Plans for Meridian Opening

Two months later.

It was another night, and all was silent, save for the starlight and the shimmer of the lake reflecting each other.

The once-thick barrier of the meridian gate had been worn down by days of washing, until only a thin layer remained.

Zhou Ning pressed on in one burst, drawing on all the power of his Qi and Blood. The eel blood on his skin suddenly crusted over.

His boiling Qi and Blood rushed straight for the Gushing Spring Meridian Gate and poured into it all at once!

The next instant, the meridian gate burst open!

An indescribable sense of relief welled up. It was as though roots had grown from the soles of his feet. He could actually sense the veins of water underground and the ripples stirred up by fish near the shore.

That was not all.

Zhou Ning sprang off his feet and used his movement technique. His legs flickered like phantoms as he raced around the courtyard.

A moment later, he returned to where he had started. At some point, a leaf had appeared between two of his fingers.

Feeling the abundant strength in his legs, Zhou Ning grinned.

"This Meridian Opening Instruction really defies the heavens. Even among cultivators at the Qi Refining Second Layer, one who has opened a meridian could kill one who hasn't as easily as killing a chicken!"

His confidence even swelled to the point that he felt he could fight someone at the Third Layer of Qi Refinement!

And he had only opened one meridian. After it came the Laogong, Dragon Bone, Five Elements, Ancestral Aperture, and Heavenly Cycle Spiritual Meridians. Once all six were connected, he could ride Qi into the air and fly like a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

"But..." At that thought, Zhou Ning suddenly stopped circulating the Azure Flame Heart Method.

He switched to the Spiritual Pivot Meridian-Unblocking Instruction. Spiritual Qi from heaven and earth flowed through the Gushing Spring Meridian Gate toward his Dantian, but gradually dispersed before it could reach it.

"Just as I thought. Only after a Meridian Opening Realm cultivator has connected all six meridians can Spiritual Qi circulate through a full heavenly cycle."

"But with the Cultivation Methods in Chen State, once a person has mastered the method, there's no need to open the meridians at all. Spiritual Qi can circulate through the twelve meridians and finally return to the Dantian."

Zhou Ning could not presume to judge which was superior, but the approach of Meridian Opening cultivators felt rather like "building the road before letting traffic through."

As for which Cultivation Method he would ultimately choose, Zhou Ning had yet to make up his mind.

There was no harm in opening all six meridians first and deciding afterward.

After all, the six meridians could significantly improve his strength. When the jade stone filled and turned black, he would be more confident and efficient when he explored that world again.

Besides, as a Qi Refining cultivator, he was opening the six meridians in reverse at a remarkably fast pace.

"Cultivating like this is truly satisfying. It's just a pity I'm nearly out of spiritual materials..."

Su Yunjin had given him a Fuluo Eel weighing over a hundred jin that day. He had squeezed out all its blood, and together with the three Fuluo Eels he had caught over the past two months, it had barely been enough to support the cultivation of his first meridian gate.

"I'll have to think of something next..."

The Storage Bag he had seized held no shortage of spiritual materials and Spirit Stones, but Zhou Ning's strength was low, and he had never dared take them out to sell.

Even now, he had no intention of doing so.

After all, he had often heard Old Jia next door talk about how dangerous the markets outside were, where murder and robbery were common.

He was only at the Qi Refining Second Layer. Taking spiritual materials out to exchange for resources would be no different from a child carrying gold through a crowded marketplace.

"I could start with Scholar Xu. He seems to be doing rather well lately."

Zhou Ning pondered.

At noon, the sunlight was too fierce to look at directly.

Zhou Ning rowed on the lake, hunting fish as usual.

The Spirit Eye Technique consumed too much, so he closed his eyes to rest from time to time.

Working for a living was hard!

Over the past two months, he had finished reading the miscellaneous cultivation notes in Chai Dingchun's Storage Bag.

The Land of Wei was what the region where Chai Dingchun came from was called.

The Land of Wei had many Qi Refining methods. After opening the six meridians, anyone wishing to cultivate a method had to consume the corresponding Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi; otherwise, they could not become a Qi Refining cultivator.

Chai Dingchun had once expressed regret that, if he had been able to cultivate a high-grade method, he would never have wasted his years in the Qi Refining Realm.

Chai Dingchun had noted down several kinds of Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi. First among them was the Profound-Piercing Wind. After reading the conditions for gathering it, Zhou Ning saw that it had to be collected at the Shangqing Grotto-Heaven and the Spirit Treasure Daoist Sanctuary. Cuiwei Lake simply could not meet the conditions.

