txolops Chapter 28 The Difference Between Portfolios
Chapter 28 The Difference Between Portfolios
Shen Qing gritted his teeth, and fine beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.
The Qi cultivation method refines spiritual energy through a process of "gathering," incorporating the spiritual energy into the dantian and transforming it into one's own foundation.
The feeling is like pouring water into an empty bowl. The more water you pour, the heavier the bowl becomes, but as long as the bowl is not full, there will be no discomfort.
Refining spiritual energy using martial arts methods is a process of "releasing," drawing spiritual energy from the dantian and dispersing it throughout the body.
It felt like pouring water out of a bowl onto parched land.
Water seeps into the soil, making it moist and soft, but that "land" is his sinews and skin. That feeling of "moist and soft" is accompanied by itching, soreness, numbness, swelling, and pain, a mixture of all sorts of sensations.
Time passed little by little.
Shen Qing didn't know exactly how many strands of spiritual energy he had refined. He only remembered that he had been guiding, spreading, and permeating the energy, then guiding, spreading, and permeating it again.
After all twelve main meridians were opened, he began to guide the spiritual energy to spread along the eight extraordinary meridians.
The eight extraordinary meridians are more subtle than the twelve regular meridians, and the spiritual energy propagates very slowly, bringing a stronger tingling and numb sensation when it penetrates.
After some time, a rooster crowed outside the window.
Shen Qing opened her eyes and found that the sky was already turning a pale white.
He actually cultivated for an entire night.
Within his dantian, a small portion of the fifty-two strands of spiritual energy extracted by the system last night remained unrefined.
It wasn't that he didn't want to continue, but that there wasn't enough time. As the morning bell of the academy was about to ring at dawn, the disciples would soon have to gather for morning lessons.
Shen Qing sighed and had no choice but to circulate the "Azure Cloud Qi Refining Technique" to refine and absorb the remaining small portion of spiritual energy according to the Qi refining method, and then put it into his dantian.
The spiritual mist surged, and his cultivation improved slightly. But Shen Qing felt little joy.
Fifty-two strands of spiritual energy, if refined according to the Qi cultivation method, can be fully absorbed in a quarter of an hour at most.
However, after refining it using martial arts techniques and cultivating it for a whole night, only a small portion remained.
This is the gap.
There's a reason why cultivating Qi and seeking immortality is the mainstream practice in this world.
The quality of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth is far superior to the internal energy generated by the human body. Refining spiritual energy using Qi cultivation methods is extremely efficient and yields twice the result with half the effort.
Martial arts practitioners can only rely on their own blood and qi to generate internal energy, and then use internal energy to temper their physical body. The quality of internal energy is not as good as spiritual energy, and the generation speed is also slow, so the cultivation efficiency is naturally vastly different.
Shen Qing's actions were tantamount to using gold as firewood, which can be described as extremely extravagant and wasteful.
But Shen Qing had no other choice; if he wanted to quickly improve his physical strength, he had to resort to this desperate measure.
Shen Qing moved his body, and the soreness, numbness, swelling, and pain had subsided, replaced by a feeling of fullness he had never experienced before.
It's a feeling of fullness that awakens the whole body, from fingertips to toes, from skin to bone marrow, every inch of the body seems to be infused with some kind of vitality.
Shen Qing clenched his fist, feeling an improvement in his physical body. The improvement wasn't significant, but he could definitely feel the change.
More importantly, the body's endurance seems to have increased slightly.
The stinging pain in my dantian that felt like it was about to burst, which I had experienced a few days ago, was nowhere near as intense.
As long as it works.
Shen Qing stood up, pushed open the door, and saw that the morning mist had not yet dissipated, and Qingyun Mountain was shrouded in a hazy gray-white.
On the training ground, several diligent disciples were already practicing on their own.
Wang Shouzhou was practicing Zhan Zhuang (standing meditation), Su Shoujing was practicing the boxing form, and Zhong Xiu was sitting cross-legged in the corner, breathing exercises.
The girl's figure appeared and disappeared in the morning mist, like a quiet green bamboo.
