That very night, Lin Donglai proceeded according to the Fetal Breath Qi-Drawing Art, refining his essence blood and condensing the fetal breath.
Nine drops of essence blood were required to refine essence into qi and condense a single wisp of fetal breath. With this fetal breath, one could draw the spiritual qi of the outside world into the body and into the middle dantian.
The earlier tendon-changing and marrow-cleansing stages had all been preparation for this step, making the body receptive to spiritual qi and ensuring the fetal breath would not be tainted by turbid, acquired qi.
The place where the fetal breath was transformed was the middle dantian.
The essence blood had to first descend into the lower dantian, then travel upward from there.
Using the Chong and Ren meridians as bridges, and the true fire of the Mingmen as the driving force, the acquired essence blood stored in the lower dantian would be converted into innate fetal breath.
This process was also known as transporting through the Three Passes: the essence blood traveled from the Huiyin to the Mingmen, where the yang fire of the Mingmen ignited the acquired essence blood like oil catching flame, transforming it into innate essence qi. It then passed through the Jiaji, converted into innate fetal breath, and entered the Shanzhong, where one visualized the fetal breath as a vortex of qi, continuously drawing in and absorbing the spiritual qi of the outside world into the body.
The spiritual qi entering the body followed the same path: it first arrived at the sea of qi in the lower dantian, then was refined through the Three Passes, entered the vortex of qi in the middle dantian, and merged with the fetal breath.
Among ordinary mortals, even those who achieved martial success and reached the Innate realm—equivalent to the Fetal Breath stage—only transformed acquired true qi into innate true qi in the lower dantian. Their cultivation never touched the middle dantian.
After all, cultivating the middle dantian was rather dangerous. Without having undergone the body-transformation of the tendon-changing and marrow-cleansing stance work, and without a spirit root to soothe the violent spiritual qi, one could very easily suffer qi deviation.
However, for cultivators, it was not as though only the middle dantian was cultivated.
The middle dantian contained the vortex of qi and was the dantian for refining spiritual qi; the lower dantian was the dantian for storing spiritual power.
For now, at least, in the Fetal Breath Qi-Drawing Art, the circuit ran between these two dantians, through the meridians including the Three Passes—one full loop being called a "full circulation" (zhoutian).
One who could complete the cultivation of a single full circulation would reach the first layer of Qi Refining.
This method was perfectly suited for laying a foundation.
Afterward, one could select other cultivation arts and alter the routes of circulation.
At first, Lin Donglai was cautious and careful, but the refinement of his essence blood went exceptionally smoothly. With inner vision and the inner landscape to assist him, he could clearly see the routes of circulation.
He sought only stability—even if the transportation was a bit slow, as long as he could pass smoothly through the Three Passes and enter the Shanzhong, it was enough.
As for visualizing the qi vortex, the only somewhat difficult part, Lin Donglai completed it in just half a shichen.
The moment the vortex formed, Lin Donglai felt a faint breeze. Without needing to draw in spiritual qi from the outside, a stream of gentle, mild, and exceptionally pure pale-green spiritual qi transported itself over from the spirit-root dao seed.
Not only that! The dao seed had already taken on Lin Donglai's form, and shortly after Lin Donglai formed the qi vortex, it sprouted a third rootlet, thin as a mosquito's leg, which burrowed into the vortex of its own accord.
This rootlet then, just as if Lin Donglai were actively cultivating the qi-drawing technique, generated a ceaseless force of absorption and drawing, extracting spiritual qi from the void and refining it.
Through his inner vision, Lin Donglai saw multicolored motes of spiritual light being drawn toward this rootlet. After being filtered through it, only pale-green wood-element spiritual qi remained, which was fed back to Lin Donglai.
This spiritual qi was then absorbed by the qi vortex, circulated through the Three Passes, and converted into a wisp of exceptionally pure wood-element spiritual power.
After running through eight consecutive full circulations, Lin Donglai felt extraordinarily fatigued. Maintaining inner vision of the inner landscape the entire time consumed a great deal of mental energy, so he actively stopped cultivating.
"No wonder the academy instructors say that in the early stage of Qi Refining, one can cultivate at most one shichen per day; in the middle stage, only two shichen; and only in the late stage of Qi Refining, with a spiritual sense, can one cultivate continuously for four shichen."
