Quickly conquer the martial arts world, and let your fists dominate the heavens!

That day, Ye Ningzhen was in the east room.

The blue cloth case containing the Baguazhang manual was untied, and the volumes were laid out on the kang (a heated brick bed). The light from the window fell on the yellowed pages, and lines of red ink annotations crawled between the characters.

She sat cross-legged on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), her left hand pressing on the pages of the book, while her right index finger slowly traced the lines of the energy path diagram.

Dong Haichuan's handwritten letter.

Although Cheng Tinghua was personally taught by Dong Haichuan, there will still be some differences in skill level once it is mastered and practiced to a high degree.

Looking at it now, Ye Ningzhen felt that there were subtle differences from the path she had learned from her master. The stride of her steps was half an inch narrower, the timing of the palm change was half a breath earlier, and the angle of the twisting force was a bend between the Jianjing and Quchi acupoints.

A difference of half an inch, a difference of half a breath.

Below the Transformation Realm, half an inch or half a breath is almost negligible, but at the peak of the Transformation Realm, the difference of even a fraction is an insurmountable chasm.

The techniques I'd honed over a decade were disassembled, one move at a time, palm techniques, footwork, and power flow—all laid out on the ground for recalibration.

In the morning, practice standing meditation for one hour, using the Three-Body Stance, sinking the Qi to the soles of your feet. After finishing the stance, walk around in front of the palm manual, round and round. After each round, stop, close your eyes, and recall the energy path that has passed through each joint.

Chen Zhan would perform a bloodletting massage on her every three days, placing his palm on her Mingmen acupoint and applying gentle, warm force that seeped into her meridians to nourish her damaged fascia and replenish her depleted qi and blood.

Time passed very slowly.

Her complexion improved day by day, her left shoulder no longer ached on cloudy days, and her face changed from grayish-white to a light red.

Every evening, Chen Li would come to the courtyard.

Standing under the jujube tree, I practiced the Five Elements Fist, striking, collapsing, drilling, cannoning, and horizontal, again and again, my steps treading in the shadow of the jujube tree.

Chen Zhan sat under the eaves watching, occasionally saying something like, "Sink your waist down another half inch" or "Don't push your shoulder out when you throw a punch." Chen Li would respond and continue fighting.

Sometimes, after finishing her practice, Ye Ningzhen would sit on the steps and watch the shadows of the master and disciple stretch long in the setting sun, extending from the courtyard all the way to the outside of the wall.

Chen Zhan's life was even simpler; he spent his time reading.

Lu Shouyi had collected dozens of Taoist alchemical manuscripts throughout his life. He would read two volumes a day, starting at dawn and continuing until the oil lamp burned out.

Extremely fast; fingertips glide across the paper, one page is turned, and the next is already in hand.

Most of the content was of limited use to him.

Lu Shouyi wrote in detail the methods for nourishing qi and prolonging life, the mantras for tortoise breathing and exhalation, and the records of the timing of various internal alchemy techniques. He noted the date and origin of each technique, how many times it was practiced, and its effects, with dense annotations, making it like a running account.

Only a few volumes are slightly different.

Among the pages of "Lingbao Yuanliu" formerly in the Tongbai Palace collection, there are a few loose pages. The paper is older than the other pages, with a deep yellow tinge, and the ink is so faint that you have to get close to see it clearly.

The font is different from the main text, which is a neat official manuscript. The characters on the loose pages are slender, and the strokes have a Taoist talisman feel to them, as if they were taken from another, more ancient book.

"This is.?"

He laid out several pages under the lamp, and with a pencil, he drew a few lines on the white paper next to him, connecting the contents of the loose pages with a certain annotation in Lu Shouyi's notes.

One night, two weeks later.

Ye Ningzhen finished her exercises in the courtyard, stretching her muscles and bones. Moonlight fell through the gaps in the jujube tree leaves, scattering across the ground.

She rotated her wrist, clenched her fist, released it, and rotated it again. The range of motion in her left shoulder was much greater than it had been half a month ago, and her strength had recovered to more than 80%. When her Qi and blood reached the Jiaji acupoint, they were no longer blocked and could pass through smoothly.

