Ch-54-Qi Gathering Technique
When the meal was over, everyone went to their rooms, and I took a bath, following my normal routine. When I finished and was standing in my bedroom, I was able to see the chests that were used to store my research books stacked next to the couch.
Walking over to them, I opened one and found that it was filled with Qi-gathering manuals. This discovery made me too excited to sleep, so I grabbed a few of them and a new blank notebook.
Sitting on the couch, I started flipping through the books, marking everything I found that was wrong or incorrect while paying attention and taking notes on what was correct. Thankfully, these manuals were smaller and a little more simple than the body-tempering ones, but they made up for that in quantity.
There were so many that I thought it would take me even longer to finish reading all of them.
I got so engrossed in reading the techniques that I ended up forgetting about sleeping entirely until the sun was starting to rise the next day. Knowing that it was not going to be a good day because of this, I went to the bathroom to clean myself up.
Afterward, I went to the shrine and did my morning prayers before moving to the dining room for breakfast. This led to the same lessons with Mo as yesterday.
I wished that I could have had this time for research, but I still went with this as I would only need to spend today to catch him up to the rest.
From there, it went into the normal routine as the last few days, with the only difference being my lack of sleep. Thus, when I got back to my bedroom after dinner, I did not care about anything and fell asleep on the bed almost instantly.
The next day, I had a slight change to the routine.
In the morning, I would go back to my room for research until midway through the day. This then went on for about a week, with only one change being made during that time.
This change was that instead of having everyone learn how to make their own techniques, I had to fix the other ones in which I already found the errors.
I also gave a technique to everyone who took the class and set a deadline for the end of the week to have them fixed and ready for use. So, when it came time for the lesson the next week, I collected all the techniques and started grading them at the side.
The grade was a number-based one, like the ones you would see in school, and it was based on the number of errors that were present in the technique. I was only going to be lenient on the person who chose to take the messed up heaven-ranked technique.
Surprisingly, the fixed heaven-ranked technique was the best out of all of them, with only a handful of errors. Looking at the name, I found that it was the shy maid who stepped forward to ask me that question.
When I handed the grades out, I took a second longer to congratulate the young maid and then finished handing them out.
With that, I announced the end of the class as I was still going through the Qi gathering level techniques and had no more time to teach. Mr. Xia shot this down, though, when he asked me if I could help teach the rest of the staff. Seeing no reason to refuse with how much he was letting me do while staying here, I managed to continue this all over again for the next two weeks.
In the end, I had finally finished going through all the Qi-gathering techniques.
Drawing some inspiration from how these techniques leave an opening to continue forward I instead reverse it to have my new technique build off of the previous technique I made. I also wanted to make it so that anyone practicing this technique could jump to another one without difficulty once it was cultivated to completion.
This was something that took almost a week to formulate and create, but once finished, I did the same as last time and error-checked everything once more.
When I finished error checking, I used the same artifact as last time and then jumped for safety.
Like last time, everyone broke into the room to see what was happening and saw me hiding behind the couch, looking at a book sitting on a table. They stopped at the door for a split second, which was enough for the lightning gathering in the clouds above to fall.
The lighting was aiming for the book that I had just written, but as it was about to hit, the book started floating in the air.
Soon, a shield surrounded the book, and an illusion of what looked like an endless starry sky covered the room for a second. The illusion then compressed into the shape of a meteor that had an atmospheric entry trail and shot off toward the Storm.
The tribulation above seemed to learn its lesson from last time and dodge the strike, only for it to explode and dissipate the tribulation anyway.
When all that finished, I walked out from behind the couch and grabbed the floating book. This time, the book did not want to stay in my arms, but I held it there and flipped to the front page.
It still fought against me, but I held it on that page and started to write down the name of the technique.
When I was writing the name, the book stopped fighting for a second, and I was able to finish writing without any interruptions. The moment I finished the name, the look of the book changed, and a diagram of Earth's solar system appeared on the cover. Checking the grade showed it to be a divine grade technique, just like the last one that I wrote.
With the technique in hand, I walked up to Raina, who was standing in the doorway watching all this happen, and handed her the technique. She did not move for a few seconds until Mrs. Xia pushed her shoulder.
When Raina came to, she grabbed the technique and flipped it to the front page. When she saw what was written there, she lunged forward and wrapped me in a tight hug.
It felt a little weird to me, but I did not resist or anything as I had gotten to know her a little over the month that I had been around her, and since I wanted to at least give her a chance. I let her do things like this.
However, what I was unaware of was my tail wagging around behind me, betraying my emotions that I was trying to ignore and convince myself otherwise.
When I was let go, I stepped back and grabbed the book I was holding to my chest. I did not want to look at anyone, so I stood there looking toward the ground, thinking if I should start practicing the technique or start working on another project.
This decision was a little easier as I went back over to the table and pulled out a large sheet of paper. On this sheet of paper, I started drawing out different designs of houses that I thought would look nice.
The reason for this was because I was starting to feel more than a little bad about intruding on them for this long, even if they did say it was fine. So, I was starting to plan out a house and workspace I would create on the mountain that was given to me.
This drawing session did not last long though, as Lou Xia walked over and grabbed the new technique I had just made off the table. I turned around to grab it back from her, but she instead took of running. Not letting go, I chased after her.
This led to me chasing her all over the mansion until we stopped at the shrine to Elinaria that I would always cultivate at. It was here that she stopped, and I realized I had been tricked into coming here.
Thankfully, she stopped running, so I walked up to her and got my technique back.
When I turned around to leave, I saw all of the servants in the house watching us. Looking back at Lou Xia, I saw the grin on her face, which I am sure if this was in a book, it would be described as an ear-to-ear grin.
Sighing and giving in, I sat down on the ground and opened the technique to the first section as a refresher. When I was certain I had it down, I started to practice.
This was going to be extremely painful, as the first step of this technique was a fundamental transformation and change of your meridians. This change would also cause someone to grow more collateral meridians, a lot more. The amount of Qi this would take was also quite substantial, so this would take a while even with all my meridians open to the max.
Once I had enough Qi gathered in all my meridians, I started the process.