A week after the horrible lightning storm, Yan Ping finally left her seclusion. Stabilising her new cultivation core took her a long time, but it was worth it. She even perfected her chakra and meridian sealing technique. However, she still had to see Anji’s progress to determine how she should modify the little girl’s cultivation core seals. It had been almost half a year. Even if her talented pupil had not finished all the homework she assigned, she should have at least read and understood the first five Chapters of the Doctrine of the Mean and moved her muscles a little to put on a little more weight.
Descending the mountain, Yan Ping used her new senses to locate where Mingfeng was. With the newly acquired knowledge fresh in her mind, she wanted to share some tips with her fellow Divine Core cultivator, who had sustained quite the damage to his territory on her behalf. If not for the sturdy mountain sheltering her from the tribulations, Yan Ping would have been on the verge of death by now. It was only right that she returned the favour.
Once again, it was past bedtime. Zhao Mingfeng was soundly asleep when he sensed an intruder in his bedroom. Jolting awake at once, his sudden movement roused Wanting from her slumber. Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by nοvelfire.net
"What is it?" the sleepy matriarch asked. Mingfeng only kissed his wife in reply and told her to return to sleep when he recognised the familiar presence.
Waiting outside their bedroom, Yan Ping made herself comfortable on the chair. Mingfeng lit the candle and congratulated her for breaking through before apologising for his untidy appearance.
"It’s understandable," Yan Ping smiled. "I’m the uninvited guest. Sorry about your mountain."
Ah, she must be referring to the lightning storm that happened a week ago. Although it was quite a disaster, the Celestial Dragon Sect resolved the crisis within a few days. The villagers were relocated and given compensation while outer disciples were deployed to help rebuild the destroyed homes. Inner disciples restored the mountain. People were rather happy with how quickly Mingfeng and Wanting resolved the crisis, which increased their reputation favourably among the locals. Not to mention, the lightning storm created a heavy atmosphere of qi around the mountain, and several new spiritual herbs were found during the mountain restoration. Not all was bad.
Cutting to the chase, Yan Ping told Mingfeng to stick his hand out.
"I’m going to transfer what I’ve learned during the secluded training," she informed him. "Think of it as repaying your kindness. Despite dodging the heavenly trials, I still cannot firmly place my foot into the Supreme Core realm. As it is, I’m merely half a sage. You don’t have to be disheartened if you don’t get it immediately. Not everyone is a genius blessed with perfectly aligned chakra pathways like your youngest daughter."
Chakra pathways? Zhao Mingfeng had many questions. However, he held his tongue and concentrated on receiving tutelage from Yan Ping.
After two hours of qi circulation and helping Mingfeng attune his chakra gates, Yan Ping recalled her spiritual threads and meditated to recover her energy. Attuning someone else’s chakra took a lot of energy, and she was mentally drained.
Zhao Mingfeng had no idea what Yan Ping did to his body. He circulated the qi a few times around his body to see if there was a change in his inner world. However, he found nothing different from before. Puzzled, he waited for the blind prophet to recover before probing for more information.
"No difference?" Yan Ping chuckled. "It’s not a difference in the body, but the soul. Check your spiritual roots again. It’s not a difference you would see immediately. Circulate your qi within the Governing and Conception vessel meridians."
Obeying, Mingfeng closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, diving back into his inner world to send qi to the yin and yang extraordinary meridians. At first glance, nothing felt different. The flow of his energy was smooth and unobstructed. However, there was no improvement in his cultivation base.
"Don’t focus on the smoothness of your circulation," Yan Ping offered another word of advice. "Try micro-focusing on each individual point of those meridians as you circulate qi. Imbue your breath into each acupoint starting from the base of your spine all the way up to your skull."
With Yan Ping’s guidance, Mingfeng finally noticed a difference.
At the Divine Core stage, Zhao Mingfeng’s cultivator core was like a pot that was very full to the brim. To add more things, he had to constantly simmer the water before adding new things. His progress was very slow as the concentration of pure qi took longer to process the denser it became. It was the bottleneck that both Mingfeng and Yan Ping struggled with. No amount of miracle herbs could help them increase the size of their golden cores.
After Yan Ping’s chakra pathway attunement, Mingfeng could transfer some of that overly dense true qi for further refinement in extra "pockets" created within his spiritual roots. No matter how much pure energy he poured into them, it disappeared almost immediately.
"What was that?" Mingfeng asked after twenty minutes. "The new spiritual roots do not seem to have an end. It did not matter which root I circulated energy into. None of the spiritual threads I sent to those pockets returned. What’s going on?"
Smirking, Yan Ping confirmed her theory.
"It’s why I’m only half a sage," she explained. "The Divine Core is like a furnace heated to the maximum and can no longer smelt anything else. We’ve processed all the raw energy in our bodies to its most refined stage. However, the new spiritual roots are different. They’re not of this world. Think of them as gateways to open into different energy planes. However, the toll price of opening these gates, even temporarily, is extremely high. There is a reason why my teacher spent almost eight hundred years before she finally ascended. Even so, that was only the beginning."
Floored by the revelation that there was a higher level of profoundness in cultivation, Zhao Mingfeng wondered if they would ever reach the Supreme Core stage. Even now, he could barely wrap his head around the concept of the new spiritual roots. However, he thanked Yan Ping for the tip and told her about Anji’s progress.
"As you’ve entrusted, I oversaw Anji’s theoretical lessons. She is a fast learner and has mastered the Doctrine of the Mean within a month. Her mother took over the remaining lessons to teach her the basic forms of the Taiji Fist and the Eight Trigram Palms. Gu Ying, a child we sent to become her bodyguard and martial arts senior, helped create a comic book that made learning easier. Anji finished mastering both styles about a month back. She studied the basics of medicine with our family physician, He Qiu, for a while with a special interval training method he devised. After running out of things to teach her, Anji has been learning basic arithmetic for a month now. However, I think we finally found something she’s not good at."
Intrigued, Yan Ping requested to see Anji first thing tomorrow so she could ascertain her student’s learning progress.