Under One Person: My Name is Wan Jing Zhenjun

Internal Alchemy

January 1, 2003, New Year's Day.

Beside the artificial lake at Wang Family Manor.

"Happy New Year, teacher! The gift I asked someone to send should be arriving at the post station at the foot of Shaolin Mountain soon. Remember to have Senior Brother Baowen or Senior Brother Baojing pick it up later." Early in the morning, Wang Xiao called Master Jiekong.

"Why send a gift? That's too formal." Master Jiekong replied with a smile on the other end of the phone, "How's your practice going lately? Is there anything you don't understand?"

"Yes." Wang Xiao didn't beat around the bush and asked directly, "Teacher, I haven't had any major problems with my meditation practice recently, but I have encountered some doubts about my life force cultivation."

"Oh? What's your question?" Master Jiekong asked, somewhat surprised.

After all, in his opinion, given Wang Xiao's aptitude, he was probably not yet able to complete a full cycle of Qi circulation.

Therefore, with such aptitude, what doubts could he possibly encounter in his cultivation of life force? It would be good enough if he could even understand it.

"Teacher, when I was cultivating my life force, it seems that my internal energy accumulated to a certain amount, and suddenly some changes occurred." As he spoke, Wang Xiao sensed the internal energy in his body. "Previously, no matter how my energy changed, the size of my innate energy was fixed, only the size of a fist. But a couple of days ago, I don't know why, it suddenly became the size of a child's head."

After Wang Xiao said this, there was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

During this time, Wang Xiao could even hear Master Jiekong's steady breathing become a little more rapid, and then return to its long and steady rhythm.

"Say that again." Master Jiekong's voice suddenly turned cold. "In your inner vision, the primordial Qi has grown from the size of a fist to the size of a child's head?"

"Yes." Wang Xiao nodded honestly. Since it concerned his own cultivation, he didn't hide anything. "And it's not that kind of inflated, empty size; it's become much more solid."

After thinking for a moment, Wang Xiao used another analogy: "If my original Qi was like a cloud of mist, then now I feel it is like a mass of liquid mercury, heavy and shiny, and it is slowly rotating in my dantian."

What Wang Xiao said was entirely true; it was all his genuine experience of the innate Qi within his body over this period of time.

After being blessed by the ancestral temple, it seems that his true qi itself has also undergone a subtle change.

"Liquid—mercury—" Listening to Wang Xiao's description, Master Jiekong murmured softly, as if confirming something, or as if convincing himself, "Xiao Xiao, don't be impatient, let this old monk explain first."

"Okay, teacher." Wang Xiao readily agreed.

"Where are you now?" Master Jiekong asked.

Wang Xiao looked around in confusion. "I'm at home. What's wrong, teacher?"

"Go find a suitable place to cultivate yourself first," Master Jiekong said.

"Uh, okay." Although somewhat surprised and unsure of what Master Jiekong intended to do, Wang Xiao didn't ask any questions. Instead, he followed the other party's instructions and went to his own training room.

"Teacher, what happens after we arrive at our destination?"

"Find a place, sit cross-legged, then position your palms, soles, and upper lip facing upwards, tongue touching the roof of your mouth. Observe the movement of Qi in your dantian. Do you notice any unusual phenomena?"

Vision?

Wang Xiao was puzzled for a moment, then sat down on the futon as instructed and closed his eyes to meditate.

As he closed his eyes to perceive, a scene slowly unfolded before him.

It was a pitch-black space, and the only light source in this space was his own.

Oh no, it wasn't him either.

In general, the most conspicuous thing in this space is the phantom that is just like him, but whose meridians are transparent, located at the very core of the space.

At this moment, as Wang Xiao observed, a white ball of light the size of a child's head was slowly moving in the abdomen of the illusory figure.

And with his breathing, the ball of light seemed to come alive, sometimes rising, sometimes falling—

After watching for a moment, he came back to his senses and said into his phone, "Teacher, it seems there really is something strange. I see that the direction it's turning seems to match the rhythm of my breathing."

And when I inhale, the Qi will rise slightly and travel up the spine, and as I exhale, it will slowly sink back to the Dantian.

Moreover—" Wang Xiao paused.

"And what?" Master Jiekong pressed.

"And I also seemed to see that with each rotation of the Qi ball, a tiny, extremely fine thing separated from it, traveled up the spine, and finally disappeared into a certain location at the back of the brain." Wang Xiao frowned, trying to describe the mysterious situation he had just seen. "There was so little of it that I almost thought it was an illusion, but I could still confirm its existence, since I just happened to see it."

"Hahahaha." Master Jiekong suddenly burst into hearty laughter on the other end of the phone, his laughter filled with undisguised surprise and satisfaction. "Good! Good! Good! Xiao Xiao, were you teasing this old monk the other day? Is your aptitude really as bad as you've made it out to be? Do you know that at your current level, you've stepped onto the threshold that so many cultivators spend their entire lives striving for but never attain?"

Before this, because Wang Xiao had experienced a month of hellish torment, Master Jiekong had given up hope on his aptitude.

After all, in Master Jiekong's opinion, with Wang Xiao's ridiculous talent, even if he put in ten or a hundred times more effort than ordinary people, he could not achieve much, even though Wang Xiao's skin color does look like that of an immortal.

But now, with Wang Xiao's phone call, if Wang Xiao wasn't deliberately teasing him, then he could be completely certain that even if his aptitude wasn't exceptionally good, it was certainly not bad either.

So this kid was just pretending with me, the old monk, for the past month.

That kid is really naughty; he's just like that old Taoist priest Zhang Zhiwei!

Hearing Master Jiekong's laughter, Wang Xiao was stunned for a moment, then skipped over the topic of aptitude and asked, "Teacher, what do you mean—"

"Don't rush, don't rush." ​​After laughing for a while, Master Jiekong finally stopped, but the joy in his tone still lingered. "Old monk, let me ask you first, do you know where the foundation of the life-cultivation technique I passed on to you after my improvement lies?"

"Foundation?" Wang Xiao pondered for a moment. "Although I can see some traces of Tibetan Buddhist Kundalini meditation in the techniques you improved, if I'm not mistaken, the foundation is Taoist internal alchemy, isn't it?"