The Dao and Techniques: An Understanding Overturned

"Immortality..."

Killua murmured the word again.

His expression was extraordinarily complicated, shifting from his initial scorn to shock, then to bewilderment and incomprehension.

He had been born into the Zoldyck Family, a place that made its living through assassination and treated human lives as worthless. Death was his most familiar "friend." He had seen countless ways to die and personally caused countless deaths.

As he understood it, life was fragile and finite. The strong could decide when the weak would die, but no one could decide to never die themselves.

His grandfather was strong, and so was his father, but he knew they would both grow old and die.

That was common sense, an irrefutable truth of this world.

Yet now Lin Yan, who looked as though a stiff breeze could knock him over, had told him in a voice so calm it almost sounded self-evident that the ultimate goal of his cultivation was "immortality."

"You... are you serious?"

Killua's voice was a little dry. "You really believe people can live forever?"

Lin Yan considered the matter inwardly.

He knew that in this bizarre world filled with Nen, going it alone was no long-term solution. The Zoldyck Family might be dangerous, but once he earned its members' acceptance, they would be the most reliable allies.

More importantly, he needed one of this world's greatest prodigies to test whether Taoist theories held true under the laws of another world.

And Killua was the perfect touchstone.

"I do."

Lin Yan answered without the slightest hesitation, his gaze as calm as still water. "Or rather, it isn't a question of belief. This is a path that can be tested."

"Just as you firmly believe that continued training will make you faster and stronger, I believe that following the right path allows life itself to keep advancing to higher levels, until it finally crosses the boundary between life and death."

Killua fell silent.

He had no idea how to argue against that.

Lin Yan sounded too certain. That certainty came not from blind confidence, but from absolute conviction in his own theoretical framework.

"Then you..."

Killua changed his question, trying to approach the subject from something he could understand. "When you beat that big guy earlier, were you using the power of this 'Dao' too?"

Even now, Lin Yan's single-finger strike remained etched in his mind.

That method of breaking an opponent down directly from within was far too strange-and far too efficient.

"No."

Lin Yan shook his head and gave an unexpected answer.

"That wasn't the power of the Dao," Lin Yan said frankly. "It was merely an application of technique. You could even call it a shortcut."

"A shortcut?"

Killua's eyes widened. That terrifying move that had frightened Johns the Dissector into falling to his knees was merely a shortcut?

"Yes."

Lin Yan extended his right hand, held his index and middle fingers together, and made a slight gesture in the darkness.

"As I said earlier, the Dao is rebuilding the engine, while technique is modifying the car. My current 'engine'-the dantian embryo inside my body-has only just fired up. It's very unstable, and the energy it produces is extremely limited."

"So I simply don't have enough strength to face a sheer monster like Johns head-on."

"Then how did you..."

"That's why I could only use technique."

Lin Yan cut off his question, his voice clearly audible in the darkness. "I didn't attack his tough muscles and bones. Instead, I used my perception to locate a 'node' in the flow of his power."

"A node?" Killua frowned.

"Think of it as a tollbooth on a highway that every vehicle has to pass through."

Lin Yan explained it in terms Killua could understand more easily. "However strong that big guy was, his power still had to travel along specific routes through his body. All I did was wait until his power reached that most critical-and most vulnerable-'node,' then use my tiny amount of highly concentrated energy like a needle to set it off."

"What I destroyed wasn't his body, but the 'order' governing the flow of power inside it."

Lin Yan lightly jabbed his finger forward, as though puncturing some illusion. "Once that order collapsed, all his brute strength naturally went out of control. That's overcoming the large with the small, defeating strength with finesse. It falls within the realm of technique."

"If my understanding of the Dao were deep enough and my energy strong enough, I wouldn't need to go to all that trouble. I could crush him and the wall together with a single finger."

Killua listened in a daze.

Though he did not understand things like "dantian embryo" and "energy," he understood the analogies of "nodes" and "order."

As an assassin, he knew the human body's weaknesses inside out and understood where to strike to inflict the greatest damage. But Lin Yan was talking about something on an entirely different level.

Not a physical weakness, but... a weakness on the level of energy?

"Where exactly is this 'node' you're talking about?" Killua could not help pressing him. This had already reached a blind spot in his knowledge.

"Right in the center of the armpit, at the Jiquan Point along the Lesser Yang Meridian." Lin Yan gave him the acupuncture point's name outright.

Killua instinctively raised his arm and felt beneath his armpit.

The skin there was tender, and it was indeed poorly defended, but his family had always taught him that attacking there could pierce the lungs or reach an artery.

Yet with just a light touch of his finger, Lin Yan had disabled the nerves and strength throughout his opponent's entire arm.

"So..."

Killua slowly lowered his hand, his mind somewhat muddled. "This path of yours is... really weak at the beginning?"

"You could say that."

Lin Yan nodded. "Until my 'engine' truly takes shape, my combat ability is far below that of people like you, who have trained in 'technique' since childhood. I need a great deal of time to accumulate energy and nurture my dantian embryo. That process can't be interrupted, and it's very fragile."

Killua understood.

At last, he understood all of Lin Yan's strange behavior along the way.

Why he had run in such an odd posture during the marathon, why his perception of danger had been so sharp in the wetlands, and why he was now meditating with this peculiar breathing method.

He had not been training. He had been... "cultivating."

He was following a path unlike anyone else in this world. It was not simply about "getting stronger," but a revolution in the very essence of life.

The idea was utterly insane.

But for Killua, who longed to escape his family's restraints and find strength of his own, it held a fatal attraction.

He did not care about this so-called "immortality." What mattered to him was the possibility Lin Yan had described of "rebuilding the engine."

As the Zoldyck Family's prodigy, his life had been mapped out long ago. His body had been transformed into the perfect killing machine, and an assassin's logic had been implanted into his thinking.

It was as though his family had forcibly installed an engine called "assassin" inside his body.

That engine delivered outstanding performance, among the finest in the world, but he hated it because it had not been his choice.

If...

Killua looked at Lin Yan, sitting cross-legged in the darkness with long, steady breaths, and his heart suddenly skipped a beat.

If I could do what Lin Yan said-completely replace that "engine" my family deliberately engineered and rebuild a core of my own...

Could I break free of Illumi's control for good?

Could I surpass Dad and Grandpa and take an entirely different path?

That possibility fascinated him more than anything else, more than any power.

Killua's feelings became incredibly complicated.

Shock, curiosity, and even a trace of envy he had not noticed himself intertwined and surged within his heart.

He took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed the burning desire in his eyes.

He was still Killua, after all-that awkward, proud boy.

"Hey."

Killua curled his lip, hiding the turmoil inside him behind a nonchalant tone as he broke the silence. "After all that talk, this 'Dao' of yours sounds impressive, but it's still useless right now, isn't it? If we run into danger again, don't expect me to protect you."

"I understand."

Lin Yan smiled without exposing the gap between his words and his feelings.

He knew that what he had said today had already planted a seed in Killua's heart.

A seed of the Dao.

He did not know when that seed would sprout, or what it would grow into.

But he knew that from this day onward, Killua would see the world differently.