14 First Birthday
After being fed with a generous serving of milk, Ryujin could finally focus on the benefits of his discovery.
Then after several days of trial and error experiments, he grasped the basics of his newfound ability and gained a much deeper understanding of Qi.
Ryujin had discovered that, nourishing his vitality (blood) with Qi actually consisted of three steps.
First, he would relax his entire body and take a deep breath to absorb the atmospheric Qi, then he would saturate his blood with it, converting it into Vital Qi (Body Cultivation Qi), and then cycle the blood through his veins to strengthen every part of his body.
The first step was always the hardest, because the breathing exercise needed him to contract all the muscles in his body and hold his breath for as long as possible, before releasing his breath and relaxing his body simultaneously.
The first half of this process wasn't difficult; however, the latter half was the main problem, as the breathing exercise required him to repeat the process instantaneously.
Whenever, Ryujin did that, he never really had the luxury of taking several breaths before restarting the cycle, and as thus, it always left him breathless, lethargic and almost windy.
It was like telling someone to run 100 meters in five seconds whilst holding their breath, then upon reaching the finish line, giving them only two seconds to catch their breath before resuming the sprint once again.
Surely, such a person would most likely lose their stamina and might even faint before they could finish the next sprint; it was simply impossible to have recovered one's stamina in that little amount of time.
However, what Spiritual Qi did was that, it enabled Ryujin to skip the entire breath exercise.
It directly used Ryujin's Focus Qi ( stored in the form of one's sea of consciousness) to latch onto the atmospheric Qi and draw it into his brain vessel.
From there, Ryujin can now saturate his blood with the Qi and cycle it around his body as usual.
Furthermore, the amount of Qi which Ryujin now had access to had increased from that of his immediate surroundings (approx. 1 meter radius of his position) to the span of his mental sense (approx. 100 meters, due to the strength of his soul).
However, this also became a little difficult for Ryujin, since the new method required much more focus compared to the breathing exercise.
The only upsides were that, rather than feeling physically exhausted, and therefore famished, he got mentally exhausted and slept longer.
Nevertheless, the sheer amount of atmospheric Qi that was now within the range of his beck and call were almost 100 times more.
All it depended on was his willpower and mental state. The calmer he was mentally, the clearer and deeper he could sense and connect with the atmospheric Qi.
Then in addition, the amount of time he spent on cultivating had been reduced to less than a tenth of the usual, and his long naps always left him both physically and mentally invigorated.
Despite it's limitations, Ryujin continued to cultivate Spiritual Qi; the ultimate discovery about it, was that every improvement he made with his mind, also passed affected his body cultivation/
He didn't need to switch between them, so he progressed in leap and bounds compared to before.
From time to time, he would use his mental sense to scan every inch of his body, discovering other secrets within it, and reaching a new understanding of the profoundness of its constitution.
In other occasions, he would try to use his breathing exercises to gauge the level of his stamina and physical prowess before returning back to cultivating Spiritual Qi.
Through this practice, Ryujin was not only able to perceive how his sea of consciousness increased in size with practice, but also have a rough understanding of the amount of Focus Qi he recovered after certain periods of rest.
His Focus Qi would latch onto the atmospheric Qi and feed it into his body, allowing him to both expand and strengthen his brain vessel, which would in turn increase the amount of Vital Qi in his blood, which would then in turn increase his physical body strength.
Once he reached the limits of the amount of Vital Qi he could store, he would then use them to search for another vessel to attack and unlock.
Ryujin had no idea how to find these specific vessels; after all, he had no access to any body cultivation technique or art, so he could only rely on his relentless search and hard work.
Sometimes when he reached his Vital Qi limit, the rest of it would simply surge around his body in a wild manner and injure him.
But by continually expanding and strengthening his brain vessel and physical body (through growth), the capacity of his blood to hold Vital Qi also increased.
After discovering and cultivating Spirit Qi, Ryujin had a much finer control of the Vital Qi circulation within his body, and over the atmospheric QI outside his body.
Before, he could only use his breathing exercises to move his Vital Qi through the normal route his blood followed, but now, with the use of his mental sense, he only needed to think about where and how he wanted them to flow, and his mental sense would automate the rest.
He even managed to modify his cultivation technique, so that when he absorbed the atmospheric Qi, they would linger around his skin, until even his body hair would be overflowing with Qi.
Ever since he discovered Focus Qi (accumulated Spiritual Qi), he had noticed qualitative changes to his body. Ryujin was now better at withstanding cold and heat, and hardly ever got sick.
When his whole family would catch a cold, he would either get over it before the symptoms manifested or recover in a few days.
'Unless it's all a crazy coincidence, improving the quantity of my Focus Qi is the only means at my disposal to temper my body. If I am right, this means that I can use it as a crutch until I get big enough to do physical activity.' He thought to himself.
