Stranger Danger

“But what do I do, exactly?”

Ye Qing wanted to pick Lin Hu’s brain, but he was afraid that it would draw suspicion. In the end, he sighed and looked down at the vellum tucked underneath his shirt.

“I suppose I’ll have to ask the Annon Sutra…”

In fact, Ye Qing’s feelings toward the Annon Sutra was something of a mixture between deep respect and outright dread. If he had a choice, he would’ve minimized his interactions with the Annon Sutra as much as possible. Unfortunately, reality did not care much for his personal preferences.

And so Ye Qing spread the vellum across his table once more and cut open his finger. After pouring a few drops of blood on its surface, he asked out loud, “How can I invoke qi?”

The Annon Sutra did not answer immediately. It wasn’t until he had poured more than a bowl’s worth of blood that it finally manifested a response:

“How can I invoke qi?”

“I’ve hit a wall after becoming an adept Reforged. The only way I might advance further and overcome my impending doom is to enter the Qi Invocation stage.”

“But before I can even think of invoking qi, I should search for a Qi Invocation mental art first. It may contain what I’m looking for.”

The bloody text vanished as soon as the last sentence was manifested. No one but Ye Qing knew it was ever there.

“A Qi Invocation mental art?” muttered Ye Qing with a heavy frown. The Annon Sutra had made it crystal clear that obtaining a Qi Invocation mental art was a must if he wished to continue any further. The problem was: how?

He had no doubt that Lin Hu and Granny Xia had what he sought for—they were late-stage Qi Invokers after all—but to ask them about it would be to expose his secret and put himself in grave danger. Anyone can be bought for the right price, and the value of his secrets were worth compromising an integrity or two to put it mildly. But if the obvious solution wasn’t available to him, what else could he do to obtain a Qi Invocation mental art? Steal it? There was no way it would work. Take it by force? Only if he had a death wish!

“This is such a pain in the ass!” Ye Qing groaned while scratching his head in irritation.

Suddenly, Ye Qing spotted a rectangular object wrapped in a strip of calfskin on his table. It took him a few seconds to recall that it was a book Fang Nianshui was carrying. He hadn’t checked out its contents before because an open field littered with human skins and a dead body was hardly the ideal reading environment, and he still wasn’t in the mood to—wait. His eyes suddenly lit up. If he remembered correctly, Fang Niansui had already started invoking qi to enter the Qi Invocation stage, and to do that he would first need a Qi Invocation mental art. Could this book be what he was looking for?

It’s definitely possible!

Ye Qing immediately grabbed the book and tore away its wrappings. The cover page of the book read: “The Mental Art of The Toad”.

“‘The Mental Art of the Toad’? What a peculiar name!” exclaimed Ye Qing curiously. He proceeded to flip open the book and poured through its contents.

Half an incense stick later, Ye Qing closed the book temporarily to rein in his excitement and delight. It was as he suspected. The book really was a Qi Invocation mental arts manual.

The so-called Qi Invocation stage was the stage where a warrior invoked internal energy and true qi into their dantian and accumulated them. Qi was the energy behind the life, aging, sickness, death, growth, decline, and longevity of a human being. It was taken from the essence of all things and stored within one’s flesh and blood, but the qi a human was born with was turbid qi. It was why an ordinary human needed to breathe constantly to live, and they could only hold just enough qi to maintain their vitality.

True qi was natural, quintessential qi. To “invoke qi” was to expel the muddy qi in one’s body and accept clean, natural qi into one’s dantian, and to do so continuously and without loss through a special breathing method. This would open up the blood vessels, invigorate the channels, and nourish the body and the internal organs; all good things that would lead to an increase in power and lifespan.

In addition, true qi was considered to be the essence of the world. It was intangible, insubstantial, and possessed of limitless potential. Greater gross and fine motor control was just the beginning for a warrior who had invoked true qi. It could be applied in countless ways such as merging it with one’s vigor to increase strength, imbuing it in one’s limbs so that even the weakest attacks could produce thunderous results, covering oneself in it to become ridiculously resilient, applying it to a blade to grant it unparalleled sharpness, so on and so on.

