The Nine Cauldrons

Chapter 14: Crossing Worlds

“Internal Martial Arts enhances the strength of the whole body before refining the inner strength, at which point, one would be inducted into the Grandmaster Realm. In fact, this is the stage of ‘Refining Vitality into Qi.’

“The ancient people did not pay attention to musculoskeletal exercise. In their view, that was an insignificant path. Their attention was completely focused on taking in Spiritual Qi from the surrounding skies and earth and refining the inner strength. After all, in the ancient past, Spiritual Qi was abundant in the environment and experts could refine it into a lot of inner strength, which could even be stored in their Dantian. Our Internal Martial Arts is based on refining the energy inside one’s blood, but the output of inner strength is quite modest and most of it is stored in the meridians, not the Dantian.”

Teng Qingshan became nervous when he read this.

In battles now, inner strength was only secondary. Most people relied on the muscles, bones, and physical strength.

The ancient people simply relied on their powerful inner strength.

After all, the ancient practitioners were ‘rich’, or more precisely, they had too much inner strength. The modern practitioners were ‘poor’, their ‘inner strength’ was so insignificant that it didn’t even need to be stored in their Dantian.

“But when comparing Internal Martial Arts and the exercises of the ancient people, Internal Martial Arts doesn’t only have weaknesses, it also has its own disadvantages and advantages.

“The biggest disadvantage is that the ancients were much stronger than we can ever become.

“The biggest advantage is that Grandmasters of Internal Martial Arts have completely opened up their meridians.

“For ancient people, it was extremely difficult to open one’s meridians. Just opening the Ren and Du meridians were considered a remarkable achievement.”

Teng Qingshan smiled when he read this statement.

Indeed, for the experts nowadays, they have all completely opened the meridians of their body. Whether it was the Eight Extraordinary Meridians or the Twelve Standard Meridians, or even the smaller meridians, they had opened all of them. Thus, their inner strength could instantly reach any part of their body.

“When I began researching, I couldn’t understand. The inner strength of the ancient practitioners was stronger, it should be easier for them to circulate the energy through their meridians. So why did they feel that it was much more difficult than we do?”

Teng Qingshan nodded slightly.

“After my investigation and understanding, I made some conclusions.

“The ancient practitioners are occupied by the energy in the surroundings. They would accumulate enough inner strength and rely on the powerful inner strength to gradually push through the meridian. This method is like cleaning up a river and pushing the mud and garbage to the sides. The more waste pushed aside, the narrower the riverbed becomes.”

“In the process of opening the meridians, a lot of impurities are pushed out of the body. However, a lot of impurities are also being pushed into the other meridians as well.”

Teng Qingshan quietly nodded.

“Every time they open up a meridian channel, it would make the ‘impurities’ within the other meridians become more concentrated, which also made it more difficult to open the next meridian.” Teng Qingshan was completely captivated by this deduction, “So, the ancient practitioners who could open up their eight extraordinary meridians and the twelve standard meridians were extremely rare. As for wanting to open some of the smaller meridians, it was almost impossible for them!”

Teng Qingshan agreed.

The method determined the result.

The method of the ancient people purely relied on brute force to open one’s meridians. By the power of inner strength, they constantly pushed more impurities in; so naturally it would become more difficult to get through. However, this was not the fault of the ancient people, it was mainly because they focused more on extra inner strength.

“But our Internal Martial Arts is not the same!

“The Internal Martial Arts exercise the entirety of the body, whether it is muscle, fascia, bone, etc…. all are included in the exercise. Even the meridians are frequently stimulated and pushed to become larger. From the meridians, the impurities are then gradually pushed out of the pores.”

“Because our inner strength is insignificant, it doesn’t push impurities into the other meridians, but rather out. With many years of practice, the impurities will continue to penetrate out. One day, we can get through all the meridians and reach the Grandmaster Realm.”

Teng Qingshan laughed.

He himself was an Internal Martial Arts expert, so he knew it was true.