The candles in the west room were lit.

She pushed open the door and went in. Chen Zhan was sitting at the table with several loose pages spread out in front of him. When she turned to a page in the middle, the white paper was covered with lines drawn in pencil, some fresh and some old, indicating that he had been looking at it for more than a day.

"Aren't you going to sleep yet?"

Chen Zhan looked up, his gaze lingered on her face for a moment, then closed the loose pages and stood up.

"Ningzhen, I've found a way to help your body recover faster, and even help you form your core faster."

Ye Ningzhen looked at his face.

Although Chen Zhan's expression was calm, there was a slight smile on his lips. After he finished speaking, his gaze shifted slightly towards the window before returning to his original position.

She had known Chen Zhan for over a decade and had never seen him look away when he spoke.

"What method?"

Chen Zhan did not answer immediately. He walked to the window, placed his fingers on the window frame, and the moonlight from the courtyard shone on his profile.

"Sit down, and I'll explain everything to you."

Ye Ningzhen sat down and casually turned up the kerosene lamp on the corner of the table a little. The wick flickered up a bit, and the light in the room fell on her face. She looked much better than she did half a month ago. Her cheekbones had become fuller, and her lips were no longer as dry and white as when she first came back.

She dragged the chair closer to the table, sat down casually, one hand on the edge of the table, the other supporting her chin, and looked at Chen Zhan.

"Say it."

Chen Zhan sat opposite him, still holding a pencil in his hand, with white paper and a few yellowed loose pages spread out on the table.

He put down his pencil, thought about his words, and didn't rush to speak.

Ye Ningzhen waited a few moments, then smiled and said, "What are you thinking about? You're stammering, it's not like you."

"I'm asking you," Chen Zhan looked up at her, "Have you ever heard of ancient sexual cultivation techniques?"

Ye Ningzhen tapped her finger on the edge of the table and raised her eyebrows.

"And what do you know about the dual cultivation of alchemy and Taoism?"

The room was quiet for a couple of breaths.

Ye Ningzhen's expression changed, a mix of disbelief and awkwardness. She stared at Chen Zhan for a while, her lips twitching, but she held back her laughter.

"Dual cultivation?"

"Ah."

"You want to cultivate with me?"

His tone was teasing, and he couldn't hide the smile in his eyes, but after seeing Chen Zhan's expression, he knew he wasn't joking, so he stopped laughing and sat up straighter.

"I've seen plenty of sorcerers in the martial arts world who use the guise of dual cultivation to seduce women. If you're talking about that kind of thing, it's probably not very reliable."

The two had already consummated their marriage, but Ye Ningzhen didn't care much about sex. Her teasing mostly stemmed from the fact that 'Chen Zhan could actually be bewitched by something like this'.

Chen Zhan shook his head: "What you know is completely different from what I'm about to say. When people mention dual cultivation, all they think of are unorthodox and unorthodox methods. The orthodox dual cultivation of alchemy has nothing to do with those things."

Ye Ningzhen didn't reply, but looked at him and asked, "So you've figured out a real method of dual cultivation?"

Chen Zhan pushed the few loose pages on the table in front of her, letting her look at the paper and handwriting first.

"Feel this paper." Ye Ningzhen picked it up and rubbed the paper with her fingertip. The paper was very brittle, with several broken edges. The ink was so light that it could only be seen when held up to the light. The characters were slender, and the strokes had the feel of talismans.

“This paper is very old,” she said, flipping through it. “It looks like it came off another book.”

"Yes, it was tucked inside the Lingbao Yuanliu collection in the Tongbai Palace. Lu Shouyi probably didn't notice it when he collected it; the loose pages were mixed up with the main text."

Chen Zhan leaned back in his chair and began to explain from the beginning.

"Before the establishment of Taoism, China already had the art of sexual health preservation, which belonged to the ancient Huang-Lao health preservation method. Its core can be summarized in four words: be cautious in sexual activity and preserve essence and energy. It is a method of moderation, harmony and longevity, which is completely opposite to indulgence."

