The season when the Fire Star sank westward in the seventh month had ended, and the mountains were cooler still.
Though Ding Songyan was already impervious to heat and cold and could even disrupt the seasons around him, he followed everyone else in changing into a thicker black martial outfit, with specks of starlight on its left sleeve and little candle flames embroidered on its right.
He stood in the Dipper Martial Training Ground belonging to Tao Wenshu's lineage, leisurely stretching his body. His fists traced circles, sometimes light, sometimes heavy, now like a murmuring brook, now like rivers and seas heaving with waves.
This was an Initial Realm training method he had spent nearly a month developing himself, through trial and error, based on the changes in his body and the Xiaoming Sect's two body-tempering and qi-training arts-the "Twenty-Eight Lodges Art" and the "Body Candle, Heartfire Art."
Of course, he had also consulted the various corresponding methods collected by the Xiaoming Sect.
Unlike other schools' methods, which always emphasized one aspect over another, Ding Songyan's Initial Realm art treated every part of the body equally, neglecting none. It gathered both body and mind inward, making them perfectly rounded and responsive to his will. It comprised nine forms, each with moving and still, fast and slow variations, making exactly thirty-six illustrated charts with detailed annotations.
Ding Songyan named it the "Nine Primal Arts," thoroughly satisfying his vanity.
Over the past few days, he had sealed off the qi channels formed through his later cultivation, read every method of circulating qi in the Scripture Repository, and repeatedly experimented and refined his approach. At last, he found the early-stage qi-training route best suited to himself and named it the "Positive and Reverse Circulation Chapter."
His next plan was to formally enter the