Chapter Thirty-Three: Acupoints

It has always been true that the human body contains great apertures.

These openings are scattered throughout the body, large and small, linked to every part of the natural cycle.

Chen Yu had found information in the books about the apertures associated with the internal organs. There was little of substance; most of it was little more than diffuse speculation. Yet what remained was enough for him to ponder.

The viscera were connected to the apertures and hung upon the twelve meridians. Places like the Lung Transport Point, the Middle Cavity, and the Celestial Pivot manifested outwardly; by striking, twisting, or pressing them, one could produce a response from the corresponding organ and feel something in return.

Beyond that, many of the Daoist and medical texts he had seen in the Square Pavilion contained similar assertions. For example, the Classic of the Spiritual Pivot stated that the five viscera were not merely linked to internal and external apertures, but also to the apertures of the five sense organs.

The liver opened into the eyes, the heart into the tongue, the spleen into the mouth, the lungs into the nose, and the kidneys into the ears and the two lower passages.

This notion of opening was different from ordinary apertures. It did not refer to acupoints in the usual sense, but to the way the five viscera influenced the five sense organs, achieving keen hearing, sharp vision, and the harmonious exchange of yin and yang.

The books made it sound profoundly mysterious, but whether it could truly be done remained to be verified. Chen Yu did not probe too deeply. Instead, he focused on the descriptions of apertures within the Contemplation method.

Contemplation of the Fire Aperture centered on the five phases. It trained the fire element through the heart, supported by the metal of the lungs and the wood of the liver, forming a complete inner cultivation method of contemplative refinement.

Across those three organs, along with the apertures of the skin, flesh, joints, and so forth, the book recorded roughly thirty points in all.

In truth, with the aid of his spiritual power and the Body-Strengthening Art of Spirit-Calling, every time he absorbed spirit liquid he could find nearly all the apertures within his body.

After comparing them carefully, he found that this method omitted quite a few; the number did not match. Several descriptions were also wrong, with the apertures positioned absurdly far off, and some locations the book named as apertures contained none at all.

Of course, it was not impossible that his body was different from that of an ordinary person. But Chen Yu felt that the far likelier explanation was that the author of the book did not possess his ability to discern and distinguish through spiritual power.

Still, that did not make the book useless. He read with even greater care, pondering and interpreting each word. There were also annotations on it from various people: adepts, scholars, and fellow Daoists.

“The guiding medicines are incomplete, and the inducing medicines are wholly absent.”

He turned a page and his gaze fell upon a sheet of paper that had been damaged beyond half its extent. Unlike Chen Yu, who had spirit liquid as a foundation, inner Daoist cultivation often caused great damage to the viscera, and many methods required medicinal support before the body could bear them.

The guiding medicines were the foundation; the inducing medicines were the superior layer. Now that both were lacking, even a complete method was not something anyone would dare to try lightly.

Chen Yu did not place much value on the cultivation method itself. What interested him were the prescriptions that could temper the internal organs. Unfortunately, there was no way to reconstruct them, and it was impossible to expect another sect to hand them over for nothing. So he let the matter drop.

He set the book aside, sat cross-legged on the stone platform, closed his eyes, and regulated his breathing for a moment, allowing the breeze to brush over his face.

His thoughts sank downward, and vaguely he seemed about to fall into a hollow, voidlike stillness. In the end, he stopped himself and drew his mind back. The First Light realm was indeed beneficial; it could calm the heart and clarify the mind. But it was of little use at the moment. What he needed now was to actively direct his consciousness to follow his spiritual power, letting it surge and circulate continuously within his body.

Chen Yu tried to guide part of his prenatal breath toward an aperture outside the heart, near the central hall, between the Gate of Qimen and the Great Cavity.

This aperture was not large, and its connection to the body was not especially close. He wanted to send the prenatal breath into it and test whether, outside the liver’s domain, he could still condense a seed of vital energy as he had imagined.

“The Spirit-Calling Art is not very effective in guiding vital energy, and neither is the Body-Strengthening Art.”

