Qing Shan walked forward, and was surprised to find out that he barely felt the heat until he had passed eight meters. Once he was there, he began to slowly circulate his Qi. Surprisingly, something unexpected happened. While Qing Shan's left side stayed purely fire attribute Qi, his right side immediately turned to Lightning Qi. This event immediately told Qing Shan to plan on only using the Flaming Tiger Paw with his left hand.
While this was surprising to Qing Shan, it was not entirely unexpected. So, Qing Shan continued walking forward while trying to only fill the left side of his body with Qi. As soon as it entered his Energy Channels, Qing Shan would immediately push the fire Qi into the left side of his body so that it did not turn to Lightning Qi. He was no longer sending out pulses of Lightning Qi from his Energy Channels into his body; Qing Shan was now sending pulses of fire Qi directly into his body while replacing the Qi that quickly escaped from his control. Like this, the Qi present in his Energy Channels was much greater, and would be complete except that he was still maintaining the Qi shield around the inside of his body.
While doing this, Qing Shan felt a strong mental strain. This took much more concentration than most other things he had done before while trying to manipulate his Qi. Even under all of this mental strain, Qing Shan was still lifting us his feet, and moving forward one step at a time. Now that his physique had increased so much since the last time he attempted approaching the Primal Fire, Qing Shan easily surpassed his limit, and reached the twelve meter mark. With only eight meters between him and the Primal Fire, Qing Shan managed to struggle until he reached fifteen meters.
Once Qing Shan got to this point, all that was left of his body was some blackened muscles and bone, and his teeth. He had forgotten how much this hurt!
With one last bust of strength, Qing Shan launched himself toward the Primal Water. After he landed inside of the hot spring, only one thought remained in his head.
'To think that I had to reach the peak of the Formation Soul realm before I could complete Master Liu's original order to get within five meters of the Primal Fire…'
Qing Shan fell unconscious, and into some much needed rest.
Once Qing Shan woke up, he continued his training, this time moving immediately out to the fifteen meter mark. He had walked the whole way here while filling his body with fire Qi, and by the time he reached fifteen meters he was almost as bruised as last time. This made sense. After all, the Primal Water only healed him; it did not make him stronger. Qing Shan kept going as far as he could while still having the capability to go back to the Primal Water.
Qing Shan decided that he would just keep up this process for a while, and maybe try to go a couple meters closer to the Primal Fire. He would keep training his control over Qi as well. After one month, no more, no less, Qing Shan would start learning about Elemental Enhancement.
One moth quickly passed by. Qing Shan fell into the haze of training, and the repetition of the training was starting to wear on his mental state. During this one month, Qing Shan's physique had a noticeable improvement, and his Life Core was now filled more than half way with Qi.
In just one month, Qing Shan had managed to close in on the Primal Fire another two meters. This was amazing improvement. And speaking of improvement, Qing Shan had definitely improved greatly in his control of Qi. While he had not learned any new tricks, he had definitely fine-tuned his control much more than most people could in one month. Well, that was not really fair, as Qing Shan had what would be equivalent to ten months for other people…
Anyways, now that a month had passed, it was time for him to start training in Elemental Enhancement. Since he had no real idea what it was, and could only guess from the name, Qing Shan had tried to ask his master about it more than once in the past month. Unfortunately, Master Liu was still inside of his statue, presumably working in Qing Shan's Technique scrolls.
Because going to his master for advice was currently not an option, Qing Shan would have to learn this skill on his own.
Luckily, Qing Shan had a relatively good idea of what Elemental Enhancement was based off its name. Elemental definitely referred to attribute types, so that was obvious. Unfortunately, there were multiple different ways that something could be 'enhanced'. Qing Shan's first thought after reading this word was his Qi loops, but he passed elemental energy– his lightning Qi– through those all of the time. Thus, he had to somehow enhance his body in such a way that he possibly gained some attributes of his element?
Qing Shan decided to try something. If his Qi usually does not come into contact with his bones, muscles, etcetera, and instead resides on a different, spiritual level that overlapped all the other systems in his body, did he not just have to infuse his Qi with the other systems in his body. It would definitely be enhancement if he somehow managed to fuse the fire attribute with his muscles and bones.
Qing Shan sat down and began to focus his mind. Since he did not want to much fire Qi to work with, he had made sure that he was not too close the Primal Fire before starting. Qing Shan focused on the Qi shield that he had placed inside of his body, and noted how it interacted with the surrounding bones and muscles. Since the Qi was layered on the inside of his skin, it made sense that that Qi would be touching those things.
