Volume 4, Chapter 58 – Visualization

“Hm?”

The instant she entered meditation, Bai Xiang suddenly felt a little uneasy and could not help lifting her head to look toward the northern quarter.

The north… was it only an illusion? She somehow felt that something important had happened there.

It was somewhat like a warning issued through Taishang Resonance, but the distance felt so vague and remote that Bai Xiang could not be sure.

“Auntie?” Bai Zhuqing had been eagerly waiting to “observe” her exactly as instructed. Seeing that she was not starting, she asked in confusion, her voice tinged with concern.

Nothing had gone wrong in cultivation, had it?

“It should be nothing.” Bai Xiang quickly withdrew her thoughts. “Let’s continue.”

Ordinarily, following the usual process, she should have immersed only half her attention into her Body-scape to maintain cultivation, while leaving the other half outside: keeping an eye on her younger sister as she cooperated, giving verbal guidance along the way, and preventing her from taking a wrong step.

But this time she wanted to see just how profound Bai Zhuqing’s qi trait could be, so she intentionally offered no prompts at all. Letting most of her attention sink into her Body-scape, she directly activated soul-vision of the Body-scape.

With a gustlike motion, a translucent soul-phantom flew out of her body. It too sat in full lotus, floating in the void with its eyes shut, while within it appeared the circulation of her Qi-Origin, her dantian Qi Sea, the golden core in her Body-scape, and the three core hidden orifices.

A closer look revealed that between the three points of light representing those hidden orifices there was also, faintly, a “centipede dragon.” It ran through the soul-body’s spine, linking all three points together.

This long dragon was the spinal great dragon hidden within the real human body, and its true name was the Heaven-Pillar Vessel. Bai Xiang had obtained knowledge of it from the Meridian-Linking Method, a body-cultivation art she acquired in the Luohou Kingdom.

The Heaven-Pillar Vessel also went by the alternate names Hidden Dragon Vessel and Spirit-Linking Vessel. As the great vessel of the spine, its importance went without saying, but it also had one rather awkward aspect: only when a certain number of the twelve hidden vessels and the body’s hidden orifices had been brought into manifestation would its function of “linking the whole system” truly come into play.

Before that point, its role was not all that obvious. At the very least, for the three flower-orifices of the Hidden Field Orifice, the Hidden Heart Orifice, and the Hidden Spirit Orifice, they could already fuse together on their own, and did not need the Heaven-Pillar Vessel to bridge them.

Precisely because of this, even though Bai Xiang had already excavated it and manifested it through refinement, she normally did not devote much attention to it. She had only felt that after finding this hidden vessel, her bodily coordination had strengthened somewhat and the exertion of force through certain joints had become smoother.

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But now that she was beginning to locate and excavate other orifices and vessels, Bai Xiang immediately discerned another hidden effect of the Heaven-Pillar Vessel: it could increase the success rate of this process and reduce errors and risks along the way.

This was not something she had comprehended on her own. It was part of Immortal Venerable Jiuli’s gift. He had made corresponding comparisons while refining several other great vessels and orifices.

Before excavating and manifesting the Heaven-Pillar Vessel, Immortal Venerable Jiuli had always harbored anxiety when excavating other vessels and orifices. Because he was different from Bai Xiang. Bai Xiang could use the combination of soul-vision of the Body-scape and Golden-Pupil Illusory God to pinpoint them precisely. He could not. He could only sink his soul into his Body-scape and explore cautiously. In nature, this was not much different from how a sword student sensed the flow of the heart-stream.

Even when luck favored him and he managed to locate one, if his mind wavered for a moment, the process of excavation and manifestation could be interrupted out of nowhere, and an orifice that had already begun to appear might immediately dim again.

If he then had to search for it all over, it could take even longer than the first time, and he still might not find it. Such things had happened before.

But if the Heaven-Pillar Vessel had already been excavated, that difficulty would ease greatly.

True to being linked with the spinal great dragon, the nerves branching from the Heaven-Pillar Vessel’s channels really did interconnect the whole body like a centipede. Once the Heaven-Pillar Vessel had been manifested externally, every vessel and every orifice excavated under that condition would be “locked on” by it the moment it was located and identified. At that point, even emotional fluctuations would have almost no effect on the subsequent process.

It was for precisely this reason that, although the vessel’s true marvels would only reveal themselves after success in body cultivation, for many cultivators who focused on excavating the body’s latent potential and specialized in the route of orifices and vessels, the Heaven-Pillar Vessel had to be found as early as possible and excavated into manifestation.

Having gained these insights, and having also received from Immortal Venerable Jiuli the visual experience of manifesting and refining three other vessels and three orifices, Bai Xiang did not delay further. She began directly with the Hidden Dumen Orifice, using Illusory God to hypnotize her externalized soul.

After a few breaths, a faint point of light appeared inside the soul-body. It was like a dim star, inconspicuous under the radiance of the three great hidden orifices.

I could light up all the orifices and vessels in one go, then take the soul-body back and manifest them all at once… but if I did that, the routes for circulating qi would become extremely complicated, and it would be unfavorable for Qing’er to read.

Bai Xiang’s movements paused for a moment, and she chose instead to withdraw the soul-body right then and there.