In the process, he clearly felt the prenatal breath that wrapped around the vital energy darting through the body’s meridians, yet he could never quite control it at will.

In the end, he had no choice but to use more spiritual power to envelope it, dragging it over by force.

Unlike the lower cinnabar field, this aperture, which was already part of the flesh and blood, easily received the prenatal breath. While he waited in silence, he poured his spiritual power into it, blending it with the prenatal breath within the aperture and strengthening that threadlike strand of vital energy.

After a quarter hour, the scant prenatal breath had been fully transformed.

A jade-white stream of vital energy flowed within the aperture. Chen Yu activated the Body-Strengthening Art of Spirit-Calling and took a sip of spirit liquid.

In an instant, it felt as though countless stars were blazing within his body, and before his eyes there was only dazzling silver radiance.

He guided his spirit to the place where the vital energy remained and saw it ripple there like mist and clouds.

Interwoven threads, along with the warmth produced by the absorption of the spirit liquid, worked together with the vital energy, continually seeping through the walls of the aperture.

His flesh and blood were being strengthened, and a faint, tingling sensation spread into his mind, bringing an indescribable sense of comfort.

But soon that comfort turned into a swelling pressure, as if he were being stretched full to bursting, accompanied by a searing pain.

Chen Yu’s mind jolted. He hurriedly looked again, only to see the flesh and blood within the aperture multiplying at great speed. Layer upon layer, with the influx of vital energy, masses of newly grown tissue seemed ready to seal the entire opening shut.

Blood pooled around it, and the delicate vessels showed signs of being unable to bear the strain, threatening to rupture.

His brow tightened, and the gateway of spirit opened wide.

He did not have time to think further. Quickly, he used his surging spiritual power to dig out all the remaining vital energy from within the aperture.

Threads and wisps of it scattered outward and sank into flesh, blood, and bone. Perhaps because there was too little of it, the effect was not especially pronounced.

As the vital energy dissipated, the flesh within the aperture began to wither. Washed by the blood, it melted away and disappeared. Yet Chen Yu noticed that this aperture seemed to have changed: a thin membrane had formed there, and at first glance it looked like the scab of a healing wound.

But it was softer and more elastic, and blood flowed through it without the slightest obstruction.

Hah.

Opening his eyes, Chen Yu pressed a hand to his forehead and slowly rubbed at the center of his brow.

The accident had happened so suddenly that, in his haste, he had poured out a great deal of spiritual power, far more fiercely than before. It was likely that the palace of the spirit within had also been injured, because the space between his brows throbbed with sharp pain.

Still, what mattered more at the moment was the experiment with vital energy.

The facts proved that this thing was far more active than either spiritual power or prenatal breath.

Its reaction to flesh and blood was also intense.

But judging from the seed of vital energy that remained quiet and unharmed in the liver, the change this time may also have been connected to the spirit liquid’s effects.

Fortunately, he had dealt with it in time. If the entire aperture had truly been blocked, then however small it was, it was still part of the body, and who knew what might have happened.

“I need to think of a safer method.”

Chen Yu rubbed his aching head and lowered his gaze in thought.

Vital energy could not be poured directly into an aperture—not at least together with spirit liquid—but he was genuinely curious about the reaction between the two.

Cannot be poured into the aperture... aperture...

Meridians, extraordinary channels, the eight secondary vessels...

As he thought, his mind drifted outward. Remembering the many stories and tales he had read in the past, he suddenly slapped his hand together and arrived at a solution that was not quite a solution.

If the path of the great flesh apertures would not work, then he would simply forge a vital-energy aperture himself.

It was not that he had some grudge against apertures. Rather, most Daoist scriptures recorded this very thing, and after reading so many of them he had gathered no small number of ideas. Moreover, after experimentation, apertures did indeed exist. Under such circumstances, to give up without even trying would be difficult to accept.

That said, vital energy was far too difficult to control. He did not know whether his spiritual power was insufficiently strong or whether something else was amiss, but he still could not command it as he wished. In such a state, wanting to shape a vital-energy aperture from nothing was no different from reaching for the heavens.

How could he make these strands of vital energy a little more obedient...