Chapter 24 - 24: Yin-Yang
Within Wei Wuyin’s body, the Hearts of Qi were like starving, ravenous wolves seeking a delicious meal. They rapidly rotated like category five hurricanes, targeting the walnut-sized Yin-Yang God Sphere.
He felt a rising sense of panic and danger in his heart as this took place, completely oblivious as to why or how this was occurring. Usually, a Heart of Qi was a passive entity unless actively given a command by the cultivator. He had never experienced something like today, where it seemed sentient and felt desire. That raging hunger made even his abdomen sting in pain.
He clutched his abdomen. The walnut-sized object had been drawn into his dantian. He hurriedly calmed himself down, realizing that panicking would only exacerbate the issue and leave him helpless.
With a thud, he returned to his cultivation stance, his eyes closed and his hands forming handseals non-stop. He utilized several spiritual spells to better connect with the spirit within his Hearts of Qi and sent his spiritual sense inward.
When his spiritual sense arrived, the scene toppled his belief in cultivation. In fact, it taught him an exceptional lesson. When an abnormal aspect of cultivation is entered into any pre-assumed fact about cultivation, absolutely anything, ANYTHING could happen.
He had felt this when his metal energy in his body attracted the violet lightning energy.
Right now, both of his Hearts of Qi were outright devouring the walnut-sized Yin-Yang God Sphere like it was a marshmallow. They pulled it apart into two directions, deforming its spherical shape, and extracting and segregating the yin and yang energy into itself.
When he received this sphere, the elf man had mentioned using this to reach the Sixth Phase had a 99% mortality rate. He didn’t know why, but recalling the book he read, it did detail the vast danger of absorbing unrefined yin, yang, or yin-yang energies, especially pure ones.
The yin and yang energy within people’s bodies were naturally refined during fetal growth and could be easily used for cultivation. However, the purer it is, the more dangerous its influences on one’s Heart of Qi and body.
He had read once that a man had absorbed pure yin energy and directly turned impotent, grew breasts, and lost his masculine energy. He was barely a man. He had also heard of women absorbing pure yang, but instead of changing gender, the changes caused all sorts of unpredictable health issues, some even resulting in death.
There were speculations and rumors that they literally exhausted themselves to death in self-lust.
However, pure yin-yang energy was far more deadly.
That being said, his Hearts of Qi looked as if they just said fuck it, and were devouring the energy like it was breakfast. Not only was it devoured, they were refining this exceptionally pure yin-yang energy.
"Am I going to die?" As he thought of that, he subconsciously looked at his karmic tattoo, it still read 171.1. Nothing had changed.
"So the heavens can’t assist if you cause the issue yourself?!" He felt like flipping the world, but he forced himself to remain calm.
The energy was currently being split and refined into his Hearts of Qi which will definitely influence his body in some way, he just had to be prepared. For now, he decided to pay rapt attention to the Hearts of Qi.
Time went on.
A minute.
An hour.
When it reached three hours, Xing Fu arrived and saw Wei Wuyin silently cultivating. She pondered whether to disturb him, but decided against it. When she left, Wei Wuyin’s eyes opened and looked in her direction. The whites of his eyes were like a battlefield as jet black and bright white energy intermingled continuously.
He wanted to speak but couldn’t. His entire body was filled with this energy that restrained even his movement. At first, he thought the walnut-sized sphere wouldn’t have a vast quantity of energy within, but oh boy was he wrong.
His Hearts of Qi was still trying to devour the walnut-sized sphere, only getting it down by about ten percent. It was like that walnut contained an ocean’s worth of energy within. He didn’t even understand how!
He had never had his Hearts of Qi rotate so fast before. They were truly like violent hurricanes intent on sending the world awry!
That being said, he felt enlightened. He had never had the opportunity to examine such pure yin and yang energies before, both unrefined and refined. It deepened his knowledge into those two energy types by a fair amount. Not to mention, he felt like he had grasped something.
That adhesive force that was generated to combine both energies would be split apart, some of it would be dispersed, while some would linger, but none of it was absorbed. He used his spiritual sense to observe the lingering portions of this force. It felt highly familiar, but also unknown.
It was an odd feeling, like meeting the mother who birthed you after not seeing her for twenty years. It was beyond strange. In fact, he didn’t know if his description was accurate, but it was the closest emotion he felt when he observed it.
Hours continued to slip away, and his body remained motionless. At this point, his entire body felt like it was going to fall apart. The energies had done a number on his body, ripping his muscle fibers, pressuring his bones, and erupting within his blood. It truly felt like his body had become a battlefield.
If it wasn’t for his Life Meadow Wood Qi that had enhanced his body’s flexibility and regenerative abilities, he would’ve long since collapsed, maybe exploded.
"I-I think I’ve figured it out!" After what felt like an eternity, he finally realized what that adhesive force was. It was an unrefined qi, termed by him as World Qi. This was a common qi. In fact, it was so common that it was everywhere. It was the metaphysical qi produced by the world itself.
It was said that cultivation had been born from studying the world, taking the world as a teacher, and slowly but surely, cultivation was birthed.
World Qi was a force that the world generated. One could feel it when they breathed, when they moved, when they jumped up and it pushed them down.
