Death God: Starting from Refining Essence into Qi

After concentrating for a while, Xuan gradually figured out one thing:

There is a limit to how much you can nourish your spirit each day. It's like training muscles; overtraining can cause damage.

Concentration should be practiced for no more than two hours each day. Exceeding this time will not only cause mental fatigue but also dizziness, mental distraction, and affect concentration the following day.

This is a conclusion Xuan reached after repeated trial and error. No wonder the *Taishang Laojun Shuo Chang Qingjing Jing* says: "The human spirit loves purity, but the mind disturbs it; the human heart loves stillness, but desires pull it away. If one can constantly dispel desires, the heart will naturally be still; if one can purify the heart, the spirit will naturally be pure."

Xuan was too obsessed with becoming stronger, extending the time he spent concentrating on his cultivation each day, only to find that his progress was actually getting slower and slower. He chuckled to himself, realizing that he had become too attached to the idea—cultivation follows a balance of tension and relaxation, adhering to the principle of gradual progress, and naturally cannot be rushed.

Since the time available each day for nourishing the primordial spirit is limited, the remaining time should not be wasted.

He needs to find something else to do.

Studying the Way of the Demons would be the best choice. However, there were many eyes and ears within the Yuanzi Academy, and the dormitory walls could not block the fluctuations of spiritual pressure. He needed a secluded place—away from people, undisturbed, and preferably close to nature.

Remembering Saito's words from last night about going to a deserted mountain forest to hunt wild beasts, Gen thought it was a good idea. The forest was vast and rarely visited by people.

Xuan closed his eyes and only felt the vision of his spiritual sense.

The world was painted in shades of gray and white, with only a faint red ribbon-like pattern, like a wisp of fabric, flowing through the window and winding its way into the mountains and forests outside the school.

That's a spiritual network—a trace of spiritual energy remnants materialized, the core means by which Shinigami track and perceive, and it's said that only high-ranking Shinigami or Quincy of the vice-captain level or above can clearly detect it.

When Xuan first discovered that his spiritual sense could detect spiritual energy, he was quite surprised, because he knew that his spiritual pressure was around the level of a high-ranking official, and in theory, he should not have been able to do this.

It was later speculated that this might be because the repeated tempering of spiritual power control and perception during the cultivation of beast transformation caused the precision of spiritual perception to exceed the limits that spiritual power level should have.

The red spiritual veins winding out from the window are the remnants, or traces, of spiritual energy left by Saito last night.

Xuan did not go that way, but chose the opposite direction and went deeper into another forest.

The deeper you go, the fewer people you see.

The weeds were almost knee-high, and broken branches and messy claw marks were everywhere. Occasionally, animal remains could be seen, with whitish bone fragments, clearly having been there for some time.

The Yuanzi Academy usually ended its day's classes at Shenshi (3-5 PM). At this time, the temperature dropped, and wild animals that had been seeking refuge from the heat became active and began to hunt.

Xuan was naturally unafraid of ordinary wild beasts. Even a pack of wolves, leopards, and brown bears attacking him together posed no threat. If any wild beasts did come, he would only be used as a live target to test his demonic arts, and then become their meal.

Xuan stopped beside a rock and looked around.

There were no signs of human habitation, and it was far enough away from the Genji Academy. Even if one encountered a Hollow of unparalleled strength, one could transform into an owl and hide in the forest. Moreover, the probability of encountering a Hollow in Seireitei was no less than being struck by lightning.

Xuan's gaze fell on a small, relatively open area.

"This will do," Xuan thought to himself.

He pulled out a shallow weapon from his waist and walked towards a small tree about the size of a bowl.

As the blade fell, the tree trunk snapped in two, the cut surface as smooth as a mirror.

Xuan trimmed the tree trunk into a smooth cuboid so that snakes could not climb it.

An hour later, a simple Dai-style stilted house took shape in the forest.

The platform is about one person's height off the ground, with a sturdy horizontal beam as its base and flattened wooden planks laid on top. There are no stairs, no walls, only a roof that can provide shade and shelter from the rain.

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The next day, when Xuan went to this temporary stronghold in the mountains to cultivate the Ghost Path, he was very pleased because there were no signs of damage from wild animals, only traces of wild rabbits and squirrels.

Xuan placed the futon he brought from the dormitory at this temporary base, sat down, and began to explore the path of the demons.

There's a question that's been bothering Gen for a long time: why are Shinigami's Hados used only in close to mid-range combat? If the enemy is far away, you have to use Bindsword to briefly control them before using Hados to deal damage.

After browsing through the academy's library, I learned that Shinigami do not control external spiritual particles to fight like Quincy, but rather control internal spiritual particles to fight. It's not that they don't want to, but that they can't.

Once the spiritual energy drives the release of the ghostly path outside the body, it becomes difficult to control and the trajectory of the spell cannot be changed midway.

