98: Chapter 98 Can someone be called an immortal if they don't compose poetry?

Xie Feng choked for a moment. Cultivation novels were lying to me again!

"They can be refined into Medicinal Pills, right?"

"Every medicine is three parts toxic." Emperor Zhou Weixi set down his teacup, his tone earnest. "Medicinal Pills are only needed when your Meridians are damaged and your Spiritual Qi is exhausted. Which Prodigy do you see chewing on Medicinal Pills for no reason?

That kind of thing is for emergencies. When Elder Zuo stuffed a Golden Core into you in Ranhuo City, it was because you were dying at the time, not because you needed to raise your Realm.

How could a cultivation base stacked up by Medicinal Pills compare to the solid Foundation gained through one's own hard Cultivation? You know it in your heart as well; if they were really that useful, Sect Master Shen would probably have his Disciples eat Medicinal Pills as daily meals."

Damn it! Being refuted by a professional is such a slap to the face, hey!

Xie Feng opened his mouth, then slowly closed it.

Thinking back carefully for a moment, it seemed that indeed every time he took medicine, it was when he was close to death.

As for Tu Ziguan breaking through to the Third Realm last time, it was forcefully piled up with a large amount of Medicinal Pills and quite a few contribution points. The price was that his Realm had not yet completely stabilized, and before stabilization, he could not break through the first layer of the Third Realm at all.

"So I can only Cultivate through hard work myself?"

"That is not necessarily the case. You can ask a great Cultivator to help guide the Spiritual Qi." Emperor Zhou Weixi picked up his teacup and took a sip. "Old Zhou is my uncle. Although his Cultivation was not achieved entirely through his own Cultivation..."

"Your Majesty, there is no need." Xie Feng really could not bring himself to say the conclusion of a cultivation base instilled through Initiation to this emperor, so he directly interrupted. "My Cultivation system is completely different from the Nine Provinces. A great Cultivator guiding Spiritual Qi does not work on me. Last time when that Master Zuo held me down in Ranhuo City, he could suppress everything in my body back into my Dantian, but he still could not help me straighten out my Meridians."

Emperor Zhou Weixi did not force the issue after hearing this, merely giving a slight nod.

"Better than nothing; it is still better than nothing." He picked up the memorial, spread it out again, lowered his head, and added another sentence, "I will have Old Zhou go and talk to you about his insights on the Fourth Realm. Although his Cultivation was imparted by the previous generation, it is more than enough to teach you, a Peak Third Realm Cultivator. Tomorrow at the Chen hour, he will go to your posthouse."

When he said this, his tone was as calm as usual, yet it had already recovered the intonation of daily political affairs. Clearly, this matter was thus settled.

Xie Feng opened his mouth, wanting to say "There is no need," but the emperor had already picked up the memorial.

Early the next morning, Old Zhou appeared punctually at the entrance of the posthouse.

He had changed out of that profound black dragon robe and was wearing a dark gray plain long robe, holding a purple clay teapot in his hand, the spout still steaming with hot air.

The first thing he did after entering the courtyard was not to teach Xie Feng to Cultivate, but to look around the environment, pick up a cold sesame seed cake in the corner of the wall, take a bite, and vaguely say it was passable.

Old Zhou was also somewhat dissatisfied. This person looked weird, showed no respect to his elders, and was disrespectful in speech. Most importantly, he was even acting hooligan-like towards the junior of his own family!

Xie Feng stood by the couch leaning on his blind staff, looking at him, thinking that the imperial family's relatives truly all possessed their own Divine Abilities and did not treat themselves as outsiders at all.

Once Old Zhou sat down, he began to lecture on the essentials of the Fourth Realm.

Once the chatterbox was opened, Xie Feng realized that this uncle's proficiency was indeed much better than him flipping through the Hall of Archives books by himself. At least he explained it to him point by point, from the circulation order of Spiritual Qi in the Dantian and limbs to the stress reactions during each step of transformation, all explained in the simplest manner.

Xie Feng had just bitten through a whole day of case files in the Hall of Archives not long ago, and could not help comparing these two experiences in his heart.

After lecturing for a whole morning, Old Zhou gradually felt that something was not quite right.

