30: Chapter 30 [Speculations on Cultivation Theory]

During his morning run, the vibration of the shouzhong token was clearer than it had been yesterday.

It wasn't the faint tremor that required concentration to perceive, but a distinct pulsation that rose and fell with his footsteps.

When Chen Zhen ran to the gentle slope by the Riverside, he could even feel that vibration slowly synchronizing with his heartbeat.

With each heartbeat, the wooden token gave a gentle tremor, as if counting the rhythm for him.

When the rhythm was right, his breathing became smooth.

When his breathing was smooth, running became effortless.

Today, after running three kilometers, he wasn't even panting when he stopped.

The system panel popped up:

[Morning Run Quality: Excellent]

[Cultivation + 0.35 (Base 0.18 + Quality Bonus 0.17)]

[Health Dimension Experience + 22]

[Special Note: With the assistance of the shouzhong token, exercise efficiency increased by 15%]

It was a bit higher than yesterday.

Chen Zhen wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked toward the willow tree.

Grandpa Wu wasn't practicing boxing today, nor was he watching the river.

He was squatting by the river embankment, drawing something on the damp soil with his finger.

Chen Zhen walked over and saw that he was drawing a spiral pattern.

It was identical to the one carved on the front of the shouzhong token, only larger and more expansive.

"You're here?" Grandpa Wu didn't look up. "Take a look at this."

Chen Zhen squatted down to look.

The spiral started from the center point and expanded outward in circles.

The lines were uneven, deep in some places and shallow in others, but overall, it had a strange sense of rhythm.

"See anything?" Grandpa Wu asked.

"It looks like… it's spinning?"

"That's right."

Grandpa Wu stood up and erased the pattern with his foot.

"Many things in this world move in spirals. River water swirls, wind spins, tree rings grow outward in circles, even your running—"

"When your foot lands, the force also travels in a spiral from your sole to your knee and then to your thigh."

Chen Zhen looked down at his own legs.

"The vibration that the shouzhong token makes you feel is helping you find that spiral force."

Grandpa Wu brushed the dirt off his hands.

"Once you find it, your force won't scatter, and your Qi won't float. But finding it isn't enough; you have to make it your own."

"How do I practice it?"

"I'll teach you something simple today."

Grandpa Wu assumed a stance, but it was different from his usual Tai Chi opening move.

He held his hands loosely in front of his chest, as if holding an invisible ball, and then slowly turned them in a clockwise direction.

The movement was extremely slow, but Chen Zhen could see the muscles in Grandpa Wu's forearms adjusting subtly, and his shoulders, waist, and hips were turning along with it.

"This is called 'Embracing the Ball'," Grandpa Wu said. "You try it. Don't overthink it; just feel like there really is a ball in your hands, heavy and solid. Hold it as you turn, don't let it drop, and don't let it tilt."

Chen Zhen learned to assume the stance.

As soon as he held his hands in the loose embrace, the vibration of the shouzhong token changed immediately.

It shifted from a simple pulsation to a warm sensation flowing down his arms toward his palms.

He tried turning, and the warmth followed, but at a certain angle, it would get stuck, as if the ball were about to slip from his hands.

"Your left elbow is too high." Grandpa Wu reached out and gently pressed on his left elbow. "The ball is tilting that way; you need to straighten it."

Chen Zhen adjusted, and the warm sensation became smooth again.

After turning like this for five minutes, his arms began to ache.

It wasn't the cardiovascular fatigue of running, but the soreness of muscles maintaining precise movements.

But at the same time, he could feel a warm current starting from the shouzhong token.

It slowly seeped along his arms into his muscles, alleviating the soreness.

It was a very wonderful experience.

"That's enough." Grandpa Wu retracted his stance.

"Practice this every day from now on, five minutes in the morning and evening. When you feel like the 'ball' in your hands doesn't need intentional support and won't tilt, you've mastered the basics."

"What is this training?"

"The Whole-body Force of your body."

"Right now, when you run, jump, or walk, your strength is scattered. Once you practice this well, every movement will have your strength twisted into a single strand, with no waste."

Chen Zhen nodded.

He roughly understood.

The shouzhong token was a mirror, reflecting where he was off-balance.

"Embracing the Ball" was a corrector, helping him straighten out his imbalances bit by bit.

[Learn Cultivation Technique: Embracing the Ball (Basic)]

[Health Dimension Experience + 30]

[Acquired Status: Initial Awareness of Whole-body Force (Slight increase in power usage efficiency)]

Before leaving the Riverside, Grandpa Wu called out to him again: "By the way, have you touched anything recently?"

Chen Zhen's heart tightened: "What do you mean?"

"I can't quite say."

Grandpa Wu squinted at him.

"But I always feel like you… have picked up a certain scent. It's not a stench, it's a… scent of aged paper and ink, mixed with a bit of the earthy smell from the mountains."

Chen Zhen thought of Engineer Gu's notes.

"Maybe… I picked it up while organizing old books at the Bookstore."

"Hmm." Grandpa Wu didn't pry further, just waved his hand. "That place has all sorts of things, it's not strange to pick something up. Just keep your wits about you."

