Perceiving Qi

Jack nodded in satisfaction with his decision and, after some thought, decided he would first aim to master Absolute Vision. He decided as much because of the aid it would give him in his future cultivation if he could see the flow of qi with his naked eyes. One thing was feeling the qi subconsciously, another was to see it.

He sat down cross-legged and let the contents of the technique wash over him for a long time before he even dared to practice it. His intention was to familiarise himself as much as possible with the precise inner workings of Absolute Vision. Put differently, he wanted to first learn how a car worked and the proper means to drive it before touching it.

Absolute Vision had a misleading name. First, it was necessary to train the spiritual sense to passively detect the flow of qi in the surrounding areas. In order to do so, one could only experience the sensation of qi from a spiritual point of view. In other words, it needed Jack to extend the feeling of qi coursing through his meridians outside of his body and learn to recognise it as qi.

If he managed this, he would be considered to have crossed the threshold into initial mastery of Absolute Vision.

Although it sounded like a small matter, the complexity of such an endeavour couldn't be stated with mere words. It was like trying to perceive radiation or pure energy as an independent entity; whereas most living organisms would only be able to touch it by witnessing the effect it had on the environment instead of observing it directly.

To succeed at doing this was comparable to cutting the reflection of the moon on the water, or grabbing smoke with your bare hands. And despite its seemingly overwhelming difficulty, Jack would not be discouraged.

Jack meditated for a few minutes first in order to bring his mental state to its peak and allow himself optimum performance. Once he was in the right frame of mind, he extended his spiritual sense in a radius of three feet around him in the form of a sphere.

Usually, when doing this, Jack would focus on the details of the things he could detect with his spiritual sense. However, this ran counter to the purpose of Absolute Vision. Instead, he discarded any notions of matter and used his mind to search for anything resembling the flow of qi as described in the technique.

At first, Jack felt nothing. Not even the slightest ripple against his spiritual sense. But Jack did not lose his patience. He sat in contemplation as he concentrated on every single inch of his spiritual sense, probing and looking around for any change.

He was unsuccessful that night.

And still, Jack didn't lose his patience. He waited until nightfall again before engaging with the same process; only to realise that he still couldn't perceive any of the flowing qi surrounding him.

Another failed attempt.

Apparently, if he continued with this means of training he could only expect results after months of secluded cultivation. Even though Jack was a patient man, there had to be a better method to discover the flow of qi.

Then, he had an idea! An idea to combine two techniques in order to accomplish a breakthrough.

To elaborate, he would practice the Exploding Fist technique in order to boil the qi coursing through his meridians and, once it achieved the point of explosion, he would let it flow out from his hand so that he could pay close attention to it, in the hopes of perceiving its form.

The first time he tried, he was unsuccessful.

The second was also a failure.

By the third time, he only had enough strength left inside him to try this method out once more. Any more would be impossible because he would have depleted his reserves of qi. If he failed again, he'd have to spend the rest of the day recuperating before giving it another shot.

Jack began practicing the motions for the exploding fist one after the other, relishing in the feeling of the qi boiling inside him with each passing moment, like the blissful burn of a muscle growing. With each time he practiced the motions, they became easier to carry out; an unintended benefit of his training.

As the power of the exploding fist neared its peak, Jack sat down with his legs crossed and placed his clenched fist a few inches in front of his forehead and raised his index finger. Then, he directed the boiling qi to the tip of his finger where he would begin releasing it slowly into the air.

For a normal martial artist, this would mean losing complete mobility in their finger from the compressed energy contained within it going rampant. However, Jack had the advantage that the Harmony of Everything's body cultivation method had reforged him from the inside out. In every sense of the word, he was a machine built to withstand rampaging qi. As such, this wasn't a problem for him beyond a bit of pain that he could very easily ignore.

The qi on his fingertip began to seep into the surroundings almost beyond Jack's control. Still, he was able to slowly let the qi out bit by bit. Jack focused his spiritual sense on the tip of his finger and prepared to perceive the changes on it.

