Episode 325
Damn?
I reached out at once, grasping for anything to hold, but something was wrong. Just moments ago, an invisible foothold had supported me. Now my hands closed on empty air.
I didn't have time to cry out. Suddenly, a strong wind rose from somewhere and sent me fluttering through the sky like a kite with a cut string.
By the way, why is this wind so cold? The chill bit into me, making it painful to keep my eyes open. Each breath fogged before me.
I instinctively summoned the Fire Qi I usually used with the First Fire Technique. The surging cold quickly subsided, but that was all. I was still falling down.
I had already reached a height where Spirit Mountain was no longer visible. The fall would likely last dozens of minutes.
Naturally, at this altitude, survival was impossible. The impact would send a shock through my entire body, far beyond what mere physical training or internal energy could withstand.
I instinctively turned to Crowtaker's power. The moment I focused my energy on the markings on my back, a single wing sprouted.
However, this was Spirit Mountain. Communication with spirits was impossible here, which meant that free flight was out of the question. Even so, the wing allowed a limited glide. In a crisis like this, that alone would reduce the fall's force.
I violently flapped the single wing as if it was about to be torn apart. If it had been linked to my nerves, the pain would have been unbearable.
Fortunately, my speed decreased, but the fall itself couldn't be stopped. Even at full effort, I could only descend slowly, as if sinking into water.
If I control it carefully, I may be able to manage a proper landing.
However, I looked up instead of down. Returning to Spirit Mountain would mean abandoning all the progress I had made during my long ascent toward the moon.
Why had my footing suddenly disappeared?
I scanned the space around me as I fell, but I saw nothing except the vast clouds.
What had Senior Sister Tian stepped on?
I didn't doubt her skill, but even she couldn't have walked on empty air for fifteen days. Something had to exist in this empty sky.
I activated my Eyes of Fire and surveyed the area again, but I couldn't see anything even with this technique.
Time was slipping away. Maintaining even this limited control through Crowtaker consumed a tremendous amount of energy. Without the presence of spirits, the strain grew worse. At best, I could sustain this state for thirty minutes, and that estimate was optimistic.
As Senior Sister Tian had warned, who knew what would happen if the balance between my internal energy and the Dark Qi tipped? The remaining time limit would be even shorter.
If I couldn't uncover the secret before then, I would have to climb back up from the bottom. Once that happened, reaching the moon within the remaining time would be impossible.
As my internal energy steadily drained, anxiety rose, but I forced myself to stay calm. This is the work of Senior Sister Tian. Regardless of the training's difficulty or harshness, she wouldn't place me in a situation with no solution.
She had left enough clues, and it was possible I already knew the answer. The problem was that I didn't have a clear sense of what it was.
It is something that Senior Sister Tian can do, and something I can do as well.
What the hell is it? The first thing that came to mind was the Extreme Earth Demon Subjugating Technique that she had learned. There could be a clue in its formula. The problem was that even if I knew it, I couldn't use it.
The Extreme Earth Demon Subjugating Technique's root was the Supreme Art of All Time, created by Bai Luguang. To some extent, it had to share some formulas with my First Fire Technique. However, earth and fire differed in nature. If I tried to manipulate it in a similar way, my internal energy could spiral out of control and damage my meridians.
It would be safer to create a new mind method... A new mind method? For some reason, my mind felt a bit strained. Under normal circumstances, this would be an absurd idea, but things were different now. I no longer relied solely on Fire Qi as my source of energy.
At present, I could use the Dark Qi in my middle dantian. Similarly, Senior Sister Tian probably didn't rely only on Earth Qi for her power. As the Heavenly Demon of the Heavenly Demon God Sect, she had to have mastered a separate mind method that manipulated Dark Qi.
A mind method was built on the storage of energy. In other words, it focused on energy accumulation. By storing energy within the world, one gradually developed the ability to control it.
However, the process rapidly became more difficult when Dark Qi entered the equation. Unlike ordinary natural types of energy, which could be drawn from all things, this Dark Qi was a sinister power that only demons or Dark Church members could wield.
The methods required to obtain this power were probably abhorrent. They could involve using human emotions as fuel, polluting the earth, killing, or offering sacrifices to demons to get something in return.
None of it sat well with me. In the first place, I had only recently grasped the nature of Dark Qi, yet now I was supposed to create a specialized mind method for such a complex power in just thirty minutes?
This is a bit... I was intelligent, but creating a mind method from scratch in just thirty minutes was impossible.
What if it isn't just thirty minutes? I closed my eyes. It had already been dozens of days since I came to Spirit Mountain. During that time, I hadn't talked much with Senior Sister Tian. We simply climbed into the sky and headed toward the moon.
