By the time Yang Wenqing and Li Ming returned to District 3, the colleagues coming to relieve the Fifth Patrol Squad had already arrived. The four of them chatted briefly, then parted ways.
Back in the office area of the public security station, their squad leader, Xiao Liang, had long since returned and was writing something at his desk. Seeing Yang Wenqing and Li Ming come back, he looked up at them and said, “The conflict in District 2 counts as a merit for each of you.”
“Thank you, Captain!”
The two thanked him at the same time, then headed toward the changing room.
The police bureau had an extremely strict merit system, and it was tied to seniority within the bureau. Ten accumulated days of patrol duty could add one merit. For a regular guard to be promoted to senior guard, if relying on seniority alone, they needed to accumulate three hundred merits.
Of course, one could also advance to the Qi Refining stage and directly obtain the rank of veteran guard. Upon cultivating to the Fifth Refinement, one would gain the qualification to sit the promotion exam for police affairs commissioner. In the entire public security station, only the station chief, Wang Ren, held the rank of police affairs commissioner.
Reaching police affairs commissioner meant entering the officer level, and one could serve as the chief of a public security station, a department director in a branch bureau, or a frontline unit commander.
The final use of merits was to exchange for various spiritual herbs and medicinal pills. After an exchange, the recorded total number of merits would not decrease, so it did not affect a guard’s accumulated seniority. The white dragon ginseng in Yang Wenqing’s possession had been exchanged with the merits he had earned from patrolling alongside the captain for half a year.
In the changing room, Ye Yong had already taken off his equipment and was chatting idly with Zhou Kun, who was in the same group as him. Seeing Yang Wenqing and Li Ming come in, he immediately said to them, “Zhao Qin from Squad One wants to invite us to Fengtai Restaurant. Are you going?”
“You asking for a beating, kid?”
Zhou Kun slapped Ye Yong on the back of the head.
Yang Wenqing glanced at Ye Yong and said with a smile, “If you want to go, then go. I won’t.”
Li Ming also shook his head. “My wife’s still heavily pregnant. I need to go back early.”
Hearing this, Ye Yong immediately got up and walked over to Yang Wenqing’s side, saying with a smile, “That kid Zhao Qin has loved showing off since he was little. I’ll go see what tricks he’s up to tonight.”
At a glance, he was the sort who could not sit still, and judging by the looks of it, he had known Zhao Qin from early on.
Yang Wenqing kept smiling as he quickly stripped off his equipment and locked the latch on his storage cabinet.
Throughout the process, Ye Yong remained by his side, recounting all the rotten things Zhao Qin had done back at school, most of it focused on disparaging Zhao Qin. Clearly, he did not want this incident to create any rift between Yang Wenqing and the members of the Second Squad. After all, when they went on missions and ran into evil cultivators or sudden spiritual energy rampages, they were comrades who had to entrust their backs to one another.
Yang Wenqing casually chatted with him for a few lines, then bid farewell to his teammates and left. He had no entertainment plans that afternoon, so after exiting the public security station, he went straight back to the dormitory building.
As soon as he entered the small courtyard, he saw a middle-aged man wearing a police vest practicing boxing under a banyan tree. Yang Wenqing knew this person. He was practicing the basic fist techniques of the Qi-Guiding Art. This set of fist techniques could assist the spiritual energy within the body in circulating through the spiritual meridians. Without the aid of medicine or spirit-gathering formations, it was the best Qi Refining method available.
Given the concentration of spiritual energy in this world, even an ordinary person practicing this art scientifically had a chance of advancing to the Qi Refining stage. It was just that the time required would likely exceed twenty years. Ordinary people did not have those twenty years, because most of their lives were spent supporting their families.
Take Yang Wenqing himself, for example. Most of his day had to be spent on duty at the police bureau. Only after getting off work and returning home each day, and in the mornings, did he have free time to cultivate. Sometimes, when he ran into overtime, it might already be the early hours of the morning by the time he got back. In that case, he would not even have time for morning and evening cultivation.
After returning to his dormitory, Yang Wenqing first took off his city defense uniform and examined the collar. Confirming that it could still be worn for another day, he was too lazy to take it off and wash it. Then he walked over to a wooden barrel in the corner and opened the lid, revealing the coarse rice inside. These were rations his parents had asked someone to bring over.
Yang Wenqing needed to make some rice cakes to keep on hand. By the time more than ten rice cakes came out of the steamer, an hour had already passed. He ate three rice cakes in one go with pickled vegetables, finally resolving the hunger in his belly.
After tidying up the messy corner, Yang Wenqing stood before the windowsill and once again imprinted a talisman paper with the Immobilization Curse before putting it away.
“Now that I’m a regular guard, I can go to the county branch bureau and receive the second curse pattern, then try to trace it with spiritual energy. The day after tomorrow happens to be Saturday, and I can take a day off.”
