The Science of Cultivation

How do cultivators sense each other?

That was the question Li Lang had to ask when he got started with developing his own concealment art. From the few methods available to him, he found that the most common method was to detect the fluctuations in the ambient Qi that were caused by cultivators’ autonomic process of absorbing and releasing Qi.

There was a constant intake and outtake of energy, whether they did so consciously or not. It flowed in and out like a person breathing. It differed from cultivation, where the energy was used to expand the human container to increase capacity rather than simply flowing through.

This meant the most straightforward method to avoid detection was to stop this flow of Qi entirely. However, the constant use of their Qi muscles, otherwise known as spiritual roots, to suppress these fluctuations would tire the user before long. Thankfully, Li Lang didn’t have any great ambitions to create such a technique that perfectly avoided detection. Instead, he pursued the direction of weakening the energy levels, so the user would appear at a lower realm than what they really were.

Li Lang would normally not be ready to create his own techniques. It was a difficult discipline and required many long years of experience and understanding. The only reason he became confident about tackling this endeavor was because of all the work he had done with the Ascension Technique.

The Ascension Technique wasn’t one specific set of movements, but many of them that had to be choreographed in a certain way that fit the specific user. It was like the technique was made up of different modules that had to be assembled together in a different way each time. The very nature of these modules was to invoke the flow of Qi inside a practitioner’s meridians in a specific way.

If you placed this concept toward the outermost part of the meridian channels, you could technically control the strength at which the Qi enters the body. The lowered levels of input would naturally decrease the output as well. It was only a conjecture, so the next step was naturally to put it to the test.

With Foundation Establishment Realm helpers with him, Li Lang could freely make adjustments to refine his results. Day by day, he got closer to his goal.

At first, the technique created unstable fluctuations. As it stabilized, the problem soon became the Ascension Technique itself. It required the user to transition into different stances. It was almost like a strange dance. A technique that concealed your true cultivation but made you do eccentric poses was only good in the wilderness, where no one was watching. Otherwise, anyone who witnessed it would one hundred percent be suspicious of the practitioner.

There were a few ways to remedy the issue.

One was to abandon physical poses entirely and create a new set of techniques that required no movements. It had the worst short-term offerings but solved a lot of the issues. The time it took was also too long and uncertain.

Next.