Chapter 4 : Immortal Cultivators—Firm in Bone, Most Luminous in Spirit
Chapter 4: Immortal Cultivators—Firm in Bone, Most Luminous in Spirit!
In the blink of an eye, another seven days had passed.
Elder Xuanqing left once more.
Almost as soon as he departed, those two familiar graceful figures appeared again at the entrance of the C-Grade Herbal Garden.
They were the inner sect disciples Su Zhi and Lin Wei.
The two had once again taken on the duty of guarding this place.
Meanwhile, Gu Yan’s life continued along its established track, steady and unchanged.
During the day, he remained that silent and diligent outer sect disciple, bending over and working among the herb fields.
At night, the gates of his small independent courtyard would be tightly shut.
While others practiced martial arts, he alone cultivated immortality behind closed doors.
Now, within Gu Yan’s Tanzhong acupoint, the original inner force was gradually being replaced, thread by thread, with a purer and more lustrous spiritual power.
This process required more painstaking effort than he had anticipated, but he had ample patience.
He even found himself somewhat immersed in this day-by-day accumulation, clearly sensing his foundation steadily deepening.
Occasionally, he would wonder—if the inner force in all nine acupoints were completely transformed into spiritual power, interconnected and resonating with each other, what kind of qualitative change would occur?
Would his Qi Refining First Layer cultivation be able to push open the gate to the second layer?
Change accumulated silently.
The Taiyi Dao Sect was, after all, a Daoist sect with deep roots. Even just the First Revolution Chapter of the “Taiyi Dao Virtue Scripture” contained authentic Daoist essence.
Now that Gu Yan had truly stepped onto the path of immortal cultivation, absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth day and night, the two combined forces gradually nourished his body and spirit from within.
Daoism emphasized clarity and emptiness, maintaining inner stillness, while immortal cultivation required gathering the essence of heaven and earth to refine oneself.
As time passed, he was like an unpolished jade being carved—his complexion gradually became warm and smooth, faintly glowing.
His eyes grew increasingly clear, and his overall aura gained a sense of openness and purity.
Like a green bamboo far removed from worldly noise—quiet, yet possessing its own integrity.
Gu Yan himself was completely unaware of these changes.
Even if he noticed a little, with his current level of cultivation and understanding, he would not know how to deliberately conceal it.
Some things were like a pearl hidden in a box—their brilliance would inevitably leak out.
On this day, Gu Yan was bending over to inspect a medicinal herb. Sunlight filtered through the clouds, falling just right upon his side profile.
At the garden entrance, Lin Wei, who had been speaking softly with Su Zhi, happened to glance over—and suddenly paused.
Strange… since when had such a person been hidden in this herbal garden?
The young man before her was tall, over eight feet, yet lacked the usual thin and dull appearance common among overworked outer sect disciples.
His shoulders and back were straight, his posture steady. Even in simple outer sect clothing, he could not conceal that distinctly extraordinary aura.
Bathed in sunlight, his side profile carried a certain…
Well, in any case, he looked far more pleasing than some inner sect senior brothers who put on airs or acted slick and pretentious—he could even be called outstanding.
Gu Yan seemed to sense something. He straightened and turned his head.
His gaze met Lin Wei’s bright eyes.
The girl’s cheeks were faintly flushed, her eyes filled with undisguised curiosity and scrutiny.
Compared to the cold and composed Su Zhi beside her, she appeared much more lively and expressive.
Gu Yan remembered them. Elder Chen had mentioned during casual conversation that these two were inner sect disciples—Su Zhi and Lin Wei.
Being watched by such a pretty senior sister, Gu Yan’s heart remained unmoved.
He did not know why she was looking at him, nor did he care to speculate.
Between an outer sect disciple and an inner sect senior sister, any unnecessary assumptions would only bring trouble.
Thus, he merely gave a slight, polite nod toward the entrance, then lowered his head again, returning his attention to the herbs in his hands.
Lin Wei, however, did not immediately look away. Instead, she observed him with interest for a few more moments.
This outer sect disciple had looks far above average—interesting.
Night fell.
Gu Yan sat cross-legged inside his room, his breathing long and steady.
The windows were tightly shut, yet above his head, it seemed as though an invisible vortex slowly rotated,
drawing strands of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth from the night sky into his body.
Turning his awareness inward, he could clearly see that the spiritual power within his Tanzhong acupoint had nearly reached saturation, on the verge of overflowing.
Based on his extensive reading of cultivation novels in his previous life,
the Qi Refining stage typically involved drawing energy into the body and transforming it into spiritual power stored within the Dantian’s energy sea,
accumulating and expanding it until quantitative change led to qualitative transformation, thereby forming the foundation.
But the path Gu Yan now followed was different.
Instead of storing the spiritual power he absorbed in his Dantian, he injected it into the acupoints of the local martial system’s first revolution.
Yet in Gu Yan’s view, both approaches were essentially the accumulation and storage of spiritual power.
The Dantian was a large warehouse; the acupoints were smaller storehouses.
He would first fill the Tanzhong acupoint and observe the results.
Practice was the only standard for testing truth.
If this path proved unworkable, he could simply redirect the spiritual power back into the Dantian—at worst, it would only be a matter of efficiency.
At least for now, these “small storehouses” allowed free storage and retrieval, integrating seamlessly with his body without any sense of obstruction or conflict.
He gathered his focus, no longer thinking further, and guided the spiritual energy of heaven and earth fully toward the Tanzhong acupoint.
Only the final bit of natural completion remained before the inner force in the first acupoint would be entirely replaced by spiritual power.