Chapter 31: Seven Gates
Even without the disturbance of those silver bells, Yan Ping struggled to focus because her newly designed soul-anchoring array kept pulling her back before it was time. It took the prophet several days to configure its sensitivity correctly before she could finally astral dive without disturbances.
After a series of gruelling attempts, Yan Ping stumbled upon a game-changing technique that allowed her to access her astral form with a newfound ease. The process of severing the connection between her conscious mind and gathering all her energy into her core was an ineffective process. However, with the aid of seals specifically developed for Anji to block major meridian channels, Yan Ping achieved her astral state in half the time.
From that point forward, the prophet focused on becoming familiar with the control of her astral body. The world, once seen through the lens of energy, now took on a new, intriguing form after she separated her soul from her body. The vision in her astral form was not just clearer but also revealed things she could not see before. Anji’s existence, previously a mystery, was now represented as a soul in the astral realm. Although Yan Ping still could not discern her cultivation level, Anji’s soul was the brightest among all the people in the Celestial Dragon Sect.
Travelling from the deepest cultivation chamber, Yan Ping used her astral body to travel down the mountains and observe her student’s progress. Anji was still studying, as she should have been under Mingfeng’s guidance. More interestingly, the toddler was working as an apprentice under her family physician. No matter. Yan Ping did not mind sharing Anji with others. After all, the successor of the Mystical Qilin Sect only had one job — to pass on the secret arts of the sect and produce the next prophet.
Assured that Anji was in good hands, Yan Ping returned to her inner world. Cultivating in the astral form was very different from cultivating qi. Unlike the body with meridians, the astral body had no channels for energy flow. People said that the eyes were the window to the soul, and Anji’s eyes were definitely unique. Yan Ping received a vague hint about soul cultivation from studying Anji’s Heavenly Eyes.
The inner world was very similar to the Daoist Heart. However, unlike the cultivator’s Golden Core, the soul’s inner world was an empty void. Yan Ping had no idea what she was meant to do. Without any manuals or guides, the prophet loitered in the void of her soul world for a very long time, trying to find the end of the vast space. Unfortunately, the void seemed endless.
Spinning endlessly in the soul’s inner world, Yan Ping tried to recall what the monk taught her about chakras. He said the body had something similar to meridians for soul cultivation. They were known as chakra, although they functioned like gates. Anjis meridians were closed. However, her Heavenly Eyes worked because she could harness qi using a different method through her naturally aligned chakras.
"Maybe the first step to using the soul’s world is to unlock the seven gates?" Yan Ping wondered.
Despite deciding on a direction to begin her soul cultivation, Yan Ping had no idea where to find them. Unlike the meridians taught to all cultivators by their teachers, the chakras were not physical points in the body. They were closer to concepts than pressure points, or were they?