New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live-Chapter 1095: The Truth About Qi

The clouds continued darkening above the mountain, making the people at its foot wonder what was happening. The local news hadn’t predicted any weather phenomena, and seeing the clouds darken so fast was strange.

But some of the older locals, who had seen this a few times before, smiled, whispering under their breaths.

"The sky blesses us with another protector."

Local legend had it that at the top of the mountain, a lesser deity resided, and once every few decades, it would gather the sky’s wrath and bless a lucky warrior with the strength to fight back against the world’s evils.

Of course, this was all legend, and no one had ever seen a demon in their lives. If only they knew how close to accurate the legend was, and the very reason they had yet to see a demon was that the Zhong Kui had been killing them from the shadows for millennia.

But everyone’s day would go on as usual, regardless of what would come in the next hour.

On top of the mountain, standing on the seventy-ninth step of the Heavenly Ascent, still pushing against the invisible wall that kept him from advancing, Liu Yan reached a calm state of mind.

His body had started tingling from all the electricity gathering in the air above him, and he felt his hair raise in anticipation, but it didn’t affect him. On the contrary, it helped calm him.

It was almost like his body knew this was a blessing coming its way.

Feeling the resistance suddenly vanish, his foot landing on the eightieth step, he grinned.

But his grin was short-lived as the sky thundered and erupted in a flash of bright, golden white.

The lightning bolt, thick as his arm, crashed into Liu Yan and tried knocking him back a step, but he took in the lightning, gritting his teeth to endure the burning pain. The surge lasted only a second, but his body kept convulsing lightly for a minute before stabilizing.

He opened his eyes, sparks still travelling in them, and grinned.

"Was that it? All this fuss for a single lightning bolt?" he mocked.

But the fox’s voice reached his ears amidst the ringing still echoing in them.

"That was only the first of nine attacks! Climb the steps while you can!"

Liu Yan was confused why the mysterious master was rushing him to climb when he had been adamant about being a pain in their ass up till moments ago.

But he wasn’t about to make the mistake of ignoring his warning. The man seemed to know more about this phenomenon than anyone in their group, at this moment, and his advice wouldn’t go unheard.

Stomping his second foot on the eightieth step, Liu Yan raised his right foot again, bringing it forward to the eighty-first. The resistance he felt earlier was nowhere to be seen here, and his foot made landfall almost immediately, causing the sky to rumble in fury again.

He looked upward, sensing the brewing force inside the black clouds, and scoffed.

"I’m getting up there! Whether you like it or not!" he taunted, raising his fist to the sky, and taking another step.

As his foot touched the eighty-second step, the sky burst into light again, this time unleashing two lightning bolts at him, both the same size as before, and hitting him in the chest.

The energy surged through his body as Liu Yan forced his mana to rotate from his chest and throughout his body, trying to ease the excess energy across his whole being so that it wouldn’t explode his dantian.

But even with all his effort, most of the energy remained in his chest, accumulating around his dantian and eroding its walls.

Liu Yan couldn’t tell if this was a good or bad thing, but he knew that the pain it caused him was barely bearable.

Alex saw the phenomenon happen in real-time, his mana senses firing on all cylinders, trying to find a way to help him out.

He couldn’t figure out why the lightning’s energy felt so much like Aether. He looked at it with rapt attention, trying to understand how the two energies could be related, but kept drawing blanks.

Even though the energy’s purity levels were seemingly identical, and their essence was so similar, he could tell through a single look that they weren’t the same. And right now, this conflict was causing damage to Liu Yan’s mana dantian.

Even though the man had no mana lobe, this dantian of his had been emulating the effects of one as close as possible. But with this new energy trying to force its way into it, it risked collapse.

Alexander didn’t want to think about what would happen if the mana lobe, or dantian, in this case, shattered. The consequences would surely not be a simple ache.

As the young man stopped convulsing for the second time, and resumed walking up the steps, trying to cover as much as he could while the sky was resting before its next assault, the fox looked at him, his eyes widening.

With the erosion of Liu Yan’s mana dantian, his control over it and his efforts to mask it finally gave way, and the fox finally detected it.

"He has a dantian! But it’s filled with your lesser power, mana. This is inconceivable!" he exclaimed.

He finally realized why the stairs had reacted so much to the boy. The heavens saw the insult he had committed, and were trying to fix it.

"What do you mean, lesser?" Alex asked, frowning. "It may be different, but with enough of it, it is no weaker than what you call Qi. I’ve been sensing the power levels of all the people on this mountain all day, and I can guarantee my friends can take any of them on with our ’lesser’ power."

The fox looked at him, his face showing disdain for a second as he clicked his tongue.

"Boy, you misunderstand me. I am not talking about its power, but its purity. This ’mana’ you use is just a weaker version of Qi. A diluted essence of Qi. That is why I call it lesser. But a dantian should never contain anything else than Qi inside it. It is a sacrilege to nature.

"Your friend managed to make something within his body that would normally take years of guidance and training, and now, with the lesser thing he accumulated inside, the sky has deemed it an aberrance and is trying to correct the flaw."

Alexander scoffed.

"Mana, a less pure version of Qi? The pure form of mana is Aether. They aren’t even the same energies. You act as if you know what you are talking about, but you are wrong on so many levels," Alex mocked him.

The fox looked at him, the urge to slap him crossing his mind.

"You idiot. Aether may be the name other worlds give it, but they are the same energy at their core. The problem lies in the source you guys are taking it from. The mana you have been gorging yourselves on comes from another world.

"A dantian is a product of humanity’s efforts to transcend. Which means it needs the energy of THIS world to grow. Gorging the dantian with energy from another world is a sacrilege to the heavens. It’s why they are targeting him, and him alone!" the fox tried explaining.

Alex’s eyes grew wide. The realization struck him.

This was why the Qi that the celestial fox had been raving about felt so familiar. It was the same as Aether, but their nature differed because of the worlds they came from.

Qi was Earth’s natural Aether!

"Listen to me, Alexander," the fox said, calling him by his name for the first time since they met.

"You need to tell your friend to let the Qi in. If he insists on fighting it off, the Qi will shatter his dantian."

Alex looked at him before looking back at Liu Yan. His mana dantian indeed seemed as if it was on the brink of breaking down.

"What would happen if it did?" Alex asked, still not trusting Gu Fang’s look-alike.

"If the dantian shatters, the Qi will have nowhere to go, and it will ravage the inside of his body, eating away at his soul at the same time. If he doesn’t let the Qi in and cleanse out the lesser power from another world, there will be no recovery from this."

Alex grabbed the man’s robes, tired of his convoluted words.

"Be blunt, god dammit! What will happen?!"

The fox glared at him, anger flashing briefly in his gaze.

But he couldn’t let such natural potential go to waste, so he stepped on his pride.

"If he doesn’t let the world correct his mistake, he will die."

Alex’s eyes narrowed, his fears coming true. It was a result he had wished was off the table, but fate had other plans.

Releasing the fox’s collar, he turned to the steps, taking a deep breath. fгeewёbnoѵel_cσm

"Liu Yan! Stop defending your dantian! Let the energy in! If you don’t, you’ll die!" he shouted.

But Liu Yan was already stepping on the eighty-sixth step, and lightning came crashing into him, this time back to a single bolt, but much thicker than before.

*BOOM!*