The wild way of leaving the body

That night, Wang Qi left his body once again.

He still did not encounter Aunt Yun or A Bao, but went on his own to the riverbank where he had shot fish earlier, sat cross-legged, and began reciting the Heart Sutra.

His previous experience of delivering the souls of dead animals had left an indelible mark on his heart.

He knew that all things in this world possessed spirits. Although humans stood above all other creatures, and nourishing themselves with those creatures was part of the natural order, he still remembered to peacefully send off the spirits of the animals that had died because of him.

This was his first time reciting the Heart Sutra without Aunt Yun and A Bao standing guard, yet he felt no apprehension.

As the sutra rang out, fish spirits appeared around him one after another, swimming endlessly in circles...

Fish possessed little spiritual awareness. Even if he had not come to deliver them, they would have returned to heaven and earth before long.

But Wang Qi had come anyway, and the fish spirits seemed to have forgotten that he was the very culprit who had taken their lives. They still swam happily around him.

Yet the evil spirits in the mountains were drawn over as well...

The Heart Sutra could awaken wisdom, and these mountain spirits also craved the spiritual energy Wang Qi's recitation brought, for it benefited them greatly.

Benevolent spirits would only feel grateful for Wang Qi's gift, but evil spirits would devise every possible means to claim the source of that spiritual energy for themselves.

Now, evil spirits appeared one after another as shadowy human figures, staring over with pairs of scarlet eyes and oppressively menacing gazes...

They could not disturb Wang Qi while he recited the sutra, but they waited to swarm him the moment he finished.

The Heart Sutra contained only two hundred and sixty words. How long could it take to recite?

This time, after only twenty-seven repetitions of the heart mantra, the cute little fish spirits slowly disappeared... They had been delivered.

Wang Qi finished his recitation as well, then opened his eyes...

At that very moment, eight evil spirits were crawling low to the ground before him, seemingly waiting for him to finish reciting so they could rush him all at once!

The sight gave Wang Qi a slight fright, but he already had a way to respond... Earlier, he had released a great radiance from within himself, delivering a host of spirits and frightening off the evil ones. That had taught him that he possessed a power these evil spirits feared.

So he wanted to see whether he could draw that power out.

He began trying to circulate qi as though he were summoning his internal qi... He had no idea whether this consciousness-form of his could even circulate internal qi.

Soon, he discovered that there really did seem to be a warm current flowing inside him.

It was his true yang qi!

His true yang qi normally lay hidden within his body, beyond his ability to command. All he knew was that its presence made his internal qi exceptionally lively, while nourishing his body and producing all manner of wondrous effects.

He had never expected that, outside his body, the qi he circulated would be true yang qi rather than internal qi... Of course, internal qi was the power of his own body. Now that he existed apart from that body, he naturally could not circulate it. But what about true yang qi?

Lacking crucial knowledge, Wang Qi could only guess that it was a power intimately connected to his consciousness.

As true yang qi circulated throughout him, he actually felt strong and healthy, as though he possessed boundless strength.

Looking again at the fiends and specters around him, he felt they were scarcely worth mentioning.

He began itching to act, then unleashed his foster father's supreme art in his spiritual consciousness-form: Mighty Stele-Crushing Palm!

This was an exceptionally fierce and forceful palm technique, one that should have been paired with external body-hardening training... Yet when Wang Qi performed it in his spiritual consciousness-form, it still carried the whistling vigor of a tiger.

The evil spirits waiting for the recitation to end had already lunged at him, and Wang Qi settled into his stance...

Boom!

He struck with one palm, unleashing matchless force. There even seemed to be a burst of scarlet, sun-scorched fiery qi.

The evil spirit before him had probably never imagined that it would take a palm strike square in the face.

His palm landed directly on its face, and its entire head shattered in an instant.

Wang Qi felt as though he had smashed a watermelon...

When he looked at the evil spirit again, its entire body dissolved into a cloud of black vapor, as though blown apart by the wind.

Only then did Wang Qi feel that some of his true yang qi seemed to have been consumed... So this, too, was a kind of "deliverance"?

He mulled it over, feeling he had grasped something, but his hands never stopped. Charging into the evil spirits, he unleashed one stele-crushing palm strike after another...

These evil spirits were accustomed to bullying all the weak little spirits in the mountains. Now that they had met someone fiercer, they were the ones being ground into the dirt...

Wang Qi even felt that Mighty Stele-Crushing Palm was a little too brutal, so he simply held back some strength and struck with ordinary punches... But even an "ordinary punch" was more than these evil spirits could bear.

It seemed that as long as he circulated his true yang qi, he could easily inflict tremendous damage on evil spirits.

He was intensely curious about this true yang qi, but that flock of weakling spirits gave him no further chance to experience it... Weaklings that could not withstand even an "ordinary punch" were utterly incapable of testing the depths of his current strength.

Wang Qi felt only the "loneliness of an unrivaled master." Then, feeling a little tired, he lingered no longer. With a mere shift of thought, he returned to his body's side... Yes, it was still lying asleep outside the communal sleeping tent, wrapped in a thin blanket.

It was already quite cold outside, but he did not find it particularly troubling.

This was the first time he had so clearly experienced the sensation of returning to his physical body's side in a single instantaneous step... It seemed that using true yang qi also improved his cultivation and insight while outside his body.

But what would cultivating outside my body be like?

The thought suddenly arose in Wang Qi's mind.

But his consciousness-form was already tired, so he could only wait until his next out-of-body excursion to try.

His consciousness-form returned to his physical body, and his eyes snapped open as he awoke.

The lingering sensations of returning from an out-of-body excursion swept through him once again. That intense heat once more bathed his entire body... And this time, the warmth lasted unexpectedly long!

Wang Qi could not resist trying to guide his internal qi while he was still in this warm state...

As he began his breathing practice, the warm current quickly faded... In truth, however, his guidance had drawn it inward from the surface, through his internal organs, until it finally flowed into his Dantian.

As those warm currents permeated his internal organs, the comfort suffusing his entire body reached its peak.

When he examined what he had gained... Wang Qi discovered that the true yang qi he had consumed outside his body had been fully replenished, and had even increased.

Even his internal qi had grown after that surging current subsided... This was probably some overflowing true yang qi that he had failed to gather in, which had naturally transformed into internal qi without his noticing.

He also had the impression that his body's foundation had become a little firmer and more substantial... He could not fathom exactly what this cultivation entailed, but he was already certain it had to be beneficial.

Under these circumstances, he gained a hazy understanding of his internal qi and true yang qi:

Internal qi was the fundamental qi of the human body, the starting point and source of all cultivation, and could be strengthened through everyday breathing practice.

True yang qi seemed rooted in a person's consciousness. It could be strengthened through cultivation outside the body, and replenished from heaven and earth during breathing practice.

When necessary, true yang qi should also be convertible into internal qi for use. But he had not yet tried the exact process, and felt that such a conversion would be an act in which the losses outweighed the gains.

He knew nothing about cultivation, yet through his constant experimentation and reflection, he had begun developing his own set of ideas and methods... An "unorthodox path," for short.