Chapter 44: Channeling Qi.

"Is that a problem?" Kalon asked; he could read a few essential words and copy them down perfectly, but he was hopeless when it came to reading bigger and more complex words. He always felt like he was lacking, and even having a tutor to teach him, he couldn't understand they were teaching him. He looked up at Roah, who was rubbing her temples yet again.

"No, it's not a problem at all. I just really have my work cut out for me, don't I?" Roah sighed before moving over to the seat directly beside him and taking the book in her hands.

"I'm not going to do everything for you, just so you know. I will teach you how to read while we go over this. You know the basic alphabet, don't you?" Roah asked with a smile.

"Of course I do. My mom taught me the song when I was younger." Kalon smiled in return. He couldn't help but think of his mother when she sat down with her arms around him and sang when he was a child.

"That's great. At least you will be able to pronounce the words. Now, look here. What does this say?" Roah asked and pointed at the first sentence of the book.

"Uhm, The -Blood moon -Technique?" Kalon stuttered along as he tried to pronounce the words to the best of his ability.

"This is getting nowhere. Okay, I will just tell you what to do now. Now bring your legs up onto the bench and cross them." Roah sighed and decided to take over since it was taking too long for Kalon to read it.

"Okay, now what do I do?" Kalon crossed his legs and asked, not taking it too seriously and deciding that it was better that way. His reading comprehension was seriously too low for even the most basic of books. Let alone a book that was meant for cultivators.

"It's just like any technique, really. You just need to memorise the mantra. So first, I want you to close your eyes. And you still feel that warmth surrounding your body, don't you?" Roah asked as she tried to instruct him on what to do.

"Yeah, It still feels weird," Kalon said as he felt the warmth circling his body. It went up from his toes to the centre of his head and then spiralled around him before repeating itself in the same order.

"It's bound to feel weird. It takes time for your body to get used to strange feelings. But give it a month, and you won't even notice it if you don't concentrate, so now is the perfect time for you to train it.

If we waited a while and you got used to it, then you wouldn't be able to differentiate between Qi and the rest of your body. It's why a lot of cultivators never progress their strength.

So I want you to try to imagine all of the warmth surrounding your body is under your complete control. Imagine it is like an extra limb, and you can move it wherever you want to and then try to direct it towards the ball above your belly button.

Feel the warmth come up from your feet and down from your head. Imagine it being sucked out of your arms and then towards the ball on your stomach. Everything else will feel cold, and that is the sign that you have done it. And then once you do that, I want you to say, "The blood moon rises in the sky and destroys seas, land, and mountains. It sets below the great abyss and passes through the void. No soul can escape the blood moon as it shadows the valley of life and death." And repeat it over and over in your mind." Roah said with a perplexed expression on her face.

'That sounds rather violent for a cultivation technique. Who would come up with such a thing? Master says the mind has to be both tranquil and calm to cultivate. What kind of psychopath can remain calm after thinking about something like that?' Roah asked herself before checking the book's cover to make sure that she had pulled out the correct one.

On the other hand, Kalon sat quietly with his eyes closed and tried to focus on directing the warm feeling out of his body and towards his dantian. He felt the presence of the small ball above his belly button since that seemed to be the source of the heat surrounding him.

It was naturally hotter there. But no matter what he thought of, he couldn't move the warmth. It just seemed to remain there.

'What am I doing wrong? She made this sound easy, but it hurts my head even thinking about moving it. Couldn't she have just told me how to do it? Why do I have to imagine everything?' Kalon asked himself even though he knew the answer deep down.

The secret to learning how to do something new is to find your own way. You can never forget if you find a personal way to do something. It was the same way sword techniques were created, and Master Ranwald had instructed him in the past that the only way to become a better swordsman was to develop your own style. But that was easier said than done.

Kalon imagined the warmth being similar to an extra limb like Roah had told him, but it didn't work. It felt as though it was glued in place. He imagined that it was like a hand and tried to move the fingers towards his dantian, but that didn't work either.

Kalon felt strange. To him, the warmth seemed more like a vortex or a tornado than a limb. If he tried to imagine it as something else, it made him feel like something was off, so as a last resort, he imagined it being a vortex.

The warmth spiralled around his body from his dantian and out towards the air, so it only felt natural to him that if he wanted to direct it back towards his dantian, then he would have to reverse the spiralling and force it back towards his dantian.

So he did. Kalon felt the spiralling around him and first focused on slowing it down. After a few minutes, the warmth came to a stop. It was no longer spiralling but now just going up into the air.

He then bit down on his tongue to help him focus a little better before imagining it spinning in the opposite direction towards his dantian. As soon as he thought about it, the warm feeling stopped.

Suddenly his body felt as cold as the snow he had trekked his way through to get to the mountain pass, and he felt light-headed. It was as though everything on the outside had faded, and he was left alone at the very peak of a mountain as the cold wind pierced through his clothes.

Roah looked up after feeling a change in the Qi to see that Kalon had entered a state of enlightenment. His body was giving out a faint blue glue, and small orbs of light began to rise from his fingertips.

"Woah, that was fast. I wasn't expecting him to channel his Qi into his dantian so quickly. It took me an hour when I first started, but it took him less than fifteen minutes. I should probably tell my master about this when I get back to the sect." Roah said aloud as she looked at Kalon as his breathing now became slow and gentle, and he sat with his eyes closed, looking almost like he was sleeping.

"I had better not disturb him. He should have remembered the mantra, right?" Roah wondered before moving back to her side of the carriage and pulling out a map from the pouch on her hip.

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