After actively ceasing his cultivation, Lin Donglai briefly sensed his condition and discovered that the rootlet anchored in the vortex-of-qi seed was still actively drawing qi into the body, only somewhat slowly—at about one-third of Lin Donglai's normal speed combined with his spirit root's synergy.
But when Lin Donglai cultivated actively, it consumed mental energy, whereas this rootlet cultivated automatically at all times without draining his mind.
The other two rootlets continued breathing and circulating according to the respiration method of the Origin-Nurturing Breathing Art, undisturbed by this new rootlet.
Lin Donglai wondered to himself: "Could these two rootlets also be converted to operate on the qi-drawing technique?"
The dao seed trembled slightly and conveyed a thought: It yearned for a vortex of qi!
Fine—so a qi-drawing rootlet must occupy a qi vortex in order to function?
Besides, Lin Donglai needed more essence blood to refine into more innate fetal breath.
To open up his "fertile fields," he needed to use innate fetal breath to refine the essence qi of the five elements, so the Origin-Nurturing Breathing Art was still quite useful.
For now, he abandoned the idea of converting the dao seed's other rootlets to the qi-drawing technique's effects.
He then checked whether there were any changes in the spiritual qi around him. If the changes were too obvious, he would need to stop this automatic cultivation.
Fortunately, this Jianmu dao seed naturally formed its own pocket of void. Although its roots were anchored in the qi vortex of the Shanzhong to draw in spiritual qi, they did not rely on Lin Donglai's own spirit-root talent to absorb qi from his surroundings; instead, they drew in scattered spiritual qi from the void itself. This involved spatial changes, so from the outside, no one could tell that Lin Donglai was cultivating continuously.
Because in essence, it was not Lin Donglai running the cultivation art—it was the Jianmu dao seed.
However, the Jianmu rootlet only converted wood-element spiritual qi and stored it in the middle dantian.
Circulating that qi through the full circulation to convert it into spiritual power and store it in the sea of qi in the lower dantian still required Lin Donglai to actively transport it.
Unless Lin Donglai also created a qi vortex in his lower dantian, with the two vortices driving each other, using the meridians as bridges to pass through the Three Passes in a cycle of conversion.
But that was not something achievable by mere imagination. For now, it was better to let the Jianmu rootlet accumulate qi. That way, when cultivating, he would not need to concern himself with the step of drawing qi into the body—he would only need to find a way to transport the spiritual qi through the Three Passes and convert it into spiritual power. The efficiency would actually be higher.
As soon as the sky brightened, Lin Donglai went to register with Elder Qin. With qi successfully drawn into his body, he had become a first-layer Qi Refining cultivator and was finally an outer-sect disciple—no longer needing to worry about failing a second hundred-day assessment and being demoted to a menial servant.
Elder Qin's expression was not particularly warm. After all, this amount of time hardly qualified him as a genius. Still, Lin Donglai was somewhat familiar to him—from practicing his stances barefoot and baring himself to sunbathe, saying things about "comprehending nature," he had gained a bit of notoriety on Immortal Seedling Peak.
He had Lin Donglai release a spell taught in the academy before his eyes—the Cleaning Spell. This spell was extremely simple, the most basic application of spiritual power.
Seeing Lin Donglai successfully cast it, Elder Qin nodded slightly and imprinted the first layer of Qi Refining onto Lin Donglai's outer-sect disciple token.
Then he admonished: "Cultivating with your five lower-grade spirit roots will not be easy. Although you have a lower-grade Jia-Wood body, which slightly augments your wood spirit root, it has not reached the middle-grade level after all."
"When you arrive at Spirit Rhinoceros Peak, learn a craft well and things will be easier for you in the future. As for selecting a cultivation art, this old man suggests you study the Lesser Five Elements Qi-Gathering Art—specifically, its Wood Element Qi-Gathering method. Once you reach the fourth layer of Qi Refining, you can then cultivate the other four elements in tandem, gathering qi in a cycle according to the way the five elements generate wood."
"One more thing. Immortal Seedling Peak is full of male disciples. Spirit Rhinoceros Peak has quite a few female disciples as well, but when female disciples enter the sect, they all train on Pure Maiden Peak. You must absolutely not strip naked and lie on that great bluestone to sunbathe anymore. Such indecency—it is my face you would be shaming."