This was why a Qi Invoker was fundamentally stronger than a Reforged. A single wisp of true qi was enough to make a world of difference.

The first step to invoke qi was to breathe in a special way that would allow the warrior to gather true qi inside their dantian, and the “Mental Art of The Toad” was exactly that, a cultivation manual on how to imitate the breathing of a toad and use it to store true qi inside one’s dantian. The breathing method even had the positive side effect of vibrating one’s vigor, muscles and bones through deep breaths and croaks, leading to a minor improvement in one’s constitution..

In addition, practitioners of the “Mental Art of The Toad” could form something called a “Toad Force” in their body once they had cultivated the mental art to a certain degree. The Toad Force was a structured application of true qi where the practitioner mobilized their vigor, muscles, bones and internal energy into perfect harmony through breathing to unleash a devastating amount of power in an explosive instant.

“Not bad,” commented Ye Qing as he continued to flip through the pages with a glimmer in his eyes. According to the opening chapter of the manual, most Qi Invocation mental arts taught incredibly slow and basic methods to invoke true qi. A good Qi Invocation mental art was one that not only drastically shortened the time necessary for a practitioner to invoke true qi, but also taught them various ways to weave said qi into powerful spells and techniques.

In this sense, the “Mental Art of The Toad” was clearly an above average Qi Invocation mental art. There might be many Qi Invocation mental arts out there that surpassed it, but it definitely wasn’t bad.

“Well then. Without further ado…” Ye Qing licked his lips and began imitating the pose that was illustrated in the manual. He bent down until his inner thighs were touching the floor, and his calves were facing outward. His hands were also touching the floor. It was the pose of a toad sitting on the floor.

Next, Ye Qing began to breathe just like it was taught in the “Mental Arts of The Toad”. First, he opened his mouth slightly and exhaled all the air in his lungs and stomach. Then, he inhaled until his stomach looked slightly swollen. A soft croak abruptly sounded from inside his body, and a shockwave washed out of him and kicked up his clothes a little. At the same time, a wisp of ephemeral qi slipped into his dantian.

“You breathe

Clean qi into your chest

And know

That the essence of the world now lies within you.”

“This… is true qi?!”

Ye Qing felt like his body had undergone some sort of fundamental change; like he was a blind man who was seeing the world for the first time. It was a most profound sensation.

“Hoo…” Extremely excited, but not so excited that he would delay his cultivation to just bask in the sensations, Ye Qing quickly closed his eyes and resumed his cultivation. The toad croaks would not stop until a long, long time later.

……

The next day, when the first ray of dawn shone through the windows, Ye Qing opened his eyes to reveal a clear, bright glint that wasn’t there before. It was as dazzling as the stars themselves.

“Croak!”

A powerful croak sounded from within his body, kicking up dust and throwing wind everywhere. Ye Qing then rose to his feet and nodded in satisfaction.

It had taken him just one night to thoroughly grasp the “Mental Art of The Toad” and invoke true qi into his body. Although the size of the true qi in his dantian was quite limited as a matter of course, he was definitely a Qi Invoker now. His power would grow so long as he continued to cultivate the “Mental Art of The Toad”.

“Alright, it’s time to go make my rounds.”

Ye Qing changed into a new set of clothes and grabbed his long saber. Then, he took off for Granny Xia’s house. He hadn’t forgotten that he was now entitled to receive some talismans!

Upon reaching his destination, Ye Qing knocked on the door and heard an aged voice responding, “Is that you, Ye Qing? Come in!”

Ye Qing stepped in and saw Granny Xia sitting in front of a table and enjoying some tea. When she saw him, she shot him a wrinkled, grandmotherly smile and said, “You’ve done well to reach the journeyman level of the Body Tempering stage in such a short time. There was a moment where I thought Huhu was joking when he told me yesterday, hoho!”