Before advancing to the Qi Refining stage, one could only learn basic curses. These curses were fixed rune formulas. They needed to be traced along fixed rune circuits using the body’s spiritual meridians. If one could complete them within a certain amount of time and keep them condensed without dispersing, they could produce the corresponding effect.
For his second curse, Yang Wenqing intended to learn the Golden Light Body-Protection Curse. It could construct a layer of protective golden light around the cultivator and counted as the best defensive and life-saving method in the early stage.
After making his decision, Yang Wenqing picked up his keys and police badge and went out. For the next several hours until bedtime, he would practice boxing in the courtyard below to guide the sea of qi and spiritual meridians within his body in absorbing and circulating the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.
The colleague who had been practicing boxing earlier was still there, except now he was sitting cross-legged beneath the banyan tree, clearly digesting the spiritual energy gathered in his sea of qi while also using spiritual energy to repair his damaged spiritual meridians. Without the help of the Golden Core World, this step would consume more than half his time, making his daily cultivation progress as slow as a tortoise.
Yang Wenqing paid him no attention. He walked to an unoccupied corner, assumed the opening stance of the Qi-Guiding Art, then calmed his mind and guided the faint trace of spiritual energy in the sea of qi in his lower dantian to slowly flow through his spiritual meridians.
When he felt a slight sense of qi, his fist technique gradually unfolded, its movements rounded and rhythmic.
The fist technique of the Qi-Guiding Art had no power to overcome enemies and seize victory. Its essence lay in the word “guiding.” Through specific movements and breathing rhythms, combined with intention, it drew in and absorbed the spiritual energy of heaven and earth in the surroundings to the greatest extent possible, then guided that spiritual energy to circulate along fixed spiritual meridian pathways.
For cultivators who had yet to form a complete heavenly cycle within their spiritual meridians, this was painstaking, gradual work. They often had to repeat the entire set of fist techniques more than ten times before they could barely accumulate enough spiritual energy to complete one full circulation through the main spiritual meridians.
Of course, those with good aptitude could complete this step very quickly.
Although Yang Wenqing’s aptitude was lacking, he had the Golden Core World.
When he began practicing boxing, his consciousness naturally split off a strand and gathered it into a golden core upon his spirit platform. Within the Golden Core World, his clear, illusory projection appeared once again.
The projection could clearly see the state of the spiritual energy flowing through his body as his fist movements unfolded. By then using intention to draw and guide the flow of spiritual energy, he could avoid most wasted effort.
After three sets of fist techniques, the spiritual energy had already completed one circuit through his main spiritual meridians.
But Yang Wenqing did not stop to rest. While the spiritual energy in his body had not yet fully calmed, he once again assumed the opening stance.
With the assistance of the Golden Core World, he could clearly see every subtle expansion and strengthening of his spiritual meridians as spiritual energy circulated through them. He could also keenly detect the tiny injuries that might arise at certain nodes from the scouring of spiritual energy.
While circulating spiritual energy, he mobilized a portion of the refined spiritual energy to prioritize nourishing and repairing the damaged spiritual meridians, making the cultivation process almost free of hidden dangers.
The second great heavenly cycle…
The third great heavenly cycle…
His mind was free of distractions, completely immersed in this slow yet tangibly perceptible process of growing stronger. The sensation of qi in his body became increasingly obvious as the heavenly cycles circulated, and the rotation of the sea of qi in his lower dantian grew steadier and more powerful.
When the fifth great heavenly cycle was completed, Yang Wenqing slowly withdrew his stance. After exhaling a long breath carrying a trace of turbid air, he raised his head and looked at the sky. By now, the sky had gone completely dark, and bright lamplight shone from many of the dormitory building’s windows.
The courtyard had long since emptied, leaving only the rustling sound of the evening wind brushing through the banyan leaves.
“Hm?”
Yang Wenqing lowered his head. He had already stopped circulating his art, yet a faint strand of spiritual energy was still flowing through the spiritual meridians in his body. According to the records of the Qi-Guiding Art, this was the state before breaking through to the Qi Refining stage.
Forcibly suppressing the joy in his heart, Yang Wenqing once again used the fist technique to draw the spiritual energy in his body through one great heavenly cycle, but there was no change at all.
He tried again, yet it was still the same.
Smack.
When he instinctively began circulating the spiritual energy in his sea of qi for the third time, Yang Wenqing slapped himself hard across the face. The burning pain in his cheek brought him back to his senses. He stood rooted in place for more than ten seconds, then exhaled, looked toward the crescent moon in the sky, and shook his head.
“You have a broader path ahead of you. There’s no need to rush for a single moment. If you end up causing permanent damage to your spiritual meridians, the loss won’t be worth the gain.”
Yang Wenqing seemed to be persuading himself. After lingering in place for a little while longer, he headed toward the dormitory building. By now, only a few windows in the dormitory building still had lights on.
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