Let the true energy circulate for a while

……

When Chen Ye entered the comic convention venue, it was lunchtime.

The comic convention was jointly organized by the shopping mall and several sponsors, and there were many strange costumes and monsters.

Young people dressing up as characters from games or anime is called "cospree" in today's terms.

The official start time is 2 pm, and it's said there will be some small performances as well.

A ride-hailing car stopped in front of the Hemei Shopping Mall, and two people got out of the car.

Gong Rongrong, dressed in Hanfu, and Chen Ye, dressed in a Taoist robe with a sword hanging at his waist.

"What do we mainly do?" Chen Ye asked.

"Just follow me." Gong Rongrong looked at the hot pot restaurant not far away, her mouth already watering.

In the plaza in front of the shopping mall, rows of vendor booths were set up, with the largest sponsor being a leading local enterprise that produces tea.

Xincheng is famous nationwide for its Maojian tea. The tea leaves are grown in the ground, and even the slightly better ones cost around a thousand yuan per kilogram, which is quite luxurious.

There are many other brands, such as Niu Niu Hot Pot Restaurant, Meng Lang Home Textiles, Xin Lan Jewelry, etc., and many staff members are setting up booths.

"You call Uncle Tang 'Second Uncle,' and judging by your skills, you're probably not a receptionist, right?" Chen Ye asked.

Gong Rongrong said, "Of course not. I am the head instructor of women's self-defense. Didn't you apply to our department as an instructor? Logically speaking, I am your superior."

Chen Ye was filled with respect and clasped his hands in a fist salute, saying, "I will be grateful for your care in the future, young lady."

"Let's go, let's go! The comic convention starts at 2 pm, let's go eat hot pot first." Gong Rongrong took out two tickets.

The square was bustling with people.

A young girl wearing fox ears waved in their direction.

"Rongrong, over here, over here."

There were several colorful girls in front of him, and Chen Ye was the only boy.

Kind of embarrassing.

"So this is your newcomer?" The fox-eared man held up an oil-paper umbrella, his false eyelashes fluttering a few times.

This young man is really good-looking, with beautiful eyes and a beautiful mouth. Wow, he really has long hair! I've discovered a living Taoist youth.

The girl with fox ears stood in front of Gong Rongrong and reached out her hand:

"Hello, my name is Ali."

"Wu Dang Wang Ye." Chen Ye extended his hand.

Ahri clasped her hands together and gave them a hard squeeze.

"Wow~ Your hands are so warm." Ahri exaggeratedly clutched her chest.

The other women crowded around, chattering away, leaving Gong Rongrong standing to the side, and one by one they reached out their hands.

"My name is Xi Shi."

"I am Daji."

"Sister Yu from Northeast China"

Chen Ye politely shook hands with each of them and smiled back at each girl.

Gong Rongrong's eyelids twitched inexplicably as she noticed two bold girls starting to ask Chen Ye to scan a QR code to add them on WeChat.

At the entrance of the hot pot restaurant, the proprietress was instructing several waiters to arrange flower baskets.

"Xiao Gong, who is that person?" The hot pot restaurant owner, a divorced woman with a story, was at the age where she was as ravenous as a wolf, able to suck the earth dry.

She glanced at the young Taoist priest and asked in a low voice, "Is that Taoist priest your friend?"

Gong Rongrong: "Aunt Niu, he's a new training partner at our boxing gym, he's my mentor."

The proprietress's expression remained unchanged: "Oh, by the way, Xiao Gong, what happened to that membership card you mentioned last time? Top up 1000 and get 2000 free, right?"

"Well, the event ends at the end of the month, and new classes start next week. Aunt Niu, would you like to sign up?"

The proprietress nodded: "After I'm done with these last two days, no, I'll come find you to register tomorrow morning." She turned her head and called out towards the door: "Come in and eat first, you'll have energy if you're full."

Chen Ye walked over confidently, looking up at the brightly colored signboard [Niu Niu Hot Pot Restaurant], the aroma of seasonings wafting from the entrance was very strong.

As the group went inside, the room was filled with people attending the comic convention, and even the staff had changed into special costumes.