'Hopefully, as my mental sense gets keener, it would help me find these other vessels. It's a risk, but one that promises high rewards. Also, between reaching my limits and sleeping, there isn't much I can do as a six month old baby."
As for his family life, it also experienced some changes during the following months. The relationship between him and his parents, kept getting better and better as well.
He had already started saying babble words, making sure to say "Mama" when Lin embraced him and "Dada" whenever Shin came near him.
Though he and his father didn't have much a relationship anyway, since his fathers and uncle were was always busy with something that made them spend more time away from home, leaving his mother and cousins to spend the most time with him.
He never caused problems for his cousins either; as a matter of fact, his curious nature and clear understanding of their behavioral patterns made it such that, the twins usually took the initiative to come pick him up.
To his defense, his father and uncle simply wrongly assumed that he was too little to notice, and that they would have time catch up later in the future, like they did with his other sons.
The sworn brothers really loved him, and Ryujin never ceased to amaze them. Shin could not remember him crying for no reason, not even when teething.
If someone bumped into his cradle or raised his voice while he was asleep (or at least pretending to), he would not make a sound, he would just take a cursory glance around before going back to sleep.
Ryujin increasingly grew fond of Jada, she was more like a loving aunt than a sister to him; taking care of her little brother like a tiny little mother.
He would have loved to express this love, but all he could do was smile and laugh as soon as he saw her, and call her "Jaja".
She was in fact the only one, beside his parents, to have a babble name, and whilst that wasn't much, it meant the world to the latter.
And so, time went by.
After six months from his arrival, Ryujin was put on the ground for the fist time and started to crawl under strict supervision.
At the ninth month he started to walk and graduated himself from babble words to real ones.
The Mystic Transformation Pupils and Origin Codex, came through during these period, shining forth their abilities in their full glory.
Everything Ryujin saw were instantly compiled into the codex, whilst the pupils made corrections to the flaws within them, leaving him a mental dictionary with the most perfect set of vocabularies.
On the day of his birthday, after discovering they had birthdays in this world too, he allowed himself to use simple phrases and started to make questions to complete his vocabulary.
Knowing nothing about babies, it was very stressful finding the right timing for every little thing.
Luckily, Ryujin could always resort on cheating to find out the proper time for him to "learn" to do something.
He was already capable of understanding everything he heard and reading the intentions and meanings within them, so he was always open to "suggestions".
If Lin was dying for him to finally say "Mommy" instead of "Mama", he would wait a couple of days before making it happen.
If Shin or Raja cheered for him to run over into their embrace, he did.
The real problem was paying attention to everything Raja, Shin and Lin said while being seemingly completely oblivious about their words.
Another problem was that once they let him roam free in the dining room, they gave him small wooden toys expecting him to play and explore his surroundings.
Ryujin already knew the setting of the whole house like the back of his hand; not that there was much to see in the first place. Yet he had to pretend to be curious about it.
That was the hardest thing he had ever done since becoming a baby, and worried him to death.
He had no clue why a child would want to explore such bland environment, and his paranoia about blowing his cover made him sweating bullets.
Seeing the expectation in their eyes, he started from the nearest thing, the fireplace. The fire was not lit, the logs were cold and covered in ashes.
When he got closer, Raja or Shin stopped him.
"This is the fireplace. Now safe, but fire bad... Fire hurt... No touching... Never."
Ryujin would look at either of them in confusion, before trying to put his hand in the ashes. Whichever of the two was around at that time would grab his hand, stopping him.
"Fire bad... No touching... Never." They would repeat.
Ryujin would then stare into their eyes like he was deeply in thought, before asking: "Fire bad?"
"Yes, very bad." They would reply with a firm nod and serious expression.
"Okay." Then he would move away from the fireplace and head over to the dining table.
When he tried climbing up a chair, almost falling down with it, Lin ran to his rescue.
"Good gods, this little one sure likes danger." Seeing their increasingly worried expressions, Ryujin believed to have found a way out of his torment.
He would keep putting himself in danger, trying to climb on the table and going into the kitchen rummaging through pots and knives.
Quickly they decided that adventure time was over. They made him sit on a sheet of fur spread over the marble floor, and then give him some toys to play with until they recovered from the stress.
He had a little wooden horse, some kind of cart, and an odd-looking dog thingy. Playing was much easier to him. Ryujin didn't need to create stories or explain what he was doing.
He could just use playtime to practice some mental martial arts, and on one accidental occasion, mentally make his toys float.
Discovering another way with which he could improve himself and kill boredom made Ryujin really happy.
He would openly rejoice, scream and laugh anytime he made a new discovery or a breakthrough, and all his parents would see was a happy child lost in his fantasies.
"Who would've ever thought that such a quiet little fellow could have such vivid imaginations." Shin said with a big, proud smile on his face.
"Look at him. All he has is just some old toys, yet it looks like he has the whole world in the palm of his hand." Raja added with an amused chuckle.
