14 THE DILEMMA OF RIVERS AND LAKES (2/2)
”You asked me earlier… to enter the Inferior stage, one would only need to sense one's personal Qi and then absorb the Spiritual Energy of their Qi's attribute. Indeed, that would be the case, but you see…” He smiled, ”There is a reason the Core was placed as the first stage a long time ago. And that is because the Core is the basis of all cultivators, and the whole system of cultivation we use nowadays all take into account the presence of the Core: this should be enough to illustrate just how precious it is to a cultivator, and just how great its potential really is!”
”The only reason it was moved forward and the Basic and Inferior Stage were added before the third, Advanced Stage was because one's cultivation would become very chaotic with all the different types of Qi's that would be absorbed. But well… in this case, wouldn't it be great if we could, in some way, somehow skip the first two stages and start out as Inferior stage cultivators while still having a Core, or at least, a disposable copy of the true Core we would build when we step into the Advanced stage? Wouldn't this grant us an edge against cultivators that have yet to enter the Advanced stage?”
”So I ask you this question: is it really, absolutely, certainly impossible to form the Qi River and the Core given the fact we would not be actually breaking through the stages?” Cheng Hao grinned, ”Of course… NOT. Even if we were to make a Core, the purity of the Qi would still count as Inferior Stage Qi! That is why we won't enter the Basic or Advanced stage by creating a Qi River and a Core right now…”
”Because our Qi won't be pure enough!”
”And exactly because of that we can just build a temporary Core that we will be using until we get our hands on the real thing! With it, although it would not measure up with the real deal, a Core still remains a Core: unless we encounter cultivators at the actual Advanced Stage or above, we will be able to easily defeat them even by relying solely on the innate suppression that our cultivation base will have over theirs!”
Interrupt, lift gourd, sip, lower gourd, resume.
”Finally, I'll also answer the other question you had at the start: why did I mention a Qi 'Sea' instead of a Qi 'River'. This is because, while the River of Qi we create in our consciousness might appear to be stable, a few problems emerge when it comes to condensing the Core. It is not a minor, but a major problem, and I still wonder up to this date why those 'Experts' have yet to take care of it. Since they still seem to have yet to change anything, I'll take matters upon my own hands and do it my way…”
Xiao Wu's green eyes had not blinked once during the whole length of this conversation. Although her gaze had never left the golden-eyed youth's face, her hands had still unconsciously jotted down a few notes. She was so shocked however, that she had yet to notice how her eyes had begun hurting from not blinking for so long.
Cheng Hao on the other hand had been leisurely going on with his lecture, barely stopping at times and taking the occasional sip from the bottle of alcohol to refresh his throat.
”Alright; let's think outside the box for a minute: the problem with the Qi River is that, being an actual, flowing river of Spiritual Energy and Qi, it is really difficult to condense for the average person- hence one amongst many reasons the Advanced Stage is such a vicious and unforgiving bottleneck among many others. But if that is the reason, then wouldn't changing things up a little get rid of the problem?”
”If, instead of forming the Qi River, we were to make something that works similarly, as a storage of Qi and Spiritual Energy, but is much more stable; more efficient in its supposed goal of easing the Core's condensation process? As for what… I will now ask you a simple question: in a cold and harsh winter, which is more likely to freeze first; a lake or a river? Mind that the water mass we're interested in is the same, thus the question could also be worded as, 'which is easier/takes less effort to freeze: moving water or Still water?' Fire (lol) away!”
”Of course,” Xiao Wu's eyes glinted as she came to the realization that… ”The waters of the Lake would freeze first! And so we are not making the River exactly because a single, moving current of Spiritual Energy would be harder to condense into a Core. However, if we make a Lake, what you called the Qi Sea, instead... it will become much easier, simply because it will be easier to freeze, or in our case condense, Qi and Spiritual Energy that is already still! This… this is…”