After Chen Ye sat down, several girls volunteered to serve the dishes and prepare various condiments.

The red oil broth bubbled and steamed, releasing the rich aroma of beef tallow mixed with sesame paste and satay sauce.

The surrounding tables were filled with young people dressed up for anime conventions, with martial arts and fantasy characters and mecha suits scattered around. The sounds of clinking glasses and laughter mingled with the bubbling of hot pot, creating a lively and bustling atmosphere.

When Chen Ye saw a few people dressed like outlaws in the corner, he felt a strange stirring in his heart. One of the swordsmen looked a lot like his fifth senior brother and was drinking beer with a few people next to him, speaking with a slight Sichuan or Chongqing accent.

The swordsman picked up a can of beer and gestured to Chen Ye as if to clink glasses in the air.

Chen Ye returned the greeting with clasped hands.

The swordsman blinked excitedly, his buzz cut, round face, and thick beard suddenly becoming agitated.

Chen Ye felt that the other person's gaze was a bit strange, making him feel uncomfortable.

Gong Rongrong asked, "Do you know him?"

Chen Ye shook his head: "I don't know him, I just remembered an old friend."

Gong Rongrong looked conflicted, but in the end she couldn't help herself and whispered a few words almost into Chen Ye's ear.

Chen Ye tilted his head and asked, "What is gay?"

Gong Rongrong quickly covered Chen Ye's mouth, glaring at him: "Keep your voice down, don't let anyone hear you."

In fact, Chen Ye himself had no idea how incredibly handsome and charismatic he was in this era after changing into this outfit.

The proprietress even touched up her makeup and personally brought over a plate of beef rolls.

"Little Chen, come here, Auntie will give you another plate of beef. It'll give you strength."

Gong Rongrong took it and said happily, "Aunt Niu, Xiao Chen is a Taoist priest, he doesn't eat beef."

Chen Ye said calmly, "I don't eat tractor-shaped food."

……

When Chen Ye came out of the comic convention, it was almost 5 p.m. He strolled down the street, wearing the Taoist robe that Gong Rongrong had given him, which he felt fit quite well.

With 400 yuan in hand, this was Chen Ye's first money in today's society.

He planned to buy something for his parents.

A person walking home on the street is attracting a lot of attention.

"Hmm, isn't this a bit too high-profile?"

Chen Ye planned to find a place to change out of his Taoist robe.

The phone rang.

Since the Taoist robe had no pockets, Chen Ye pulled his hand back into his sleeve and reached inside...

I took out my phone and saw that it was a message from my dad.

Did you go out to dinner with Tang Long's niece?

Chen Ye had a headache. He typed a reply: "[She found me a part-time job]", and then locked his phone.

A few minutes later, the phone rang; it was Chen Jianbin calling.

"Hey, son, where are you?"

"We're heading back from Zhongshan Road."

"What part-time job did she get you?"

"Dad, let's talk about this when we get back. You might have misunderstood."

On the phone, Chen Jianbin's tone became serious:

"Son, Gong Rongrong is a good person, but her family situation is a bit complicated. I'll tell you more when we get back."

"Dad, it's really okay."

"By the way, your ID card replacement has been taken care of."

"It must have cost a lot of money, right?"

"Hey, this isn't your concern. Okay, I'm working overtime tonight, that's all for now."

Chen Ye hung up the phone, somewhat speechless.

Passing by the No. 13 Primary School at the intersection of Zhongshan Road and Shencheng Avenue, the entrance was crowded with parents picking up their children.

Chen Ye stood by the roadside, looking at his school with a nostalgic look in his eyes. He wanted to go inside and take a look.

The security guards at the school gate opened the gate, and the first batch of primary school students poured out, merging with the waiting group of parents.

This is a key primary school in the old city area. During school dismissal time, the road in front of the school is congested, making it almost impossible to pick up students by car, as there is simply no place to park.

It was mostly parents who were riding electric bikes or walking who gathered together.

Several parents were talking, and Chen Ye could vaguely hear them discussing how the parents' committee was raising funds to buy a car for his homeroom teacher.

