PS: Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Three extra chapters tonight. Please send recommendations, bookmarks, monthly votes, and treats...
Hou Niao made another discovery in his cultivation.
He discovered that an inexplicable vortex had appeared between his middle dantian and lower dantian!
Cultivating Joining the Same, Tracing the Source and Dragon-Tiger Convergence simultaneously, advancing his middle and lower dantians together, was his little cultivation secret. Time waited for no one. Since he had yet to see any ill effects, he would naturally continue. His Qi Gathering was forty to fifty percent faster than normal, and the changes in his body, visible to the naked eye, gave him the drive to persist.
He had practiced this way for nearly ten days in Right River Town without anything unusual happening. Nearly ten days after arriving at the outer hall of Jincheng Sword Manor, everything was still going smoothly. This set his mind at ease, and he began giving it his all, gathering qi sixty to seventy percent faster than when cultivating a single dantian.
This was his third day of going all out, and his first day in his new residence after witnessing disaster erupt within their own walls. Then he discovered this strange change inside his body.
A vortex had appeared between his middle and lower dantians, at the location known in Daoist teachings as the purple mansion and yellow court.
"Yellow court" referred metaphorically to the hollow center manifested through Daoist internal cultivation. Yellow was the color of the center, while a court lay at the center of its four sides. It was the cornerstone of the Daoists' inner mysteries, growing more important the higher one's realm, the foundation that determined how far a cultivator could go.
Of course, cultivators below the Profound Connection realm were still working at the level of meridians and dantians, unable to touch these inner mysteries. The problem was, he had never seen any Daoist text mention a vortex appearing at the yellow court and purple mansion during the Qi Gathering Stage!
Hou Niao immediately realized that the backlash he had always feared had arrived. After inexplicably acquiring the aptitude for cultivation and successfully circulating two dantians at once, the price had finally come due.
He also discovered that the forty to fifty percent of spiritual power he had lost was pouring into this vortex, which continued to devour it. Whenever he circulated his cultivation methods, the vortex became a great maw that could never be filled...
His first reaction was to stop his dangerous practice of cultivating two dantians simultaneously. Faced with a choice between speed and his life, he chose his life without hesitation.
Tragically, the vortex still appeared when he circulated a cultivation method through only one dantian. Worse still, with only one dantian circulating, the vortex slowly drifted off-center, causing heart-rending, lung-tearing pain in his internal organs. Even without understanding the principles involved, he knew that if he let it keep drifting, there was no telling what harm this vortex might do to his purple mansion!
This left him hard-pressed to choose. Unless he stopped cultivating altogether, he had to circulate both dantians simultaneously to keep the vortex perfectly centered.
Was there only one path up Mount Hua left now?
On the surface, he had cultivated himself into a freak. In truth, all of this had been unstoppable since the Anhe Prayer. It was only a matter of time!
He was not someone who blamed heaven and everyone else. Having thought it all through, he could at least console himself that discovering it early was better than discovering it late. If he really waited until the sickness had reached his vitals...
Since it had already happened, he could only face it calmly. Returning to an ordinary mortal life was impossible, so he could only keep forging ahead without looking back.
Let's see just what this vortex can bring me!
Without madness, there's no life!
Without realizing it, Hou Niao, a disciple of the Demonic Sect, began accepting its most fundamental philosophy: wealth and honor were sought amid danger, eternal life amid slaughter!
Before killing others, first cut down yourself!
Casting aside his fretting over gains and losses, he circulated his middle and lower dantians at full strength while keeping close watch on that vortex. Like a mysterious vertical eye, it beckoned to him with boundless temptation.
Dimly, he felt that vertical eye tugging his mind inward. He knew perfectly well that stopping his cultivation methods would free him from this temptation. But if he escaped it this time, what about the next? He would have to face it sooner or later. There was no escaping it!
Then let it happen. I'll uncover the vertical eye's secret once and for all, and spare myself having to cultivate with my heart in my throat every time, unable to give it my all.
As he yielded to it, he felt as though he had returned to that scene on the sacrificial altar in Anhe's Divine Capital, his soul drifting and swaying, floating as though about to ascend to immortality...
Well, I've heard of recurrent miscarriages, but never recurrent out-of-body experiences.
The next moment, he felt himself arrive somewhere mysterious. A narrow passage, its walls made of some unknown material, made him feel as though he were inside an animal's blood vessel. Everything was crimson, with nothing else in sight.
He had become a soul body again, perfectly suited to this environment, each complementing the other.
Hou Niao strained to examine himself. His body was so thin as to be almost transparent, as though a light breeze could scatter it. Without flesh, blood, or bones, he was nothing but a wisp of energy.
The only addition was a sword in his hand-that heavy sword. Only, the sword too was pure energy, and unstable at that, bending and breaking from time to time.
Calling it a sword was one thing, but thinking of it as a wisp of smoke held in his hand was not wrong either.
Who am I? Where am I? Can I still go back?
Having become a soul body, even his voice had turned into a shrill screech, like scraping the bottom of a pot.
With no other options, he could only float forward, hoping to find an exit or encounter some old immortal grandpa. He would gladly serve him tea and water, hold his little rudder and catch his piss... so long as he let him out.
Hou Niao had never thought there was anything to be proud of in being human. Now he felt it. Even if he could only return as an ordinary person, he would willingly pay any price.
Fretting over gain and loss like this, he drifted haltingly forward, until he suddenly sensed a trace of danger.
It was the mutual awareness between souls.
He stopped drifting and stared intently ahead. Dimly, another soul, just as insubstantial and ethereal as himself, appeared before his eyes, likewise holding a longsword that flickered between existence and nothingness!
Moreover, he could sense with absolute certainty this newly appeared soul's undisguised malice toward him!
Eat you, eat you, eat you... That was what the soul meant to convey.
Hou Niao began retreating while begging for mercy. "We're both fallen souls wandering the ends of the earth; now that we've met, why must we kill each other..."
But he was still unfamiliar with this soul body and could not flee as fast as the other could move. He was soon caught. Amid the soul's eerie shriek that pierced straight into his spirit, that wavering longsword stabbed toward him.
At the same time, Hou Niao turned and swept upward, the broken sword in his hand flashing out...
It was an evenly matched bout of two novice chickens pecking at each other. Hou Niao had only recently begun learning swordsmanship, but he had a foundation in saber techniques and experience killing people. His disadvantage lay in his unstable soul body. Often, his longsword clearly struck his opponent, yet lacked the energy to finish the job.
The vicious soul's swordsmanship was mediocre, but its soul body was sturdier than his and could withstand more attacks. Thus, the battle dragged on like an itch being rubbed at, clinging and sticky...
There was no real technique to speak of in this battle. It was purely a contest of will and energy. At last, before Hou Niao exhausted his own energy, the soul dispersed like smoke beneath his blows. As a soul body himself, he instinctively opened his mouth and inhaled.
Hmm, feels like I'm back to full health?
Indeed:
The great Dao held no illusion; ordinary feelings bred demons of their own. A window to heaven opened for the mountain; because of insects, grasses grew thick. Attend to your cultivation-a vortex arose in the purple mansion.