The scholars would call that gravity, a unique force of the world produced by its own heart. It was theorized in some writings that the world’s core was its Heart of Qi. That the layers and layers of earth were its muscles, and the sky was its skin. This was only an assumption, but it left a profound mark on Wei Wuyin when he heard it.
Because it felt like it said that the world was alive. If so, if the stars outside were celestial bodies, then wouldn’t their world be one as well? If that’s the case, it was possible for their stories to be epic and truly be gods!
It was this unique force that acted as an adhesive to the yin and yang energies to give birth to yin-yang energy. However, grasping this force was profoundly difficult, unless one knew what they were looking for.
"In the various cultivation guides and methods I’ve read, they stated that the Sixth Phase was a phase where no outside instruction held any benefit. Now I understand! Most people would find describing this world qi exceptionally difficult!" He deduced and concluded in his mind, and he felt even more certain.
If he was to instruct his students, he would tell them what he understood, "You need to use the world to help you merge the yin and yang energy." Then, they would ask: "but how do you do that?"
This was something each person had to figure out on their own. They had to find a unique way to connect and use the world qi in the environment. While two people may use similar or the exact same methods, their description of what to do may be wildly different. After all, Wei Wuyin was drawing from his personal knowledge and experiences.
He took a deep breath, and urged his Hearts of Qi to focus. They started to slow down, the yin and yang energies had been split apart and refined, but it was too much to contain, and it was too pure. While the Hearts of Qi acted like hungry beasts, they had no way to get their food. That was why the energies rampaged throughout his body.
He needed that adhesive force to combine these renegades. He also needed it to reduce its surface area! While his Hearts of Qi devoured the yin and yang energy, the world qi was decidedly ignored as if irrelevant. In fact, when he tried to absorb the last bits of it, the Hearts of Qi weren’t willing, actively rejecting it.
He had never experienced a direct refusal to follow orders before by his Hearts of Qi. It truly felt that his Hearts of Qi were sentient. This stunned him immediately. Fortunately, he soon realized it had to do with the force itself. They didn’t want to accept it. It could be because it was refined by the elf man or another reason.
His Hearts of Qi started to receive his intentions and seemed to share his comprehension. They started to rotate slowly, trying to connect with the world. After all, the spirit had a faint connection to both the world and the soul. It was like a thin bridge or a tightrope that required absolute expertise to cross.
It was now that Wei Wuyin realized that the connection to the world via the spirit was the clue and gateway to the Sixth Stage of Qi Condensation, False Reality Phase!
The world qi in the air became apparent to him. When it did, he now realized why those in the sixth phase were capable of creation and why he couldn’t interact with the world with his elemental qi before. Without that worldly force, all metaphysical qi wouldn’t be a part of the world.
It seemed so simple when discovered, but a conundrum of epic portions when unknown.
The world qi was absorbed, refined and converted by his Hearts of Qi into its own unique worldly force. When both Hearts of Qi birthed this force, the wild and rampant refined yin and yang energies were drawn to it like moths to a flame. In a blink, they entered both hearts and condensed into a mist at the center.
The mist was translucent like glass, but still visible, also like glass.
This was Yin-Yang Qi.
At the moment it was formed, he collapsed with his arms and legs spread about haphazardly. He took several deep, inconceivably heavy breaths. A wave of exhaustion entered his mind.
"Oh!" He immediately rose up, inspecting his body with his spiritual sense. His eyes widened with excitement! The pure yang energy contained a vast vitality that promoted his healing factor, and the wood energy flowing through his body seemed invigorated by the pure yin and yang energy.
He lifted up his palm and produced a trace of non-elemental qi, gave it the form of a cube, and instilled a sense of vitality within. It looked ethereal, but present. Now, he drew upon the mist within his Hearts of Qi, the yin-yang qi, and infused it into the cube.
It solidified, gained a shadow from the light, and interacted with the world normally. He even felt it tremble from the faint, but consistent seismic activity of the ground when he placed it on the floor. This was something that wasn’t possible before.
He had just created an actual cubical construct with mass and matter!
While it hadn’t gained permanence, he could maintain its shape, form, and weight with just the infusion of his qi. When he stopped sending in qi, it slowly started to shift. It first lost its solidness and it became like a drawn object in a painting. It didn’t affect the world unless the creator wanted.
Then, it lost its vitality, and started to lose its sense of realism and life. Its opacity lowered, making it more translucent. Then, it lost its form, and turned into a mass of unrecognizable qi.
"Incredible!" He had done it. Using a lucky chance deemed 0.1 on the karmic luck scale, he entered the world of gods! A grin of utmost excitement formed on his lips.
"You finally finished cultivating?" He heard a voice nearby. Xing Fu was dressed in her core disciple outfit, obviously having just returned from her usual daily activities. For some reason, she seemed far more attractive than normal.
His eyes flashed as arousal and lust borne from his success emerged in his heart. With a step, he had already reached Xing Fu and lifted her up in a bridal carry. With her cultivation base, she could barely react before being picked up and held close. She cried softly in surprise.
"You?!" She had questions, but the way Wei Wuyin looked at her caused her to blush and become embarrassed. She had only recently learned the aspects that were relations between men and women, but that look of his had already been ingrained into her mind.
She stayed silent as Wei Wuyin laughed, swiftly carrying her into his room.