Chapter 614: I Am Wronged (4)

From Lineage Ridge to Heart Pool, from Immortal Path to Red Pool, from Nourishing Yang to Liver Pool... mm—was Heart Pool above Red Pool, or Red above Heart?

Is this one of those “twist and enter once” routes, or is it just a straight series linked in order?

Qing kept cocking her head, trying to gauge the acupoint positions—ugh, I learned this and it’s not coming back.

You could sneer that a martial artist doesn’t even know her own acupoints and is fumbling—but that would wrong Qing.

The only people who memorize every last point are physicians, and though Qing is a clinic woman, she hasn’t learned needling yet.

Martial artists don’t actually carry around the whole body’s acupoint atlas in their heads.

Usually, most don’t even clearly know the main channels their own inner-energy method runs through.

If you train alone, it’s hard to pin each point exactly.

The crude Central Plains diagrams rarely tell you how deep a point lies.

Granted, unless you’re studying ascent, the flows aren’t that complicated anyway.

Guide the current along a comfortable path near the right spot and nine times out of ten it’s “close enough,” so problems don’t crop up.

Of course, ascent studies are extremely complex.

But methods that absurdly difficult and complex are never learned alone.

When you enter such peerless arts, a master plants a palm to your back, moves your qi, and gives you a single shakedown run that opens the way in one go—a venerable technique called “True-Energy Guidance.”

And the All-Forms-as-One Inner Art is one branch of the West’s supreme composite arts—and by Qing’s scale, it’s purple-tier.

On top of that it’s old, so the terminology is out-of-date; plus it’s a translation stitching Indian terms into West-plateau language—twice as bizarre.

In short, disgustingly complicated.

Amukhablap never imagined Qing would actually learn the All-Forms-as-One Inner Art he’d lent her.

He figured she already had her own core study, and a woman who owns multiple peerless arts wouldn’t scatter her focus just to pour “the wisdom of All-Forms-as-One” into herself.

Maybe she’d just pick up the Tantric Great Handprint, he thought.

But Qing is hungry again.

Back at Super-transcendent she thought, My inner energy’s already bursting, why would I need more?

Only after entering the Flower Realm did a crisis tap her shoulder—at this rate I’ll become an ordinary Translucent Realm—and her eyes locked back onto inner-energy methods.

So?

Ah, screw it.

Entry doesn’t even cost many training points.

I’ve stockpiled plenty—what am I saving them for?

Thus, while the prisoners raised their voices for a grand “brag-about-your-crimes” fair, behind the curtain that screened the bedroom-slash-latrine, on the high-end bed, Qing lay with her eyes skewed out of focus, going walleyed, as she kneaded her brain—an endlessly filthy sensation that made her gag—blegh, urk.

So filthy there’s no pen-and-ink way to express it—strange, though not painful.

Ugh, there’s just no way to describe this...

Even after the All-Forms-as-One Inner Art’s labyrinthine study settled into place in her head, she only lay there slack-eyed on the bed.

In Buddhist teaching, Vairocana—the Great Honored One—is the universe itself.

Thus everything in the world is the Honored One; sky, earth, even a dry leaf scudding along the road is Vairocana.

Therefore “All Forms,” everything that is, “as One,” the one and only Honored One.

From such imagery is wrought the All-Forms-as-One Inner Art: it names the core the Lotus Treasury World, the center.

It names the middle core the Truth, the One Sun; the stream of true-energy rises from the core to the middle core—Truth dawning like the sun that lights all worlds from the Lotus Treasury World.

Then countless branches ramify through the body and return to the middle core in a three-dimensional flow.

Being a West-plateau art, it developed in a wholly different direction from Central Plains arts with their left-right symmetric single-stroke patterns.

Strictly speaking, All-Forms-as-One is Indian rather than West-plateau, but Qing hadn’t been separately briefed.

Good thing I learned this with training points.

If I’d tried to brute-force it, I’d have wrecked every acupoint in my body and still fallen short.

Meanwhile, Qing’s core welcomed a new tenant.

A glittering, resplendent rookie.

The most striking difference between Central Plains Buddhas and Indian Buddhas is their lavishness.

Indian Buddhas practically wear strings of jewels instead of clothes.

The Pure Land of Bliss in Buddhist lore is literally ground of gold and jewels, with the finest liquors flowing like water and delicacies bubbling up—a sumptuous heaven. (Only, there are no women.)

The All-Forms-as-One energy slid in with the faint scrape of jewels, settling into the core.

A garment draped from the left shoulder, baring the right torso—honestly, should that even be called clothing?

Thick golden threads strung with exotic gems like a beaded curtain; one set of it would burn through the gold reserves of ten warehouses.

The demonic energies leapt up, eyes shining.

Look, look, look—look at that getup.

That obscene luxury—she’s a ten out of ten; absolutely, without question, she’s one of ours.

At last our side has a real queen-boss!

The poor, oppressed, wicked demonic energies were about to crowd in to hoist her high and toss her in celebration—

When over there, in the sunlit VIP seats of the core, two Buddhist true-energies raised their hands.

The demons froze in place—creak—unnaturally craning their necks.

The usually grave Sinew-Washing true-energy, rare smile bright, had a hand raised.

Beside it, the Royal Prajñā Energy—reclining in a palanquin atop an elephant’s head with the elephant’s trunk swaying and a dragon’s tail flicking—fluttered its hand.

Seeing them, the All-Forms-as-One energy bloomed a smile in a single breath and flashed perfect snow-white teeth.

A dramatic reunion of Indian-lineage true-energies!

Even the Daoist true-energies, who had bristled at such excess, at once relaxed and wore warm smiles.