There was another kind of Qi called True Yang Metal Qi, which Chai Dingchun held in extremely high regard. Strangely, it could not be gathered in the Land of Wei.

"True Yang Metal Qi must be gathered at noon, when yang is at its height."

"With such a simple condition, how could he have failed to gather it?"

Having nothing else to do, Zhou Ning decided to give it a try.

"At noon, true yang; the red sun high in the sky. Close your eyes and face the light; guide the Qi with your spirit..."

Even with his eyes closed, Zhou Ning still saw golden light filling his vision. Following the Mnemonic, he used his spiritual intent to draw in the light of the heavens.

An hour later.

Just as his head was spinning and his vision blurring, a wisp of Qi, pure yang and blazing, with a bone-piercing sharpness, flowed from the sunlight into the spot between his brows.

Guided by his thoughts, it seeped in between his brows, traveled along his meridians, and entered his Dantian, where it was nurtured for a short while.

Zhou Ning opened his eyes and breathed gently into a small jade bottle. A thread of gold vanished inside.

"It worked?"

Zhou Ning could hardly believe it. "Was Chai Dingchun lying to me?"

He stared at the thread in the bottle, which resembled molten gold, bright and warm. In a daze, he murmured:

"It really is True Yang Metal Qi."

A hundred wisps made one portion. He only needed to gather ninety-nine more, and with a corresponding Cultivation Method, he could use it to cultivate.

"No matter. Time is the one thing I have plenty of."

Evening.

Xu Qinghou came ashore carrying two Fuluo Eels, looking full of high spirits.

Two months earlier, Yuan Dahu had brought a piece of netting and hoped everyone would pool their money to buy a fishing net and hunt the Fuluo Eels in the lake together.

Xu Qinghou had put in four jin of spiritual rice and borrowed another jin from Zhou Ning to take part in Yuan Dahu's grand net-fishing plan.

Who could have expected that, over those two months, their group's fishing efficiency would soar, and they would earn spiritual materials who knew how many times faster than before!

Not just on Bamboo Creek Island-even the retainers on the nearby islands had heard of them, their names ringing like thunder in their ears.

Old Jia from next door, dressed like a wealthy master, stared fixedly at the sleek black Fuluo Eels in Xu Qinghou's hands. He estimated that the two fish weighed forty jin.

At the Su Household, they could be exchanged for four jin and two liang of rice, enough for more than half a month's cultivation.

Old Jia deliberately gritted his teeth and joked:

"Scholar Xu, you've earned every last grain of the Su Household's spiritual rice!"

Xu Qinghou burst out laughing, feeling immensely pleased. "Earning too much isn't good either. Look how busy I am every day-my feet hardly touch the ground."

Zhou Ning chuckled. It was not that Xu Qinghou's feet hardly touched the ground; he was clearly floating.

He called out, "How about we stir-fry a couple of dishes tonight and have a few drinks?"

Xu Qinghou could not have asked for more.

Zhou Ning glanced at Old Jia beside him and invited him too, asking him to bring a pot of rice wine. It was a good chance to ask him a few things.

Xu Qinghou had been too busy lately to catch any pheasants, but Old Jia contributed a jin of beef.

Along with wild vegetables Zhou Ning had dug up on the back mountain, they made wormwood and cured pork, bamboo shoots stewed with beef, and a plate of fried fava beans.

The three ate with relish as dusk settled around them.

Old Jia glanced at the spiritual rice in his bowl and said pointedly, "Boy Ning, do you have something to ask today?"

After all his years in the cultivation world, how could he believe someone would show kindness for no reason?

Zhou Ning did not beat around the bush. "Everyone says you've traveled far and wide and seen a great deal. I wanted to ask whether there are any markets around Cuiwei Lake."

Scholar Xu was surprised. "Markets? What do you want to know that for?"

Zhou Ning answered with a mixture of truth and falsehood. "If I want to travel far on the immortal path, I need to find a way to make a living."

Scholar Xu asked no more. He picked at the fried fava beans and thought:

Zhou Ning wasn't like this before. I suppose seeing how much I've earned lately gave him the idea.

He felt a little pleased with himself.

But there was no room for another person in the net-fishing business. Zhou Ning could only blame his own lack of good fortune.

Old Jia took a sip of rice wine and opened his eyes a little wider. "It's not easy being a craftsman!"