When fighting at close range, Kido is not easy to dodge, but at such close range, most Shinigami will choose to end the battle with a more direct Zanpakuto. When fighting at long range, Kido cannot be changed midway after it is released, and one must rely on rich combat experience to predict the opponent's movement and calculate the lead time.

Once the opponent dodges the Kido, the caster will be unable to exert high-intensity spiritual power again for a short period of time, which will inevitably expose a weakness. Therefore, Shinigami will usually use Shunpo to close the distance and then finish off the opponent with Zanpakuto.

This is the biggest flaw in the Death God cultivation system: it only focuses on the lock and sleep of the middle and lower dantian, but neglects the upper dantian, thus lacking sufficient willpower to control the ghost path.

In contrast, Taoist techniques all rely on mental control for tracking, and include sword control techniques and other methods that use mental focus and weapons rather than magic for long-range combat.

As for the Quincy, it's not hard to understand why they can control arrows to turn without cultivating their upper dantian. After all, they can directly use the spiritual particles of the environment and even the enemy to fight, which should be a talent for controlling spiritual particles.

Since Xuan has an extra step compared to ordinary death gods—cultivating the upper dantian to nurture the primordial spirit—he naturally has an advantage: he can remotely control the ghost path.

However, even so, it still needs to be verified. Xuan specifically left his dormitory and built a simple base in the deserted mountains to facilitate testing and verifying his conjecture.

He concentrated his spiritual power at his fingertips and constructed a structure according to the method of [Breaking the Dao - Rush]. However, at the moment of release, his intention did not retract with the spiritual particle leaving his body, but continued to attach to it, using his intention to guide that ball of spiritual power.

The feeling was subtle. It was like an object that you could clearly touch suddenly being pushed away, but you could still feel its outline and position.

"Hado One: Okuri".

A shockwave shot out from the fingertip, tracing an arc, bypassing a tree directly in front, and striking another tree behind it. With a muffled "bang," it left a dent an inch deep.

Just now, Xuan clearly sensed that the detached spiritual particle cluster was being guided by his will during its flight. The feeling was very subtle, like using an invisible thread to pull a clump of flowing water; it could slightly change its direction, but couldn't make any drastic adjustments. The thread was too thin, the water too dispersed; it could break with the slightest force.

Perhaps it's because my primordial spirit is too weak right now, and my will has too little influence on the ghost path. Or perhaps it's because the ghost path I'm using is too weak, and my spiritual power is too little to bear too much will.

Xuan kept this realization in his heart without putting it down. His past life experiences had honed his memory to be reliable enough that he only needed to categorize these conclusions in his mind.

Next, let's discuss another speculation about the Ghost Path.

……

In the days that followed, the daily routine became fixed: during the day, I would attend classes at the Yuanzi Academy, in the afternoon I would go to the mountains and forests to study the Ghost Path for two hours, and in the evening I would return to my dormitory to continue nurturing my primordial spirit.

At first, wolf packs would roam in the distance, occasionally letting out a few howls. But Xuan never provoked them.

After the wolf pack probed the area a few times, Xuan ate several meals of roasted wolf meat, and afterwards the wolf pack stopped approaching the area.

Six months passed quietly in this way, spent in cultivation and research.

[Hado No. 4 - White Lightning] The lightning is solid and has strong penetrating power. However, it is too fast, and its trajectory is currently difficult to control flexibly.

【Hado No. 12: Hidden Fire】Can transform spiritual energy into threads of fire that can be wrapped and cut. The duration increases as more spiritual energy is mobilized.

Try each of the following methods: 【Binding Technique 1: Blockage】【Binding Technique 4: This Rope】【Binding Technique 8: Repulsion】and practice them repeatedly.

Binding spells require a higher degree of precision in controlling spiritual energy than breaking spells. However, after half a year of practice, he could use these low-level binding spells at will, almost without any deliberate preparation.

Six months later, Xuan was able to unleash the [Thirty-One Breaking Path: Crimson Fire Cannon] from his palm without chanting, accurately hitting a target twenty feet away. However, due to the abundance of vegetation in the mountains and forests, he always kept his spiritual power output to a minimum and never unleashed it at full power—the true destructive power would probably have to wait until actual combat to be verified.

I have memorized the yellow light rope of [Binding Spell No. 9: Collapsing Wheel] and the smoke screen of [Binding Spell No. 21: Crimson Smoke Escape]. The former can instantly bind a target within three zhang, and the latter can obscure vision in times of crisis; both are practical techniques.

He had now mastered all the low-level Breaking Path and Binding Path techniques that had appeared in the original work.

Yuanzi Academy has posted a notice that the 1034th cohort of students, who have just entered the second grade, will have their classes canceled the following day and instead have their first practical group competition.

It's unlikely that the school will group Gen and Saito together. Gen is taking the upcoming match quite seriously—it might be his first real chance to face Saito.

He didn't intend to reveal his Ghost Path, but this was a good opportunity to test just how strong he had become after a year of focused cultivation.