Chapter 25: Inner Qi?

Chen Mo controlled that extremely faint wisp of breath, letting it wander within his dantian.

Logically speaking, any breath capable of remaining within one's dantian must, without a doubt, be the Inner Qi belonging to a Martial Artist.

Yet, why he would have Inner Qi within his own body truly left him scratching his head.

Inner Qi is something belonging to internal-style Martial Artists; one must practice quiet arts, engage in long-term meditation and Zen contemplation to regulate the body, and cause both the physical body and the spirit to reach a state of perfect harmony before one can condense Inner Qi.

This Inner Qi can help a Martial Artist regulate their physical body and prolong their life, but it does not provide much of an increase to the Martial Artist's actual combat strength.

Inner Qi nourishes the physical body and can indeed fundamentally increase a Martial Artist's strength; it can even manifest many miraculous effects, such as healing wounds or defending against enemies.

However, to achieve this step requires not only a vast amount of Inner Qi but also a relatively long period of time.

For external-style practitioners, ten years, or even just five, is enough to cultivate an external art to a relatively profound level.

But for internal-style Martial Artists, ten years might just be the time needed to lay a foundation and begin formal cultivation.

Unless it is a childhood-started art, practiced from the age of eleven or twelve, it is extremely difficult for an Inner Qi Martial Artist to achieve any real success.

For Martial Artists like Chen Mo and his peers who started halfway through life, practicing external arts is the best choice; the cultivation is simple, and the results are fast.

Internal arts nourish the Qi, external arts train the body.

The Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist he practices is an absolute external, hard art; how could it possibly cultivate Inner Qi? This is absolutely impossible.

In the world before he transmigrated, Chen Mo had heard that some top-tier external-style practitioners could cultivate Inner Qi from the outside in.

But in this world, he had never heard of such a claim; although external-style practitioners and internal-style practitioners are both practicing martial arts, their directions of cultivation are completely different.

At the very least, among the Martial Artists in the military camp who practiced this same Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist as he did, he had not heard of anyone being able to cultivate Inner Qi.

It could even be said that in the entire military camp, not a single Personal Soldier had cultivated Inner Qi; even those who had family martial arts or had studied under other martial arts masters were all practicing external arts.

The reason is simple: practicing martial arts is too expensive.

Even internal arts are the same; those who practice internal arts not only need to spend a large amount of time cultivating, but they also need to ensure sufficient nutrition—meat must never be lacking, and body-supplementing medicinal soups must be consumed frequently.

This kind of expense is not just for a year or two of effort, but for over a decade, day after day.

And unlike external arts, where one can see results quickly, internal-style practitioners see no obvious improvement in the short term.

Even if the Personal Soldiers in the military camp had a little family wealth before entering, they were at most small landlords or wealthy farmers.

They could afford the expense of practicing external arts for a year or two, and once there were results, they could immediately convert them into income.

But practicing internal arts is not something an ordinary family can afford; one must be a child of a noble family, or at the very least, a great merchant or a wealthy household.

Personal Soldiers like them, who mostly came from commoner backgrounds and couldn't even be considered "cold-door" gentry, had no qualifications to practice internal arts.

With these thoughts in mind, Chen Mo stood up from the bed and began to practice the Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist in the silent, lightless darkness.

He needed to determine where that wisp of Inner Qi came from—was it born purely because of the Mortal Transformation?

Or was it Inner Qi produced because his practice of the Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist combined with the Qi and Blood generated by this Mortal Transformation?

To verify this point did not require much effort; he only needed to practice the Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist and see if the Inner Qi in his dantian would change.

As he set his stance and stood in his stake-training position, the surging power of Qi and Blood accumulated in his body once again.

Chen Mo's sensation this time was very different; he had undergone another Mortal Transformation, and his internal organs, as well as his Qi and Blood, muscles, and bones, had all seen a considerable improvement.

The most important part was the internal organs; their improvement brought Chen Mo a sense of heaviness and solidity.

Before, when he practiced the Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist, his progress was fast, but there was always a feeling of floating and unreality.

The Qi and Blood in his body seemed to always be on the verge of restlessness; as he practiced, if this restless Qi and Blood could not be fully controlled, then further practice would instead harm his body.

However, after his internal organs underwent the Mortal Transformation, when he circulated his Qi and Blood, that feeling of restlessness completely vanished, leaving only a persistent, heavy flow of Qi and Blood within his body.

After this Mortal Transformation, he was unsure of the exact increase in his physical strength; he hadn't done any tests yet and couldn't confirm it.

There was only one thing he could be certain of: his physical foundation and his internal organs had definitely improved immensely.

Thus, his progress while practicing the Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist would be faster, and breaking through bottlenecks would be easier.

As he finished practicing the set of fist techniques, Chen Mo could clearly perceive that three clusters of Qi and Blood had gradually emerged within his body, and a fourth was about to condense into shape.

This indicated that his Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist had already been cultivated to the perfection of the third layer and was striving toward breaking through to the fourth layer.

This was clearly not the progress he had made before the Mortal Transformation; it seemed the Mortal Transformation had caused the progress of this external art, the Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist, to jump directly from the initial entry of the second layer to the perfection of the third.

This was not worth being surprised about; external arts are fundamentally about training the physical body, especially the Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist, which is a top-tier yet relatively simple external art.

As long as the physical foundation is strong enough, one can say the cultivation path is smooth and progress is rapid.

His physical body underwent a transformation, naturally driving the progress of this technique along with it.

The condensed Qi and Blood slowly dispersed again, merging into the last cluster of Qi and Blood that was about to form; however, looking at the progress, it would likely not be an easy task for him to break through to the fourth layer of this technique.

Furthermore, the most important thing was that after he finished practicing the entire set of fist techniques, with the Qi and Blood transforming within him, a wisp of Inner Qi had also condensed at his dantian.

The amount was extremely small and extremely faint; wanting to fill the entire dantian by this method would require at least three to five years of hard work.

However, this was enough to prove one point: the wisp of Inner Qi in his dantian was indeed born because of practicing this external art.

But why would practicing an external art result in Inner Qi?

This truly left Chen Mo unable to understand; could it be because of his special constitution after the Mortal Transformation?

Otherwise, why had so many Personal Soldiers in the camp who practiced this external art not cultivated Inner Qi, while only he had?

Or was it because their cultivation progress was too low, and thus they were unable to cultivate Inner Qi?

However, to figure this out would not take much effort; he would find an opportunity later to ask Sun Jiangjun.

His mastery of the Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist was certainly above the third layer; he could ask him if he had cultivated Inner Qi through this technique.

As for the fact that he had cultivated Inner Qi through the Greedy Wolf Seven Kill Fist, it was better not to tell others for the time being.

He was not sure if external-style practitioners in this world could also cultivate Inner Qi once they reached a relatively profound level.

If others hadn't cultivated it but he had, it would inevitably arouse suspicion.

The Transformation Pearl was still lurking in his dantian; if someone knew he had cultivated Inner Qi and wanted to inspect his dantian, this secret would be exposed.

Even if he were to ask Sun Jiangjun about Inner Qi, he would have to be careful and cautious, using indirect questions to probe.

(End of chapter)