Riluo City (Blue Phoenix Book 1) (7 page)

‘This method allows you to gain Qi of a better quality than your peers, but you will need to spend a lot more effort and time with it.  This is why most children don’t use it. They would never have the patience to do it.’ Lan Feng said with a laugh. Being reborn was definitely beneficial for him .

‘For now I need to explain everything to you, but when we have completed the soul contract I will be able to transfer parts of my knowledge directly.’ Lan Feng  stated with a sigh. The sigh clearly represented his feelings  on explaining all this was a waste of time. However even if he was impatient, he made sure to explain everything thoroughly.

‘Close your eyes and steady your breath,’ was the first order Lan Feng gave, and Hui Yue quickly did as he was told.

Anyone who would be seeing the newborn baby would be unaware of the  the conversation that was going on between Lan Feng and Hui Yue, as their two souls were communicating within their shared infant body. Lan Feng knew that Hui Yue would be unable to cultivate with his body, so  he decided to teach Hui Yue a way to refine essence into Qi using his consciousness alone.

‘I need you to enter your body and search for the lower dantian. Flow through your veins until you reach the area below your navel.’ Hui Yue did as he was told, and he was consumed by the sound of his blood flowing through his veins. Shock filled his mind as he noticed that a mental projection of himself was standing in the middle of a tunnel like structure within his body.

‘Wake up!’ Lan Feng ordered with a stern voice, and Hui Yue quickly shook off the surprise before allowing his soul to descend further and further down until he reached the dantian.

Within him was an empty cave,  which gave him a strange feeling. His consciousness settled down inside, and he quickly noticed the blue orb of fire that was Lan Feng waiting for him there. Astonished as he looked around since he had never expected to find a cave like this within himself. Even more surprising was the fact that his consciousness looked exactly like his adult self  looked before his death.

‘It is a great size,’ Lan Feng said approvingly while looking around, ‘ the cave will be able to gather quite a lot of qi.’ Hui Yue had a feeling that it was caused by having both himself and Lan Feng cohabiting within his body.

‘Sit down, cross your legs and place your hands in the bird hand seal.’ commanded Lan Feng. Hui Yue was a bit surprised at first, but quickly followed the given order and he sat down with crossed legs and made the hand sign as told.

‘Steady your breath and follow the blood out towards your skin. When you reach the outer layer of your body, open up a suction force and keep moving at a steady pace until you have gone a whole circle through your body and returned here to your dantian.’ Lan Feng explained the best he could. Hui Yue gave a slight nod, before his consciousness turned into a streak of light that made its way through the veins, sucking up essence from outside.

It took him an half an hour to go a full circle around his body, and when he returned to the dantian he had a small mist of essence that was hanging around his consciousness, similar to a low valley that gathers mist early in the mornings.

Lan Feng nodded content at the sight.

‘Sit down like before; make sure you use the bird hand seal. Do not open your eyes no matter what happens.’ He ordered, and was satisfied when he saw how Hui Yue followed his directions with no questions asked.

‘Keep breathing steadily. With each breath inhale some of the essence around you, let it spin in a cyclone inside of you until it has turned as white as the new fallen snow. The whiter it is, the purer the quality.’ Lan Feng gave the final order before he stopped talking. The orb of blue fire was quiet as he just spent his time observing Hui Yue refining the essence he had gathered.

Hui Yue ended up spending five hours refining the essence he had gathered. When he finally finished, all the essence around him had vanished; instead, it had been replaced by a fine thread of Qi. It was of the purest white.So white that it was shining, and it kept swirling around itself in the middle of the dantian cave.

Hui Yue was exhausted but gratified. The amount of effort he had put in had only amounted to a single Qi thread that looked so alone inside the empty cave.

However, this single Qi thread was the product of Hui Yue’s hard work, and great satisfaction was evident within his heart.

‘Well done Hui Yue, that is a very good quality of Qi,’ Lan Feng said happily. He had never seen any Qi that pure before. Hui Yue had spent more time refining it than Lan Feng had expected. ‘Rest for today, we will redo it tomorrow. This will  take a lot of time.’ Hui Yue nodded, it would be too much to hope that things went quicker than expected.

The days went by one after another. Hui Yue spent around six hours every day absorbing essence and refining it into Qi. He wanted to absorb twice a day, but Lan Feng would not allow him to, as the refinement took a lot of energy, and if they were to try twice a day the quality of Qi was likely to drop.

Upon hearing those reasons Hui Yue could acquiescent Just like Lan Feng he too want to  make sure that the Qi  he was refining was at the highest quality possible.

Deep inside he was grateful for the helpthe Phoenix was giving him, and their initial enmity was almost completely dissipated. In return, Lan Feng was slightly less haughty towards Hui Yue, as he in turn was astonished by the boy’s perseverance.

Hui Yue never complained as he struggled day after day while absorbing the essence and refining it. The Qi was of a quality much purer than his own had used to be, and the fact that Hui Yue followed any order given caused Lan Feng to take a liking to the stubborn young man.

Apart from refining Qi, Hui Yue had began to understand that he was born into a poor family. He had no siblings, but his parents were both young. His mother, who was named Hui Lifen, was younger than Hui Yue had been in his previous life. Leaving Hui Yue feeling rather odd about the whole situation.

His father, named Hui Guang, was earning money by going into the forest and collecting medicinal herbs. Nevertheless, he could only gather low grade medicine as they had the least amount of danger. Both of his parents were ranked in the student levels, his mother was a four-star while his father was a seven-star student.

