The First Resonance of Qi and Blood

Lin Yi walked to a corner of the Bluestone Grounds and bent down to pick up the smallest stone.

It was grayish-blue, about the size of two fists, rough-surfaced and icy cold in his hand, weighing roughly twenty or thirty pounds.

He weighed it in his hand. Not bad. At least one swing would not knock him flat first.

The incantation of the Bluestone Blood-Transporting Method surfaced in his mind. Recalling the diagrams on the animal-hide scroll, Lin Yi aimed the bluestone at an acupoint on the inside of his arm. Then he gave it a light tap.

Thump.

A muffled sound came from beneath his skin and flesh, and a faint ache spread along his meridians. It did not hurt, but it felt strange.

"I need to use more force." Lin Yi encouraged himself, raised the bluestone again, and brought it down with a little more strength.

This time, the ache was more obvious.

As he cautiously felt out the rhythm, an overly enthusiastic shout suddenly rang out beside him. "Brother Lin, that won't do! You're hitting too lightly. Put some more strength into it!"

Lin Yi turned around. Xiao Hu had somehow appeared beside him.

The boy held a bluestone in his hand, fully twice the size of Lin Yi's, weighing no less than seventy or eighty pounds.

Then, right in front of Lin Yi, Xiao Hu swung that huge bluestone and slammed it into the top of his own head twice with two loud bangs. His expression did not change, his heart did not race, and he even narrowed his eyes in enjoyment.

"See? Hit it like this! It clears you right through!"

The corner of Lin Yi's mouth twitched violently.

"Brother Lin, want me to help you hit it?" Xiao Hu approached with the stone in hand, his eyes sparkling, his whole face brimming with an eager "Let me, let me!"

"Hey, hey, hey, absolutely not!" Lin Yi hurriedly raised a hand to stop him, so startled that the bluestone in his own hand nearly slipped free. "I'll do it myself. I can do it myself."

Xiao Hu pursed his lips, seemingly a little disappointed, then carried his big bluestone back to his spot and resumed banging it against his head.

Watching the child's retreating back, a line silently drifted through Lin Yi's mind: If this were on Earth, this kid would absolutely be the star of a headline reading, "Shocking! Eight-Year-Old Boy Savagely Smashes His Head with a Stone Yet Remains Completely Unharmed!"

He took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the bluestone.

Even an eight- or nine-year-old child like Xiao Hu could endure it without changing expression. As an adult, could he really lose to a child?

"Fuck it, I'm doing it. Only by enduring the bitterest of hardships can one become superior to others."

Gritting his teeth, Lin Yi brought the bluestone down heavily onto an acupoint beside his shoulder blade.

The dull pain was twice as fierce as before. A numb, aching heat burst from the point of impact and spread outward through his meridians.

Suppressing the discomfort, he tried to recall the method's descriptions of guiding blood and qi, attempting to sense the direction of that warm current within his body as he struck himself.

Once, twice, three times.

During the first few rounds, his strikes were utterly haphazard. Every time the stone fell, the warm current stirred within him darted about like a headless fly, here one moment and there the next, before quickly scattering completely.

He was clearly following the incantation, yet his blood and qi simply would not gather.

But after more than a dozen rounds, his brain began to show its worth.

The position, angle, and force of every falling bluestone, as well as the direction in which the warm current spread through his body afterward and the speed at which it dissipated—all that information was automatically gathered, compared, and analyzed by his Super Brain.

He discovered something crucial: randomly striking himself could stimulate blood and qi, but it also ruptured fine blood vessels, causing the blood and qi to leak away through those damaged gaps before it could gather.

Those tiny ruptures in the blood vessels were invisible to the naked eye, yet they greatly reduced the efficiency of blood and qi circulation.

So the phrase "strike the acupoints with stone" in the method did not mean that just any stone, swung from just any angle, would work.

Lin Yi's eyes lit up.

He began making deliberate adjustments.

He shifted the angle of his strikes slightly, avoiding points where the blood vessels were frail and letting the flat surface of the stone press squarely against the center of each acupoint. Rather than brutally smashing down with all his strength at once, he divided each strike into two stages: heavy, then light. The heavy blow stirred his blood and qi; the light press guided it back into place.

