When most of the children showed little interest in the Primordial One-Qi Art, Wang Jin continued his impassioned pitch.
“The Primordial One-Qi Art has many advantages. Its true qi flows smoothly, and its circulation method is simple. Once you become sufficiently familiar with the cultivation art, you can even cultivate without sitting in the lotus position. Whether you’re standing, walking, or even lying down, you can absorb spiritual qi.”
‘Lying down...? That sounds nice.’
“Then can we cultivate even while sleeping?”
Someone asked.
“Well... theoretically, I suppose there’s no reason you couldn’t. In any case, the important thing is that the Primordial One-Qi Art has no drawbacks aside from its cultivation speed. And in truth, even that isn’t much of a problem.”
Wang Jin raised the book and added,
“If you work as a spirit-plant cultivator, achieve good results, and become an inner disciple, you’ll be granted a superior cultivation art. When that happens, you won’t need to disperse your Primordial True Qi. Primordial True Qi is spiritual power that does not lean toward any particular attribute, so most of it can be converted into the spiritual power of your new cultivation art. In any case, the Verdant Wood Vitality-Nourishing Art, Crimson Flame Art, Sovereign Earth Art, Metal Edge Art, and Mystic Water Art are all merely Tier 1 cultivation arts. If you become an inner disciple, you’ll learn a better cultivation art anyway. So wouldn’t it also be a good choice to first learn the Primordial One-Qi Art and then distinguish yourself in the field of spirit plants?”
Wang Jin swept a hand over the six piles on the table.
“That concludes the explanation. Each of you may take one copy of whichever cultivation manual you want.”
Perhaps Steward Wang Jin’s sales pitch had worked, because more than half the children chose the Primordial One-Qi Art.
‘Learn the Primordial One-Qi Art, distinguish myself as a spirit-plant cultivator, and become an inner disciple? If becoming an inner disciple were really that easy, why would only a few ever manage it...? But I never wanted to become an inner disciple in the first place, so it doesn’t matter.’
‘The Primordial One-Qi Art is the best choice for me. If I want to cultivate my own spirit field and grow spirit plants by myself later, I need to be able to use techniques of multiple attributes.’
After thinking for a moment, Lee Hyun also chose the Primordial One-Qi Art.
Some of the more suspicious or thoughtful children chose one of the other five cultivation arts instead.
Each child received a book, sat down, and briefly looked through its contents. Then one child asked,
“Steward, what is this Primordial Body in the latter half of the Primordial One-Qi Art?”
‘Primordial Body?’
Lee Hyun also flipped to the latter part of the book and found a cultivation method described there.
“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s useless.”
“Why is that? From the looks of it, it tempers the entire body. Isn’t it a body-refining art? I heard that cultivators become stronger the more evenly they develop their essence, qi and spirit.”
“The Primordial Body is not an ordinary body-refining art. Most body-refining arts rely on external aids. You might soak yourself in a special bath prepared with a demon beast’s essence blood to temper your skin, or require spirit treasures or pills to temper your bones, muscles, and internal organs.”
The children listened quietly.
“Some cultivation arts temper the body inside special formations, while others require you to endure the heat in places where earth fire emerges.”
“Then what makes the Primordial Body different?”
“To begin with, the Primordial Body does not rely on any special external resources for its training.”
Another quiet stir rose at Wang Jin’s answer. To impoverished outer disciple candidates, a cultivation art that required no expensive resources sounded like the best possible option.
“It sounds good when you put it that way. But if there really were a way to become stronger for free, why would the world’s body refiners risk their lives to obtain resources?”
Wang Jin tapped the cover of the Primordial One-Qi Art with a finger.
“The method of creating a Primordial Body is simple. Instead of accumulating spiritual power around the dantian, you turn the entire body into a dantian.”
Wang Shao tilted his head.
“Wouldn’t making the entire body into a dantian be a good thing? It sounds like you could hold far more spiritual power.”
“Yes. If you only consider the advantages, that’s true. Since spiritual power would constantly flow throughout the entire body, the skin, muscles, bones, and internal organs would be continuously bathed in it. If you actually succeeded, your physical body would become stronger without any separate body-refining art. You could also contain vastly more spiritual power than other cultivators at the same realm. In truth, strengthening the physical body is merely a side effect. At its core, it is closer to a unique method of cultivating spiritual power.”
He looked over the children for a moment, then pointed to a tall boy in the front row.
“You. What do you think the dantian is?”