"Several silk books have been unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha, including 'Ten Questions,' 'Harmony of Yin and Yang,' and 'Discourse on the Ultimate Way of the World.' When I was in the capital, I saw a rubbing of it in the hands of a scholar. The contents were all about the taboos of sexual life and the methods of guiding and regulating breathing. Not a single word involved lewdness."

Ye Ningzhen listened without interrupting.

She knew about Mawangdui, but didn't know there were such silk manuscripts inside. She was a martial artist and didn't have a deep understanding of Taoist classics.

Chen Zhan continued, "After the establishment of the Celestial Masters sect in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it absorbed some of the ancient concepts of sexual cultivation. In the early stages of cultivation, there was talk of men and women combining their qi to regulate yin and yang, but this was only an aid to health preservation and did not become a cultivation system. The alchemists of the Wei and Jin Dynasties moved the sexual techniques toward the direction of cultivating immortality, but most of them remained at the level of secular health preservation, and the alchemical system was not yet mature."

He reached out, poured himself a bowl of water, took a sip, put the bowl down, and continued speaking.

"The real turning point was during the Sui and Tang dynasties. Taoism shifted from practicing external alchemy to practicing internal alchemy, treating the human body as the alchemical furnace and essence, energy, and spirit as the elixir, pursuing the dual cultivation of body and mind. Internal alchemy takes yin and yang as its core, and from this, two paths diverged."

He held up two fingers to show his fingers.

“One path is called solitary cultivation, which involves harmonizing one’s own yin and yang through one’s own efforts. This is the absolute mainstream, and all orthodox Taoist sects throughout history have followed this path.”

"The other one is called Yin-Yang Dual Cultivation. It believes that relying solely on one's own Yin and Yang is unbalanced and requires the assistance of external Yin and Yang energies to refine pills. It is extremely rare, a secret, and never revealed to outsiders."

Ye Ningzhen asked, "Which school passed it down from?"

"During the Southern School of Ziyang in the Song Dynasty, Zhang Boduan's 'Wuzhen Pian' was the most famous Taoist book discussing the dual cultivation of Yin and Yang. However, the book is full of cryptic language, such as dragon and tiger, lead and mercury, other family, and Yellow Woman. Later alchemists interpreted it in two different ways."

"One school of thought says it's all internal metaphors, referring to one's own heart, kidneys, spirit, and energy, and has nothing to do with others; the other school says 'that other family' actually refers to an external Daoist partner, and there is a cultivation method that complements Yin and Yang. The two schools have been arguing for hundreds of years, and neither can convince the other."

"What about the Northern School? What does the Quanzhen School think?"

"Wang Chongyang founded Quanzhen, who became a monk, celibate, and abstained from sexual activity. He believed that Yin and Yang existed within his own body and that he did not need to rely on outsiders. The patriarchs of all generations have condemned the practice of dual cultivation of the physical body as a heretical path. You are familiar with the path of Quanzhen Taoism. It is close to those of us who practice martial arts. Our internal energy cultivation methods are all based on Quanzhen alchemy."

Ye Ningzhen nodded. She was a disciple of Baguazhang, and Baguazhang and Quanzhen Taoism did indeed have a connection. Dong Haichuan had stayed in a Taoist temple back then.

Chen Zhan's tone became more forceful.

"The orthodox practice of dual cultivation in Daoist alchemy has four rules: Dharma, resources, companion, and place. Dharma is the oral transmission of the true Dharma, resources are the offerings of provisions, companion is a fellow practitioner, and place is a pure place of practice. None of the four can be missing."

"The process is accompanied by strict control of the heat, the order, and the cultivation of mind. The core is to refine essence, qi, and spirit in reverse to form the elixir. Pleasure is a great taboo. Once one indulges in pleasure and lust, the qi will dissipate and the elixir will break, resulting in failure."

Upon hearing this, Ye Ningzhen's brows relaxed, and she leaned back to find a more comfortable position.

Chen Zhan could tell she was processing the information, so he waited a while before continuing.