Lan Feng said it was the result of not cultivating, but by passively absorbing essence during their everyday life. It was likely that everyone from the village was ranked somewhere in the student level, as they did not have the resources to seriously cultivate, and even if they did reach the nine-star student rank, the quality of the Qi would be too poor to allow for any breakthrough.

Everyone who worked in this village lived  by gathering medicinal herbs and once a month they would travel towards town to sell them.

As none of them were cultivators they would be given the absolutely lowest price possible for the herbs, but it was enough for everyone in the village to survive. Even if they were poor, everyone would help each other and they were incredibly friendly.

Hui Yue’s new mother was looking after their shack while  also growing vegetables and looking after the few stock animals that the village had together.  She usually  brought Hui Yue with her .

Hui Yue spent the night cultivating, and then would sleep during the day pretending to be a child while looking at the other children he was supposed to play with. Lan Feng would usually just sleep his days away or give Hui Yue some small information about the world they were now living in.

Hui Yue was a beautiful baby. Everyone adored his big eyes and fair skin. His skin never got tanned. Even when his parents brought  him  outside under the sun all day, the village elders would say that he was as fine skinned as a noble lady. His hair and eyes were black, much like before. His appearance and temperament made him a very loved child throughout the whole village.

 With the passing of days eight months quickly went by, Hui Yue quietly and diligently gathered essence and refined it into Qi during this time. The quality had not dropped from when he started, but the fine thread had turned into many threads that were swirling around all over the dantian cave.Nonetheless, something had occurred  after Hui Yue had finished refining the  Qi thread during this day.  All the threads grouped together, tangled into each other, and merged into a long robe of Qi , swirling around itself in a cone-like spiral in the middle of his cave. The robe was so white that it shone  with light.

The light that was emitted from the spiral shot out throughout the whole of Hui Yue’s infant body,  imbuing  it with a power he had never felt before. Shock and happiness were  evident on his face as he understood that he had finally reached the first star of the student level.

‘Well done!’ Lan Feng said from the side of the cave where the blue orb of fire moved towards the Qi  spiral; ‘Now, Hui Yue are you still willing to make the soul contract with me?’ he asked, while hovering right before the spiral. Hui Yue nodded, clearly excited to see what would happen now, and as soon as Lan Feng saw his reply a flame shot out from the fire-orb, and absorbed the entire Qi spiral.

Hui Yue stared in bewilderment, shocked to see his eight months of hard work disappearing like that. As the Qi entered the blue orb it grew in size, sizzling with power before it finally burned down and left behind something in a human shape.

The anger which had been dormant for so long started rising again, until he noticed that the human shape left behind started moving.

Hui Yue stared, as the person slowly straightened out. It was a boy who seemed to be around ten years old, both his eyes and hair were  azure blue, and his whole body was covered with small white feathers that were so white that they gave off a celestial aura.

Hui Yue was astonished as he saw the boy, but he quickly adjusted and smiled. Who would have guessed that Lan Feng was actually a ten-year-old boy.

Although Hui Yue was shocked, this world already held so many surprises that Hui Yue no longer felt greatly shocked upon seeing the display which had just occurred  in front of him.

‘Idiot,’ Lan Feng exclaimed of Hui Yue. He was displeased as he felt that Hui Yue was making fun of his current shape, ‘you are in the body of an infant, and I need to scale down my consciousness too, or the body would be strangled by my mental energy.’ He explained.

Lan Feng went straight towards Hui Yue without giving him any time to answer. He took out his hand and with  his nail made a long cut on his palm. No blood appeared, instead a silver coloured liquid slowly oozed out. Hui Yue clearly understood  what was expected of him and copied the gesture. He held out his hand towards Lan Feng, who grasped both hands together and allowed the liquid to merge.

A voice that sounded much older than the body resonated within the dantian cave, ‘You hold my soul, and I hold yours. In accordance with the ancient soul contract we are now one, and one shall we be till death do us part or our goals are achieved.’

As soon as the words were said a huge power forced its way through the cut on Hui Yue’s hand and circled his entire consciousness a few times, before retracting itself into Lan Feng’s palm. At the time it left him, Hui Yue felt some of his own consciousness returning to him, to give him a feeling of being complete once again.

As soon as the power had vanished Hui Yue felt as if he had been doing some excessive exercise, his whole body ached. He was exhausted. Lan Feng too seemed rather tired as he sat down and leaned against the cave wall. Hui Yue walked   to him and sat down beside him.He then closed  his eyes.

‘So those eight months of hard work needs to be redone?’ he said with a sigh as he looked at his empty cave. Lan Feng heard the exhaustion in Hui Yue’s voice and laughed gently, ‘no, it will come back when you rest. But you do need to continue refining every day, we need you to get stronger after all.’ Hui Yue nodded, as relief flooded his senses. It would have been depressing if the eight months of hard work had vanished just like that.

Lan Feng looked at Hui Yue and smirked, the soul contract had caused some changes to Hui Yue’s appearance, but Lan Feng felt no reason to tell him just yet, as he noticed how the consciousness turned blurry. He  saw Hui Yue slipping into a deep sleep.

The morning broke as usual and Hui Yue’s father was on his way to the forest when his eyes fell upon Hui Yue who was sound asleep in his crib. His eyes widened and he froze up for a moment before he finally woke up his wife.