Breathing Technique

"Sis, you're here! I've been looking all over."

Li Bai looked at his sister, satisfied that he found her so quickly.

"Uh-huh. Where are we anyway?"

Li Bao couldn't hold back her curiosity as she looked around more and more.

The inside of the ring was very wide, but it was also very dark. The more one ventured farther from where Li Bai entered, the less they could see.

This was the same for Li Bao. Although she was not that far from where she and her little brother entered, her eyesight was already wavering.

"Ah, sis, this is my storage ring."

Answering his sister's question, Li Bai nodded accordingly.

"Ah... so we're in a stor- wait, what? A storage ring?"

.....

After a lot of explaining, Li Bao finally understood. She was inside the ring that her brother always wore after he bought it from the Zhou clan.

"Yes. For the past few days, I was trying to make you go in here, since there's plentiful of Earth energy here. But you just kept refusing me."

Hearing her little brother's words, Li Bao felt a sense of regret. She should've just listened to her little brother, he was only trying to help.

"You can try cultivating now."

As she heard Li Bai's words, Li Bao sat down cross-legged and closed her eyes. She opened her pathways to let the Earth energy in.

The Earth energy around Li Bao began to fluctuate. Li Bai was astonished. He had never seen someone absorb Earth energy so fast!... except for himself, of course.

Suddenly, something unexpected happened. There appeared another energy in the surroundings.

"This..."

He recognized this energy. This was the unknown emergy he encountered in his sister's room earlier! What could this be? And where was it coming from?

As he observed further, he learned of the source - it was coming from his sister! What... what the heck?!

"Sis, you..."

His sister was emitting such a strange but undeniably strong energy, how could he not be surprised? Li Bai was speechless. In all his past lives, he had never encountered this energy at all!

At that moment, his image of himself being an all-knowing being shattered. He learned that there were far more he had yet to know.

However, as his sister was cultivating, he realized something. Her gem was not lighting up at all! What could this mean?

Could this mean that the Earth energy she was absorbing was being converted to this unknown energy inside Li Bao's body?

Li Bai was extremely confused. In all of the thousands of years he has lived, he had never witnessed something like this happen before.

The ring started reacting to the strange energy. The Earth energy in the surroundings were changing to the same energy as the one that came from his sister.

Of course, Li Bai was unaware that this was happening, with him closing his pathways off. He couldn't afford to open them since that would make the energy enter him at an astonishing pace.

The darkness of the ring, however, was trembling. Dust was falling from nowhere, indicating that the black walls of the ring was being scraped off.

Li Bai saw these happenings, and was confused. He stretched out a hand to catch some of the dust which had fallen.

"Hmm?" The dust covered Li Bai's hand in black. Even after trying to shake them off, the black dust still stuck to Li Bai's hand.

Eventually, he took out a cloth, and wiped the black dust off.

Li Bai looked around once more around the large space. The darkness was disappearing, being replaced by a bright orange color. There were also tints of blue and red.

When he saw this, Li Bai was reminded of flames. Flames had the same color as the walls of the ring right now.

Suddenly, Li Bai got worried as he recalled something. The black walls... they were supposed to symbolize the endless Earth energy within this ring!

He hurriedly sat down and opened his pathways, relying on the faraway Zodiac Pot to absorb the excess energy.

Instead of the Earth energy that he expected, however, the energy that entered Li Bai's pathways was the unknown energy that he encountered in his sister's room earlier.

"The Earth energy... it's disappearing!"

Li Bai got worried. The Earth energy in the ring was supposed to be endless, but now, it was being replaced by an unknown energy.

Nevertheless, he knew how to restore the Earth energy, so Li Bai didn't feel as much worry as he would have if he didn't know how to.

He started absorbing the unknown energy around him. His body was heating up as the energy entered his pathways in a rapid pace.

The pace was gradually increasing, eventually reaching an astonishing rate! Li Bai's body couldn't handle it!

"Aagh!" Li Bai tried to stand up out of the shock, but couldn't as he felt a massive strain on his body preventing him from doing so.

"Haah... haah..." Li Bai inhaled the air around him intensely. He was out of breath.

'The same thing happened earlier!' Li Bai thought as he looked over to where his sister was previously at.

The image of his sister sitting was not present. Instead, she was lying on the floor of the ring just like her brother.

Both of them were profusely sweating as they took in all the air they could.

Li Bai recalled a breathing technique which was used by cultivators around the world in his previous life. It seemed that it was actually lost in the recent passages of time, even though it was widely used back then.

Of course, Li Bai never bothered using it since he considered it useless. Of course, using it now looked appealing to Li Bai, who was out of breath on the floor.

He did not know what breathing techniques were for as he did not use them at all in his previous lives. His cultivation went smoothly every single time using normal cultivation techniques, so he did not see the need to use these ones.

The name was also partly at fault. To those who never used them, breathing techniques sounded like... techniques on how to breath! It sounded pointless!

That was why Li Bai assumed it to be so.

Li Bai remembered the [Sky-absorption] Breathing Technique.

If a cultivator that had even the most general of knowledge in breathing techniques, they would know that this breathing technique was one that was created by an immortal, Feng Yan!

The immortal was said to have isolated himself for a whole century before receiving enlightment for this breathing technique.

As such, this technique was hailed to be the most powerful one!

However, it was also the hardest to comprehend as well, only a handful of cultivators could understand it. Several had dedicated their entire lifetimes to study the technique created by the immortal, only to leave the world empty handed.

Li Bao, who was lying on the floor, weakly sat up as she struggled. Her insides felt like they were all burnt as the energy she absorbed got hotter and hotter, until she couldn't handle it anymore.

She looked in the direction of her brother, who was lying on the floor like her earlier. Only, she noticed something peculiar.

"Hmm...?" Li Bao saw that her brother was breathing... erratically.

'Has he gone mad? Wait...!' She realized what her brother was doing.

The energy around Li Bai was circulating around the surroundings fiercely as if there was a storm forming, and the eye of the storm was located at Li Bai's mouth.