The boy looked flustered by the sudden question.
“An organ below the navel... that stores spiritual power?”
“Wrong.”
Wang Jin spoke decisively.
“Anyone who has killed a person and cut open their abdomen would know that there is no separate organ called a dantian inside the human body.”
Several children went pale.
“Meridians physically exist. But the dantian is merely a region designated by a cultivation art for storing spiritual power. Following the guidance of the cultivation art, you define a particular area below the navel and repeatedly gather refined spiritual power there, gradually forming it into a dantian.”
Wang Jin pointed at his own lower abdomen.
“The reason we use the center of the body is simple. It makes it convenient to send spiritual power to the limbs, the head, or any of the internal organs.”
“But accumulating spiritual power throughout the entire body isn’t impossible, is it?”
The boy asked cautiously.
“I never said it was impossible. I said it was useless.”
Wang Jin raised one finger.
“The hardest thing on the path of cultivation is not drawing in spiritual qi. It is gathering the spiritual qi you have drawn in at one place, compressing it, and transforming it into a higher-quality power. When a Qi Refining cultivator advances to Foundation Establishment, they must compress their diffuse, gaseous spiritual power and transform it into liquid true essence. Most cultivators spend their entire lives trying and still fail, even though they only need to condense the spiritual power contained within a space the size of a dantian.”
His finger swept toward all the candidates this time.
“And you want to make your entire body into a dantian? How great do you think the difference in volume is between a dantian and the entire body? It varies by cultivation art, but usually it would be around a hundred times. Even compared to cultivation arts that create especially large dantians, it would still be fifty times.”
The hall fell silent.
“Do you think the Seniors of past ages lacked wisdom and chose to cultivate within the narrow confines of a dantian for no reason? They found the most efficient method of achieving a qualitative transformation with limited spiritual qi and resources.”
Wang Jin opened the book to the section describing the Primordial Body.
“This method of using the entire body as a dantian was likely created a very long time ago. Perhaps it originated in antiquity, when heaven-and-earth spiritual qi was far denser than it is now, or perhaps it is a cultivation method usable only in a place like the immortal realm, where spiritual qi floods into the body merely from breathing.”
A sharp-eyed boy sitting toward the back raised his hand.
“Wouldn’t it be possible for a wealthy cultivation clan or great sect? If they poured in all kinds of pills and spirit stones, it seems like they could turn the entire body into a dantian.”
“Theoretically, perhaps. But what faction would ever do such a thing?”
He gave a dry laugh.
“Suppose you were the master of a sect. Would you raise a hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators, or a single Foundation Establishment cultivator whose entire body served as a dantian?”
The children fell completely silent.
“Foundation Establishment is not the end. What about Golden Core? Nascent Soul? Common sense tells you that the return is far too small for the resources invested. Once someone crosses a major realm, their combat power rises to an entirely different level. No matter how small the dantian of an early Foundation Establishment cultivator might be, do you really think a Qi Refining Stage 10 cultivator who made his entire body into a dantian could defeat him...?”
Wang Jin fell into thought for a moment.
“Hmm... now that I think about it, he might be able to. In any case, even if he could, it certainly wouldn’t be easy. And there’s an even bigger problem!”
Wang Jin spoke as though driving in the final nail.
“How many Foundation Establishment Pills would he have to swallow to break through to Foundation Establishment? Fifty? A hundred? Absurd. Ordinary late-stage Qi Refining cultivators risk their lives on missions just to obtain a single Foundation Establishment Pill.”
Wang Jin clicked his tongue.
“Even though a Qi Refining cultivator lives longer than a mortal, their lifespan is only around a hundred to a hundred and fifty years. In practice, once they pass eighty, their vitality declines, and the odds of dying while attempting Foundation Establishment rise sharply. Most Qi Refining cultivators fail to break through to Foundation Establishment because they cannot properly condense even the spiritual power accumulated in the small dantian beneath the navel within a hundred years. So how could anyone condense the spiritual power accumulated throughout the entire body?”
He tossed the book onto the table.
“There’s no harm in reading it. It may even help you study the principles of cultivation. But if you actually try to follow this cultivation method yourself, you will feel the hopelessness of filling an endless sea alone.”
Once Wang Jin’s long speech ended, the children lost interest in the Primordial Body.
Lee Hyun, however, became even more intrigued!