He even began working out how to coordinate his breathing, exhaling as the stone fell and inhaling as he lifted it, merging the rhythm of his chest and abdomen with the rhythm of his strikes.

The blood and qi that had once been chaotic actually began to show signs of gathering under this string of subtle adjustments.

It felt like a stream that had once flowed wildly across mountains and fields. With hoe stroke after hoe stroke, he had dug channels for it, and it was beginning to flow slowly along a fixed riverbed.

"This might work!" Lin Yi was overjoyed, and his movements became even more focused.

On the first day, he struck himself with that fist-sized bluestone over a thousand times. His body was mottled with bruises, and when he lay in bed, even turning over made him bare his teeth in pain.

Early the next morning, he got up with a hiss and continued. By the third day, much of the soreness had faded, and the route of his blood and qi circulation had grown clearer. He could distinctly sense that after every strike, that warm blood and qi surged along a fixed path.

On the third night, he sat cross-legged on the stone bed, replaying every detail of his daytime cultivation over and over in his mind.

His comprehension had grown stronger than the day before. The acupoint locations and directions of blood and qi flow that had still been somewhat hazy were thoroughly sorted out during that night's review.

He even vaguely deduced a blood and qi circulation route more efficient than the one described by the incantation. Though it was only a tiny adjustment, the very idea of "optimizing the method" left Lin Yi so excited that he barely slept that night.

On the morning of the fourth day.

Lin Yi came to the Bluestone Grounds as usual and picked up the grayish-blue stone he had held for three days.

Morning light spilled across the grounds. He took a deep breath, then brought down the bluestone onto the Central Courtyard Acupoint in the center of his chest.

Thump—!

A scorching current exploded at the point of impact, completely different from every strike of the previous three days.

The current no longer scurried about in every direction like a headless fly. Instead, like a tide set ablaze, it roared through the "river channels" he had dug over the past few days, washing through his meridians, muscles, bones, and skin. Every cell in its path trembled, heated, contracted, and expanded.

His skin visibly flushed red, as though a fire were burning inside him.

When the bluestone fell again and struck his forearm, it produced a completely different muffled sound from before—deeper and heavier, like a stone hitting a taut leather drum.

His blood and qi had taken form.

He could clearly feel that power. It surged and coiled within him, pressing heavily against his bones and flesh.

Lin Yi clenched the grayish-blue stone in his hand, flexed his fingers, and squeezed hard.

Crack.

A faint crisp sound came from his palm. A hair-thin crack appeared across the surface of the bluestone that had accompanied him for three days.

Lin Yi froze for a moment. Then he slowly loosened his hand and looked at that tiny crack in his palm, wild joy exploding from his chest.

Just four days.

Four full days. Starting from nothing, he had reached Initial Blood Resonance and gained the strength of twenty thousand pounds. He had succeeded.

And the true greatest contributor behind all of this was the Super Brain that had continued evolving ever since he crossed into this world.

Without that comprehension that grew day after day, there was no way he could have grasped the flaws in the Bluestone Blood-Transporting Method's details and adjusted them himself in only three days.

Without those adjustments, he would most likely still be sprawled on his bed, bruised all over and questioning his life.

No one knew that he had quietly improved the method's finer details.

"Brother Lin! You broke through!"

Xiao Hu's shout exploded from nearby, excitement warping his voice. The boy had somehow come over again, and now he was staring wide-eyed at the cracked bluestone in Lin Yi's palm, his mouth forming a circle.

"You're amazing, Brother Lin!"

His voice was as loud as a gong, and everyone else cultivating on the Bluestone Grounds turned to look.

Some put down the stones in their hands, while others halted beneath the heavy loads on their backs.

More than a dozen pairs of eyes landed on Lin Yi in unison, carrying all kinds of emotions: surprise, curiosity, envy, and a touch of contemplation.

Feeling a little embarrassed under their stares, Lin Yi scratched the back of his head and cupped his hands toward them.

