" Y- Yes Elder, I went though Qi deviation back in the Tranquil Peak "
Shen stuttered a little as he answered Elder Huang's question.
" Strip and lay down, I'll check your body "
Looking at Shen in daze for half a second before he reacted Elder Huang scolded again.
" Lad! stop being in a daze and lay down! "
" Even though I don't have a wife, I don't swing that way! Don't you dare have any such thoughts! "
Shen didn't say anything but quietly stripped and laid down on the rocky ground.
Seeing Shen's body a flash of worry appeared in Elder Huang's eyes as if he had discovered something bad before it disappeared again.
Elder Huang clenched his fist as it started shining with a blinding white light.
As soon as a while light engulfed his fist, he straightened his index and middle finger while keeping the remaining closed.
The while light slowly started to condense between his index and middle finger and then became sort of a sharp sword.
Elder Huang placed his fingers on Shen's head and started to move it down.
Elder Huang's fingers kept slowly moving downwards through his neck, after moving it in the same path as Shen's nerves, Elder's speed fastened.
In just a blink of an eye he had traced every nerve, artery, meridian and pressure point of his body.
Shen couldn't keep track of Elder Huang's fingers at all, the only information his body sent through the nervous system was that it was under immense agony from this.
However, despite all of this pain his body did not react at all.
It was as if some invisible pressure was holding him still.
This went on for about 5 minutes or so before Elder Huang retracted his fingers.
" Wear your clothes and follow me."
Shen did not have much idea about what was going on, so he simply decided to follow Elder Huang.
As Shen followed the Elder through the forest at night, the only sounds he heard was of deafening silence except the random sound of dry leaves cracking beneath their feet or the periodic cracking of tree crickets.
Shen felt quite awkward, the same elder who was joking around with him was now so silent.
It didn't feel right at all.
After walking for about 20 minutes, Elder Huang was the first to speak up.
"Why do you wish to cultivate ?"
Shen froze on the spot, he felt an invisible pressure pressing on him as Elder Huang started speaking.
"Elder Huang, I Shen Wang cultivate for the purpose of attaining immortality!" Shen exclaimed with made up enthusiasm.
For a few seconds, Elder Wang did not say anything.
"Tch.. Who doesn't, anyways keep walking"
After another 40 minutes they reached Elder Huang's Abode.
Elder Huang's house was inside a walled area of about 100 meter square, the house itself was in the middle, surrounded by fruit bearing trees and a small pond with a lotus blooming beautifully in the middle.
" Directly go and sit down, cross legged in my room "
Elder Huang ordered as he immediately disappeared from Shen's eyesight.
As he walked inside the house, he saw shining pearls which illuminating the entire house.
Looking back at Shen's memories, He had actually never been to Elder Huang's room.
He had been assigned his room, which was around the left corner of the house, all the did there was cultivate and handle a few chores around the house.
There was a latrine a hundred meters away from the house, it sort of functioned as a tree fertilizer producing machine in the middle of a forest.
In fact Elder Huang's residence was the most simplest out of all the elders, not only simple, it was also completely isolated.
There was literally no other houses in the radius of at least a dozen kilometers.
However despite all the oddities, Elder Huang was seemingly a simple man.
All he did was spend a few hours in the Medicine pavilion in the Outer Sect and came back every evening and stayed holed up inside his room.
However despite being curious the old Shen never dared to enter Elder Huang's room, lest he offended Elder Huang and ended up homeless.
After all, the first thing he was taught in this sect after the rules was a simple phrase " Curiosity kills the cat ".
As Shen stepped inside the room he instantly felt the difference of the density of spiritual qi.
It was about three times as dense inside.
In fact was comparable to a middle-grade cave abode at the Spiritual Peak.
" Don't stare too much, you look like a bumpkin! "
Elder Huang's voice came out of nowhere, bringing Shen's wandering mind back to reality.
" Sit "
Elder Huang pointed at a mat which was spread across the floor.
Shen quietly sat down without any complaints.
There was an eerie silence between both of them which lasted for a couple of minutes before Elder Huang spoke.
