Five Hearts Toward Heaven

After chatting for a few more minutes, the two families more or less settled the matter.

Seeing that it was already late, Shen Xinglan suddenly noticed that although Wu Ming was forcing himself to stay alert, a trace of exhaustion was becoming impossible to hide on his face.

After giving it some thought, she understood that her son's work in his room today had probably been far from easy. Even if he possessed some special ability, operating it at high intensity for more than ten consecutive hours would place an enormous burden on his mind.

So she said, "It's getting late. A-Ming and I should head back first. You should get some rest too."

Miao Yueling had also noticed the fatigue on Wu Ming's face. After thinking for a moment, she said, "We have plenty of spare rooms. Why don't you stay here tonight?"

"No need to trouble yourselves." Shen Xinglan declined with a smile. "A-Ming is particular about where he sleeps. He probably wouldn't sleep well outside, so we should go home."

Seeing that, Miao Yueling did not insist. She stood up and said, "Then I'll walk you out."

After leaving the Ruan residence, Shen Xinglan called for a taxi.

The driver had been infected a few days ago and had antibodies in his body, so he was not afraid of the virus in the area. He had even specifically waited near the villa district to pick up fares.

Naturally, his price was much higher than usual.

Shen Xinglan did not care about that little bit of money. With the taxi speeding all the way, mother and son quickly returned home.

It was already late at night. Once Wu Ming completely relaxed, he could no longer suppress his mental exhaustion. He fell deeply asleep almost the moment he lay down.

He slept without dreams.

When he woke again, sunlight was slanting through the gap in the curtains, carrying a faint bright-yellow hue that did not quite resemble morning light.

Wu Ming rolled over, pulled out his phone, and checked the time. Only then did he realize it was already the afternoon of the next day.

I actually slept for this long? It's almost four o'clock.

Right, my delivery!

The thought suddenly struck him. His spirits lifted, and he instantly became fully awake. He hurriedly checked the tracking information, wanting to know where his manuals had reached.

[Delivery signed for]

Seeing that result, he froze slightly. Opening the details, he discovered that the delivery had arrived at eleven in the morning and had been signed for by Shen Xinglan.

So it's already here. Wu Ming breathed a sigh of relief, immediately perking up.

He called out for his mother, but received no response. When he went to the living room, he found a note on the dining table with two lines written on it.

[I went to work. I left food for you in the refrigerator. Remember to eat.]

[Oh, and I accepted a delivery for you this morning. It was a pretty heavy box, so I put it in the storage room.]

Only when Wu Ming saw the note did he realize how hungry he was. His stomach rumbled loudly.

However, he did not draw on his energy reserves. Instead, he went to the refrigerator, took out the lunch Shen Xinglan had left for him, and prepared to heat it up.

While waiting, he washed up. Afterward, he ate the meal with renewed energy, washed the bowls and chopsticks clean, and only then went to the storage room.

Just as the note had said, there was indeed a large cardboard box in the storage room, over a meter in diameter.

After opening the package, he found it packed full of books. The first layer alone contained more than a dozen volumes, covering all kinds of categories.

For example, there were Daoist classics such as Essentials of Inner Elixir Cultivation, The Secret of the Golden Flower, and The Yellow Court Classic.

Besides those, he also saw texts from other schools, such as manuals and secret teachings on various Internal Martial Arts, as well as even cultivation methods for yoga.

"Good lord, there are actually this many texts related to Five Hearts Toward Heaven."

Wu Ming was somewhat surprised. He carried the entire box into his room, took out the books one by one, and sorted them by category. In the end, he organized a total of 130 volumes.

"Daoist classics, medical texts, Internal Martial Arts, yoga... There are even books about qigong?"

One of the books on qigong cultivation was even titled Five Hearts Toward Heaven Cultivation Method!

Wu Ming was speechless. "Could the future Genetic Energy Cultivation Method have started with qigong?"

He casually picked up the Five Hearts Toward Heaven manual from the qigong school and flipped through it quickly. The book looked thick, but its outer packaging made up most of the bulk; there was actually very little content inside.

Moreover, the entire book talked about the concept of "qi." The parts that truly involved cultivation only added up to a few hundred words, and they were written in plain language.

"This is way too deceptive." Wu Ming quickly finished reading the whole thing and could not help shaking his head. "Other than the movements described at the end, this book has nothing to do with cultivation at all. What a waste of time."

"I should look at something else."

He casually tossed aside the misleading qigong manual and pulled out a Daoist inner-elixir text instead.

He did not have high hopes to begin with. That qigong manual had just thoroughly dampened his expectations. Yet after flipping through only a few pages, his gaze suddenly sharpened and fixed on a passage.

"Sit with the five hearts facing Heaven, empty the heart and fill the belly, lower the curtains and observe within."

"When the breath is regulated, the heart grows still. When the heart is still, the spirit returns."

Those two passages stirred Wu Ming deeply. He looked at the annotations beside them, which clearly explained the movements of Five Hearts Toward Heaven and the signs one would experience while sitting quietly and sensing.

"The so-called emptying the heart and filling the belly, lowering the curtains and observing within, means clearing away distracting thoughts and keeping the mind in its purest state. Keep the eyes half-open and half-closed, focus your attention within the body, and sense its subtle changes."

"Breathing must be adjusted to its most natural state for the mind to become calm. Then the spirit will not scatter outward, allowing one to gather one's focus."

"That makes sense. It completely matches the original description!"

Wu Ming's spirits rose. Based on the information given in the original work, aside from the movements, the most important aspects of Five Hearts Toward Heaven were a calm mind and a relaxed body. Only then could one more easily sense Cosmic Energy.

And the content described by this inner-elixir text could be summed up in one sentence: breathe naturally!

There was no need to deliberately adjust one's breathing. The more natural it was, the easier it would be for the mind to calm down.

For Wu Ming, that sentence was the most useful part of the text. The rest overlapped with information he already knew.

"But this sentence is enough. At least now I know the specific way to calm my mind."

After turning the last page, Wu Ming put the text back and assessed it silently.

Of course, that single sentence was far from enough to form a complete cultivation method. Fortunately, there were still plenty of texts left here. He could go through every one of them and extract their essence.

That way, the cultivation method he pieced together would be more complete and far more feasible!

Thus, Wu Ming spent the following hours rapidly reading through the remaining texts, from afternoon to evening, then into the dead of night.

He did not sleep all night, tirelessly flipping through one text after another. He did not eat a single grain of rice during that time, but fortunately, he could draw upon his stored energy at any moment to replenish his body's expenditure.

Only by late morning the next day did he finally close the last book and let out a long breath.

"Done!"

He narrowed his eyes and rapidly pondered in his mind, piecing together word by word the useful content he had extracted from the various texts. Then, combining it with the detailed descriptions from the original work, he finally formed a complete sensing method!

"This cultivation method will be called the Five Hearts Facing the Sky Cultivation Method."

Wu Ming opened his eyes, a smile appearing on his face.