“After the Song and Yuan dynasties, especially during the Ming and Qing dynasties, a large number of sorcerers took the name of Yin-Yang dual cultivation, discarded the mind, timing, and discipline, and only left the set of male-female yin-yang cultivation and sexual health preservation. They wrote fake books, created fallacies, and cheated people out of money and sex.”

"The orthodox Taoist school calls these eight hundred heretical sects and three thousand unorthodox paths. They have been vehemently denounced by eminent Taoist masters throughout history and have never been included in the orthodox Taoist Canon."

He looked into Ye Ningzhen's eyes and finished speaking.

"Those swindlers you encounter in the martial arts world who claim to practice dual cultivation are all practicing this kind of wild art, which has absolutely nothing to do with orthodox alchemy."

Ye Ningzhen remained silent for a while.

She flipped through the few loose pages in her hand, but couldn't quite understand the terminology used in alchemy.

However, one could recognize the energy pathway diagram that Chen Zhan had drawn on the white paper next to her. The lines closely matched the distribution of the meridians in her body, and several acupoints were circled in pencil and marked in great detail, which were exactly the locations where her blood and qi had been stagnant for many years.

Mingmen, Jiaji, and Tanzhong.

When she practices, her energy always circulates around these three points. After a while, this circling becomes a habit, and she can no longer enter new energy pathways.

How did you know where I was stuck in traffic?

"I felt it when I was pushing the uterus to release blood. Your meridians have been deficient for too long. Relying solely on your own repair, the qi and blood will bypass the blockages. By going around and around, you've widened the side pathways, but the main pathways have become useless."

"The benefit of dual cultivation is that I can transfer my energy into your body to help you harmonize your internal organs and improve your blood and qi."

Chen Zhan turned the diagram on the white paper towards her and marked a few spots on the paper with a pencil.

"Look here, from the Mingmen point to the Jiaji point, the strength weakens. You can correct it yourself. In three years, you can reach the threshold of the Dantian stage. By using the method of dual cultivation of Dan Dao, the two people's Qi and blood are mutually attracted and Yin and Yang complement each other, the recovery speed will be much faster, and the time to reach the Dantian stage can be greatly shortened."

Ye Ningzhen stared at the diagram for a long time, her finger slowly tracing the lines drawn with a pencil.

She had practiced kung fu for over a decade, and she knew exactly which meridians in her body were clear and which were blocked. Every point Chen Zhan marked was accurate.

"Written in Lu Shouyi's loose pages?"

"There is a set of methods for alchemy and qi cultivation in the loose pages. It is incomplete, but the key energy pathways and timing formulas have been preserved. I combined my understanding of meridians and qi and blood with decades of practice records of health cultivation methods in Lu Shouyi's notes to fill in the missing parts."

"Are you confident?"

"Seventy to eighty percent. If done well, the results will exceed expectations."

Ye Ningzhen closed the loose pages, put them back on the table, stood up, and walked to the window.

Moonlight shone on the jujube tree in the courtyard outside the window, casting its shadow on the earthen wall. The threshing ground in the distance was quiet, with only the occasional chirping of insects.

She rested her hand on the window frame, turned her head to look at Chen Zhan, and smiled slightly.

"Then this humble woman will be at your disposal."

His tone was frank and unpretentious.

Chen Zhan smiled too.

She walked back, sat down, picked up the loose pages again, and flipped through them, tapping the paper twice with her fingertips.

How long do you need to prepare?

"Two days. The missing parts of the loose pages must be filled in without any mistakes. During the process of mutual attraction of qi and blood, if the force deviates even slightly, both of them will suffer internal injuries."

"Where is the place?"

"Find a quiet courtyard or an empty house in the mountains, where no one can disturb you, for at least half a month."

Ye Ningzhen thought for a moment: "There are a few stone houses on the ridge to the east. They used to belong to the forest rangers, but they were removed last year. They are about four or five miles from the village, not far from the water source, and quiet. I'll go take a look tomorrow."

Chen Zhan nodded.

Ye Ningzhen stood up and walked to the door, paused, turned back to look at him, and smiled. (End of Chapter)