The cultivation system of this world was divided into two stages: the Strength Path and the Qi Path.
The Strength Path focused on body-hardening arts, conditioning, unarmed combat, and weapons. Stripped bare, its practitioners were merely ordinary mortals wrestling in the streets.
In the nearly fifteen hundred years since the Nameless Immortal descended into this world and transmitted his teachings to the Eight Meridians, most of the mysteries and wonders of Orthodox Dharma had become common knowledge.
Combining the memories of the body's original owner, Bai Ye, with his study of the True Void and Wondrous Being Scripture, Hong Yuan understood it all the more thoroughly.
The greatest difference between the Eight Lineages of Orthodox Dharma and the Outer Dao was that the Outer Dao drew numinous energy into the body, producing true qi that was stored in a physical flesh aperture.
Wei Yiming, for instance, stored his true qi in the Sea of Qi within his dantian!
The Sea of Qi was also the most common choice. Ninety percent of the world's martial artists used it to absorb and store true qi.
Orthodox Dharma was different: it drew numinous energy into the body to open a "spirit aperture" within the fleshly vessel.
A spirit aperture had both a fleshy structure and an energy structure, existing between the tangible and intangible, seemingly real yet seemingly illusory.
Each of the Eight Orthodox Lineages cultivated its own spirit aperture.
The method of the True Void Dao opened an aperture within the Shanzhong Acupoint, known as the "Void Aperture."
Once this aperture was formed-or, more generally, once a True Dharma Spirit Aperture of the Eight Lineages of Orthodox Dharma was established-its partially flesh-transcending nature meant that, starting from Foundation Establishment, the first realm of the Qi Path, it could retain most of its