Chapter 59: The Spontaneous Generation of Qi (Part I)

Under the shroud of night, Chen Yu sat with his eyes tightly shut, his mind still deeply immersed in the myriad transformations occurring within his body.

Inside the great cauldron of forged blood and energy, he himself was like a smaller vessel, refining the interior and exterior of his physical form—his viscera, flesh, sinews, bones, and even the hundreds of acupuncture points.

At this moment, the primordial blood surging through him had lost its restlessness, calming into a steady flow. Most of the fetal membranes within his acupoints had been shattered during the previous violent fluctuations, dissolving into foam and merging into the blood coursing through his entire body.

Chen Yu attempted to draw Qi into an acupoint, only to find that once infused, it no longer fostered the growth of extraneous flesh. It was as if the tissues within the acupoints had fully adapted to the Qi, leaving the acupoints to serve solely as transit and storage hubs.

His mental energy sank into his internal organs. Several of them had already completed their metamorphosis, yet they continued to subtly improve as the primordial blood surged through them.

In the Dantian, the fetal breath had dissipated entirely; the last wisp he had caught in his desperation had been fused into Qi and sent into his spleen and stomach. Now, his lower Dantian stood wide open. As he directed his mental energy, he found that the barriers that once obstructed him were gone, allowing him to drive straight through.

It was dark and desolate.

It felt even more hollow than the Niwan Palace had when it was first opened. He surmised that it should have originally held a vast amount of fetal breath, but now that it had been thoroughly drained, nothing remained.

Just then, as he maneuvered his mental energy to drift about, a faint, ash-gray force slowly emerged from below.

Chen Yu observed it; it was none other than the fetal breath.

So, the fetal breath truly originated here. Vaguely, the wisp of mental energy he was controlling was drawn toward the fetal breath. The familiar gravitational pull emanated outward, and as the fetal breath pulsed, it seemed intent on devouring the mental energy drifting near it.

His mental strength was immense now. With a single thought, he wrapped around it, grinding and fusing it. In an instant, the ash-gray fetal breath vanished, leaving behind only a wisp of jade-white Qi.

What lay beneath this?

He turned his mental focus downward. Unlike the Niwan Palace, which required external guidance, the lower Dantian clearly produced its own, acting as the very source of the fetal breath within this hazy, illusory expanse.

He attempted to probe the bottom with his consciousness, but unexpectedly encountered a familiar resistance. He had felt it outside the Dantian before, but it seemed far weaker than this.

If he had been able to use his massive mental energy to carry the fetal breath and Qi in a deluge to bypass some of those barriers earlier, this layer, solid as a city wall, forced him to abandon any thought of grinding through it with mere mental force. After all, there seemed to be another power at the base that did not react to or consume his mental energy.

Outside the Dantian, more mental energy flooded in.

At first, it was like a trickling stream, but under Chen Yu’s active control, it soon became a surging river, constant and endless.

Setting aside his interest in the bottom for the moment, he spread this mental energy out, blanketing the surrounding space.

Half a quarter of an hour passed, yet the anticipated fetal breath did not appear before him. He scanned his surroundings and noticed a wisp of fetal breath scattered in an area not yet covered by his mental energy.

It was silent and still, flickering like a candle flame, as if it might be extinguished at any moment.

As Chen Yu "watched" this scene, his consciousness jolted. He withdrew his mental energy, leaving a gap. Sure enough, in the next moment, wisps of fetal breath emerged from the bottom, rippling in the void and attracting his mental energy.

"Although it attracts mental energy and can synthesize Qi, it ultimately needs to be born in an environment devoid of mental energy?"

This thought stirred questions in him. For a long time, he had been unclear about where the fetal breath came from and how it fused with mental energy.

He had already deduced that mental energy was condensed and nourished by consciousness. He suspected that the hazy, void-like lower layer outside the Niwan Palace might be the deepest reaches of his own consciousness, perhaps even an ocean—that boundless sea of consciousness whose origins he had never been able to trace.

Now that he had opened the portal to the Dantian, similar to the Niwan Palace, and discovered that the fetal breath originated from below, he wondered: what did the deeper parts connect to?

Consciousness? No, he didn't think so. The fetal breath and mental energy were related, yet fundamentally different. Compared to the ethereal nature of consciousness and mental energy, he felt they were more closely tied to his physical blood and flesh.

In fact, over the past long period, as his primordial blood increased, Chen Yu had long noticed that the growth of the fetal breath had also improved, leading to more overflow and more fused Qi.

But this situation had changed recently. It seemed the fetal breath had a total limit, or perhaps the stimulation from the primordial blood had an invisible peak. Once nearly half of his acupoints had successfully drawn in Qi, the total volume of primordial blood was immense, yet the production of fetal breath had ceased to grow, and instead began to shrink.

Now, having come into the Dantian and witnessed the process of fetal breath generation with his own eyes, he began to form some ideas. The fetal breath might truly be closely linked to flesh and blood, but it wasn't that simple.

There was also the involvement of the spirit liquid.

At this point, Chen Yu suddenly opened his eyes and took a swig from his water skin—he had grown more accustomed to using the skin than the bamboo tubes for consuming the spirit liquid.

As for the bamboo tubes, he kept them for storage; he had made quite a few, but they were kept aside after being filled, to be used only when needed.

Now, as the spirit liquid flowed into his belly, he was surprised to find that his metamorphosed digestive system took effect even before his liver—previously, his stomach could at most break the liquid down slightly to transport it to the liver, lacking the ability to fully digest and decompose it on its own.

But now, it was different. The spirit liquid was rapidly absorbed and transmitted to all his internal organs. It wasn't just the liver; heat flowed into the others as well.

The efficiency of absorption far exceeded the previous process when only the liver was involved!

Moreover, Chen Yu turned his attention inward and was startled to find wisps of fetal breath emerging in the Dantian once more. However, each wisp appeared slightly frail, as if forced into existence rather than growing naturally.

He steered his mental energy to scan his body, finding no signs of damage or the ill effects of forced growth.

He let out a sigh of relief, assuming these wisps were simply the result of the spirit liquid and primordial blood merging, and were harmless to his body.

Chen Yu converted all of them into Qi, guiding some out of the Dantian while leaving the rest within.

He steered his mental energy to the exterior of the Niwan Palace once more, pondering for a long time, seemingly hesitant.

But eventually, he made up his mind.

He flowed outward with the remaining mental energy, drifting around like heavy clouds.

He pulled and aggregated, as if braiding a rope, threading it through most of his body and stretching it toward the area outside the Dantian.

Fortunately, his metamorphosed body offered less resistance and caused less consumption of his mental energy. The process went smoothly without much difficulty.

After failing several times midway, he finally succeeded.

Then, Chen Yu opened the lower Dantian.

He pulled the fetal breath out in the same way, braiding and stretching it until it reached an acupoint near his navel.

The lower Dantian was not made of flesh, but at this moment, two thin threads—one silver-gray, one pale-gray—were connected together, colliding within the acupoint.

The next moment, Qi slowly began to manifest.