The Missing Month

Luo Ji immersed himself in the Qi Refinement chapter of the True Exposition of Tai Chi Creation.

"Wuji gave birth to Tai Chi, Tai Chi gave birth to the Two Principles, the Two Principles gave birth to the Four Images, and the Four Images gave birth to the Eight Trigrams..."

The cultivation scripture was like a key, unlocking the fixed perceptions he had built up since childhood.

He closed his eyes and began sensing the "qi" within his body according to the method described in the technique.

The first day.

Nothing happened.

But the pills he swallowed had an obvious effect. His body felt utterly renewed, better than ever before, as if he had returned to eighteen.

With tangible benefits before him, how could Luo Ji possibly give up? He merely felt that his comprehension was not good enough.

If he lacked talent, then he would repeat it!

Again and again, until he succeeded.

Until the ninth day!

At last, he felt a faint warm current rise from his dantian and slowly flow along his meridians.

The sensation was strange, as though something furry were traveling through the blood in his entire body.

"This is qi?"

Luo Ji got excited, and the warm current he had painstakingly gathered immediately scattered.

Still, once he had taken the first step, everything that followed became much easier.

He continued guiding that qi according to the cultivation method: one minor circulation, two minor circulations, three minor circulations.

With every circuit, the qi grew a little stronger.

Meanwhile, news of Luo Ji's disappearance swiftly spread through the major intelligence agencies at the United Nations.

CIA, MI6, Mossad, KGB—all the intelligence agencies were asking the same question: Where had Luo Ji gone?

No one could find an answer.

His fingerprints and DNA were in his office, but there was no trace of him leaving.

The surveillance footage showed him entering his office, and then he never came out again.

The Trisolarans.

Every intelligence agency reached the same conclusion: the Trisolarans had done it.

Although no one knew how the Trisolarans had accomplished it, it was the most reasonable explanation.

Sophons could monitor everything and interfere with physical experiments, so why could they not erase a living person out of thin air?

Panic began spreading through the upper ranks.

If the Trisolarans could make people vanish into thin air, then who was safe?

The United Nations Secretary-General urgently convened the Security Council to discuss the "Disappearance of Wallfacer Luo Ji."

The meeting lasted the entire night, but no conclusion was reached.

In the end, Sai said only one sentence: "Keep looking. Dead or alive, we must find him."

At the same time.

Trisolaran Civilization, Sophon Monitoring Center.

Sophons were a pair of proton-sized supercomputers, traveling back and forth between Earth and the three suns at near-light speed, transmitting information in real time.

At this moment, one Sophon floated above United Nations headquarters, monitoring everything within the building from an ultra-high-dimensional perspective.

Luo Ji's office.

Luo Ji had vanished!

The Sophon scanned the entire building, scanned hundreds of kilometers around it, and even scanned the whole Earth.

It could not find Luo Ji.

Trisolaran World.

The Supreme Leader sat upright upon the throne, with dense streams of information flowing before him.

"Report, Supreme Leader. Wallfacer Luo Ji has vanished from surveillance."

"Vanished?" The Supreme Leader's voice did not ripple in the slightest. "What does that mean?"

"The Sophon cannot locate him. He left his office, but none of the surveillance devices captured any trace of his departure."

"What about the other Wallfacers?"

"The other three are all under surveillance."

"Only Luo Ji vanished?"

"Yes."

The Supreme Leader fell silent for a moment.

"Mobilize all Sophon resources. Find him."

"Yes."

The Sophons' search range expanded.

Every corner of Earth, every inch of land, was scanned anew.

Still, Luo Ji was not found.

The Sophons even scanned the Moon, Mars, and every planet in the Solar System.

Still nothing!

The Trisolaran Supreme Leader's pupils contracted slightly.

This was the first time in his life that he had felt unease.

For them to be unable to find him, it had to be a higher-level civilization that had sent Luo Ji into another dimension.

At least a Level 3 civilization!

"Supreme Leader, we detected an anomalous signal."

"What signal?"

"At the same time Luo Ji vanished, there was a faint high-dimensional energy fluctuation. It lasted less than one trillionth of a second, then disappeared."

"What was its source?"

"Unknown. But the characteristics of that fluctuation... do not belong to any known physical phenomenon."

The Supreme Leader remained silent for even longer.

"Raise Luo Ji's threat level. Upgrade it from B-class to SSS-class."

"At the same time, initiate the accelerated plan for the 'Dyeing' Project. We must destroy humanity's confidence on Earth in the shortest possible time."

"Yes."

Within the group space, the vast white world had neither beginning nor end.

Luo Ji sat cross-legged in the void, surrounded by a faint white vortex of qi.

The vortex seemed both present and absent, like morning mist and rippling water, slowly circling around his body.

It had been nearly a year.

At a time-flow ratio of 1:10, he had cultivated here for a full three hundred days.

Outside, a month had also passed.

Luo Ji opened his eyes and slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air.

"Qi Refinement perfected."

He murmured to himself, feeling the endlessly surging true qi within him.

A month ago, he had still been an ordinary person who could not even sense what "qi" was.

But after cultivating in the space for nearly a year, he had completed the cultivation of the first chapter of the True Exposition of Tai Chi Creation!

He had broken through from the first level of Qi Refinement to perfected Qi Refinement!

Was that fast?

He did not think so.

After all, he had cultivated twenty-four hours a day without pausing in the slightest, equivalent to three years of ordinary cultivation!

This speed could only be considered normal.

During that year, he did only three things every day—meditate and refine qi, consume all kinds of pills, and study the cultivation technique.

Spirit Gathering Pills increased the speed of spiritual qi absorption, Foundation Nurturing Pills stabilized the foundation of his dantian, and there were Essence-Enhancing Pills, Body-Tempering Pills... all kinds of pills.

His rate of improvement relied entirely on points being spent like flowing water.

Of his more than eight thousand points, excluding the exchange for the beginner space, over three thousand had been spent on pills alone!

Luo Ji stood and lightly stretched his limbs.

He formed a hand seal for the Dust-Cleansing Art and immediately felt refreshed from head to toe.

Among the various spells within the cultivation technique, he had chosen to first practice the Dust-Cleansing Art, fire arts, and the Levitation Art.

He could no longer be considered powerless enough to be unable to truss a chicken.

Besides that, the improvement in his realm had also made his thoughts clearer. Problems that once required repeated consideration to sort out could now be seen straight through to their essence at a glance.

"So this is the effect of cultivation..."

Luo Ji fell into thought.

The essence of cultivation was a leap in the level of life.

From mortal to cultivator, from cultivator to immortal, every step was an evolution.

He did not rush to leave seclusion. Instead, he spent another three days thoroughly consolidating his perfected Qi Refinement realm.

Only then did he leave the group space.

To face the coming storm and tempest!

The instant his consciousness returned, Luo Ji appeared in his office.

An earthquake spanning two worlds had arrived!