Chapter 112: The Conservation of Qi

Before he tried again, Paike examined his dantian for any changes. If there were any, they were too small for him to detect.

So naturally, Paike tried again. It came a bit faster this time, and he paid attention to how long the qi could store the extra energy. The vibrations lasted for some time and did not fade as quickly as the first time.

The inconsistency troubled him. So he tried again; this time, the energy lasted for less time.

That ruled out the possibility that it was just a progression based on how many times he made the change. His initial theory was that there was something from the changes that he couldn't detect from the process of moving up a stage. These changes might have been letting him either push more into it or maybe insulate it better so the energy didn't leak as fast.

That neither was happening meant there was some unknown hidden variable. That bothered him. Paike liked understanding things. It was what he had based much of his current cultivation and combat style on. Yet this was the first time he had felt truly stumped by a cultivation question.

With a lack of ideas, he tried again and got a slightly longer length of time before the energy faded. Paike had no more clues.

That was something he could move on from if he had to, but there was one more problem. There was no way he would have the time to apply the energy to all the qi he had. He assumed he would need to in order to trigger the change that would push him to Peak Topaz.

Still trying might teach him something. Paike made the pattern one more time. But instead of watching, he did it again. And again. And again.

But the tenth time, he had made a dent in all of his qi, but the first section that he had changed had faded all the way. As his little nodes of energized qi faded, Paike carefully examined every part of his spirit. Yet no matter how he looked, he could see no change.

Was this not the correct pattern? Maybe he had found some false tier that wouldn't last, and he needed a new pattern.

It was tempting to want to ask Father. Paike was pretty sure Father could tell him the right answer, but he didn't think he would. Also, with the movement and the noise from the air, he couldn't hear Father.

Now that he considered it, though, Father could have absolutely shielded them from the wind so they could have conversed comfortably. But he hadn't. Paike hadn't been a cultivator long enough to consider doing it. At least that was what he told himself. But the others certainly would have considered using their qi that way. Likely they hadn't, as it seemed an intentional choice by Father, and no one wanted to risk offending him.

So Paike decided asking now wasn't a good idea. He trusted Father to stop him if he was going to make a crippling mistake, so he could risk it a little. Besides, he still had so much to try; should he really just go get the answer without trying to learn? That didn't seem like something Father would be proud of.

Paike weighed his options. He could keep trying and hoping that the energized qi would stay stable long enough for him to get everything. The odds of that seemed quite low. Maybe it had lasted longer when there was more of it in his dantian, but he wasn't sure. Could he also hope to learn something? Like what, though? What could he learn?

One thing struck him. Maybe he could figure out where the energy was going? It had to dissipate somewhere, and apparently it wasn't going into his dantian. He also had the feeling that it wasn't traveling through the walls of his dantian, but he also couldn't detect any change in the rest of his qi.

Granted, it was likely that any one of these things was happening, and he just didn't have the fidelity to detect them.

Regardless, he tried again. This time, he tried to feel what happened to the extra energy, but as far as he could tell, it went nowhere.

That gave him an idea. If his senses didn't have the fidelity to determine where the small amount of energy was going, he just needed to increase the energy.

Definitionally, he couldn't force more energy into the qi. This was him reaching for the peak of his realm. Any more, and it would get over the barrier to the next realm. So, to increase the energy, he just needed to produce more of it from more sources.

Paike formed two of the patterns simultaneously. Just before he activated them, he considered why he had just limited himself to two. If he could hold them on the brink of triggering, why not make more? Increasing the energy would only help him in his quest to determine where it went.

It took a little time, but he soon had most of his qi woven into the patterns. It took a bit of coordination and certainly pushed his mental capabilities to their limit to maintain control over all of them at once.

Somehow he managed it. With a mental countdown, he tugged.

All at once, a good portion of his qi energized. The vibrations spread rapidly, shaking his dantian and leaving his teeth chattering.

