Chapter 6: Refining Essence to Qi
The vast sea of stars extends the sword to the heavens, a lone peak and cliff sleeps in the snow, the cold wind is biting and flowers no longer bloom, ten thousand miles of rivers and mountains, no one cares.
"I, Chen Dewei, a swordsman of Yanzi Cave in Guangxia Mountain, was enlightened by the Nine Heavens Xuan Nu Ruyi True Monarch, and was bestowed with the Sword Sect's talisman. I train under the Yao Guang Peak Master and Po Jun Sword Lord at Nine Yin Mountain.
Serving the sword for five hundred years, refining Qi and transforming the spirit, forging a sword infant, transmitting the sword and obtaining the Dao, I am now named Tianku, and today at the Daoist field of Guangxia Mountain, I open a platform to teach the Dao, founding a sect.
You eight, after worshipping the Xuan Nu Ruyi True Monarch today, will become one of us in the Mystic Sect, the Sword Attendant boys of Guangxia Mountain. When I am not on the mountain, Senior Brother Yue Peng and Second Senior Brother Zhou Feng will teach in my place.
Once your cultivation is successful and you form the Nascent Soul, you may enter my sect as the second-generation sword transmission disciples of Guangxia Mountain, and be granted the talisman of an Outer Mountain Disciple of the Sword Sect, receiving the true teachings of Beichen Swordsmanship."
Since starting cultivation at Yanzi Cave in Guangxia Mountain, autumn has come and gone, and it is now unknowingly the twelfth lunar month.
The Sword Attendant, wearing the old clothes and a green robe handed down by the senior brothers, with hair tied by a hemp rope, sat in the icy wind of Yanzi Peak, facing the first light of dawn, breathing in and out.
The so-called breathing practice is exhale first then inhale, with a single breath of innate true breath as the core, exhaled, harnessing the spiritual Qi between heaven and earth, returning to the body to be refined.
The bone-chilling icy breath cuts down the throat like a sword blade, then dissolves from within the lungs, circulating through the meridians, refining every Qi acupoint in the body, finally refined into a true Qi, exhaled through the mouth and nose, actually shooting out in a three-zhang white ribbon before him in the cold wind, forming a clearly visible ice crystal ribbon, rolling like a dragon or snake.
Thereafter discarding impurities, retaining the essence, inhaling back into the mouth and nose, this cycle repeats eighty-one times before it is counted as cultivation of Dao Breath, allowing the Qi to settle in the Dantian, and the breath to infuse into the inner scene.
This is the true transmission of the Mystic Sect, the secret of refining essence into Qi.