094. Refining Elixir with True Fire, Nurturing the Primordial Breath!

Two stoves in the house burned with a low, steady flame.

On one, a pair of black earthen pots simmered: one held a restorative tonic made from three full doses of herbs; the other had nearly a pound of fish gelatin with supporting ingredients. There was no room for any more.

For caution’s sake, Chen Jue even took out the leftover tonics he had bought earlier and never gotten around to finishing. The medicinal jelly, ginseng slices, and the rest were all steeped in hot water. Only after two hours, with the night already nearing midnight, did he finally finish cooking both medicine and food, ladling out two large basins to cool.

He had been so careful because the siphoning effect of the Great and Small Heavenly Circulation was terrifyingly strong. Even before he had truly mastered it, when its proficiency was still barely one out of a hundred, it could strip the nutrients clean from his stomach and intestines.

And this time, each point added at least ten proficiency at a time. Chen Jue did not want to suffer that hollowed-out, drained feeling again.

“If I want to practice properly, there’s no other way,” he muttered.

“For all those days of training before, nothing happened. Trying to grind this skill out by sheer effort is basically impossible. I can only rely on added points.”

Taking a deep breath, he first drank the medicine and ate the fish gelatin until he was completely full, then sat cross-legged to circulate his blood and energy. After that, he spent 0.01 free attribute points to raise the Great and Small Heavenly Circulation.

Boom.

The instant the points were added, Chen Jue’s mind suddenly buzzed, his ears rang, and the blood flowing through his body seemed to be shot through with stimulant, surging hotly through every vein.

One circuit, two circuits, three circuits—no one knew how many revolutions it made. From within the old house, there came a rushing sound like water boiling furiously in a kettle.

That was the echo of blood within Chen Jue’s body.

His blood vessels swelled, his whole body flushed red like a cooked shrimp, blue veins standing out in cords. His heart thudded violently in his chest, even more exaggerated than when he unleashed repeated bursts of hidden force.

Most of all, Chen Jue could feel that the medicine and food he had just eaten had been drained away in an absurdly short time, and his strength, stamina, agility, and even intelligence all began climbing at a frightening rate.

This was the process described in Daoist inner alchemy as refining essence into energy, then refining energy into spirit.

But in ancient times, when accomplished Daoist masters practiced it, the process was extremely slow—sometimes taking years, even decades, before yielding any real effect.

Yet Chen Jue, by adding points, had forcibly compressed that transformation.

His whole body flushed crimson, veins bulging. At that moment he was like a human alchemical furnace. Beneath his navel, in the dantian, it felt as though a fire were burning; blood gathered there, forming a warm, round, bead-like sensation.

Hidden there was a point called Shangqu, an important hub in the body’s blood circulation. Once stimulated, it could unleash immense power.

In martial classics it was called the Blood Gate. In Daoist alchemy, it was said to conceal the mighty Northern Dipper True Warrior within.

And Chen Jue’s blood now pouring uncontrollably toward Shangqu meant that a special condition of inner alchemy had formed: blood refining lead and mercury, the inner elixir taking shape of itself.

At this point, no matter how much he ate, it was all devoured by the tremendous siphoning force set off by his circulation technique.

“Not good!”

“What I’ve eaten isn’t enough to keep up with the absorption!” Frightened, Chen Jue hurried off to finish the remaining medicinal broth and fish gelatin.

But it was useless. After only a few minutes of fullness, his stomach and intestines were empty again.

Like feeding fire into a furnace, adding more and more fuel, Chen Jue’s body was the furnace, and food and tonics were the kindling. The hotter the fire burned, the faster the fuel was consumed.

Seeing that the two prepared pots of medicinal food were not enough to replenish him, Chen Jue had no choice but to tear open the medicinal jelly he had set aside earlier and down more than a dozen packets in succession. Still feeling unsatisfied, he drank great gulps of hot ginseng tea.

Even then it was not enough. After finishing a pot of ginseng tea, he even poured the ginseng slices from the bottom into his mouth, chewed them, and swallowed them down.

By the time he had gone this far, the aftershock of the siphoning effect still lingered. So he quickly poured hot water over the entire can of ginseng slices he had bought online, and without caring whether the slices had softened, dumped the lot into his mouth.

With Chen Jue’s teeth now, he could chew a stone to pieces. This half-can of ginseng only took a few bites before it was ground to pulp.

The reckless way he swallowed tonics left a very strange taste in his mouth, but he no longer had the leisure to care.

Only after he had scooped out the medicinal dregs from the pot of restorative tonic and swallowed a couple of big mouthfuls did the siphoning effect from the added points finally begin to subside.

His pores, which had been tightly closed for so long, suddenly loosened. A visible wave of heat burst from every pore on Chen Jue’s body.

The entire first floor of the old house seemed as though a sauna room had been suddenly stuffed into it; the temperature rose rapidly under that steaming heat.

Chen Jue sat cross-legged, slowly calming the surging heat in his blood.

He glanced at his attribute panel. Strength, stamina, and agility had all leapt upward by a good margin, each increasing by 0.1. Intelligence had risen the most of all; in that short span, it had already climbed to 1.61, with the original value at 1.11.

“And this was only ten proficiency points added to the Great and Small Heavenly Circulation…” Chen Jue looked at the kitchen and stove, now a complete mess. “If I’d broken through directly, wouldn’t this body have been sucked completely dry?”

To calm the terrifying siphoning effect just now, he had even eaten some of the medicinal residue from the earthen pots, which showed how urgent the situation had been.

Fortunately, his qi and blood had now settled. His stomach no longer churned at such speed, and the sudden surge in attributes and intelligence left Chen Jue clear-headed and deeply at ease, his thoughts open and agile. With a single idle notion, he could spin out all kinds of strange and fanciful ideas.

After cleaning up the kitchen and taking a shower, he saw that it was already past one in the morning, so he lay down and went to sleep.

No matter how many ideas he had, he still had to nourish his energy and keep a regular sleep schedule. He could not go back to the way things had been when he worked before, mindlessly scrolling on his phone until four or five in the morning and then sleeping straight through to the afternoon. That would damage the foundation of his health too much.

...

When he woke, it was already past nine in the morning. Chen Jue felt completely relaxed. The sleep he had gotten last night was like an infant returning to its mother’s body: no dreams, no waking, deep and peaceful, as though he had slept straight through until dawn.

In Daoist texts, this state was called embryonic breathing, a highly difficult special mode of sleep mentioned in inner alchemy. Like an animal hibernating through winter, one could sleep for months at a time, with blood circulation and organ activity reduced to a minimum, all distracting thoughts cast off, the spirit concentrated and the breath quieted in order to nourish the elixir.

And this elixir was not the golden pill of immortality from tales of cultivation or transcendence. It was the gathering of blood at the Shangqu point in the dantian, as described above.

Shangqu is an important hub of the body’s blood circulation. It connects to the kidneys, supplying them with blood, nutrients, and energy. The stronger the kidneys become, the greater their ability to filter toxins and impurities from the blood. Combined with the heart’s supply of blood, the body grows healthier and healthier over time.

To put it simply, on Chen Jue’s attribute panel, his health index had risen overnight from 105 percent to 132 percent.

Simple, direct, and clear—and proof that last night’s point investment into the Great and Small Heavenly Circulation had placed him on the right path of cultivation.