Still, he was able to maintain his concentration and found the energy went... nowhere? It actually just faded into nothing.

This result frustrated Paike to no end. It made no sense from everything he had learned about qi. Elder Song's theories had been incomplete, but they hadn't been wrong. So far, the world of qi, or the spiritual world, had mimicked the physical world, just with a few extra terms. And while digging into it with her, he had learned a decent amount about mortal physics. Conservation of energy was one of the core principles that many of her theories took as an axiom.

If that didn't hold, how much confidence could he have in the other ideas? They seemed to hold up under experimentation, but what hidden flaws did they miss because of their assumptions? There were probably things they hadn't even thought to test for

Paike couldn't accept this. Spiritual energy didn't just vanish. It just didn't make sense. There had to be something else he was missing; energy could be captured and held or transformed into something/ Maybe it was the vibrations? Where were they bleeding the energy off into motion? Maybe, but was there some analog to heat or sound that they hadn't thought of? Was he cooking his dantian?

That set off a realization. Was that what was happening when he moved up a stage? Was the energy being captured by his spirit and used to improve them along a set path? Like a child growing into an adult takes energy from food.

Then why did it seem that his dantian wasn't absorbing the energy and changing? Was some other part of his spirit ending up with the energy? Or maybe it was his soul?

He would need to test it more.

Paike set up another batch and triggered them again. It took a little time, but he didn't think they would be at their destination anytime soon, judging by the ground moving underneath them.

This time, as the qi's energy faded, he focused his senses on the outside of his dantian. He found that it did something? What he couldn't tell.

He triggered another wave. And this time, he saw the dantian briefly stop all its natural fluctuations. It was as if it were holding its breath and waiting, but after a second, it sighed in disappointment and released the energy.

Ah ha! Paike thought. Indeed, the energy was going somewhere. The dantian was just deciding it wasn't enough to trigger the upgrade, so it let it go.

Out of curiosity, he ran another test, this time looking at his soul and the meridians carved through it.

After the dantian released energy, the soul absorbed some of it and didn't release it at all. But compared to the amount of energy the dantian released, it was minuscule.

Since the energy didn't leave the soul again, from what he could see, Paike had to consider: was he strengthening his soul by doing this?

Maybe. He had never even considered trying that. In the stories, a strong soul was usually about being brave or unusually moral. Paike didn't think that was the same thing. And if it was, he wasn't sure he wanted to strengthen his soul that way.

No, he considered what he used his soul for. He carved his meridians into it and .... What was that really?

Those meridians, through some property of the soul, moved the qi from the spiritual world into his body in the mortal world; from there, it affected reality.

Would that mean it would make the qi more real? Or would it make it harder to move the qi? Maybe it would change how easy it was to bore meridians. That wouldn't be ideal, as they were already hard for him to make compared to someone with faster-moving qi. But then again, he hadn't opened a new one since he had started using the internal circulation. Perhaps with higher speeds, his qi drill would have an easier time getting through. It certainly wouldn't slow down much as it encountered resistance compared to other cultivators. Maybe he was thinking adding meridians would be harder than it actually was now.

There were a couple more things he wanted to test. After the energy left the dantian walls, what happened to it besides leaking into his soul?

Running the test again, he found that his physical cultivation had increased somewhat, but it was so little that it made no practical difference.

Once more he ran the test, but with his attention on the outside world. This is where he finally found where the bulk of the energy was going. He could feel it very clearly. There were no issues like in the dantian where he couldn't detect it. In fact, the energy was so obvious that he was certain that in the dantian it was in a different form that he just couldn't detect, because in the area around him it was plain.

He could see the spirits of the cultivators around him and an absolute blank where Father was. As the wave of energy left him, he saw it crash into the spirits around them and watched as they all shivered.

Oh, that wasn't great.

Paike opened his eyes to find everyone staring at him with a mix of emotions again. This time, the fear was much more prominent.