The words were spoken lightly, but Chen Zhen heard the warning in them.

On the way home, Chen Zhen kept thinking about Grandpa Wu's words.

"Scent."

If the Spiritual Perception Glimmer enhanced his sensitivity to abnormal energy fluctuations.

Then, did someone like Grandpa Wu, who had been Cultivating for a long time, have similar perceptual abilities?

Could he "smell" the residual "abnormal" aura on Engineer Gu's notes?

What about Grandpa Wu?

Grandpa Wu had guarded the Bookstore for so many years and handled so many of Engineer Gu's things; did he also know something, but just wasn't saying it?

The clues were like a web, weaving tighter and tighter.

But for now, the most important thing was his daily life.

He arrived home at 7:15.

His mother was already up, hanging clothes on the balcony.

Seeing him return, she poked her head out and said: "The porridge is in the pot, and the salted duck egg is already cut."

"Where's Dad?"

"He left early, said he needed to get to his post ahead of time today to get familiar with the new machines."

Chen Zhen ladled out some porridge and sat down.

The salted duck egg was pickled just right, the yolk oozing oil, which tasted great with the white porridge.

His mother finished hanging the clothes, came over, and ladled a bowl for herself too.

"Mom, are you still going to the Library today?"

"Yes, but I might be back a bit early this afternoon." His mother sat down. "The Library needs to renovate the bookshelves, so it will be closed in the afternoon."

"Then you should rest in the afternoon."

"Rest for what?" His mother laughed. "It's a good chance to go to the market and buy some pork ribs. Your dad has been working hard lately, he needs to build up his strength."

Chen Zhen lowered his head and drank his porridge.

During his morning study time, Chen Zhen first lit the calming incense.

Blue smoke swirled up, and a clear, bitter scent dispersed.

He observed it carefully today.

After the scent entered his nose, the distracting thoughts in his mind weren't forcibly suppressed, but gently pushed aside.

Pushed to the edge of his attention, they no longer interfered with his core thinking.

A very clever design.

He opened his math workbook and started working on difficult permutation and combination problems.

With the support of Deep Understanding and the environment provided by the calming incense, the problem-solving process was as smooth as sorting through known clues.

After reading each question, the solution path naturally appeared in his mind; he just needed to write it down step by step.

When he got to the third question, he suddenly paused.

This question described a distribution scheme of "distributing six books to three people, with each person getting at least one."

Usually, he would just apply the formula, but today, what popped into his mind wasn't a formula, but an image:

Three piles of books, at least one in each pile, books moving between different piles…

Then he "saw" something more essential: this was actually calculating the number of schemes for "distributing six indistinguishable items into three distinguishable containers, with each container being non-empty."

In an instant, he thought of the clue nodes in Engineer Gu's notes.

Those events, years, and locations were also "items" that needed to be distributed into "containers" like "causes," "laws," and "essences."

Mathematics and exploration were connected at the level of thought.

[Deep Understanding triggered cross-Domain association]

[Learning Dimension Experience + 40]

[exploration dimension Experience + 15]

[Cultivation + 0.42]

The system panel prompt confirmed his feeling.

This was no coincidence.

What the System was guiding might not just be single-dimensional growth, but an overall improvement in his way of thinking.

Using the focus of Cultivation to study, using the logic of learning to explore, and using the sharpness of exploration to Cultivate.

Nourishing each other, spiraling upward.

He continued doing the problems, but his mindset had changed.

No longer just to "complete tasks and increase Cultivation," but starting to enjoy the process of his thinking gradually becoming clearer and connecting the dots.

By the end of the morning, his Learning Dimension had increased by 86 points, less than 70 away from leveling up.

His mother didn't come back at noon, sending a message saying she was having a work meal at the Library.

Chen Zhen cooked noodles for himself, fried an egg, and cleaned up after eating.

Before going to the Bookstore in the afternoon, he first went to the Secret Base.

Opening the door, the faint lingering scent of the calming incense was still there.

He walked to the small table, opened Engineer Gu's notebook, and found the part he hadn't looked at in detail yesterday.

The "Dongshan Magnetic Anomaly Record" from 1968.

The record was very brief:

"November 7, 1968, Sunny. According to the account of the duty personnel at the Dongshan Meteorological Station: Around 3:00 AM, all magnetometers in the station fluctuated violently for about five minutes before returning to normal. There were no solar storms or geomagnetic storm records during the same period. On-site inspection showed no equipment failure. Preliminary conclusion: Local geomagnetic disturbance, cause unknown."

Beside it, a line of small print was added in pencil: "The straight-line distance to the 1953 incident site is less than 2 km. Could they be related?"

Chen Zhen turned to the "Analysis of Unnamed Meteorite Fragments" from 1975.

This time it was the physical object.

Engineer Gu had obtained a few black stone fragments "suspected to be meteorites" from somewhere and performed a composition analysis.

The notebook had a few microphotographs pasted in, along with a handwritten elemental content table.

The conclusion was: The composition was similar to common meteorites, but "the internal crystal structure had an abnormal arrangement, appearing to be influenced by some kind of directed energy."