Could that act be meaningless? What if all of that is part of the lesson?
My steps, posture, movement, mindset, and even the direction of my gaze all mattered. The method one moved while manipulating internal energy was the dynamic energy technique. If that were the case, then clues could lie in Senior Sister Tian's movements.
I recalled the way she walked and imitated it. There was no need to fixate on creating an entirely new mind method. Even if I imitated her, the result would be completely different.
My thoughts spread out more wildly than the stars in the sky, but I didn't force them into order. Stars were only celestial bodies scattered somewhere far away. Humans were the ones who gave them meaning.
People saw clusters of stars that resembled sheep or snakes and eventually named them constellations. In the same way, I was free to impose laws on my wild thoughts.
At that moment, a tremor stirred in my stomach. I looked inward, and the Dark Qi nestled in my heart was rampaging.
Shit. The situation that Senior Sister Tian had warned about was happening. The moment the total energy stored in my lower dantian decreased, the Dark Qi erupted as if it had been waiting. It slammed against the walls of my middle dantian. Every impact struck like a master's penetrating blow.
So this is why internal energy isn't stored in the middle dantian. Internal energy was the core of martial artists, but it was also dangerous. Depending on one's physique and mental state, it wasn't strange for it to go wild at any time. If the internal energy in the lower dantian lost control, the worst outcome would simply be the dantian's shutdown.
However, the middle dantian, the heart, was different. It was directly linked to life. It couldn't endure such strain for long. Trying to endure it was even worse.
I made a quick decision. I fully opened my middle dantian, and the trapped Dark Qi surged violently through my body. I couldn't allow it to roam freely.
As I considered how to handle it, I suddenly thought of Crowtaker's power. I didn't know if it would work, but it was better than using my White Sun Eclipse.
I guided the raging Dark Qi toward the marking etched below my shoulder blade. Thanks to the insights I had gained during my first training, the process wasn't difficult.
The real problem came afterward. The Dark Qi's momentum was too strong. As if excited by its first taste of freedom, it rushed toward the outlet of the single wing.
If my original internal energy was like water whose pressure I could control through a faucet, then the Dark Qi was more like something governed by a valve. In its current state, it was as if I had removed the lid from an overturned body of water.
The flow was difficult to control with my current level of mastery, so should I simply let all of the Dark Qi spill out?
I didn't have time to dwell on it before the situation changed. The single wing couldn't contain the Dark Qi and tore apart in midair.
The moment the wing, its container, ruptured, the Dark Qi naturally shot in every direction. It was like a bottle of ink exploding in the air. My vision was dyed black.
In an instant, the gray sky of Spirit Mountain was stained with ink.
This was clearly an illusion. One of the Dark Qi's strange traits, unlike internal energy, was that it remained visible to the naked eye regardless of its concentration or volume. Therefore, the Dark Qi that blocked my vision only covered the gray sky for a brief moment.
Thus, the world I witnessed was plunged into darkness. Perhaps that was why, at the instant I beheld this false night sky, I heard Senior Sister Tian's voice as she pointed upward with her iron fan.
—Luan, you need to take a good look. Look carefully.
Senior Sister Tian only pointed to the sky as she spoke. She didn't recite anything. Formulas were the essence and force of a mind method, but they weren't limited to words. I recalled her voice as she calmly recited the constellations.
Phoenix, scorpion, awl, zither, scale, whale, hourglass, keel... What had been vague clusters now took on clear shapes. A field of stars seemed to descend and envelope me.
I instinctively retracted the single wing. My slow descent turned into a plunge once more, but my mind and body had already calmed down.
In mid-fall, I folded my legs into a cross-legged posture. If this dark night sky was the human body, then the stars were the acupoints. The imaginary lines connecting them would be the meridians.
I understood. Weren't constellations the most direct and clear form of formulas?
"This is it."
What I needed now was a route, not a landmark, because I had yet to discover the way forward. Therefore, I set the route as the network of my meridians.
The image that came to mind was the Keel Constellation, the backbone of a ship. It suited me, who hadn't even decided on a route.
I guided the energy through the nine key acupoints, with the Yintang acupoint at the center of my forehead as the core. As the energy gathered there, it naturally affected the eyes.
At that moment, I realized that I could perceive the world from a completely different perspective than with my Eyes of Fire.
I also found a hidden path. It was a staircase that stretched endlessly toward the sky, swaying like a bridge of clouds in the wind. It moved so turbulently that it was impossible to detect it when it wasn't visible.
I set aside the question of why such stairs even existed. The name of the newly created mind method flashed through my mind. Against the backdrop of the night sky, the image of a lone martial artist reaching for the moon took shape. The name would be simple.