Xie Feng's foundational questions were extremely bizarre. He remembered some parts familiarly, even being able to casually recite a few original sentences from the classics, yet in other parts, he was completely blank.

Moreover, why was this knowledge so ancient? It was not just backward; it was practically a generational cut-off, as if Xie Feng was still lingering in the Cultivation era of a hundred years ago.

Old Zhou could not help stopping his topic to ask a few questions, and Xie Feng had no choice but to truthfully say that Master Zuo had previously explained a period of cultivation system to him. Before he finished speaking, Old Zhou's expression changed.

After being silent for a good while, he set the purple clay teapot down on the low desk, restrained his temper a bit, and after a moment of pause in his tone, said, "So Lord Zuo has taught you... That is no wonder you would understand certain parts."

Xie Feng caught that pause and fiercely greeted him in his heart.

Back in Ranhuo City, you were so ferocious that you practically wanted to jump off the flying ship to tear apart the Great Old Ones with your bare hands, yet now when mentioning Zuo Ciyuan, your voice has dropped by three degrees.

Why aren't you arrogant anymore! You don't make a peep upon hearing the name of the Governor of Qingzhou?! Coward!

Old Zhou placed the purple clay teapot back onto the low desk once more, the bottom of the pot knocking against the stone tabletop to emit a crisp sound.

He looked at Xie Feng for quite a while, presumably wanting to say "What did you just call Lord Zuo," but in the end didn't ask it out loud, simply pushing up his cuffs and picking up the topic he had been halfway through just now.

"The Breakthrough of a normal Fourth Realm Cultivator relies on stirring one's own Spiritual Qi to pull and hook the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, allowing one's own Spiritual Qi fluctuations and the external Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi fluctuations to gradually synchronize, slowly pressing together like two palms, until they press so close that you cannot tell which one is which, and the barrier is broken.

The sign of a successful triggering is very simple: being able to fly. Not relying on Magic Treasures, not relying on Cultivation Techniques, but floating up by yourself."

"I can fly right now."

When Xie Feng said this, his tone was very plain, because it was indeed a fact. After being entered into his left eye socket by the Nightfiend upon the ruins of Ranhuo City, that mass of black viscous substance had automatically bestowed upon him the ability to levitate.

When he was chatting with the Third Princess on the deck of the flying ship, he had still floated over.

Old Zhou put down the purple clay teapot, walked over, bent his knuckles, and crisply knocked on Xie Feng's forehead.

This knock was extremely heavy, and a red mark immediately rose on Xie Feng's dark green forehead. The Nightfiend uncomfortably shifted inside his left eye socket, its three petals of fire contracting in unison.

"Flying by relying on that strand of black fog doesn't look like a proper Cultivator at all. Don't you have any idea what that black fog of yours is? That is the residual power of an outer god. Every time you use it to fly, it seeps one more trace deeper into the depths of your consciousness. If it doesn't want to be a packhorse anymore and wants to be the coachman, you won't even be able to touch the reins."

Xie Feng touched his forehead without refuting.

The jade pendant given by Zuo Ciyuan was still hanging around his neck to this day, lightly vibrating every few days to suppress the shadows that the Nightfiend was infiltrating into the depths of his consciousness back down.

Every vibration was reminding him: his mind and spirit were already riddled with holes; do not use the power of outer gods to fill them up anymore.

Xie Feng pushed his hood back and sat upright.

"Start from the beginning, as if I can't fly."

Old Zhou sat down again and began to explain the Fourth Realm barriers from the beginning.

Completely different from Zuo Ciyuan's teaching style of "I am a Genius so I also don't understand where you don't get it," Old Zhou's Cultivation was instilled by the older generation of imperial elders, and he himself had also experienced Bottlenecks and felt the existence of the barriers.

"The first step in stirring the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi is to let your own Spiritual Qi seep outward from the Dantian. After seeping to the surface of the skin, continue moving outward, stopping at a position about half an inch away from the body. Many Cultivators can achieve this step; Peak Third Realm ones can basically all do it.

What traps most people is the second step: continuing to circulate the Great Heavenly Cycle after the Spiritual Qi leaves the body, making one's own Spiritual Qi synchronize with the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi outside the body. This synchronization is useless through brute force; Spiritual Qi is not a stick, and you cannot use it to poke heaven and earth."

