Who taught him to practice swordsmanship like this?

Chapter 114 Moving the Furnace

After everything was settled, Su Baichen realized that there was really nothing left to do.

It is not something that can be accomplished overnight for the Liang Kingdom to strive for strength, nor is it something that can be accomplished in a short period of time for the Changchun Palace to increase its power.

Su Baichen decided to cultivate properly, and more importantly, to accumulate his internal strength.

Therefore, after temporarily bidding farewell to his senior brother, he rushed back to Yinfeng Gorge and then immersed himself in the Daoist scriptures of the Yin Sect.

At Changchun Palace, he had to apply for permission to see anything, and he needed the consent of Master Kaiyang and others.

But in the Yin Sect, his presence is sufficient.

He didn't even care about bringing a small, black fox into the Daoist Canon, which shows the authority of the sect leader's true disciple.

"Hey, go play by yourself. Just remember not to mess up the bookshelf. I'm going to read for a while."

He opened a Taoist book and began to savor it slowly.

The little fox called "Black Treasure" didn't wander around at all; it just nestled in Su Baichen's arms, greedily sucking the deathly aura emanating from him.

There's nothing we can do about it; this is a side effect of refining the Myriad Souls Banner.

The Banner of Ten Thousand Souls has accumulated nearly 60,000 dead souls, and it generates death energy every moment.

This is also why Su Baichen was able to gain the favor of the Ghost Fox.

They can eat as much as they want here!

Su Baichen also discovered that the accumulated death energy made him look sinister, so letting the little fox eat him would make him feel better.

The two thus formed a perfect symbiotic relationship.

At this moment, the Taoist book that Su Baichen was looking at was not related to cultivation or Taoist methods, but rather it explained the principles of heaven and earth.

His cultivation was progressing smoothly, but he needed to understand how the world operated—although he had previously fearlessly declared he was willing to suffer divine retribution, he still harbored a sense of awe and wanted to see exactly what would lead to such retribution.

This content was extremely obscure, even impossible to put into words; it could only be understood through his continuous reading and learning.

On the other hand, he needed to prepare to move the furnace.

He felt that the time to move the furnace was approaching, as the warming and nourishing of the danzhong (a type of stagnation) had been going on for some time.

Su Baichen stayed in the Daoist Canon for a month, during which time he read through almost every book in the canon.

It's not that there are few books in the library, but rather that most of the books here have annotations from the sect elders, making them easy for him to understand.

Gradually, he also gained a vague understanding of the principles governing the workings of heaven and earth.

That is: God is actually a bit dim-witted!

The saying "Heaven is watching what people do" is true, but He sees far too much and will not directly interfere.

The universe operates with its own error-correction mechanism, and God will not interfere outside of this mechanism.

At this moment, he thought of the Extraordinary People and understood why they were able to recklessly exploit the opportunity of reincarnation to continuously erode the world.

That's exploiting a loophole in this mechanism!

Their chaotic souls can fool this error correction mechanism. Unless God, or the Way of Heaven, or the Will of Heaven—in short, some supreme being—can discover the problem here, they can continue to operate as this bug indefinitely.

So the question then leads to a direction that gives Su Baichen some hope—how can he get that supreme being to discover the problem?

Su Baichen pondered this deeply for a long time, and in the end, he only had one uncertain conclusion: divine retribution!

Divine intervention is God's proactive correction of errors, or at least a higher-level mechanism at work.

When he suffers divine retribution, he will experience unprecedented pressure from heaven and earth, and will be under some kind of gaze—

He felt that it might be an opportunity.

But such an opportunity is too dangerous, and he would never want to try it unless absolutely necessary—it can only be considered an alternative.

After a month of this, his chest cavity was also nourished to an excellent level.

He put down the scriptures in his hand, walked out of the Taoist library, and went to his room to prepare for seclusion.

He had already moved out of Xuan Yin Zhenren's place, and his new house was located at the end of the corridor, deepest part of Yin Feng Gorge.

This is the self-awareness of the Soul-Suppressing Sword's wielder. His place is perpetually shaded from the sun and extremely damp, but it is the best place to monitor the state of Yin Wind Gorge.

"Hey, can you adapt to this environment?"

Su Baichen was a little worried that his fox wouldn't like this eerie atmosphere—but it turned out he was overthinking it. Ghost foxes feed on death energy and love eeriness the most.

Seeing that the little fox didn't care at all, Su Baichen felt relieved and began to prepare for his breakthrough.

Moving the furnace is the most important and unavoidable juncture in the cultivation process.

Originally, the furnace was located in the lower dantian, which is the place closest to the sea of ​​essence. Using this as a base, it is convenient to refine essence into qi.

When it comes time to refine Qi into spirit, the furnace needs to be moved to the middle dantian.

The Tanzhong point, located in the center of the body, is most conducive to gathering the five vital energies of the internal organs and facilitating the circulation of true energy throughout the body. Once the furnace transfer is completed, Su Baichen's true energy will also experience a significant surge.

However, if there is a lower dantian and a middle dantian, then there is naturally an upper dantian.

When the cultivator begins practicing the Returning to Emptiness technique, then naturally the furnace will need to be moved upwards.

Su Baichen then made preparations to begin moving the furnace.

When moving the furnace, all the body's true energy must be released from the dantian, then circulate throughout the body, and finally converge into the dantian.

The biggest challenge in this process is to circulate the body's internal energy together, which requires extremely strong control to complete in one go.

Of course, some people choose to move the furnace slowly.

However, that would mean having to circulate two dantians within the body for a long time, which requires a high level of control over true qi. Moreover, it is too easy to encounter problems when circulating two dantians, so wise people would not do it.

At this moment, Su Baichen released all the true energy in his lower dantian in one breath, and then gradually channeled it into his chest.

It was fine at first, but soon the area around the dantian felt crowded.

This requires him to simultaneously expand the space in his chest and compress his internal energy.

Another advantage of the middle dantian over the lower dantian is that it has greater potential for expansion and is also more conducive to compression and purification.

He sat there for three days, finally managing to transfer all his internal energy to his chest.

He still felt a bit bloated at this point, but this was just the initial discomfort of moving the furnace.

Once the space in the chest is fully opened in a while, Su Baichen's cultivation will advance by leaps and bounds.

He breathed a sigh of relief, finally completing his cultivation at the intermediate stage of Qi Refining.

To be honest, the Qi Refining stage is indeed very time-consuming. Even with the blessing of his ancestor's body refining technique, it still took him a great deal of time to reach this stage. Ordinary cultivators would need decades to accumulate experience.

He opened his eyes, wondering what to do next, when he suddenly saw a translucent purple fox crouching by the fence of the walkway outside his house, reaching out its paws to scoop up fish—

Wait, what's going on with this fox?

His fox was clearly black!