Only after walking until the village was no longer in sight did Li Qiuchen stop. He carefully checked himself from head to toe, and only after confirming there was nothing suspicious on him did he finally relax completely.
He found a shady, clean spot, sat down cross-legged, entered meditation, and closed his eyes, beginning to recall the words in the Yellow Huai Treatise.
First was the introduction to the “Qi Refining realm.”
The Qi Refining realm could roughly be divided into three stages.
The first was sensing the spiritual qi of heaven and earth, then drawing qi into the body—this was the origin of the term “Qi Refining.”
The second was using spiritual qi to open the meridians and strengthen the physical body.
The last was tempering the spirit and strengthening divine sense, thereby allowing one to cast spells.
Then doesn’t that mean I’m already in the late stage of Qi Refining?
Of course it was not that simple.
The moment he first saw the Yellow Huai Treatise, Li Qiuchen realized that the contents of this little booklet were far from comprehensive.
It could not be considered a textbook; at most, it was an instruction manual.
It only told you how to cultivate, not why you cultivated.
The Li family’s ancestor, Li Jingyun, had written in detail about his many years of cultivation, his mental journey, and his understanding and knowledge of the Great Dao.
Jingyunzi was equivalent to the general outline.
The Yellow Huai Treatise, on the other hand, was a single chapter under that general outline.
One was the Dao; the other was technique.
What Li Qiuchen lacked most right now was precisely “technique,” but in his heart, he still looked down somewhat on the Yellow Huai Treatise.
It was far too lopsided.
As for the Qi Drawing Art within it, the first half seemed to him to be nothing but empty, fanciful nonsense.
Things like finding a yellow huai tree over three hundred years old, hugging and rubbing against it every day without fail, boiling its bark and leaves into medicinal decoctions to drink, shaving its branches into wooden needles and inserting them into one’s own acupoints…
The ultimate goal was to interlink the vital energy of that yellow huai tree with oneself.
Why make it so complicated? How could the Medicine Master’s blessing be such an inconvenient thing?
Li Qiuchen felt he could skip this step entirely.
The truly useful part was the final section.
Ordinary cultivators absorbed the spiritual qi of heaven and earth and guided it into their qi sea, which was to say, their dantian.
But what Medicine Master believers cultivated was not the dantian, but the spine, also called the Dragon Court.
Precisely because of this, the cultivation of Medicine Master believers was extremely deceptive. If others observed Medicine Master believers using the methods for observing ordinary cultivators, it was very difficult to distinguish their true strength.
In the Li family’s cultivation method, the Qi Refining realm was divided into twelve levels, also called the Twelve Towers of the Qi Sea.
But as for what exactly these Twelve Towers were, the book did not say, so much so that even now Li Qiuchen still could not figure out his own cultivation level.
The Yellow Huai Treatise likewise described the cultivation stages of Medicine Master believers in the Qi Refining realm, subdividing the early, middle, and late stages into thirty-three layers, also called the Thirty-Three Heavens, corresponding respectively to the thirty-three vertebrae of the human body. As long as one cultivated the entire spine once through, one could reach the great perfection of the Qi Refining realm.
But doesn’t the spine only have twenty-four vertebrae?
Have the human bodies in this world mutated? Or did I learn biology wrong?
Maybe I should go back and find a corpse to dissect and take a careful look.
For the time being, Li Qiuchen set aside this doubt and continued recalling the contents of the book.
The “Soul-Tethering Art” was a very sinister spell. First, one had to find a way to stimulate the growth of “flesh buds” from within one’s own body. Then, supplemented with other medicines, these would be made into pills or medicinal powder and fed to the subject.
In this way, it was equivalent to planting a part of the caster’s body inside the subject. Then, by using the power of the Medicine Master’s blessing, the caster could influence the subject’s actions and thoughts.
The simplest and most straightforward method was this: when he wanted you to do something, he gave you a little sweetness; when he did not want you to do something, he gave you a little bitterness.
Cultivating together with the old Daoist made one’s whole body feel comfortable.
Going down to the fields to do farmwork made one’s whole body feel miserable.
After ordinary people were trained back and forth a few times, they would become perfectly obedient.
Li Qiuchen was even more familiar with the “Human Elixir Formula.”
Seeds cultivated in advance were driven into the other person’s body, where they would frenziedly seize that person’s flesh and blood, grow out from the victim’s corpse, and ultimately absorb the victim’s life completely, nurturing a fruit brimming with vitality.
The “spiritual root” inside Yingcao’s body back then, and the great tree by the lake that Song Laosan had transformed into, both came from this.
Yingcao had been fed all sorts of medicinal decoctions by Granduncle since childhood, while he and Hongyang—one possessing a family-inherited cultivation method, the other said to have some dragon bloodline—had luckily escaped the fate of being dosed with medicine.
From Granduncle’s point of view, the more spiritual roots there were, the better.
Unfortunately, he had not been the true person in charge of Songlin Village.
Perhaps in the old peach tree’s eyes, Li Qiuchen and Hongyang counted as specially prepared side dishes of different flavors.
Only by eating everything could one achieve balanced nutrition.
Li Qiuchen did not go searching for any yellow huai tree. He picked a thousand-year-old ancient pine for himself and sat beneath it, beginning to cultivate the Qi Drawing Art of the Yellow Huai Treatise.
After one full great circulation was completed, he only felt warmth spreading through his back, as though a considerable amount of strength had appeared out of nowhere.
Opening his inner sight, he saw that the life energy within his body, which he had previously been unable to use effectively, had already gathered into the spine in his back, condensing into fine strands of life essence. Both his perception and his blood qi had clearly improved.
Li Qiuchen opened his eyes and discovered that pine needles had already fallen all over his body.
This session of meditative cultivation had actually lasted an entire day and night, yet he had been completely unaware of the passage of time.
The thousand-year-old ancient pine behind him seemed to have lost quite a bit of vitality. Though it was clearly summer, large numbers of pine needles had fallen, and even some tender branches showed signs of withering.
The cultivation method in the Yellow Huai Treatise was far too domineering. It was outright plundering and looting, without the slightest regard for reason. He vaguely felt that if he cultivated here for at most a week, he could exhaust all the vitality of this thousand-year-old ancient pine.
Was there any cultivation method more efficient than this?
There was, friend. There was.
A long, melodious crane cry sounded from the sky. The white crane flapped its wings and descended gracefully.
“You found something?”
“Gah!”
The white crane gave a heavy gah.
It seemed this was not as simple as having found something. The problem was very serious.
These past few days, while Li Qiuchen had been giving technical guidance in the village, he had not let the white crane remain idle either.
Its traveling speed was quite fast; in one day and night, it could fly several hundred li. Li Qiuchen had sent it to scout the surrounding villages and see whether there were signs of other Medicine Master believers’ activity.
There were, and many of them.
As the saying went, when a whale falls, all things are born.
Before its death, the old peach tree had thrown out who knew how many root fragments, fishing out all the Medicine Master believers within several hundred li.
The outward appearance of these Medicine Master believers was extremely deceptive.
After all, the pursuit of longevity was something everyone yearned for.
You could hardly say that just because I planted some vegetables in my own garden and prescribed myself a medicinal formula, I was a Medicine Master believer, could you?
Kaoshan Tun, Jiyang Dian, Zhuyaozi Gou, Sandao Ling…
Over the following month, guided by the white crane, Li Qiuchen quietly visited all the villages and towns within a hundred-li radius, large and small.
Eighty percent of them had already been occupied by Medicine Master believers.