The last sentence was a guess: "Could it be related to the high-energy environment generated by the 'strange light' phenomenon?"

Chen Zhen looked at these scattered records, and a profile gradually pieced together in his mind:

1953, strange light, heavy fog.

1968, magnetic anomaly, no light.

1975, meteorite fragments, abnormal structure.

1983, strange light reappears, cycle begins to emerge.

It wasn't a single phenomenon, but a combination of a series of related events.

The strange light might be the most conspicuous manifestation.

But behind it were magnetic anomalies, energy residues, and it might even affect falling objects…

He summoned the clue association network.

A few more nodes were added: [1968 Magnetic Anomaly] [1975 Meteorite Fragments]. The System automatically generated several dashed line connections: [Magnetic Anomaly] → [Possibly a phenomenon accompanying low-intensity Spiritual Qi leakage]; [Meteorite Fragments] → [Influenced by abnormal energy] → [Speculated that leaked energy has the property of altering matter].

The inference was also updating:

[Based on the new clues, it is speculated that periodic Spiritual Qi leakage may be accompanied by various physical effects: optical phenomena (strange light), electromagnetic disturbances (magnetic anomalies), and material structure changes (meteorite fragments). The center of the leakage may be located at a ley line node in Dongshan District.]

Chen Zhen stared at the four characters "ley line node."

He had seen this term in some Cultivation novels, but Engineer Gu's notes used scientific terminology.

Now that the System reinterpreted it using Cultivation language, it felt even more apt.

If there really was a ley line node, did Grandpa Wu know about it?

Did Grandpa Wu know?

Two more years.

2013.

He closed the notebook and took a deep breath.

He had digested most of the information, and the rest needed time to settle.

Now it was time to do his afternoon work.

When he arrived at the Bookstore, Grandpa Wu was putting up a notice at the door.

Chen Zhen walked closer and saw it was handwritten: "Inventory taking today, closed for business."

"Grandpa Wu?"

Grandpa Wu turned around: "Oh, you're here. We're not open today, but the work still needs to be done."

"It's perfect, help me thoroughly organize those boxes inside."

Chen Zhen looked into the shop.

The remaining three cardboard boxes from Engineer Gu were still piled there.

"Okay."

"Organize them carefully." Grandpa Wu finished putting up the notice and clapped his hands. "Engineer Gu's things, keep what should be kept, and dispose of what should be disposed of. You handle it."

These words gave Chen Zhen quite a lot of autonomy.

He nodded and walked into the Bookstore.

There were no customers today, and the shop was exceptionally quiet.

There was only the creaking sound of the old electric fan, and the unique scent of old book paper, mixed with dust and the fragrance of ink.

Chen Zhen opened the first unorganized box.

This box mainly contained tools:

A more precise geological compass, a portable spectrometer (old-fashioned), a bunch of labels and specimen bags, and a few field notebooks.

He organized the tools first.

He wiped the compass clean and checked the spectrometer.

The battery compartment was corroded, likely unusable.

He opened the notebooks and looked through them.

Most were routine records of field geological surveys, with only a few pages occasionally mentioning "abnormal readings," but without specific details.

The second box contained books, but not professional ones, rather some "miscellaneous books":

A photocopy of the Taoist classic "Cantong Qi" (The Triplex Unity), a modern annotated version of ancient alchemy Cultivation texts, and even a few Qigong magazines.

The margins of these books were filled with annotations, and the handwriting was sloppier than in the notebooks, looking like Engineer Gu's personal thoughts:

"Does the 'gathering herbs' mentioned in alchemy metaphorically mean absorbing energy from a specific environment?"

"Could the 'intercourse of Kan and Li' in 'Cantong Qi' be related to the Yin and Yang changes of the geomagnetic field?"

"Can modern instruments quantify the concentration of 'Spiritual Qi'?"

The further he flipped, the bolder the annotations became, and he even started to see some self-invented terms: "Spiritual Pressure gradient," "ley line resonance cycle," "energy tides."

Chen Zhen was shocked as he read.

Engineer Gu was clearly attempting to understand Cultivation concepts using a scientific framework, and he had gone quite far.

If these thoughts were made public, they would likely be regarded as heresy by the academic community.

But the System reacted to a few of the annotations:

[Discovered Cultivation Theory Hypothesis]

[exploration dimension Experience + 25]

[Clue association updated: Gu Mingyuan once attempted to build a 'Scientific Cultivation' theoretical framework, unfinished]

The third box was the lightest.

Inside were only two things:

A kraft paper envelope, sealed with wax; a flat wooden box without a lock.

Chen Zhen picked up the envelope first.

The wax seal was intact, with a fingerprint pressed onto it.

On the front of the envelope, it was written: "To the Successor."

He hesitated for a moment and didn't open it.

The wax seal was intact, which meant Grandpa Wu hadn't looked at it either.

He decided to ask Grandpa Wu first.

He opened the wooden box, and inside was a stack of maps made by Hand-drawing.

It wasn't just one, but a set.

The scales were different, the areas were different, but the core region was always Dongshan District.