"You flatter me, you flatter me. I just got lucky, just lucky."

A few good-natured laughs rose from the crowd. Some said, "Luck alone can't cultivate blood and qi." Others said, "This old man took half a year back then. You kid really are a monster."

Others merely smiled and shook their heads before lowering their heads and continuing to strike themselves with stones.

At that moment, an elderly figure slowly approached from the distance. Seeing him, the watching clansmen quickly made way.

The village chief did not walk quickly, but when those ancient-well-like eyes settled on Lin Yi, Lin Yi felt a gentle yet undeniable weight.

The old man stopped in front of him. He first lowered his head to inspect the cracked stone in Lin Yi's palm, then looked at the flush that had yet to fully fade from his skin, and nodded lightly.

"As expected of one recognized by the Mingdi Spirit Fox Clan." The village chief's voice was neither loud nor soft, but many around them heard every word.

"Initial Blood Resonance after only a few days of cultivation. In all these years, this is the first time our Bluestone Tribe has seen talent like yours."

Lin Yi was just about to offer a few modest words when the village chief waved a hand and changed the subject.

"However, burying your head in hard cultivation alone is not enough."

The old man's gaze left Lin Yi and swept toward the outlines of the valleys beyond the tribe, blanketed by forest. His tone grew low and measured.

"What is cultivation for? It is to survive in the Great Wilderness. A true strong person is not forged by shutting oneself away and smashing stones. They are ground out, bit by bit, beneath the claws and fangs of Ferocious Beasts, between life and death."

He withdrew his gaze and looked at Lin Yi again.

"Well? Are you interested in going out with the Hunting Team?"

Lin Yi was taken aback.

The Hunting Team. Fighting Ferocious Beasts face-to-face, seeing this world's true face with his own eyes.

His heartbeat suddenly quickened.

To be honest, in the few days since arriving here, all he had seen was the tribe's daily life—stone houses, the Bluestone Grounds, dried Ferocious Beast meat, and Xiao Hu banging his head.

He had only heard the words "dangerous and perilous" from the village chief's descriptions. They had never truly fallen upon his own head.

But he could not remain cowering in the tribe forever.

"Village Chief." Lin Yi raised his head, a determination he himself had not noticed entering his voice.

"Perfect. I wanted to go out and have a look too."

As though he had expected that answer, the village chief's lips curved slightly. "Good. At the tribe gate tomorrow morning, you'll set out with Biao and the others."

"The Hunting Team's captain is Biao."

As he spoke, the village chief lifted his chin toward the tower-like figure in the distance.

"The members are the tribe's mainstays, thirteen in total. Every one of them has at least reached the Blood Tide Realm, while Biao himself is a great expert of the Mountain-Sinking Realm.

"They hunt Ferocious Beasts outside all year round and possess abundant experience. Going with them once will do you more good than ten days of solitary cultivation."

Lin Yi looked in the direction the village chief indicated.

Biao had his back to them as he bent down to lift a bluestone the size of a millstone. His face did not redden and his breathing did not change. After setting it down, he said something to the teammates beside him, and several of them burst into laughter.

Morning light fell across their broad backs, and the crisscrossing scars upon them gleamed with a silent light beneath the sun.

The Hunting Team. Thirteen people. The lowest is at the Tide-Chasing Realm.

Lin Yi silently committed that information to memory. A strange feeling suddenly rose in his heart. He had only come to this world a few days ago, but starting tomorrow, he would truly set foot upon the land called the Great Wilderness.

Xiao Hu hopped excitedly beside him. "Brother Lin, Brother Lin! You're going to fight Ferocious Beasts! Bring me back a tail, will you?"

Lin Yi looked down at that eager little face, and the corner of his mouth twitched. "I'll try to come back alive."

Xiao Hu burst into laughter. Little Flame had somehow strolled over to his feet. It looked up at Lin Yi, and a glimmer of satisfaction seemed to flash through its amber eyes.

Then it sat down, its tail sweeping leisurely across the ground, as though it had finally relaxed after confirming that he had passed inspection.