If the ancient training method was to forcefully rely on inner strength to extract the impurities, then the Internal Martial Arts of today would be the strengthening of all parts of the body, including the meridians, and even the tiny meridians connected to the pores.

In the process of training, the impurities in the offshoots of the meridians would seep out through the pores. Naturally, the impurities in the major meridians would slowly flow into some offshoot channels, and then seep out through the pores. Silently, all impurities from each of the major meridians would pass through the branching meridians and eventually seep out from the pores.

What about the ancient people?

They squeezed a large amount of impurities into their offshoots at the beginning, causing the tiny meridian offshoots to become completely blocked.

Blockage is never better than uncluttered, this was the principle.

Internal Martial Arts Grandmasters started off by strengthening every part of their body, ingeniously causing the impurities to naturally run down.

“Therefore, by merit of opening up meridians, the practice of Internal Martial Arts should be much more excellent than the training methods of the ancient people.”

Seeing this conclusion Teng Qingshan could not agree more, since only a few ancient people were able to open up all of their meridians.

“I sometimes think about what would happen if an Internal Martial Arts Grandmaster could return to the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the Warring States Dynasty, or even the Qin and Han Dynasties, to a period when the Spiritual Qi of Heaven and Earth was abundant. With the meridians of their whole body all opened up and their ability to practice the ancient secret skills, the achievements of this Internal Martial Arts Grandmaster would be unlimited.” In the end, the Internal Martial Arts Grandmaster from the period of the Republic of China were obviously sad.

Powerful ones felt lonely.

This ‘Willow Monkey God’ Grandmaster from the Republic of China period had also been standing at the peak of the world, but when he found out that there were actually three major innate realms in the training of the ancient experts, how could his heart not desire that?

Teng Qingshan read this lengthy thesis written by ‘Willow Monkey God’ as endless emotions surged in his heart.

“I hate not being able to be born in the distant antiquity.”

Teng Qingshan sighed and made an emotional remark. In this modern society, he was already considered to be at the peak of the practitioner world, but in the ancient era he would only be considered an ordinary expert who couldn’t even touch the doors of the innate realm. The period with experts as numerous as the clouds. Just by imagining it, Teng Qingshan couldn’t help but feel his hot blood boiling.

“I really don’t know why Spiritual Qi began decreasing so drastically since the Sui and Tang Dynasties.” Teng Qingshan said to himself as he pondered, and immediately continued reading the Millennium Chronicle.

Millennium Chronicle, this book was indeed a book that recorded the training method of the Thief God Sect.

In the back of the book, it only talked about the training methods of the “Monkey Fist” from the fundamentals to the Grandmaster Realm. Although there was a system to follow, it was extremely difficult for ordinary people to train until inner strength was generated, let alone becoming a Grandmaster.

“Huh….”

Teng Qingshan could not help but feel surprised when he flipped to the last few pages.

“My Thief God Sect has passed down several ancient books of secret arts. At the beginning, I did not take these secret records seriously. However, only after researching the secrets of the ancient training methods did I realize that these secret records were true. Yet, due to the drastic decrease of Spiritual Qi, these books of secret arts became useless.”

“Besides the secrets of training, there was another top Qing Gong secret art called ”Crossing Worlds”. This ancient secret art does not show the method of training inner strength, it’s only a way of using inner strength. I have already been in the Grandmaster Realm for twenty years and have amassed a large amount of inner strength. After performing a couple of experiments, I found that after doing it only once, my inner strength was completely consumed! I could only sigh and make an emotional remark to myself……. The inner strength of the ancient people was seriously too abundant.”

As Teng Qingshan read until here, he couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

In the battles of modern day Internal Martial Arts, the Grandmasters could only force out a measure of inner strength occasionally. After all, the amount of inner strength in their bodies was so small that storing it in the Dantian was unnecessary.

Yet, during ancient times, it was said that the practitioners were able to saturate the Dantian completely with inner strengths. What amount of inner strength would that be!