Shen Qing watched for a while, then turned and walked towards the dining hall.
In the following days, Shen Qing extracted spiritual energy precisely at midnight every day, refining it all using martial arts techniques to temper his physical body.
The fifty-two strands of spiritual energy initially took a whole night to barely refine most of, but later it could be completely refined within three hours, and then within two hours.
As for his physical body, it was also getting stronger at an incredible speed. Although he was still a long way from the "Great Perfection of Body Refinement" described in "True Explanation of Mortal Martial Arts", the carrying capacity of his meridians had increased by at least 20%.
A 20% increase means that the total amount of spiritual energy he can safely absorb each day has increased by 20%.
This means that the cultivation speed has increased by another 20%, which is a virtuous cycle.
During this time, Shen Qing also made an unexpected discovery.
Huang An and Huang Ning's loyalty has dropped.
On the system panel, two lines of prompts stood out starkly:
[Disciple Huang An's loyalty -10, current loyalty: 69]
[Disciple Huang Ning's loyalty -10, current loyalty: 69]
Shen Qing stared at the two lines of numbers and remained silent for a long time.
The moment when loyalty dropped was exactly the day after County Magistrate Zhao Yuanlang left Qingyun Mountain.
Considering what happened at Qingyun Mountain, the reason is self-evident: Huang An and Huang Ning must have relayed Zhao Yuanlang's visit back to the Huang family.
They were fulfilling their duty as "eyes and ears," and this duty created a certain conflict within them.
This conflict manifests as a decline in loyalty.
Ten o'clock, which isn't a lot considering the loyalty of the two people, is enough to illustrate the point.
Shen Qing had previously gone to great lengths, using rewards, promotions, and persuasive rhetoric to raise the loyalty of the two men from the thirties to the seventy-nine.
He once thought that the two teenagers had truly regarded him as a member of the Qingyun Sect.
After all, they were not valued in the Huang family, but they were respected and recognized in the Qingyun Sect. Shen Qing felt that this contrast was enough to change a person's stance.
But as it turned out, he was wrong.
The bond of blood was stronger than he had imagined.
Even if they were marginalized members of their families, and even if they received unprecedented respect in the Qingyun Sect, when they had to choose between their families and the sect, they still chose their families.
Shen Qing didn't think it was because they didn't approve of Qingyun Sect. After all, a loyalty score of 79% was enough to show that they had feelings for Qingyun Sect.
However, in their value ranking, family ranks before sect.
This is something deeply rooted in one's bloodline; it cannot be changed by a few Qi Gathering Pills or a few nice words.
Shen Qing did not bring this up.
He treated Huang An and Huang Ning as usual, continuing to have them tutor the children in literacy classes.
Continue to involve them in inner sect meetings, and continue to record their Immortal Affinity rankings accurately.
Everything remained the same, as if nothing had happened.
But Shen Qing mentally relabeled the two of them.
They are neither "enemies" nor "traitors," but simply two teenagers caught in a web of circumstances.
They were sent by their family to act as spies; it wasn't their choice.
It's not their fault that they chose to remain loyal to their family at crucial moments.
If Shen Qing were in their position, would she make the same choice? Shen Qing didn't know; maybe she would, maybe she wouldn't.
That's not important. What's important is that from now on, Shen Qing will no longer try to "completely win them over".
It's neither necessary nor realistic.
Maintaining the status quo is fine; a loyalty level of 69 is sufficient for system binding and energy extraction.
As long as they don't do anything to harm the Qingyun Sect, Shen Qing will treat them the same as other inner disciples.
But if one day the Huang family and the Qingyun Sect really go to war, Shen Qing will not make things difficult for them.
He would transfer the two men away from the core area in advance, sending them to a county town far from the battlefield.
It's not that I'm soft-hearted, it's that it's unnecessary.
Two teenagers at the second level of Qi Refining can't cause any trouble.
Instead of racking his brains to "turn them against their own side," he should spend more time cultivating Zhong Xiu, Xu Ping, and Fang Xue—those true geniuses of the Qingyun Sect—who are his foundation.