Chen Ye thought of his best friend Er Mao, the little girl with two pigtails that stuck up in the air, who would secretly hide spicy snacks in her schoolbag to share with him.

As for Er Mao, I haven't been to school for almost half a month, and I don't know if she misses me.

Chen Ye remembered that when he first entered the school in the first grade, he sat at the same desk with Er Mao. In the second semester, the two of them pricked their thumbs with compasses and dripped the blood into the milk given by the school. They drank the blood milk and became sworn brothers.

The school gate was bustling with activity, and two traffic police officers on duty were struggling to direct traffic.

"Brother, can I borrow a light?" a middle-aged man said.

Chen Ye snapped out of his daze and realized the other person looked somewhat familiar. Sixteen years had passed, and his hazy memories were becoming clearer. This was Er Mao's father!

"I don't smoke."

"Oh." Er Mao's father looked very anxious and went to borrow a light from someone else.

In the crowd, a little girl with two pigtails sticking up was squeezing in and out, shaking her head.

It's Er Mao. Chen Ye pursed his lips. She hadn't changed. She was still as brave as ever.

"Hey, Mao Taimi!"

Er Mao clearly did not recognize Chen Ye.

Her small frame stopped in front of the older boy, and she tilted her head up to look at him curiously.

Chen Ye squatted down and sang mysteriously, "Loving you, I walk alone through the dark alley..."

"I love the way you don't kneel..." the little girl sang unconsciously.

"Hello, big brother!" the little girl greeted him.

Chen Ye lifted the hair from his forehead, revealing a faint crescent-shaped scar.

The little girl's eyes widened: "That's awesome! That's awesome! My older sister has this scar too."

Chen Ye smiled.

"Daddy!" the little girl shouted, ran past him, and disappeared into the distance.

A middle-aged man not far away threw away his newly lit cigarette, squatted down, and embraced his father. The little girl ran and jumped into her father's arms.

The little girl was being led by her father, and she kept turning back to blink as she walked.

Chen Ye, dressed in a Taoist robe, struck a pose like Ultraman firing beams, completely absorbed in the moment, his body even trembling slightly.

The little girl broke free from her father's hand, ran forward, and struck a pose as if firing light beams, exchanging beams with Chen Ye from a distance.

"Brother, please make way." A middle-aged man with a dejected look passed by and said with some envy as he looked at the cheerful young man in front of him.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Chen Ye gave an apologetic, awkward smile, stepped back onto the steps of the nearby China Construction Bank, and watched Er Mao and his daughter leave with a smile.

"It's been sixteen years, my good brother."

The flower shop by the roadside was playing "Fleet of Time".

Chen Ye stopped and listened for a while, feeling that the lyrics didn't quite fit Er Mao's style.

We walked home in silence.

When I got home, I found a note on the dining table.

[Son, the food is in the kitchen. Heat it up in the microwave. Mom has to work overtime.]

Both of Chen Ye's parents went to work. When Chen Ye was in school, if his parents worked overtime, his maternal grandfather would usually pick him up and he would eat at his grandfather's house.

Chen Ye went to the kitchen, lifted the lid of the large pot, and found three dishes and a soup: scrambled eggs with tomatoes, shredded pork with green peppers, and braised beef with potatoes. It looked very appetizing, and there was still rice warming in the rice cooker.

Thinking back to those years when I wandered the world after leaving the mountains, enduring wind and rain, a single white steamed bun was all I needed to celebrate the New Year.

Chen Ye rarely encountered the chivalrous heroes in novels who would spend lavishly to save those in distress; however, he had seen quite a few highly skilled martial artists who committed murder and robbery.

These are two different worlds; their lives are incomparable.

Sitting on the sofa, the food was still warm, so I didn't reheat it. I opened a bottle of Coke and started to enjoy my meal.

After finishing the meal, I washed the dishes, cleaned the house again, and scrolled through my phone for a while.

Recently, he has come across a lot of things online, such as martial arts movie clips and AI special effects for cultivating immortality. What amazes him the most is that the names of many martial arts techniques in Jin Yong's novels are very similar to those in his world.

