Cultivation He Figured Out Alone

Left alone in a corner of the military camp, Wang Qi did not feel lonely, because he still had plenty to do while recuperating.

Lost as he was about cultivation, he did not dare push his internal qi practice any further for the time being. He merely kept nurturing the pathways he had already opened.

He wondered whether he should find some information on meridians when he had the chance. Practicing blindly like this really left him without a reliable footing.

For two days straight, his cold symptoms grew steadily worse.

His nose ran nonstop every day, and even his voice had gone hoarse.

These symptoms made him rather miserable. Fortunately, the swelling in his gums had subsided somewhat, bringing him a little relief.

On his third night in the isolation tent, his consciousness left his body again.

He wandered through the mountain woods for a while but failed to find Aunt Yun and A Bao, so he could only find something to do on his own.

Without a specific goal, his thoughts scattered far and wide while he was out of his body.

He noticed the river beside him flowing toward the camp and casually decided to follow it upstream for a look...

Just then, a mountain breeze swept past, and an urge suddenly stirred within him. It felt as though he could ride the wind into the air.

So he spread his arms into the wind and immediately felt its resistance...

Then he took another step forward... In that instant, he felt the wind lift him, overcoming gravity's hold, and he floated into the air.

He felt like a kite, sensing both the wind's resistance and its lifting force, as well as gravity tugging him downward...

Everything felt so real, as though his body had suddenly become much, much lighter.

He floated higher and higher, until he rose above the treetops and began worrying that he might lose control... As his desire to keep flying faded, his figure slowly descended again.

It was as though a single step had carried him more than ten meters into the air and across nearly a hundred meters of ground...

He found it so much fun that he could not resist spreading his arms and jumping up and down again and again, forgetting his original purpose.

In the process, he felt his body stretch as it never had before. It was as though his entire being had been thoroughly "opened up," leaving him wonderfully comfortable and free of obstruction from head to toe.

His back, with its old injury, felt especially good, as though some tendon there had finally been stretched loose.

After playing like this for a while, however, he suddenly felt a wave of fatigue.

He knew his "time was up," so amid his exhaustion, he suddenly fell backward... Wherever his disembodied consciousness might be, the moment he fell, it would cross an infinite distance and tumble back into his body.

Back in his body, Wang Qi opened his eyes and felt a familiar surge of intense heat sweep through him, leaving him as comfortable as if he were soaking in a hot spring.

As he savored the sensation, he quietly wondered whether it had something to do with his out-of-body excursion... He had treated these excursions as play, considering them serious business only when he recited scriptures for Aunt Yun and A Bao.

But now it seemed leaving his body was not merely a novel experience-it was also an aid to cultivation!

Wang Qi felt as though that intense heat was massaging his entire body. The most immediate effect was that his blocked nose suddenly cleared, bringing him considerable relief.

What unsettled him a little was that, as the intense heat washed through him, even the previously obstructed meridians in his back seemed to show signs of opening.

His internal qi stirred restlessly, as though eager to rush through the barrier in his back in one go.

Once it passed that barrier, his internal qi seemed capable of traveling through the crown of his head and returning to the front of his chest, forming a complete circuit.

This worried Wang Qi, who had already cultivated himself into a body full of ailments... He did not dare try completing that circuit on the spot, and instead deliberately restrained the circulation of his internal qi.

Only after the surge of intense heat subsided did Wang Qi sit up, still feeling apprehensive.

He stood and stretched, only to notice a tight, pulling sensation in the muscles of his back.

So he put more force into the stretch...

But just then-

"Crack!"

He felt a sharp crack come from the tendons and bones in his back, followed by a sensation of looseness and relief.

At that moment, he seemed to feel fresh blood flowing through the place where his old back injury had left a blockage, bringing tremendous comfort to that whole group of muscles.

He hurriedly swung his arms and stretched in various poses... He discovered that his old injury really had healed considerably. Though he still felt some pain at certain extreme angles, it was already seventy or eighty percent better than before.

It seemed that with another stretch of careful recuperation, a full recovery would be no problem.

Feeling the ease in his back, Wang Qi grew bewildered again. Was his cultivation right or wrong?

The drawbacks of lacking a skilled teacher's guidance and a systematic inheritance had already become apparent. He was utterly at a loss about his current condition.

He felt wonderfully comfortable while cultivating, yet the ailments it kept bringing on also frightened him.

Fortunately, he had now confirmed that leaving his body in dreams and roaming in spirit was a form of cultivation that benefited him. So long as he paced himself and did not do it too often, he could nourish his body without damaging his mind.

And so he stayed in that little isolation tent for another fifteen days...

During that time, Military Marquis Xu Sanlang and the other Military Marquises occasionally came to visit him, but he was alone for the vast majority of it.

Even the military camp gradually forgot about his existence. After all, they believed fifteen days of missed training would be enough for some of the more outstanding recruits to catch up with Wang Qi or even leave him behind.

Throughout that time, Wang Qi still did not dare advance his cultivation any further. He merely accumulated internal qi through a simple daily practice, then left his body at night to roam in spirit.

Strangely, neither Aunt Yun nor A Bao came looking for him again. It seemed that the earlier scripture recitation, which had depleted his true yang qi, had brought them something else as well.

Unfortunately, with him inside the military camp, Aunt Yun and A Bao could not come directly to find him.

Back in the mountain village, by contrast, whenever he left his body at night, he would see them keeping him company.

After two weeks, he finally nursed his body back to health. To his surprise, however, once his nose stopped running and he was no longer coughing up phlegm, he seemed able to draw in and release even more air with every deep breath!

Once the rash on his back faded, his entire back remained warm all the time... Even though winter was already approaching in the mountains of Langya Commandery, he felt no chill at all in a single layer of clothing.

It seemed his body had actually grown healthier after this round of ailments had run its course.

The change was so tangible that it also made him realize his cultivation might not have been heading in the wrong direction... The illness and pain were only temporary. Perhaps... his body had merely been expelling toxins?

This discovery surprised him considerably. Once he was certain that his body was not only free of problems but had actually improved, he could not resist using his intent to guide his qi again, beginning to open the meridians from his back to his cervical spine...

He was very curious: if this internal qi could enter through his mouth and nasal passages, descend all the way to his dantian, then circle out through his perineum and rise along his back to the crown of his head, completing a circuit, what wondrous changes might occur?