Lanke Chess Edge -
Chapter 36: The Transformation of Heaven and Earth
Due to exhaustion, Ji Yuan unknowingly fell asleep, leaning against the stone table. During his rest, the energy in his body bloomed like a tree branching out in spring. His bones, meridians, and internal organs were stretching, and the excess spiritual energy beyond what his body could handle flowed out like wisps of smoke, allowing Ji Yuan to return to a comfortable state.
“Mr. Ji, I have brought the books!”
A faint voice came from outside the courtyard. Ji Yuan, who was half asleep, squinted in the direction of the courtyard door.
“Daytime Officer Liu, please come in. I’m a little tired so I won’t come out to open the door.”
Anyway, they were all ghosts, so why couldn’t they just enter? Besides, Ji Yuan felt that he and “Old Liu” were sufficiently familiar with each other.
Two daytime patrol officers stood outside the courtyard, and the four Yin agents holding large black umbrellas1 looked at each other in disbelief, before slowing down to pass through Ju’an Pavilion’s courtyard gate. The Lord City God had personally ordered that the county’s Yin agents should not disturb the peace of Ju’an Pavilion, and must respect the owner.
Ji Yuan sat up and watched the group of underworld agents entering the small courtyard. There were so many of them!
Looking at how high the sun was in the sky, the two daytime patrol officers were clearly skilled at their job, while the rest were protected by the big umbrellas.
The four Yin agents under the umbrella each carried a bamboo box on their backs. As they entered, the temperature in the small courtyard grew much colder.
“Mr. Ji, these are the books that Lord Cheng Huang ordered us to bring. Where would you like them to be placed?”Ji Yuan couldn’t wait, so he pointed to ground by the stone table.
“Just leave it here.”
However, these book boxes and books all entered through the door along with these ghosts. They wouldn’t be intangible, right?
Fortunately, it turned out that Ji Yuan was just overthinking it. The four Yin emissaries untied the book boxes from their backs, and the two daytime patrol officers reached under the umbrella cover, grabbed the boxes, and gently placed them on the table.
Ji Yuan could hear the sound of the book box hitting the ground when it was put down. It was definitely the sound of something tangible. It must have been a ghost-transporting method similar to the one rumored about in previous life.
“Mr. Ji, the books have been delivered. I’ll take my leave!”
“Okay, thank you all!”
Ji Yuan turned his attention away from the books, and politely clasped his hands and bowed to all of the Yin agents. The other party naturally didn’t dare to neglect him and bowed in return, before walking out through the door.
After all, they were all ghosts. Even if they had a human connection, they had no intention of overstaying their welcome.
After all the underworld messengers had gone, Ji Yuan relaxed and looked at the four boxes of books. He immediately went over and carried one of the boxed over to the stone table.
It was a little heavy, but Ji Yuan felt like it wasn’t quite heavy enough for what he had been expecting. If such a large bamboo book box were filled with books, it would have been significantly heavier.
He opened the bookcase, but through his blurry vision, didn’t see the imagined stacks of books. Instead, he saw something that looked cylindrical.
He stretched out his hand and tried to determine what the objects were.
‘Bamboo slips!’2
Ji Yuan took out one of the bamboo slips, weighed it in his hand, and then slowly unfolded it.
‘The Old City God is quite generous!’
These bamboo slips were different from books written with ordinary brushes. The characters on them were all engraved. Ji Yuan could “read” the contents naturally by brushing his fingers over the slips.
Regardless of whether the Old City God did it intentionally, Ji Yuan was very grateful.
‘It seems that there is no need to ask someone for help!’
. . .
It was already late at night, but Ji Yuan was not sleepy at all.
As someone whose eyesight was the same whether it was night or day, there was no need for him to light candles. Ji Yuan had been “reading” the books in the courtyard since the afternoon.
Sometimes he held the bamboo slips in his hands, and sometimes he spread them out on the stone table, carefully tracing each word with his index finger.
The inscriptions on the bamboo slips were very fine and small, allowing each slip to hold a lot of characters. Ji Yuan read very slowly and carefully.
The content inside each slip were a fields that Ji Yuan had never been exposed to before. It was content that any young person from the technological era would greatly covet.
At this moment, Ji Yuan was so excited he could barely control himself.
‘I’m really a freaking genius, I can understand this surprisingly well!’
Ji Yuan found that he could actually understand the obscure language.
When the vital Qi he had absorbed circulated in his body, he clearly perceived all of his meridians and acupoints. What he lacked were the names and a better understanding of said acupoints and meridians, which could be learned from books.
Ji Yuan read very slowly, not wanting to misinterpret any words. After reading a paragraph, he would always return back to the previous paragraph to consolidate his understanding.
The Five Elements,3 Yin and Yang, the Six-Harmonies and Eight-Methods,4 how to feel the vitality of everything in mountains, rivers, and lakes, absorbing the energy of heaven and earth, cleanse the body, and cultivate the self!
The book in Ji Yuan’s hand was the “Qi Guiding Art.” The name was very simple, and it was indeed a very common item. In the world of spiritual practice, it was a rather basic refining technique, and there were many other similar ones. There were also more detailed, high-end methods specifically for cultivating Yin, Yang, and the Five Elements.
