The Birth of the Taiji Diagram

They no longer clashed as fiercely as they did within his meridians.

The Taiji diagram he had initially struggled to form, which once filled his dantian like a soybean-sized shape, was now compressing smaller and smaller.

And then, when the diagram shrank to the size of a sesame seed—

A sudden change occurred.

A powerful tremor spread from his dantian, shaking his entire consciousness and forcibly ejecting his mind from his core.

When the tremor subsided and he cautiously extended his mind back into his dantian, he saw that a minuscule, fully formed Taiji diagram was now floating at its center.

The Taiji Diagram itself was slowly rotating.

As soon as the energies of life and death entered the dantian, they were immediately absorbed by the Taiji Diagram before being released again.

The energies of life and death that flowed through the Taiji Diagram underwent some changes.

Bok Taejin carefully sensed them for a long time before he was shocked to discover that the life energy coming out of the Taiji Diagram contained a minuscule amount of death energy, and likewise, the death energy carried a trace amount of life energy.

With this transformation, when these altered energies entered his meridians, they would still merge with the other energies of life and death within his body.

As a result, the proportion of these foreign energy currents became even smaller—so much so that Bok Taejin could barely sense them even when tracking them closely.

Now, the time required for him to complete one full cycle of cultivation had lengthened significantly.

He had no idea how long it would take before he could see more noticeable effects.

He wanted to continue, but his mind was already exhausted, leaving him with no choice but to stop cultivating.

Yet, the moment this thought arose, the flow of life and death energy within his body gradually slowed down—it was the familiar sensation he experienced before stopping cultivation.

By all accounts, the energies should have come to a complete halt and started moving randomly on their own.

However, the Taiji Diagram in his dantian never truly stopped rotating, and, unexpectedly, it continued to guide the energies of life and death along the cultivation pathway, albeit at a much slower pace!

Bok Taejin focused his senses for a while but felt no discomfort.

Deciding not to worry about it, he withdrew his consciousness from within his body and lay down to sleep.

Perhaps for those who had reached profound levels of cultivation, the process itself was the best form of rest, making sleep entirely unnecessary.

However, for someone like him?

Cultivation was actually the most mentally exhausting activity.

The moment he finished cultivating, he immediately fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning, the sky was just beginning to brighten.

Bok Taejin got up, preparing to go outside and practice the Eight Brocades Qi Gong.

Passing through the living room, he instinctively glanced toward Im Beomhyeon's room.

As expected, the person who should have been sleeping soundly on the bed was nowhere to be seen.