

Just as the expert group hit a dead end and the atmosphere grew stifling, a corner where Professor Zhang, a folk history specialist with thick reading glasses, let out a sudden "Huh?"

He squinted, staring intently at the soul power execution diagram Teacher Li had drawn on the big screen, his expression shifting from confusion to shock, and finally to a ridiculous, bitter amusement.

"Old Zhang, what did you find?" Lei Zhan immediately asked.

Professor Zhang's trembling hand pulled a yellowed notebook from his chest. Flipping through a few pages, he pointed at the screen. "Look at this route—qi settles in the dantian, three rotations return to origin... Isn't this the exact illustration from that Quick Mastery of Qigong in Thirty Days I bought for five mao at a Panjiayuan street stall back in the eighties qigong craze?!"

The entire room erupted in uproar as everyone crowded around.

"A street stall find?!"

"Quick! Intelligence team, pull the archives for comparison!" Lei Zhan barked the order.

Minutes later, the comparison results came in.

Staring at the two meridian circulation diagrams on the screen, which overlapped with an 85% match, everyone fell silent.

"No... that's not right! A con artist couldn't fabricate such a rigorous logical loop! And they definitely couldn't invent a cultivation method out of thin air!"

Professor Zhang lunged at the console, his fingers trembling as he pointed at the raw scan on the screen, shouting at the top of his lungs:

"Hurry! Run an ancient text trace—cross-reference this breathing method from Quick Mastery of Qigong in real time against every single rare book in the national ancient text database! I need to know exactly which source this fraud copied from!"

"Yes, sir! Searching now!" The operator's fingers flew across the keyboard.

Data streams cascaded down the main screen like a raging waterfall.

"Found it!" The operator delivered the result swiftly.

Professor Zhang pushed up his slipping glasses, fixed his gaze on the newly displayed ancient text facsimile on the screen, and read aloud with rapid breaths: "According to the comparison results just now... the breathing method in this book is not original. It's a verbatim copy from a fragment of the Outer Sect Chores Strengthening Exercise of a minor, low-tier sect called the Iron Bone Sect."

At this point, the old professor jerked his head up.

"Because it was designed for outer sect disciples with no martial talent—those who only did heavy labor—to strengthen their bodies, its logic is extremely crude and its efficiency abysmally low."

That single sentence struck Lei Zhan's mind like a lightning bolt, shattering the fog of his thoughts.

"So you're saying... the meditation techniques from that other world share the same principles as our ancient cultivation methods?"

A blazing light burst from Lei Zhan's eyes. "Then what if we dig out those truly complete, top-tier ancient inner cultivation techniques?!"

"Since Su Yun's Earth body isn't suited for that other world's meditation methods... what about native techniques?"