But for ordinary people, even the world’s most powerful mortals, this book was still unattainable.
As for Ji Yuan, this book was also a precious treasure. It was a book of enlightenment, for him to enter into the realm of spiritual practice!
Since he had come to this world, who wouldn’t want to be different? Who wouldn’t want to live forever?
‘It turns out that the vision of mountains and rivers that I saw in the inn was not because I was particularly special, but rather it’s a vision that anyone absorbing spiritual energy for the first time has a chance of seeing.’
Everyone received a different vision inside their bodies. For example, some people would see meridians like rivers, while others would see raging fires. Each individual’s vision was related to their own abilities and state of mind.
There were few people who received this kind of strange vision in their bodies, and those who did were often held to higher expectations by their teachers. Although it wasn’t an absolute metric, the achievements of those people were often more promising.
‘I really am a genius! ’
Ji Yuan couldn’t help but smile when he read this. However, the smile disappeared after a few moments, as the book went on to say that the purer the scenery, the better: for example, seeing white snow or blazing fire were good signs, but the more complex the vision, the worse the qualifications.
Ji Yuan thought for a moment. He recalled the beautiful scenery of heaven, earth, mountains, and rivers. It was so complicated…
Forget it, don’t think about it!
After studying the Qi Guiding Art until midnight, Ji Yuan had almost fully grasped its contents. In addition to the several other book boxes, there was also a volume of “Energy Manipulation Techniques,”5 which summarized several cultivation methods, and even contained some minor Taoist spells.6 Apart from the techniques, there were no cultivation-related books inside the other the boxes. The remaining bamboo slips contained some martial arts secrets and chess manuals.
“Let’s try it out!”
Ji Yuan whispered to himself. He sat upright on the stone bench and relaxed.
There was a whole vast world all around him, and a whole small world inside of his body.7 Every minute meridian, each acupuncture point, every organ in the human body, all corresponded to the mysteries of Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, the stars in the sky between heaven and earth… Cultivation was also about comprehending the vastness of the world, and grasping the power of the universe.
Ji Yuan exhaled softly and slowly. His breath entered his chest, his abdomen, then rolled down his body, extending into his limbs and bones. His consciousness seemed to be flowing in with each inhale, and being exhaled out of the body along with the air, spreading to the world around his body. He could feel the vitality between heaven and earth.
This was the secret technique of the “Qi Guiding Art” – the Transformation of Heaven and Earth!
No matter what kind of spiritual practice they followed, regardless of whether they were in the realm of immortals or in the ordinary mountains and fields, whether old, young, or longing for immortal life, countless people would get stuck at this first level!
Ji Yuan, on the other hand, gradually improved unknowingly, and did not feel the difficulty at all.
Ji Yuan felt that what he was currently feeling was actually very similar to the magical feeling when he had first absorbed spiritual energy into his body. However, that first time his infinitely expanding world was an internal vision in his body, while this time his consciousness was transformed and diffused into reality.
He seemed to be both present, absent, and everywhere all at once. Ji Yuan could clearly sense the state of spiritual energy floating in between heaven and earth.
At that thought, it was like he had turned on a magnet. The spiritual energy all around was immediately attracted, approaching little by little before finally gathering around Ji Yuan, seeping through his skin into his body.
There was no itching or soreness. It felt like spring rain falling on the earth, silently irrigating the world, bringing Ji Yuan only comfort and a refreshed feeling.
It was not as large of an amount as his previous experience with the chess piece Qi, but it was very comfortable and fit him perfectly. The quality was even purer. Ji Yuan vaguely understood that this was the right way to absorb spiritual energy!
However, the existence of Ji Yuan’s self-titled Chess Piece Qi Technique gave him the confidence to improve the efficiency of his practice.
T/n: training montage, go!
Also, heads up that my update speed is going to slow down significantly for this week since Real Life is catching up to me. Gotta run!
- Presumably because sunlight weakens Yin entities – the daytime patrol officers seem to be different, or specially appointed to that role ↩︎
- Bamboo slips, traditionally written with a brush but in this case carved ↩︎
- The Theory of Five Elements ↩︎
- Liuhebafa, a martial arts practice ↩︎
- 术 (shù): technique; 法 (fǎ): law, method, way, (Buddhism) dharma; 精 (jīng): essence, vitality, energy; 要 (yāo): to demand, to will. This translates more literally to “techniques to bend the natural Law (dharma) to your will,” which MTL stubbornly insists on translating as “spells” – I mean, I can see why, but I don’t have to like it. It’s also flipping ANNOYING to translate in a concise enough fashion. It seems to be referring to the kind of external techniques cultivators use to manifest “magic-like” things – controlling water, fire, etc. I used “Energy Manipulation Technique,” but be aware that there’s some other context about the five elements and various worldly energies that are also bundled in there and difficult to directly translate.
I might come back and change it if I find a better translation ↩︎
- Again, reads similar to the prev. footnote, different characters. Seems to be a difference between being told about the theory and having the particulars and instructions explained to you. I caved on putting “spells” on this one since there really isn’t a better word in English for it 😦 Let me know if any of you have suggestions ↩︎
- 外有大天地，身内小天地 More or less saying that the inner world reflects the outer world in complexity ↩︎
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