Chapter 13: Qi Root

_I don't know why I'm here, but that doesn't matter. I'm here, and that's all that matters. And my first priority is to survive, but to survive I'll need to become stronger and faster. My current physical condition isn't enough, even my Cannibalistic Body Cultivation Art can't get me strong enough. Well, not in the amount of time I have, especially if I want to survive in this trial._ the teenager thought to himself.

As he walked to the wall of the giant underground hall, he continued chewing on the tough human meat while doing so, absorbing all the types of Qi he could have. He circulated the Blood Qi through his veins, expanding them and thickening them. After that, he drew in all the Wood Qi into his pseudo-Qi Root.

A Qi Root is a structure that can be built and integrated into the dantian, which one usually creates after reaching the. It is what gives the Qi its properties. Through the cultivation of a specific Qi type, it can influence its properties and power. It makes them physically stronger as well and can strengthen their attacks with the specific property.

A pseudo-Qi Root is a fake Qi Root that acts as a replacement for a real Qi Root until one can create a real Qi Root. However, not many people know how to create a pseudo-Qi Root as it is a secret art created by the Holy Royal Family only for the elites of the family and their most trusted people, who were placed under a heavenly oath not to go against the Holy Royal Family.

Qi can have 5 different main properties. Fire, water, wood, earth, and metal are the main Qi properties that anyone can gain through either cultivation or birth. There are another 6 special properties that Qi can have: lightning, ice, poison, yin, yang, and demonic. These are Qi properties that one can only get through it being passed down or birth.

The next Qi properties are race specific. There are only 2 of those: spiritual, and draconic. There is also Blood Qi, but every single person has Blood Qi, but some have stronger Blood Qi than others. These are the Qi properties that are currently known, however, there are speculated to be more.

One's Qi Root can have a maximum of 3 different properties. But even if one can cultivate enough of a Qi type to influence their Qi, they can be seen as amazing individuals who will have high positions in the common world. If one can cultivate 2 properties that aren't race specific, they are usually seen as geniuses who only appear once every one thousand years. However, if one can cultivate 3 Qi properties with none being race-specific, they are more than likely to be emperors and rulers of continents, being geniuses who can only appear once every ten thousand years.

But of course, like everything in this universe, there is always an exception. A man who lived hundreds of millions of years ago was a man who was known as the 'Origin of Qi' and also a man who had figured out how to expand one's lifespan with Qi. He was the one who had helped society and cultivation as a whole. He had taught everyone internal cultivation.

This was a ground-breaking discovery in cultivation at the time because it taught people to store the Qi inside of themselves and use it as a weapon that needed precise control, instead of just using the Qi in the objects around them to empower their physical strength, commonly called external cultivation.

He had figured out that the dantian was not in its final form and had much to improve on, and after several centuries of experimenting, he managed to create the very first Qi Root. The man had managed to cultivate every single Qi property, even race-specific properties. It is thought that he had convinced those who had those Qi properties to pass them down to him.

However, when the passing down of Qi properties had been discovered, others had tried, but each and every single one had failed and died a gruesome death. The Qi rejected their dantians and would twist and crush their meridians, leaving them in an unimaginable amount of pain. But due to their incredibly powerful vitality, they would stay alive for several days, their meridians and dantians completely destroyed. Finally, almost as if the heavens were angry at the cultivator for defying their will, they were struck by the lightning of retribution that is known as God's Rage, a deep purple lightning strike that is empowered by an unknown type of Qi but is commonly referred to as Retribution Qi.

Once a cultivator got struck by God's Rage, their entire lineage would be cursed. Every single descendant of the cultivator would be cursed with absolutely zero talent for martial arts and cultivation. Their dantians would be shattered and their meridians would twist and knot, completely restricting their ability to cultivate, and any time they did they would feel an unending amount of pain.

This was such a barbaric time because they knew that if these descendants continued to have children, cultivation would become impossible for everyone and would become an ancient myth. So they made the only rational choice and murdered all the descendants of the cultivators who were cursed. After that, no one attempted to pass down race-specific Qi types ever again, and it became a taboo which was punishable by familicide [1].

The teenage boy had finally reached the edge of the hall. He managed to get there without many people attacking him. He sat crossed-legged in the lotus position and laid out his golden needles and poison. He had made sure that not a single person was within range to attack him while he was going through his vein reconstruction procedure.

The boy measured the exact amount of poison he needed because he only had one chance to do this and not just because of his limited amount of poison. He placed the 12 golden needles he had taken and pierced his skin deep enough to reach his main meridians. After doing so, he slowly let the poison run down the needles into his meridians. His veins started to bulge with a green hue. He had an extreme look of pain on his face. He needed to resist the urge to move, otherwise he could die.

He slowly began to circulate tiny Qi slivers throughout his body, slowly spreading the poison to his entire body, going through every single meridian and vein inside his body. He continued to add more Qi to his circulation while increasing his circulation speed, spreading the poison evenly across his body.

[1] A familicide is a type of murder or murder-suicide in which a perpetrator kills multiple close family members in quick succession, most often children, spouses, siblings, or parents.