This thought was correct. Well, sort of. While it was true that the Qi was touching those things, it was really more like the Qi was passing through those objects. As of now, the Qi was not interacting with Qing Shan's bones and muscles and organs at all; it was just moving like none of that stuff was there at all.
Of course, Qing Shan had expected this. The Energy Channels resided on a spiritual level of the body, and this level was not exactly inside of the human body. It was sort of like a different realm that was contained in the outline of his body. At least, this is what Qing Shan understood. He also knew that it was possible for an origin realm cultivator to fuse their spiritual level with the rest of their body, in a way. While Origin Realm cultivators still had the Energy Channels in the spiritual level, they also had a mirrored effect on the body. The Qi would be present in both the normal and spiritual levels. It would not duplicate, but it could simply interact with both levels of the body. Then, when Qi was expelled outside of the Energy Channels, it would leave the spiritual level and remain solely in the normal level of the body.
While this was a complicated concept to understand, it was not meant to be understood. Since this change happened naturally once the Origin Realm was reached, why would people care to learn this?
Well, obviously, Qing Shan was an exception. Although he did not know why, this concept had had been explained in Senior Teng's Runic Forging book. Qing Shan just had not thought of trying to figure this out for himself because his master had said that he already knew enough to learn Martial Origin Techniques. Since this low level technique needed this concept to be applicated in order to learn it, did that not mean that Qing Shan could forcefully learn to do this before he reached the Origin Realm?
Qing Shan shrugged.
'No harm in trying…'
Qing Shan sat on the shore, to the left of the Primal Water. He was still on the side of the Primal Fire, but he really did not need to much Fire Qi for what he was attempting. Well, he did not really need fire Qi at all, considering that that would only come after he figured out how to take down, or at least make holes in, the barrier between his spiritual level and his normal level.
He clasped his hands, and started mentally looking at an intersection point between his Qi and a bone.
Why was it that the shield encompassed Qing Shan's whole body, but did not touch it?
Qing Shan was going to try to meld his Qi container with his physical body. He focused on the connections between the shield and that finger bone, and tried to find if their were any differences from the rest of his body. Focusing on this point, Qing Shan could not really see any real connections. The shield acted as though the finger was not there, and the bone did the same.
Because there was no real connection between the two, Qing Shan tried to make one. He bent his Qi shield around his finger. Unfortunately, this also had no effect. There had to be something that Qing Shan was missing.
Maybe he could not only focus on one body part at a time?
Qing Shan made his focus zoom out, until he was pretty much looking at a three-dimensional figure of his body. He pulled back his Qi shield, so that it was only covering about half of his body. He would now watch if there were any changes.
Almost immediately, Qing Shan felt as small change. In his legs, he felt heat running up and down. Once he looked at the three dimensional model inside his head, Qing Shan was surprised. Somehow, fire Qi had entered his physical form as soon as he took down the Qi barrier. While this made some sort of sense, it should have only been possible if he started his Circulation.
'No…'
'That's it! When I Circulate my Qi, all of the nearby Qi flushes strait into my Energy Channels; my energy channels are inside my spiritual realm, so doesn't that mean that Circulation is a path between the spiritual and normal levels?'
"Hmm…"
'Now what? Do I reverse my Circulation or something?'
'!'
Qing Shan immediately dove into his energy Channel, and started to reverse the flow of his Circulation. This felt very weird to him, as it went against anything he had ever been taught. He brought his Qi from his Dantian to his Seventh Meridian, and continued circulating backwards. Although the idea had seemed ridiculous at first, Qing Shan had no choice to believe that there was something to it.
The reason for this was that reversing his circulation was actually releasing Qi out of Qing Shan's spiritual level! The Qi then traveled down his limbs until it left his body. This meant that he could actually move Qi in and out of his normal level!
While Qing Shan still had some–a lot–of fine-tuning to do, he had sort of figured it out! Now, Qing Shan needed to somehow control the Qi that was inside of his of normal level.
Unfortunately, that would be even harder than anything he had done up to his point. Origin Realm experts had a melded normal and spiritual realm, so they could control all of the Qi inside of their body. As someone who was literally still forming their cultivation, hence the name Formation realm, this was not a task that most people would be able to achieve. Luckily, Qing Shan had proven time after time that he was not like most people. Somehow, he would learn this Elemental Enhancement thing, unless it would just be Quicker to move on to the Origin Realm. Unfortunately, Qing Shan doubted that hopping up to the next realm would be easy.