“I, Willow Monkey God, am most proud of my agility. But I realized that when I perform this Crossing Worlds, even if it was just once, my inner strength was completely consumed. Yet, the speed of this art was…… seriously too fast. So fast that I could not bear for this secret art to disappear and so, I recorded it at the back of the book.

The last few pages of the book ‘Millennium Chronicle’ documented the powerful technique of the sect, “Crossing Worlds”.

This book of secret art might have been very precious during the Spring and Autumn War Dynasties and the Qin and Han Dynasties.

However, in this period, this book of secret art could only be a ‘collection.’ Its practical use was already extremely small, since just one performance of the art would cause an Internal Martial Arts Grandmaster to use up all of his inner strength. If so, who would dare to actually use it? It would be extremely dangerous to have no inner strength during fights.

“Crossing Worlds…I wonder how powerful it is.” Teng Qingshan began reading every detail.

According to the description of Crossing Worlds, if Crossing Worlds was performed when a Grandmaster had reached the Golden Dan of the Innate Realm, the Grandmaster could achieved the effect of the highest level of Crossing Worlds, ’Close Yet Worlds Apart’.

“Such a waste.”

Teng Qingshan scrutinized the technique and couldn’t help but sigh.

As the sun rose, in the yard of the house that Teng Qingshan occupied, a figure was stepping in a strange pattern. On the concrete ground, there were hollow footprints.

The hollow footprints were the footstep positions that Teng Qingshan had purposely trod according to the description of the Crossing Worlds. He then began training continuously according to the writings in this secret art. This was the most basic footwork of Crossing Worlds, which looked simple but actually contained boundless mysteries.

“This footwork is really quite peculiar.” Teng Qingshan practiced the footwork pattern according to the instructions of the secret manual from late at night until now. As the time he spent practicing became longer, Teng Qingshan gradually realized that this footwork contained a special sequence.

A sequence that could not be classified by logic.

However, Teng Qingshan could feel it.

“Just practicing this footwork would be useless. The level of agility trained through my Twelve Forms of Xing Yi is not weaker than this footwork.” Teng Qingshan halted. “It seems like I really have to do it with inner strength in order to make this ‘Crossing Worlds’ footwork show its true power.”

Teng Qingshan was a great hitman in the past, so of course he had a good memory. This Crossing Worlds, the book of secret arts with only a few thousand words, three images of footwork and six images of meridians, it had all been perfectly memorized by Teng Qingshan.

“Let’s give it a try and see how powerful this ‘Crossing Worlds’ is.”

Teng Qingshan could feel his heart itching. Like the Grandmaster during the period of Republic of China, Willow Monkey God, he couldn’t resist the temptation and decided to do some experiments.

“The inner strength heads out of the Surging Gate, straight down the sea of blood, the treacherous major fields, Shang Qin, to the capital and then returning….” Teng Qingshan could still clearly remember the method of circulating the inner strength through his body. While the inner strength circulates within the body, Teng Qingshan’s entire body seemed to transform into a flash of lightning as he shot forcefully to the front.

“Whew!”

In a flash, he disappeared from the yard.

“Stop!” Teng Qingshan abruptly stopped the circulation of the inner strength.

“In the blink of an eye, I actually leaped out of the yard. I probably moved at least thirty meters.” Teng Qingshan turned his head and realized that he was already in the small woods outside the yard. Teng Qingshan was shocked by this horrifying speed. If he performed one tiger leap, he could move ten meters. Yet, this was only in the twinkling of an eye, and he had moved thirty meters away.

“The inner strength was used up too quickly. I stopped immediately after I activated it, yet half of my inner strength was already consumed.” Teng Qingshan slightly understood what ‘Willow Monkey God’ had said. If Teng Qingshan himself had reacted a bit slower, the tiny amount of inner strength in his body would be all gone.

“Unbelievable! However, I wouldn’t dare to waste my inner strength like this during battles.” Teng Qingshan sighed and said to himself.

This ‘Crossing Worlds’ Qing Gong was indeed marvelous, but the expenditure of inner strength was too shocking.