Chapter 9

Meditating on Ki. What is Ki?

Well, basically it is life energy. Or atleast, that is the barebones explanation. If it really was just life energy I'd die the moment my capacity reached 0. No, in reality Ki is an Internal Energy that generates naturally and takes influence from its surroundings. Similar to Qi in a way. Except there isn't a limited amount of Ki. The only point it would exhaust is if the universe experienced a heat death. Ki is generated from matter, emotions, and energy. Even Qi has its own Ki. This is also why Refined Ki is so overbearing. It's pure Ki without outside interference. Well, except for the refiners Ki. Life Force Ki is the easiest Ki to mess with for this reason, cause it was influenced by you. It takes upon your characteristics, and when you die? Your Ki follows you, forming the body for your soul. If you don't have a lot of Ki when you die you may not look like yourself, instead existing as a ball or something like that.

So then, what happens if I infuse Refined Ki into my body? Well, my body grows tougher. Ki is almost always beneficial when it comes from within the body. Sure you can consume meat for other entities Ki. But in the end the Ki would help you. Course the toughness will disappear shortly after, unless you train your body. So by infusing my body with a ton of Refined Ki and exercising as long as I can I can train my body at an inhumanly fast rate. If I constantly infuse my body with Refined Ki at every moment possible my toughness will also naturally increase.

How do I refine Ki? Well, it's simple, I take the Ki, and wring out as many influences as possible, returning it into a blank slate. Then I pile on the Ki and compress it to make a sliver of Refined Ki. The more effort you put in, the purer the Refined Ki becomes. This is what I know about Ki as an energy. What about in practice?

Ki can be attached to objects, to form a sort of enchantment. Like adding a sharp effect or a stealth effect. It all depends on the intent that you use when acting with it. Course that is the rough way of doing it, and it will dissipate eventually. Meaning there is a way to make a permanent boost. How so? Well, it lies within imagination and intent. You have to have the image in mind when imbuing intent into Ki in order to make the effect last longer. The more logic you incorporate into the Ki the more it will last. The less logic you use the more it doesn't make sense but the less time it lasts. So Ki has a loose set of rules that it follows, however it is only a loose set of rules and not many can exploit this due to the lack of control over Ki. I cheated by having an absurd amount of Ki within myself. It only takes around fifty units of Ki to fill my normal body to the brim. That would be around the max most people would be able to push themselves. But due to the existence of the system I am able to store a ton more Ki than most.

That is… until the Ki Dantian is formed. The Ki Dantian is an imaginary space that has the miraculous ability to continuously store Ki. Something that can slowly be formed by allocating as much refined Ki as possible. Of course the Ki Dantian would only store a small amount at first, but over time it would get bigger on the inside and store more and more Ki. To compensate your body will generate more Ki and then suddenly you have a feedback loop causing you to grow stronger exponentially. Meaning I am cheating to the freakin highest degree cause what the IDLE System allows me to do shouldn't be logically possible which will allow me to get close to the cultivators in terms of pure strength in a small amount of time compared to a normal person who learned how to control Ki.

Now if this is the case, I need to get hold of three skills according to the system, Restoration, Blade, and Body Ki Manipulation Skills. The reason these displayed first was because I am already super close to achieving a small mastery in them. So how can I progress further into them? Concepts. The idea of imbuing concepts into energy has existed for a long time, it is the reason those Qi Daos exist. Such as the Concept of Space and Time. So if I can turn Restoration, Blade, and Body into concepts that I can call upon at any time I could quickly reach a small mastery of the skills. This sounds a lot like magic. There are more rules to it, but it is very similar.

Regardless, let's try this. First we need to find the concept of restoration. What is it to restore? To build onto destruction, making what was once broken functional again. Destruction, followed by Restoration. A cycle of thought. It's possible to mend things before they break, but that isn't restoration, that's reinforcing. Now I just need to figure out how to imbue this concept into Ki.

New Ki flows into my body. My regular Ki, while not at its peak, is restored a lot. I'll go back to meditation in a moment.

"System, how many Ki Accumulators can we get with my current refined Ki."

[Calculating. Calculations complete. Twelve upgrades using sixteen hundred refined Ki.]

"Twelve for only three days, that's a lot… Eh, while I'd love to upgrade my accumulators. I can use the restoration of the mountain for my concept. Initiate the next stage of evolution."

[Refined Ki: 1691]

[Refined Ki: 691]

I saw the Ki being pulled out of my body. Strange thin lines coming out of seemingly nowhere manipulating the Ki, then I saw something I made sure to pay attention too.

The System was changing the Refined Ki with a Concept. Something I was meditating on. I watched as the Ki began to take upon characteristics of the concept. I could barely tell what they were, Evolution, Restoration, Destruction, Life, Death, and more. The Refined Ki started to become invisible as it changed. I only caught the five concepts, but it was enough. I need to meditate on this, it could be the thing that leads to my next breakthrough.

So I proceeded to do just that.

— Silver Third Person POV

The Great Master's energy was spreading. The only reason Silver knew was because he was near the Great Master. Thin invisible lines spread across the dead trees. Then he laid down and began to circulate Endless Moon technique. Rapidly pushing to the next realm. Silver stopped the breakthrough. He couldn't pursue it near the Great Masters' new den. If it destroyed the Great Masters home, he would pay the price. The thought of being able to defeat the Grand Master never appeared in the wolf's mind.

Thus the wolf endured preventing the breakthrough, however the wolf was happy to find that the energy had other benefits. The wolf's body was growing stronger, and it's size was increasing. Impurities were being destroyed and reformed into beneficial pieces instead of simply being expelled, and the framework for the foundation was being put into place before the attempt at growing the next realm was made. Something that was unseen, as normally you'd only make the Foundation when you get to the next level. Not partially make it. This would make it easier to ascend into Foundation Establishment. All the wolf would have to do is condense Qi over the framework.

Similar things were happening across the ruins. The energy couldn't be absorbed, but it had several concepts within it, something that only high level cultivators were capable of. Those concepts could be absorbed and used to push the locals' cultivation to higher levels.