Chapter 60: Spirituality
Dan Woo stood in a room that felt straight out of a xianxia. The smell of incense filled the room as the surrounding area was rattled and shaken by waves and waves of energy. The wood clattered and the steel screeched, and most of all, the groaning and writhing from the bed was something that couldn’t be ignored, especially with the heat and frost that followed it.
Dan Woo wasn’t sure what was happening. He could only watch in horror as his unconscious sister seemed to glitch in and out of existence, radiating energy in waves that made it impossible for him or Jiang Yuntian to come close.
He turned to Jiang Yuntian, who carefully looked at the subject matter before turning to give his verdict.
"She is suffering from a qi deviation."
"Qi deviation?"
Dan Woo repeated the words as if repeating them would allow him to understand the diagnosis. Of course, Dan Woo wasn’t familiar with qi deviation, but Bai Chen definitely was.
He could feel himself go through the diagnosis.
What constituted a qi deviation?
A qi deviation was usually because the qi was flowing through unnatural paths, ones they weren’t meant to, or maybe if one experienced backlash from a cultivation technique that either harmed their origin essence or simply had an unstable foundation from an improper cycle.
Dan Woo looked at his sister, trying to see if it truly was a qi deviation, and even though it did look like it was, he wasn’t sure. So he tried to respond the only way he could think of.
He channelled Bai Chen’s energy, but as he was about to go and help her redirect her energy through the right channels, he couldn’t help but stop himself.
What if his energy was incompatible with hers? Wouldn’t that worsen the situation? What’s more, he was now a Nascent Soul. Wouldn’t his energy overwhelm a Golden Core cultivator?
He stopped himself from moving forward with the plan as he tried to look for better solutions.
That was when his screen blinked to life.
When this happened, he was immediately reminded of all that had happened to him with Cha Hwa Rim and his search for her using her True Name.
Could he maybe use the True Name somehow to solve the problem?
Better yet, if he could make use of her Meaning, maybe he could even entirely fix the memory issue. After all, Baek Hari no longer held her Meaning.
He quickly turned towards the door before flying away to his own room to bring back the same folder holding what was supposedly Kim Soo Won’s Meaning.
Maybe through it, he could truly save his sister, even without the use of Cha Hwa Rim and the True Name, and the Fracture Actualisation of Time.
It took less than twenty seconds for Dan Woo to go to his room and bring back the file with the Meaning before he set it next to Kim Soo Won.
He still wasn’t sure how he was supposed to incorporate the Meaning, as it didn’t react to him. So he tried to see how it reacted to Kim Soo Won herself, to see if there were any reactions.
At first, there was nothing.
The file just danced around in the wind, barely able to do anything.
But slowly, there seemed to be a small link forming, one that gave the file a faint luminosity, showing there was a bit of resonance between Kim Soo Won and her Meaning.
The problem was, how was he supposed to give it back to her?
Was he supposed to turn back to Cha Hwa Rim and move from there?
He turned it over in his mind, unsure of how to proceed, when he remembered how tied the characters of Bai Qian and Bai Chen were. They came as a pair and were treated as such, so maybe he could use that connection to give direction to the Meaning that he now had. Maybe this would cost him the character of Bai Chen, but it would be okay if he could get back his own sister.
But now he had to think of how he was supposed to do this.
He thought of using the shared history of being born to a Foundation Establishment clan, but how was he supposed to use that? Was there a new concept he was supposed to actualize?
There was the concept of the Dao, but he didn’t understand that.
That was when he remembered how she got the character of Bai Qian in the first place.
He could use the connection to the avatar inside her.
But then he felt stumped again, as that avatar was formed through his transition to Bai Chen.
No.
He had to try.
He sat down, trying to channel his Meaning as he attempted to connect with his spirituality and use the resonance between his avatar to create a sort of connection that he could deliver the Meaning through.
As he did this, he couldn’t help but feel connected to two entities instead of one.
But both seemed to have the same origin and Meaning, like a copy of two entities.
Immediately, Baek Hari’s explanation of Spirituality came to mind.
Maybe the reason that his sister was going through the two states was because her spirituality couldn’t settle into one state, and there was a tug of war between Bai Qian and Kim Soo Won.
This then brought a sudden dread to him.
What if this happened to him and he also had a conflict with one of his personas?
The chill was unsettling, but then again, it hadn’t happened yet, so he was grateful.
Maybe it was because he had his system to help him through it?
He didn’t know.
But he turned to the two spiritual bodies inhabiting the body of Kim Soo Won.
There was a spillage between their two Meanings due to their similarities, which was confusing who was who and thus could cause a collapse of both of them, as they were trying too much to match each other, each fighting for dominance over whose spirituality belonged to the body.
Dan Woo immediately saw this situation and now understood why there was weak resonance with Kim Soo Won’s Meaning.
That was because one of them was rejecting the Meaning while the other one was reacting to it, causing a fluctuation.
The same went for the Domain that Dan Woo had.
One was reacting to it while the other wasn’t.
Maybe that was why the instability was there in the first place.
The problem was, why was it happening now?
The condition hadn’t really been this terrible before all this.
Dan Woo pushed the question to the back of his mind as he turned to look for a solution to the situation.
And that was when the idea came.
What if he just separated the two spiritual bodies, then just got rid of Bai Qian afterwards?
Wouldn’t that make the issue disappear?
He got to work.
He turned to Kim Soo Won’s Meaning, channeling his spirituality into it to draw out Kim Soo Won’s spirit body so that he could get rid of Bai Qian once and for all and just have his sister back.
There was a bit of struggle, with a push and pull as he channelled the Meaning, but for the most part, it turned to energy that flowed into one Spirit body instead of the other.
Dan Woo, seeing this, immediately tried to take his mask off to lock out Bai Qian, expecting to see his sister turn up on the bed and the body of Bai Qian disappearing.
But instead, what he got was a wild lashing out of Meaning that threw him and Jiang Yuntian several metres.
Dan Woo turned to see his sister’s body suddenly start blowing up like a balloon, as if she was being filled with some type of air, yet her structure was fully solid, almost like she was disappearing into another plane of existence.
Dan Woo, seeing this, tried all he could think of, but without Bai Chen, there was no connection to her.
Should he try using Cha Hwa Rim?
She could also work, as she had a connection to Kim Soo Won through her True Name. But at the same time, he knew putting on the mask of Cha Hwa Rim could lead to him turning to go to Cha Ha Rin, overshadowing her own sister’s situation, and he couldn’t have that.
So he reluctantly turned back to Bai Chen.
And immediately when he did, he deployed his Domain.
He could see Bai Qian’s body slowly take shape as the blown-up situation gradually reduced. What’s more, he could feel spiritual energy begin gathering around Bai Qian as her breath and energy got more in tune, her body slowly taking a meditative posture even through her unconsciousness.
The surrounding area began to rumble as, slowly, other omens began to take place before a grand visage of Bai Qian took to the sky.
"She is breaking through to the Nascent Soul," Jiang Yuntian said happily as he grinned at the display.
Dan Woo was confused by the situation but could only let it play.
Maybe he could deal with the situation after the breakthrough.
If not...
For now, all that mattered was Bai Qian succeeding in her breakthrough.