" Tell me what happened in the Tranquil Cave abode, don't miss out the details "
" Elder, I comprehended the first chapter of Thunderleaf Inner Resonance Scripture. "
" Thus I started cultivating, however my spiritual qi got out of control and it started to hurt my meridians "
" I was only left with the option of dissipating my cultivation into spiritual qi"
" Once I was done with that, I cultivated to 5th stage of Qi Condensation all over again "
After hearing out Shen, Elder Huang was silent for a while.
" Tell me little Shen, what are meridians ? "
" Sort of channels in which spiritual qi flows ? "
" Sigh... No wonder you experienced qi deviation, tell me what exactly do you know about the terms like, qi deviation, meridians, bottlenecks, dantain, yin-yang imbalance etc. "
" Umm, from what I recall, I've vaguely heard disciples discuss such terms and learnt a bit about them in the outer sect academy's free lectures they hold on Sundays."
" tsk tsk, you ignorant brat."
Elder Huang glanced at him for a few moments before taking a deep breath.
" Well I suppose that it cant be helped, you've spent your entire life oblivious to the world of cultivation before you entered the sect," Elder Huang had a hint of pity in his eyes. " And now you've done permanent damage to yourself without even knowing what you did. "
Shen had no idea what sort of reply he should give to Elder Huang's statements, should he enquire more or should he play the victim card ?. Thankfully before he muttered anything Elder Huang started speaking.
" Alright, you'll spend some time with me and I will teach you about a few things. Before I tell you about things which are wrong with your body, you need to know about the details of these common terms that you've been hearing in the sect," As Elder Huang said these words, the mood in the room lifted up quite a bit.
" So, when will we start?" Shen enquired anxiously with a hint of excitement concealed in his voice.
" Right now and right here," As Elder Huang said these words, he closed his eyes and his presence became heavier, the lights in the room illuminated and the brightness became more and more intense.
" Bright light helps with clearing the mind, try to be in a bright place while studying or learning, meditation should be done in a dim-lighted room for better introspection and relaxation. "
" Although this looses it importance once your cultivation is higher, it is a significant factor in Qi Condensation Realm. "
As Shen sat there listening to Elder Huang, he did a quick observation and indeed he did feel sobered up after the room became brighter.
Shen couldn't take any notes since he didn't have any paper or pen, so he concentrated completely on Elder Huang's words, he needed to learn everything that he was about to way.
Without waiting Elder Huang kept speaking, "Now then, the first thing I will teach is you is what exactly is 'heaven and earth', As you can basically infer from the statement it is made up of two main words. Heaven and Earth,"
"Although the concepts behind these are extremely deep, furthermore even I only know about it on a superficial level. You don't even need to worry to much about the details until you actually reach higher realms"
"Now as I was saying....."
Elder Huang's lecture lasted about 10 hours, after which he gave Shen a day for him to digest all of the information.
To sum it up Elder Huang first told him about Heaven and Earth. The world that they lived in was composed of the Heaven and the Earth.
The Heaven was basically the cosmic and spiritual aspect of the world It encompassed the heavenly laws, fate, and destiny. Heavenly laws were basically the laws of the world, these were similar to physics of Shen's original world. This meant that heavenly laws were the rules according to which the world worked, as simple as that.
Earth represented the physical and material aspect of the world, unlike the Earth of Shen's old world. The 'Earth' here was a representation of everything physical in the world.
Although Shen felt that these were some supreme secrets he was learning, Elder Huang immediately humbled him by telling that, this was basic knowledge that even a 5 year old with a cultivation background knew, leading Shen to felt quite embarrassed.
After teaching him about heaven and earth, Elder Huang started explaining about spiritual qi. Although this was something that Shen already knew he still didn't show any dissatisfaction or boredom, after all what elder Huang was doing for him was technically a favor not an obligation.
In short, Spiritual Qi was the energies of heaven and earth present in the world which was used by cultivators to cultivate.
This didn't take much time before Elder Huang started covering the topic of what exactly was cultivation. According to him, everyone had a different answer for this.
For some cultivation was become more powerful, for some it meant learning about the world, for some it meant imposing their will on the world, for some it meant defying heavens, for some it meant living longer, for some it meant freedom and for some it meant the ability to control others. The list was endless.
Elder Huang didn't tell what cultivation meant to him, however he asked Shen to find his own meaning of cultivation in the future.
According to him, experiencing life is the only way to find the true meaning of what cultivation meant to him.
