Chapter 253: Heaven and Humanity Structurally Identical

Although it sounds strange, Feng Xue felt he was now like a fingerprint analyst, constantly searching for similarities among intricate fingerprint ridges and analyzing whether their differences stemmed from pressure, location, or whether they were simply not from the same source.

Fortunately, Xiao Lingdang's spell diagrams were extremely standardized; if they were handwritten manuscripts or sketches instead, it would have been truly disastrous.

"Broadly speaking, there are almost no similarities—at least not in terms of spiritual intelligence or spiritual nature. Is testing the only option left?"

Feng Xue muttered to himself, pulling out a failed attempt from his Hu Tian bag—a leftover from practicing "Jie Yu"—and engraved this short segment of the diagram into it, adding no other structures except the input and output ports.

In truth, this attempt was like randomly cutting a piece from a circuit board and powering it on—most likely yielding no results—but with no other leads, Feng Xue adopted the mindset that at worst he wouldn't die, so he might as well give it a try, and began his experiment.

As spiritual energy flowed into this relatively simple circuit, nothing happened as he expected—but his intuition told him something was off.

Feng Xue frowned, watching Bi Gelei's tiny bat grow increasingly lifelike, yet still did not recall Mo Ying, only saying:

"Xiao Lingdang, monitor my bodily data when this diagram is activated."

"Understood." Xiao Lingdang didn't waste any words, signaling her readiness; Feng Xue immediately reactivated the spiritual energy flow. Even though he slowed the energy as much as possible, the entire process lasted less than 0.3 seconds.

"Master, some spiritual energy has disappeared."

After a brief pause, Xiao Lingdang delivered the data. Feng Xue hadn't expected actual detection—he immediately asked:

"Do you know how it was consumed?"

"Unclear. Spiritual energy was depleted after passing through the jade talisman, but caused no objective effect. It likely produced some effect, but for some reason, the effect was too subtle to be detected. My monitoring relies on your perception and electronic device functionality—if it exceeds these, I cannot detect it. Yet since there is depletion, it confirms activation. Suggestion: increase spiritual energy input."

Xiao Lingdang shrugged, offering a response no different from "Thinking halted. Server busy. Please try again later."

Feng Xue rolled his eyes, but after confirming his lifespan lock, he increased the input. If he could withstand an angel's descent, how hard could a single diagram be?

As spiritual energy increased, the jade talisman began to warm slightly. This time, even Feng Xue himself felt the spiritual energy "vanish into thin air."

"Could it be that spiritual energy turned into heat? That doesn't match! The Call Fire Spell doesn't have this kind of mechanism…"

Feng Xue continued increasing output when suddenly, he felt a sharp tremor run through his body.

"Xiao Lingdang, did you detect that earlier?"

"Confirmed feedback. Symptom resembles muscle spasm, but cannot determine whether it is an isolated twitch or a talisman effect."

As if to demonstrate professionalism, Xiao Lingdang used no emotional particles this time—but its cold, mechanical report gave Feng Xue confidence.

He focused his attention on the earlier twitching sensation and re-activated spiritual energy. This time, prepared, he clearly sensed the origin of the twitch—

His waist—or rather… his kidneys?

"No. It's merely referred pain. The actual stimulus point produced no feedback to any organ." Xiao Lingdang explained Feng Xue's thought. Feng Xue frowned—

"Kidneys… Kidney Water? Or… Yuan Qi? The Collecting Yuan Method and the Discontinuous Method both involve Yuan Qi, but Wu You Nuan Mian shouldn't involve Yuan Qi at all. Moreover, under normal spellcasting, such stimulation should be minimal—insufficient to cause any tangible change."

Though he thought this, he did not dismiss it as coincidence, but ordered:

"Xiao Lingdang, retrieve all database entries regarding Yuan Qi."

"Understood. Please wait."

The screen flashed with vast amounts of text. Files Feng Xue had bulk-downloaded and his previous notes were rapidly retrieved and cataloged. In data searching, AI truly had its advantages: even with full documents and keyword search, manually scanning would have taken hours—but Xiao Lingdang, while allocating most of its processing power to fine-tuning Bi Gelei's spell procedure, delivered nearly ten thousand characters of summary from both Medical and Daoist perspectives in just three seconds, along with concise abstracts.

"In Traditional Chinese Medicine, Yuan Qi is the most fundamental primordial qi of the human body, the original driving force of life. Xiao Lingdang, based on the Folklore World's 'refining essence into qi, refining qi into spirit,' this is essentially the process of collecting Yuan Qi and nourishing the spirit soul."

"In Daoism, Yuan Qi refers to the origin of the universe, the core of human cultivation—the 'one' from 'Dao gives birth to one,' the primordial qi, the chaotic source."

Feng Xue studied these two definitions. Though both were called Yuan Qi, the difference was immense—but as his gaze dropped lower, he recalled what Old Li had told him when transmitting Wu You Nuan Mian:

"The so-called unity of heaven and man refers to the human body being isomorphic with nature: heaven has the five elements, man has the five viscera; heaven has the four seasons, man has the four qi. The Wu, You, and Nuo masks use the small circulation of the human body to replace the great circulation of nature, allowing the virtual spirits that should naturally be conceived between heaven and earth to be born under the controlled environment of the human body..."

"The human body and nature are structurally identical?"

When Old Li explained this theory, Feng Xue had assumed it was like the forced equivalence of "heaven has 360 stars, humans have 360 acupoints"—after all, even something as simple as bone count had been wrong since the Emperor Neijing, and remained wrong through Song Ci's Xiyuan Jilu (Note 1). To claim no one knew bones weren't that numerous was impossible.

Even Old Li himself admitted this technique was simply replacing collective spiritual power to create a phantom spirit with one's own personal aspiration—just because heaven and earth generate spiritual power doesn't mean your personal aspiration makes heaven and earth structurally identical to you.

But now, this diagram's transformation seemed to suggest that "heaven and humanity as one," "structural identity between heaven and humanity," was not mere forced analogy.

As Feng Xue pondered the connection between Yuan Qi and Yuan Qi, Bi Gelei suddenly shouted:

"Stop! That's it!"

Feng Xue instinctively switched to the over-the-shoulder view and saw a pink little bat flapping its wings wildly around the room, its movements agile and light—unlike the rules of this world, where spell effects vanished after performing a single action.

Seeing this, Feng Xue immediately said:

"Xiao Lingdang, display this spell diagram. Bi Gelei, make your bat stop—I need to run a physical scan on it!"

(End of Chapter)