In the end, Xiao Xun'er drank that strange, bubbling medicinal liquid.
"Go to sleep once you've finished..."
Seeing her obediently finish the medicine, Xiao Yue nodded with satisfaction, then told Xiao Xun'er to leave the secret room while she herself continued tinkering with the spiritual herbs.
As the night grew deeper, Xiao Xun'er lay in her bed back in her own room, gazing into the pitch-black darkness. Her mood now was completely different from the empty solitude of the previous night.
The experiences of the day had given her a trace of warmth and a sense of belonging in this unfamiliar place. Naturally, all of this could be attributed to that strange silver-haired sister—at times aloof, at times gentle, at times serene, and with just a little bit of... mystery and mischievous cunning?
Before she knew it, she gradually drifted off to sleep. Perhaps the medicine had taken effect, for this time she did not suffer from insomnia at all.
After she fell asleep, Xiao Yue opened the door and walked over to the bedside, looking down at the young girl on the bed with a thoughtful gleam in her eyes.
"This child, her aura is so frail..."
With that, Xiao Yue placed two fingers on the girl's wrist to check her pulse.
"Not long ago, some extremely overbearing foreign object was forcibly implanted inside her body. No wonder her vitality and blood are so weak. Still, it doesn't seem to be a bad thing," Xiao Yue murmured thoughtfully.
After a moment of reflection, she raised her left hand. On her left index finger wore a gold ring; upon closer inspection, one could see it was actually nine golden threads coiled around her finger. Unhurriedly, Xiao Yue flicked her finger, and those golden threads transformed into slender acupuncture needles.
With a flick of Xiao Yue's fingertips, the Golden Needle accurately pierced several acupoints on the young girl's body. The Golden Needle was crafted from soft gold, requiring Xiao Yue's internal energy to be used; if brute force were applied, the slightest exertion would cause the needle to bend instantly, making it impossible to pierce human skin.
Next, Xiao Yue rubbed the tail ends of the Golden Needle between her right thumb and middle finger. As she executed the set of acupuncture techniques, the soundly sleeping Xiao Xun'er felt not the slightest discomfort, sensing only a trace of refreshing coolness coursing through her body, nourishing her bones and meridians, causing her to sleep even more soundly.
"Goodnight..."
With those words, Xiao Yue flicked her wrist again, and the Golden Needle whizzed back, coiling around her finger once more to transform back into a ring.
As the saying goes: Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, and Fuxi created the Nine Needles. Xiao Yue's acupuncture technique originated precisely from that cultural progenitor—the ancient Fuxi clan.
...
...
Quietly returning to her own room, Xiao Yue did not sleep. She sat back down in her chair, holding a self-made silver fountain pen. With the candle burning brightly in the room, she set about formulating her future cultivation plan.
She was still young now, her bones and physique not yet fully formed. No matter how she trained, she wouldn't possess much combat power, so for the time being she could only practice stance-standing to nourish her muscles and bones, and visualize the White Tiger Swallowing the Moon scroll to nurture her soul.
Until then, she could only spend more time tinkering with other things.
"Hmm, the world is different now. The martial arts of my past life truly need some modifications..." Xiao Yue touched her chin, deep in thought.
Having come to this world, her greatest wealth was not some White Tiger Visualization Scroll in her mind, but her memories.
As the most outstanding martial arts genius of her past life, someone who had integrated the essence of a hundred different schools, she had the wisdom summarized by numerous predecessors deeply imprinted in her mind.
The emergence of the spiritual Qi of heaven and earth showed her even more possibilities for martial arts. If she were to follow the training methods of her past life step by step, that was not entirely unfeasible, but she could not simply be constrained by the wisdom of her predecessors; where improvements were needed, she must make them in order to adapt to this world brimming with spiritual Qi.She recalled an ancient book titled *A Millennium of Martial Evolution*. According to its records, while major sects falsely claimed histories spanning a thousand years, the internal martial art with the longest history—Taiji—was actually created by Zhang Sanfeng of the Wudang sect during the Ming Dynasty. That was less than a millennium ago; in China’s five-thousand-year history, internal martial arts had only emerged within the last thousand years.
What about the millennia before that? What were the martial artists of the Xia, Shang, Zhou, Spring and Autumn, Warring States, and pre-Qin periods like?
The author of that book had spent over a decade gathering data, offering a hypothesis regarding "spiritual energy fiction": from the Sui and Tang Dynasties onward, the spiritual energy between heaven and earth had been in sharp decline.
During the Spring and Autumn, Warring States, Qin, and Han periods, the concept of internal martial arts simply did not exist. Back then, practitioners on Blue Star absorbed the essence of heaven and earth, fully comprehending the nature of things, exploring the laws of the universe, and mastering the mysteries of the human body to achieve a state where boundless power was concentrated within themselves.
However, starting in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, that spiritual energy began to plummet. According to various sect records, it was during and after this period that martial artists on Blue Star became increasingly scarce. By the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, it had become almost impossible to absorb spiritual energy from the environment at all.
In ancient times, when spiritual energy was abundant, ancestors learned to absorb it. But when that energy waned, what were their descendants to do? One had to admit that humanity’s ability to adapt to its environment was truly formidable. It was precisely the disappearance of spiritual energy that led to the emergence of internal martial arts.
In the early Ming Dynasty, Zhang Sanfeng of Wudang was likely the first to pioneer these arts. He had refined the path to its peak, reaching a state of supreme sanctity in both body and spirit. He was also recorded as the very last person to have shattered the void and ascended.
From that era onward, the system of internal martial arts was finally perfected, leading to the appearance of Taiji, Xingyi, Bagua, Wing Chun, and many others. Through hundreds of years of exploration, countless talented individuals devoted their youth to tracing Zhang Sanfeng’s footsteps, gradually giving rise to the modern, highly refined system of internal martial arts. Yet, there had never been another Zhang Sanfeng.
To put it plainly, the cultivation process of martial artists in the past was essentially the Daoist practice of "refining essence into energy" and "refining energy into spirit." The "essence" in "refining essence into energy" referred to the essence of heaven and earth—the spiritual energy itself. With the disappearance of this energy on Earth, modern martial artists could no longer absorb it from the outside world; they were forced to develop internal martial arts to refine the blood and essence within their own bodies.
This explains the saying: "Seventy percent nutrition, thirty percent training." In an era of declining spiritual energy, martial artists had to eat voraciously to adapt. It was perfectly normal for one to consume half a roasted lamb in a single sitting, for to refine massive amounts of blood and essence, one naturally had to eat more.
"The internal martial arts I once learned were merely products created by our predecessors to cope with the disappearance of spiritual energy. They are like fish struggling to crawl onto the shore to survive in a polluted ocean..." Xiao Yue murmured to herself.
Her goal was now clear. Since the fish had returned to the ocean, the next step was to recover the lost heritage and then... leap over the dragon gate!
"The Martial Immortal, one in breath and essence, like the sword immortals of old, forges energy into a sword orb, defeating enemies from a thousand miles away, formless and invisible. When the practice is perfected, one ascends to the rank of Martial Immortal, shatters the void, ascends in broad daylight, and attains longevity alongside heaven and earth..." Xiao Yue twirled her pen and wrote these words.
This was an authentic record from the biography of Wudang’s Zhang Sanfeng, using alchemical terminology to describe the highest realm of martial arts.
Hmm. The book also recorded that the old master had shattered the void and ascended. Whether that was an exaggeration or not, she would know once she put it to the test in the future.