Moving onwards, Elder Huang started explaining about the basic conditions to cultivate. To cultivate a person needed spiritual roots and meridians.
The spiritual roots acted as an attraction, sort of a suction pull which attracted the spiritual qi in the surroundings to come closer to the cultivator so it could be absorbed.
Spiritual roots were generally acquired from birth, however there were exceptional treasures and medicines which could enhance or awaken spiritual roots. Apart from telling him that these exceptional treasures or medicines were extremely rare and hard to obtain, Elder Huang didn't give much insight on the matter.
After a short break, Elder Huang started explaining about Meridians. Meridians were developed, unlike spiritual roots meridians were not present with birth. In every being who had spiritual roots, there was an innate ability of constantly absorbing spiritual qi in low concentrations.
Spiritual qi could be absorbed voluntarily or involuntarily. When a cultivator came in contact with a cultivation technique and started guiding spiritual qi according to the method, their body would start to develop meridians.
This stage was called Qi Condensation, in the 10 stages of this realm, A cultivator would awaken 10 major meridians in their body.
During this, Elder Huang also referenced Shen Wang's cultivation. He explained that since Shen was in the 5th realm he had already awakened 5 meridians.
The 10 major meridians were as follows -:
1) Bone Marrow Tempering Meridian
2) Blood Nourishing Meridian
3) Internal Organ Meridian
4) Limb Tempering Meridian
5) Tendon Strengthening Meridian
6) Bone Rebirth Meridian
7) Muscle Tempering Meridian
8) Void Channel Meridian
9) Nexus Mind Meridian
10) Integration Meridian
The first seven meridians were the same as they sounded, each meant for strengthening a certain part of the body.
Shen was at the Tendon Strengthening Meridian, which was also the 5th stage of the Qi Condensation Realm.
Elder Huang also explained that awakening these meridians was only a part of breaking through in a small realm.
Furthermore from each major meridian smaller meridians originated until the entire body was connected with meridians.
Interestingly the Elder mentioned that meridians actually had no physical form, one couldn't just rip out a meridian to have a look at it, they existed but didn't take up any space. This explanation defied Shen's understanding but it also made sense, the human body was already packed with organs and muscles, where would it find a space to add more?
Moving on, Elder Huang explained that each cultivation technique had a unique pathway to lay the meridians in, each cultivation technique had unique conditions for breaking through to higher realms.
If someone was cultivating a specific technique and decided to oppose the flow, disastrous consequences would await them
This was where Qi deviation came into play, Elder Huang started to elaborate. When a cultivator who is cultivating according to a specific cultivation technique guides their spiritual qi in a wrong way, their already accumulated cultivation base starts to oppose it.
This causes a friction to arise between the spiritual qi and the cultivation base, which leads to a disturbance.
This disturbance gradually turns more and more violent and turbulent.
This leads to deviation in both the cultivation base and the spiritual qi, the already refined spiritual qi and the wild spiritual qi.
In many cases, one can suppress the wild spiritual qi with their cultivation base, causing their cultivation to decrease temporarily. This is reversible damage where not much harm is done and is the best case scenario.
Finally Elder Huang started explaining what exactly happened to Shen.
During Qi deviation Shen completely decided to delete his cultivation base.
Since the wild spiritual qi wasn't opposing anything anymore the creation of resistive force stopped.
However the already wild momentum directly struck his meridians and his spiritual roots after which everything returned to normal except for the fact that his meridians and the spiritual roots suffered severe but temporary damage.
At this point Elder Huang's face started turning ugly as he said started scolding Shen, " As if that already wasn't enough, you decided not to get your condition checked but decided to re-cultivate in such sensitive just to save face!"
This was basically what Elder Huang talked about for 10 hours and expelled Shen Wang from his room, asking him to take a break for a day.
Coming back to the present Shen was sitting in his room contemplating what the f**k just happened.
Apparently he personally harmed his future potential and still had the guts to rejoice in ignorance and scream of reaching unimaginable heights on the Tranquil Peak.
He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
But he did know that he was hungry so he went to his cupboard and took out some fasting pills and ate them, after all he couldn't just go into creative mode and summon food out of nowhere.
He couldn't risk his cheats getting exposed to anyone until he was strong enough!