Taking life, receiving instruction

This was not Wang Qi's first out-of-body experience, but it was certainly his first attempt to venture so far from his body.

He had walked barely a hundred paces beyond the military camp, yet this was the farthest his consciousness had ever strayed from his flesh.

He did his best to suppress the fluctuations of his emotions, then followed his senses in a certain direction...

Then he saw her.

A beautiful woman in palace attire sat composedly on a boulder in the woods.

But darkness enveloped the entire area around her, making the sight deeply eerie.

"Aunt Yun, you really were waiting for me here." Joy stirred in Wang Qi's heart, though it remained gentle and steady.

Then he understood a few things... blood energy seethed within the military camp. To yin spirits, it was a deadly poison, making it difficult for them to approach.

"Where's A Bao? Is he playing hide-and-seek with me again?"

Aunt Yun lowered her lovely head and pointed toward a corner behind the boulder... Wang Qi drifted over for a look, and sure enough, a little boy in splendid brocade was hiding beneath it, clutching his head with his bottom sticking up.

"A Bao, I've already spotted you!"

Wang Qi did not open his mouth, yet his cheerful voice rang out.

The child called A Bao seemed a little dejected. He stood with his head lowered and tried hard to climb toward his mother... but the boulder was rather steep, and his short little legs struggled to get him up.

Seeing this, Wang Qi instinctively stepped forward to give him a boost...

But A Bao seemed to sense it. He hurriedly tumbled to the ground, then scurried around to the side on his little legs and climbed onto the boulder.

Wang Qi's hand remained half-raised in the air, a little forlorn... he knew A Bao was doing it for his sake, but a faint ache still lingered in his heart.

With one light step, he rose into the air as though weightless, then settled onto the boulder as well.

It had been a month since they had last met, and he knew what Aunt Yun and A Bao were looking forward to...

So he closed his eyes and began reciting the Heart Sutra, which he already knew by heart.

The Heart Sutra held great wisdom. It could enlighten the heart, and it could also reach spirits.

A Bao and Aunt Yun both loved listening to him recite the Heart Sutra. In truth, they probably gained some benefit from it.

Wang Qi felt he owed this mother and son a great deal, so he did what he could by chanting the sutra for them.

He hoped he might help them pass on this way...

Yet every time he tried to help Aunt Yun and A Bao pass on, he attracted uninvited guests.

Wang Qi felt a little uncomfortable. Sensing the cold yin aura gathering around him, he knew his chanting must have drawn other things here again.

Though his eyes were closed, he could sense what kinds of things were gathering around him...

Suddenly, his whole body shuddered. He seemed to feel a faint sorrow reaching him from all around, as though he shared in their grief...

There were perhaps a few human figures nearby, but most took the forms of animals from the mountains.

They crouched or stood beneath the great boulder, quietly listening to Wang Qi's increasingly ethereal chanting, without any intention of drawing a step closer.

The human-shaped shadows, by contrast, seemed unwilling to listen quietly. They kept trying to approach the boulder, only to be forcefully swept away by Aunt Yun's sleeve each time.

Soon, only nine repetitions of the heart mantra remained before this recitation would be complete.

But something stirred within Wang Qi, and he could not help lifting his head and opening his eyes to look at the yin spirits around him...

In that instant, he seemed to glimpse a fawn's pure eyes, as though they were telling him of its yearning for life.

He also seemed to glimpse a wild boar's ferocity, mingled with longing for its offspring...

There were also many pheasants, wild rabbits, and fish...

They knew nothing of life or death and had neither worries nor cares. They had simply been drawn here.

But Wang Qi understood now. These were all the spirits of animals he had hunted and killed in the mountains over the past month!

In that instant, a great aspiration arose in Wang Qi's heart. He wanted to free these yin spirits, so they would no longer have to wander these mountain woods in suffering.

And so the first of the final nine repetitions of the heart mantra rang out:

Gate gate, paragate... go, go, all of you, go.

Parasamgate, bodhi svaha... all of you, go to the other shore and attain enlightenment.

Wang Qi truly wished this in his heart. Guided by that wish, his disembodied form of consciousness suddenly blazed with brilliant light.

Wang Qi felt something radiate from him, bestowed upon the mountain spirits before him.

As the heart mantra continued, the mountain spirits took on expressions of ease, one after another, before their forms slowly faded away.

By contrast, the seemingly malicious human shadows scattered in terror the moment the brilliant light shone upon them, as though its touch would mean death.

But Aunt Yun and A Bao merely basked comfortably in that radiance, neither disappearing nor showing any fear.

Only after all 108 repetitions of the heart mantra were complete did the brilliant light around Wang Qi dim.

He felt an unprecedented exhaustion as well. He barely managed a farewell to Aunt Yun and A Bao before his whole body toppled backward...

That backward fall seemed to carry him across hundreds of meters, plunging him straight back into his flesh within the military camp.

His sleeping body jolted violently, and only then did he wake.

Wang Qi came to his senses, but his face felt uncomfortable.

He reached up to touch it and found it wet with tears.

He had been crying in his sleep...

Recalling the yin spirits he had seen in his "dream," Wang Qi's heart filled with a bitter, tangled feeling... those spirits were the very animals he had hunted and killed over the past month!

Just then, Wang Qi, who had not felt cold in a long time, suddenly shivered... then he discovered that the lively warmth that had filled his dantian was gone.

"It was what happened just now..." Wang Qi finally understood what he had used to release that brilliant light and help all those yin spirits pass on.

But he felt no regret. Instead, he felt a sense of relief...

What he had lost must have been the true yang qi produced by cultivating Lesser Yang Qi to the Yang Birth Realm.

He did not know whether this true yang qi could recover. For now, his body felt empty and utterly depleted.

In contrast, his heart was filled with a faint yet enduring joy... he was certain he had done nothing wrong.

So he did not regret the depletion of his true yang qi. Instead, he had found an unprecedented motivation to keep cultivating... he realized he still knew far too little about the internal qi within him. Perhaps continuing to strengthen it would also increase that miraculous true yang qi?

He felt both curious and eager, especially when he remembered how much Aunt Yun and A Bao had enjoyed the brilliant light formed from that true yang qi...

And so he sat cross-legged and began cultivating again, steadily accumulating internal qi in his dantian as instructed by Lesser Yang Qi, hoping to recover that warm feeling of the Yang Birth Realm.

But he only managed to suppress the chill in his body for the moment. Even his original internal qi had lost much of its liveliness and become half-dead.

Only then did he feel a little upset.

Still, he did not give up. He continued breathing in and out, gathering qi without pause... until the sky began to lighten faintly.

A ray of sunlight seemed to fall upon Wang Qi...