‘I could create a Primordial Body, couldn’t I? Time is the one thing I have to spare, and there’s no reason I need to break through to Foundation Establishment quickly anyway. I’m not trying to become strong as fast as possible.’
‘In the xianxia novels I read in my past life, no matter how high your realm was, there were always plenty of strong guys around who would pick a fight with you... In the cultivation world, the lower your apparent realm, the safer you are. It makes your opponent let down their guard! If that’s the case, maybe learning the Primordial Body and becoming the strongest within the same realm would be better...’
Lee Hyun thought the Primordial Body suited his disposition extremely well. Still, he had no intention of learning it immediately. At the early stage of Qi Refining, if his realm did not advance at roughly the same pace as everyone else’s, the sect might find it strange, and it could also make it difficult for him to carry out spirit-plant work.
‘I’ll learn the Primordial One-Qi Art to a reasonable level, learn about spirit plants, then run away from Qinghe Valley before anyone notices that I don’t age. After that, it won’t be too late to dig a tunnel, hide away, and create a Primordial Body.’
...
After the lesson ended and they returned to their quarters, Wang Shao saw the Primordial One-Qi Art in Lee Hyun’s hand and asked,
“Did you really choose that?”
“Yeah.”
“Brother, I hate to say this, but... there’s no way producing results as a spirit-plant cultivator will make you an inner disciple. The cultivation world is extremely treacherous and full of schemes. This has to be a trap Wang Jin is steering us into!”
“How dare you badmouth Steward Wang when you’re just a newcomer? Have you lost your mind?”
At Lee Hyun’s words, Wang Shao’s expression froze.
“Haha, I’m joking. You say the cultivation world is treacherous, but don’t you trust me, someone you’ve barely known for very long, a little too easily? You should always watch what you say.”
“You scared me! I certainly was careless. But I have a good eye for people. From the very beginning, I thought you were someone I could trust, Brother.”
“What did you choose?”
“I chose the Metal Edge Art. If you’re going to be a cultivator, shouldn’t you become a sword cultivator with the greatest combat power? And if you want to be a sword cultivator, naturally you should learn a Metal-attribute cultivation art. How long would it take to reach a high realm through spirit-plant work?”
“Didn’t they say the Metal Edge Art harms the meridians?”
“They said it would be fine as long as I keep taking medicinal ingredients.”
“That’ll cost a lot of spirit stones.”
“If I become a sword cultivator and earn merit in battle, won’t the sect provide all the pills and medicinal ingredients I need?”
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
“No...”
“Neither have I. Honestly, I’m not confident I can fight. Even killing an animal is hard enough, so how much harder would it be to fight another cultivator? I’m going to learn spirit-plant work.”
After chatting for a while, Wang Shao climbed onto his bed and opened the Metal Edge Art. After reading through the cultivation art’s mnemonic formula a few times, he immediately sat in the lotus position.
Lee Hyun also sat on his own bed and opened the Primordial One-Qi Art.
Compared to the Qinghe Qi-Drawing Art, the Primordial One-Qi Art contained far more material. It explained everything in detail, from the breathing method for absorbing heaven-and-earth spiritual qi, to the process of refining spiritual qi, to how Primordial True Qi should circulate through the meridians, and how to circulate Primordial True Qi when using techniques.
‘I need to reach Novice quickly so I can cultivate lying down! The lotus position is way too uncomfortable...’
...
A few days later.
Steward Wang Jin called in the newcomers who had reached Qi Refining Stage 1 one by one for interviews, and Lee Hyun was no exception.
“You’ll be assigned duties soon. Is there any particular work you want?”
“I’d like to learn how to grow spirit plants or spirit herbs.”
“You have a triple spiritual root of Wood, Fire, and Earth. That’s not a bad fit. Why?”
“It seems safer than fighting people.”
Wang Jin’s hand stopped as he wrote something in the register.
“You’re an honest fellow. But spirit-plant work is by no means easy. You have to guard against spirit insects and crop disease, and even a slight miscalculation in the amount of spirit rain can ruin the crop. Some spirit herbs with strong medicinal potency even emit poisonous qi. What cultivation art do you intend to learn?”
“The Primordial One-Qi Art.”
“Is that so? Good choice. You’ll learn the result of your assignment soon.”
***
On the hundredth day after entering the sect.
The newcomers gathered in the hall before sunrise.
Today was the day Steward Wang Jin would formally appoint the newcomers who had reached Qi Refining Stage 1 as outer disciples and assign them new duties and living quarters.