When he was young, he had seen craftsmen treated as honored guests by Aristocratic Clans and sects, and had dreamed of becoming someone like them.

As the saying went, the poor drew talismans, the rich refined pills, artifact refinement beggared three generations, and formations ruined a lifetime...

Old Jia had deliberately chosen talisman drawing, the cheapest of them all, but lost so badly his own mother would not have recognized him.

Later, he abandoned talismans to study medicine and nearly treated someone to death!

He finally understood and accepted that he was a mediocre man.

Even so, he would not try to dissuade Zhou Ning. Sometimes young people had to smash their heads bloody before they understood the danger.

"There's a Luyou Island in Cuiwei Lake. The Su Household's descendants and guest elders often trade there. You can buy everyday cultivation supplies, but I don't particularly recommend it."

"Five hundred li to the east, there's a place called Forget-Return Market. It was established jointly by the artifact-refining Duan Household and several Aristocratic Clans. It has a wide variety of goods and even holds auctions regularly."

"Farther away, there's Purple Palace Immortal City. Your cultivation is too low, so don't go there," Old Jia said knowledgeably.

Zhou Ning committed it all to memory. This sort of information, which depended on being up to date, could not be found in the Su Household's library.

He planned to sell some of the miscellaneous items he had after opening all six meridians.

Listening from the side, Xu Qinghou asked, "Where can I buy spiritual materials that speed up cultivation?"

Old Jia answered without hesitation, "Qi-Benefiting Pills, Spirit Essence Pills, and Three Flowers Pills to help break through to the Qi Refining Middle Stage can all be bought on Luyou Island."

Xu Qinghou's eyes lit up. "How much do they cost?"

He had earned quite a bit from fishing lately and had built up a modest fortune.

Old Jia shot him a sidelong glance. "A Qi-Benefiting Pill can speed up your cultivation by thirty percent. As for the price..."

He chuckled. "Three pills to a bottle, enough to last you about a month. Sixty jin of spiritual rice."

Xu Qinghou sucked in a cold breath. "Sixty jin?"

In the past, even with all his hard work shooting fish and his guaranteed base pay, he had earned less than ten jin of spiritual rice a month!

Even now, working with Yuan Dahu, he had not earned that much in a month.

Old Jia said, "As for a Three Flowers Pill, heh. Wait until you've saved up a Spirit Stone before you start thinking about that."

Spirit Stones were rare treasures to low-level cultivators, each worth over a thousand jin of spiritual rice.

Thinking of the seven or eight Spirit Stones he had seized from Chai Dingchun's Storage Bag, Zhou Ning silently called himself "Master Ning"!

"Cultivation is hard!" Xu Qinghou sighed.

Old Jia stared at Scholar Xu in the prime of his youth, then suddenly looked away, thinking:

With low-grade aptitude, what good will all your effort do?

He himself had struggled all his life and still could not break through to Late Qi Refining.

Xu Qinghou did not think so. He was doing splendidly now, and of all things, he refused to believe in fate.

Xu Qinghou put down his chopsticks and looked at Zhou Ning, who was poorer still. He took the initiative to say:

"If you need materials to learn a craft, I still have some here. Just take whatever you need."

After all, Zhou Ning had helped him a great deal when he first made connections with Yuan Xiaohu, and whenever Zhou Ning invited him to eat, he usually served cooked spiritual rice.

Zhou Ning said, "There is one thing."

He explained his difficulty. "I'm too weak at Early Qi Refining. If I travel far in the future, I'll need some means of protecting myself. I plan to take up the mundane martial art Blood Sha Palm again, but I'm afraid I'll need to borrow the fresh blood of your Fortune and Longevity Eels to temper it. I'll pay you in spiritual rice for the weight they lose."

Old Jia was astonished. Well now, not only was Zhou Ning learning a craft, he was even taking up mundane martial arts. He really was doing nothing but straying from the proper path!

Xu Qinghou knew Zhou Ning had once been a martial arts expert in the jianghu. He was very generous. "Between the two of us, why talk about spiritual rice? Just take whatever you need!"

Zhou Ning agreed for the moment, but had no intention of taking advantage of him.

He had used more than eight jin of fish blood to force open the Gushing Spring Meridian Gate last time. He still had thirteen jin of spiritual rice, and if he exchanged it for fish blood alone, he could get at least a hundred jin.

With Xu Qinghou as a source, Zhou Ning had no need to venture out and take risks in the short term.

"Now I can open my meridians in peace."