“Huhu?” Ye Qing’s mouth twitched with amusement. Granny Xia might be the only person in the entire August Hill Village who could say that to Lin Hu’s face and not earn a smack to the head. He saluted her before replying humbly, “You flatter me, Granny Xia, but thank you for the praise!”

“I’m also glad to see that the power hasn’t gone to your head. Keep up the good work!” Granny Xia smiled. “You’re here to receive your talismans, right? I have them here.”

She handed him three talismans in total and explained them one by one, “The first one’s a fire talisman, the second one’s an edge talisman, and the third one’s a message talisman. You know how they work, right?”

“Yes. The captain has already explained everything to me!” replied Ye Qing affirmatively while tucking the talismans under his shirt. The fire talisman could create a massive curtain of flames that was pretty deadly against many Strangers, the edge talisman could improve the sharpness of a weapon and was useful when going up against a particularly tough Stranger, and the contact talisman was exactly what it sounded like: a tool to contact others and summon reinforcements.

“Haha, good.” Granny Xia let out a chuckle before advising, “Watch yourself when you’re out there, okay? Nothing is more important than your own life.”

Ye Qing saluted her again. “I will, Granny Xia. If there’s nothing else, I’ll be heading out now.”

The old woman waved her assent. “Off you go. When you have time, do visit this old woman and keep her company, will you?”

“Of course.” Ye Qing shot her one last smile before taking his leave.

After he was gone, Granny Xia’s clouded eyes shone just a little brighter. “Strange. I feel like there’s something off with his body, but it’s masked by some sort of power? How strange!”

Ye Qing wasn’t expecting an interruption as he made his way toward the village entrance, but he ran into Chen Zheng by “accident” right as he was about to step out.

“I heard you’re a journeyman Reforged, Ye Qing?” the martial artist asked with a meaningful look on his face.

Ye Qing raised his eyebrows and grinned. “Yeah. What business do you have with me, Chen Zheng?”

“I don’t. You’re under Lin Hu’s protection right now, aren’t you?” Chen Zheng sneered. “That said, no matter how high an ant climbs, it will always be an ant that I can crush to death with a single finger. So don’t get any stupid ideas, okay?”

Ye Qing shrugged his shoulders before responding in a careless tone, “You can certainly try. Say, do I get a prize if I manage to force you to use two fingers instead of one?”

Chen Zheng snorted in disdain. “That’s all you got, your mouth.”

“Is there anything else? No? Then I have work to do,” Ye Qing replied with a perfunctory smile before stepping around Chen Zheng. He wasn’t at the point where he could take the fight to the martial artist yet, so he wasn’t going to provoke him into a rage.

Chen Zheng’s face iced over as he glared daggers at Ye Qing’s departing back. “Fang Nianshui, you useless bastard. How did you manage to off yourself before you complete the simple task I gave you?”

“Screw it. So what if the ant gets to live a couple days longer? In the end, it’s still going to die!”

Chen Zheng wasn’t worth any space in his frontal lobe, so Ye Qing forgot about him as soon as his feet had passed through the gates. And good thing he did, because he was immediately assaulted by a cold, oppressive pressure that came from seemingly everywhere. He frowned and kicked up his alertness another notch.

Just like before, Ye Qing began his expedition starting from the small path between two fields. He kept a hand the hilt of his saber at all times as he scanned his surroundings. He could see multiple traces of battle from yesterday.

Rustle rustle…

A sudden rustle caused him to laser into a nearby bush and unsheathe his saber immediately. He waited to see if something would jump out at him, but nothing happened after he waited a good ten seconds, then another ten. He was just thinking that it was a false alarm and prepared to leave when suddenly, it rustled again.

“What’s with this bush?” Ye Qing frowned a little before making the bold decision to part it with his saber and check what was inside. Unfortunately, it was a mistake. He had just pushed half of the grass away when suddenly, he heard a crisp, melodious chime that stopped his movement and made him feel very, very faint all of a sudden. Before he knew it, he blacked out.