For example, Chen Ye practiced the Great Shift of Heaven and Earth, but the actual effects differed somewhat from those in the novel.

About half an hour later, Chen Ye sat cross-legged on the balcony and began to practice the Longevity Technique.

This technique belongs to the internal alchemy school. My master said that if a person with exceptional talent reaches the ninth level, they can supposedly cultivate a golden core. However, very few people throughout history have succeeded in cultivating it.

"Difficult, difficult, difficult, the Dao is most profound, do not take the Golden Elixir lightly."

The Longevity Technique has nine levels, each a step higher than the last. His master only reached the second level.

Chen Ye has now reached the third level of cultivation, which is a bottleneck. In his master's words, he is a genius unlike any other in history.

When Chen Ye entered meditation, everything around him was a vast expanse of white... the empty room was filled with white light.

In a daze, Chen Ye saw many things.

I saw my master and fellow disciples.

I saw my senior sister dancing with her sword under the moon by the lake at Shisanli Bridge.

I saw my fifth senior brother, drunk and staggering, heading towards the Red Phoenix Tower at the Old Dragon Town tavern.

Seeing that he had been poisoned and unable to move, and was locked up with Princess Zhao Youzhen who had taken the "Great Joy Yin Yang Powder," he went completely insane.

He saw the hypocrite from Baihe Academy thrusting his sword towards him.

I saw him fight hundreds of demonic cult members in the Ancient Cave of Ten Thousand Demons that year, and with one palm strike, he smashed the beloved concubine of Patriarch Tongguan into pieces, her body covered in blood and flesh...

He saw himself hacking his way from the Vermilion Bird Gate all the way to the Xuanhe Hall, with corpses strewn all around him.

He saw the flames engulfing Yun'an City that day, and he, with a knife at his waist, carried the unconscious Zhao Youzhen as they fled.

I saw a hail of arrows flying through the air—

"Those who stand in my way shall die!!" Chen Ye, who was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, suddenly opened his eyes, his hair moving without wind, like an old demon emerging from seclusion, and roared to the sky—

"ah!!"

Huff—Chen Ye gasped for breath.

"As expected, I still can't break through to the fourth level."

"The hallucination I just experienced was incredibly intense."

"Luckily, Mom and Dad aren't home. It seems I can't try to push my limits anytime soon."

Chen Ye stood up and opened another bottle of Coke.

Calm down your excited mood.

"I need to take a shower and calm down."

Upon entering the bathroom, I took off my clothes, stood in front of the mirror, revealing well-defined muscles, healthy tanned skin, and a series of shocking wounds.

There were arrow wounds, sword wounds, sixteen wounds of varying sizes, crisscrossing from front to back.

Chen Ye turned on the shower, and warm water gushed out.

Steam quickly filled the entire bathroom, and the mirror was covered with a layer of white mist.

Taking a bath, singing, and applying glue are the most direct and brutal ways for modern people to release dopamine.

Chen Ye is perhaps the only boy who has never used glue.

He played the song "A Smile in the Jianghu".

"Swords ignite grudges in the martial world, sleeves flutter to veil the bright moon..."

"Having walked alone through countless years, witnessing the glint of swords illuminating the darkness, how can one distinguish between chivalry and wickedness? A dream is but a fleeting moment..."

The relaxing feeling brought by the hot water rinse allowed Chen Ye to temporarily shed the burdens of the past.

The true energy began to circulate unconsciously.

Chen Ye did not deliberately suppress it, but raised his hand in accordance with the airflow.

With hands loosely clasped together in the flowing water, palms facing each other, true energy, like silk threads, wraps around the cascading water, rotating and condensing, gradually forming a water ball the size of a fist.

Chen Ye shaped his wrist into a lotus shape and pushed it forward, sending the water ball crashing into the tiled wall.

A wave was released.

"Bang!"

The water balloon exploded and splashed everywhere, and a spiderweb-like pattern appeared on the surface of the tile.

Chen Ye's smile froze. "I..." he stammered, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

I tapped it with my hand, and with a crash, the tile came off and shattered into several pieces on the ground.

"I didn't mean to..."