Xie Feng closed his eyes and sank his consciousness back into the depths of the Dantian.

Silvery-white threads surged out from the Dantian, seeping toward the body surface along the Meridians.

No, what should I do if there is no Spiritual Qi in the body and only Mana?

Forget it, treat a dead horse as a live horse!

The feeling of Spiritual Qi seeping to the skin surface was very familiar. Xie Feng had already been able to achieve this step when reading "cultes des goules". Mutual conversion between Mana and Spiritual Qi, along with fine control, had long been common practice for him; it was just that before today, he had never thought of using the same method to sense the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi.

In the past, he always felt that Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi was just a lump of Chaos energy, essentially similar to Mana, just with different purity.

But Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi was not Chaos energy; it had a structure, a density, a flow direction, and extremely subtle fluctuation frequencies.

For the first time, Xie Feng truly felt the texture of heaven and earth, just like when he first stepped onto the Immortal path in the Qingyun Sect.

It was alive, rather than an energy pool that could be arbitrarily extracted.

It was breathing, flowing, and responding to every Cultivator's touch in its own way.

Xie Feng slowly floated up.

The height was less than a foot away from the couch, and his buttocks still maintained a cross-legged posture, but his knees had already left the surface of the couch.

Old Zhou sat on the stone stool in the courtyard, holding the purple clay teapot. The steam in the spout swayed slightly in the afternoon breeze. He looked at Xie Feng, who was sitting cross-legged and swaying slightly in the air, brought the spout to his mouth to take a sip, and muttered that he had really learned it.

The barriers of the Fourth Realm completely collapsed deep within his consciousness.

The Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi actively pushed open an extremely thin crack from the outer side of the barrier. After the Spiritual Qi seeped out from the Dantian and circulated synchronously with the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi outside the body for a few turns, that membrane that had always been stuck between the miniature sun and the Ghatanothoa mark naturally shattered.

Xie Feng did not open his eyes, continuing to maintain the Great Heavenly Cycle circulation where external Spiritual Qi synchronized with Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi. Every breath caused more Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi to seep into the Meridians, to be converted and absorbed by the silvery-white magic threads.

Previously, when "seeing" the world using Spiritual Qi perception, what he saw were all the outlines, temperatures, and Spiritual Qi fluctuations of objects, just like an infrared scanner.

Now what he "saw" was texture.

He could "touch" the flow direction and flow speed of every trace of Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi in the air, could "smell" that the granite on the stone table in the courtyard, baked by the sun, was slowly releasing the thermal radiation accumulated for half a day, could feel that the flow speed of moisture in the veins of those few vine leaves on the wall top was slowing down,

and could even count clearly the subtle stress differences caused by uneven wall temperatures of the purple clay teapot in Old Zhou's hand.

So this was how high-tier Cultivators perceived the world?

Xie Feng only felt the heaven and earth abruptly change!

Zuo Ciyuan had told him about it in the Governors Mansion, and at that time he had listened in a daze.

Now Xie Feng understood; the Fourth Realm was not about becoming physically stronger, but being accepted by heaven and earth.

Integrating the human body into heaven and earth, hooking the power of the Nine Provinces.

This was what an Immortal truly was!

For those great Cultivators above the Seventh Realm, the rules of heaven and earth circulated within their bodies by themselves. The aura of outer gods and Great Old Ones to them was like smelling a stranger's cigarette smoke in their own home; no matter how faint, they could immediately detect it.

He finally knew why Nine Provinces Cultivators could go head-on against Cthulhu-esque pollution for hundreds of years. When these Cultivators cultivated to profound heights, stacking their numerical stats to the limit, they could confront outer gods head-on without falling behind,

because they themselves were a part of the rules.

Their power originated from the essence of this world, rather than attaching themselves to those Great Old Ones from another Realm.

Previously, Xie Feng had completely relied on cheats to steamroll through, but now he was finally beginning to truly step into the Foundation of this world.

"In the past, I drifted and wandered, borrowing the fog to travel; today, I spread my wings and ride the wind lightly.

A mortal vessel finally enters the Heaven and Man Realm, half Cultivator and half Immortal."

Old Zhou's expression was weird: "Why are you reciting poetry?"

Xie Feng scratched his head.

"The atmosphere arrived, and it felt like I had to recite it."