At once, the exact location of the Hidden Dumen Orifice, the insights into manifesting it, and its specific function poured directly into her thoughts. As her route of circulating qi changed, a vortex-point appeared inside her body, and under the washing of Qi-Origin it began to emit a resonant echo.

What is that?

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Bai Zhuqing had been closely observing Bai Xiang’s every movement all along. This observation did not merely mean watching with her eyes. Her “clone,” the tiny sword-pellet sphere condensed from qi-force, had already slipped into Bai Xiang’s body from the place where their lower abdomens and dantians touched. While resisting the cutting and refinement of Bai Xiang’s violent Qi-Origin, it also split into countless fine strands of qi-force that wrapped themselves around the Qi-Origin, likewise constructing a model by reading the returning echoes.

Because she had now also cultivated Jade Spirit Mingxin, she was capable of performing this sonar-like operation. So when the resonant model came back to her, the first thing she sensed was that a new sounding point seemed to have appeared inside Bai Xiang’s body, which astonished her greatly.

No, it was not simply that one extra point had appeared.

At the same time that the Hidden Dumen Orifice was being manifested, it was also being locked in place by the nerves of the Heaven-Pillar Vessel. The instant the two connected, Bai Zhuqing’s brows trembled slightly. She could actually vaguely sense that there seemed to be a “great centipede dragon” hidden inside Bai Xiang’s body, slowly swaying with her breathing.

In the model, it looked almost like some kind of tentacled monster. The girl involuntarily widened her eyes in shock, scarcely able to believe what she was seeing.

“Well?” Bai Xiang had successfully manifested a new orifice by now, and she too opened her eyes to look over. “Did you sense anything?”

A moment ago she had used her soul-ability to restrain the overly violent Qi-Origin inside her body and had deliberately slowed the rate at which it refined the sword-pellet sphere. That was the only reason Bai Zhuqing had been given enough time to observe.

…That little sphere also produced certain strange sensations in her, so it was fair to say that she had made a sacrifice as well.

If Bai Zhuqing’s answer did not satisfy her, this treatment would never be available again.

“I only felt that two places inside Auntie’s body were giving off… fluctuations.”

The girl blinked a few times and honestly described her own perception.

So such a thing was possible?

Bai Xiang was a little surprised.

Even though she had already begun to suspect something about her younger sister’s qi trait, and about the true nature of the thing, she really had not expected it to give her such a surprise right away.

“Then try it on yourself,” Bai Xiang ordered.

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She wanted to see just how far this strangeness could go.

Bai Zhuqing did not understand the inner workings here. She only assumed that anything Bai Xiang instructed could not be wrong, and so she imitated the recorded fluctuations.

And so, about a minute later, Bai Zhuqing looked at Bai Xiang somewhat nervously and asked hesitantly, “Did… did I do something wrong?”

“…”

For a moment, Bai Xiang did not know how to answer.

Because Bai Zhuqing had succeeded.

She had not only excavated and manifested the Hidden Dumen Orifice, but had even excavated the Heaven-Pillar Vessel along with it, and had successfully manifested both.

How could such a thing exist in this world…?

If this peculiarity was not merely an extra gift from Little Aunt, but rather the “ability of inner realization” possessed by all cultivators of the Path of Qi, then it could almost be regarded as a divine-pool power unique to the Path of Qi.

Unlike Dao-Void Methods, which had to be tempered through thunder tribulation and only then, after forming the so-called Dao-Origin foundation, could begin to touch such things, this had actually awakened right at the moment of entering the Dao…

Bai Xiang sank into thought. And across from her, Bai Zhuqing also understood something from her silence.

She had probably… perhaps… done something quite extraordinary, to the point that even Xiang’er, who was normally as still as an ancient well, had been left speechless.

Of course, Bai Zhuqing had no idea that what she had just done amounted to “cultivating far above her level.” This was simply not something her realm should have allowed her to do.

What was her current cultivation?

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Refining Qi, Eighth Layer.

The eighth layer of the Path of Qi system was roughly equivalent to a True Person of the Sword Dao system in the Embracing the Core stage, and one who had already opened the Nine-Turn Core Tribulation at that.

At her age and with so little time spent cultivating, that was already astonishing. But it was still far from enough.

As for the excavation and manifestation of hidden orifices and hidden vessels, that was something one ought only begin to consider in detail after reaching the Innate Realm and the Medicine-Gathering stage.

Especially when it came to vessels. By Bai Xiang’s estimate, it was best to wait until all of the body’s manifest meridians and manifest orifices had been trained through, and then begin researching and cultivating this step only after reaching the Golden Core realm.

Bai Zhuqing should never have had the chance to touch this path at the “shallow cultivation” of Refining Qi, Eighth Layer.

But because of her connection to Bai Xiang, because in a certain sense she was treated by the soul-ability as a “clone,” her qi-force and even her thoughts were not rejected by Bai Xiang. They could still penetrate inward and thus read this information.

And according to Bai Zhuqing’s own calculations, as long as she could read it and sense it, then finding “something inside herself that roughly corresponded” did not seem especially difficult.

After all, she was only copying from a model.

What was it Elder Sister had once called this kind of act?

“Observation”?

“Visualization”?

The girl stole a glance upward at Bai Xiang’s expression and thought that the word truly was perfectly apt…