One of them—the Joyous true-energy—suddenly giddy, ran up jingling its jeweled kasaya and devoted itself to admiring those precious gold and jewels.

All-Forms-as-One looked at the overreacting Joyous energy flipping hems and, with a flourish, offered a hefty piece of green jade.

Perhaps there’s a sympathy beyond Daoist and Buddhist between one who seeks to gather everything into the One and one who deems “the All” identical with the One itself.

The demons’ faces soured as they watched.

Birds of a feather being ridiculous—ridiculous together.

How’s a demon supposed to live? This filthy world—what hardship, meeting the wrong master.

Next door, Self-Driving Demon-Energy sits in the upper core and throws lightning bolts whenever it’s in a mood; meanwhile we, under the wrong master, get held tight and tiptoe around.

Their peevish expressions slunk off to the dampest, dimmest corner of the core.

And pat-pat, thump-thump!

Heaven-Rending Demon-Energy was smiling.

But sometimes, it cried...

Black tears—each with a tiny eye attached—dripped, drip, drip.

Today again, tears brushed across the core.

When you pick up a new inner art?

Afterward, the amount of Heaven-Rending Demon-Energy you can use grows by a sliver—sparrow’s-tear small.

“Hey, rookie.”

Qing had a rough sense of Heaven-Rending’s full capacity.

Even if she added up every drop of inner energy she had now, it wouldn’t reach a tenth of Heaven-Rending’s mass—a sea-sized current.

“Pssssst—rookie, rookie?”

That sea, mighty as it was, was compressed to a booger-sized lump stuck to her core—deeply unsatisfying.

But there’s no helping it; it doesn’t really interfere with tending her inner energy anyway.

Mm... if I could just undo the seal, the inner-energy problem would be solved in one shot.

Wouldn’t that give me not Translucent Realm but Life-and-Death Boundary–grade inner energy?

“Hey, you little shit—hey, rookie punk.”

And the look of it, no matter how you slice it:

A pitch-black steel-qi with countless eyes budding?

Mm. That would look downright cool.

Doesn’t this thing move?

Qing poked and prodded the Heaven-Rending lump clinging to her core, but when she deliberately fiddled like this, the capacity never grew.

It only ever grew a smidge when she learned a new art, or when the core randomly ached on its own.

If it would just jump up, I could fire beams with my fingers on tap.

Since Heavenly Demon Pacings is so handy everywhere, I end up “saving” Heaven-Rending and rarely use the Death-Beam.

By what principle does it grow?

I have no idea.

“Hey, fucker! When someone talks to you, you listen!”

Someone yelled beyond the curtain.

Side-effects of the brain-kneading cram method had Qing woolgathering to calm her mood; only then did she pop her clogged ears open.

Of course, she didn’t realize they were calling her.

They said “rookie punk,” so she figured there was a guy who’d come in right before her.

“Mm? Me?”

“God, this dogshit punk—listened to everything and then ‘me?’ Yeah, you, you fuck!”

“Why so mad? A person can space out. Blow your top and it only hurts you.”

“Graaaah!”

A thump-thump echoed against the wall.

Not bang-bang—thump-thump.

The dainty sound made Qing poke her head past the curtain that screened the bedroom-slash-latrine.

It was the guy in the cell directly opposite.

Maybe his own knuckles are precious, or maybe he cares about the wall.

His fist slowed hard just before impact—thunk—and even so, the ridge of his hand bore thick callus.

Both ears were plastered flat to his head.

Dumpling ears and a callused fist?

Well, he was two layers of bars away anyway; dumpling ears or elf ears, who cared.

“Why? Why’d you call me?”

“I can’t talk now.”

Now Qing’s brow twitched.

What kind of clown calls someone over and then—

“What do you mean, you can’t talk?”

“Because—mm—that—I can’t talk now.”

What, some new species of harassment?

A ploy to make someone stew and burst?

Qing was about to snap at him—

“God, that constipated fuck!”

“Why bait someone and clam up!”

“Shut up right now! I’ll tear your mouth!”

From all over the Repentance Hall they shouted on Qing’s behalf.

The dumpling-eared man across the bars only pressed his lips tighter—then suddenly hammered the wall again.

Thud! Thud!

This time he put force into straight punches.

For a man with no core and severed meridians, the power was decent.

His callus split and blood seeped.

What is this, sudden self-harm?

She watched, mildly entertained; the man lifted the curtain, planted himself dead center on the wall, and—wouldn’t you know—wrote with blood on his fingers and held it up.

Only then did Qing catch his intent.

Ah—stand there and only the person in the exact opposite cell can see.

He’d called her to whisper something; he’d drawn attention by accident, so he “couldn’t talk now.”

Qing looked at his palm.

Your room.

Cramped palm, two characters’ worth.

Qing dipped her chin to say she understood.

Door open.

Well, that figures.

Qing was on the Repentance Hall “experience” package, so of course she didn’t lock her door.

The dumpling-ear prisoner must have thought it was Master Danlun’s mistake.

He wrote again.

Break out.

Out of blood, he squeezed his own hand hard.

Help each other.

Leave together.

Otherwise—

I’ll spread the word.

Since your door’s open, let’s escape together.

If not, I’ll tell the Kunlun Daoists and have them lock it.

A spark flickered—oh, I smell ridiculous fun.

I was bored anyway—perfect.

Qing bared a thin, wicked smile and spoke.

“Doesn’t add up, does it? Beg on your knees and I still might not consider it. Give to get.”

The dumpling-eared prisoner’s face crumpled.

Qing, riding high, voiced a word so destructive and dirty it’s tacitly banned in the upper worlds.

“Go on. Make an offer.”