At first, he wasn't able to notice anything worthy of noticing. In fact, he could perceive nothing at all. He could feel the qi subconsciously, but he still couldn't see it. There had to be something that he was missing.

Then he remembered something from his childhood, all those thousands of years ago.

He remembered being in his father's toy shop sitting at the counter during the Autumn of 1939, helping his father prepare for the biggest seasonal sales they would never get to see. Jack recalled seeing a beam of sunlight shine through a slit in the curtains. In that beam, he saw the different dust particles floating about the air.

Usually, he wouldn't see those dust particles floating about, but they were shown in that beam of light. He found the phenomenon wonderous at the time and he pestered his father senselessly for an answer to the mystery of the particles in the sunlight. His father would laugh and just say that that was how things were; that in the narrowness of the light, its potency was focused and could shine upon the hidden things that usually escaped our vision.

It wouldn't be until many years later, whilst conducting research for an assassination, that he'd learn that his father had been wrong and that this was only a queer effect of the light and the dynamic range of light that your eye can see at one time.

Although the logic wasn't exactly applicable to his current situation, Jack guessed that if he narrowed the field of his spiritual sense to just encompass his finger, and he shut his senses off to the rest of the world, then he might just be able to perceive the qi; just like his father had taught him all those thousands of years ago.

The choice proved to be the right one, for he was soon able to perceive tiny specks of silver light emerging from his fingertip and rushing off into the air surrounding him. These specks were small, smaller than the dust particles in a beam of sunlight, but they were quite clearly there and they danced around his fingertip in a joyous melody of cosmic music that only they themselves knew.

Jack had been successful!

He immediately let the rest of the qi out without stopping it and he observed how it changed its pace from slow to quick. He memorised the feeling of its presence against his spiritual sense, the particular warmth it emitted and its queer wavelength.

Once reasonably certain that he'd memorised the feeling, he extended his spiritual sense around him and tried to feel the qi again. Once he had perceived them for the first time, it was far easier to do it again.

Jack could feel the dancing patterns in the glowing spots of silver light dappling through his spiritual sense. He tried to follow them around, feeling them enter his field of perception and then leaving without any semblance of rhythm. Gradually, he started sensing an order to the playful movements of the silver spots as they coalesced into a flowing line directed to an unseen end; far beyond his realm of perception. A pattern that almost looked like it might just form an order of sorts, if only it would complete.

But no matter how those patterns of silver spots swirled and danced beside him, they never fully coalesced into a whole that he could grasp nor understand. It was almost as if it offended them that someone might try to find an order to their existence.

However, Jack refused to be defeated and, instead of gradually expanding his spiritual sense in order to perceive more of these fantastical spots of silvery light, he contracted his spiritual sense and drove it forcefully into his eyes.

And then, the most wonderous thing happened to him.

Jack began to see the spots as they danced and swirled around him nonsensically. It was just as if he'd suddenly found himself capable of seeing an entirely new colour that he'd been previously blind to. There were no words to describe how the qi interacted with the world, rather than to say that it was as if a slight drizzle blanketed his room and gave it a mystical appearance that he'd simply been unable to notice before.

It was truly a magical experience.

He extended his hand towards some of the bigger spots of silvery light and used his finger to absorb them. He felt the qi enter him as he did so. Never, in his thousands of years of bitter existence, had he been able to see something so perplexingly beautiful.

And then his eyes began to burn.

Jack cancelled the technique and felt a splitting headache threatening to overcome him, like someone had just struck him with a large wooden bat in an effort to kill him. He felt as if lightning had struck his mind and he almost shouted out in pain.

Ultimately, he didn't; but he could surmise that attempting to drive his spiritual sense into his eyes at this stage of the training had been a little bit too impulsive on his part. However, the gains he'd received from learning to see the flow of qi was something that he was extremely willing to suffer a headache from.

What he didn't know, or perhaps it was better to say that he didn't consciously think about, was that he'd only been able to survive his little stunt because of the training his soul had gone through in the dragon-shaped ring. Had he not strengthened his soul power, then just trying to push his spiritual sense into his eyes would have utterly decimated his soul and effectively turned him into a vegetable.