28 Unexpected Equilibrium
Immediately after gathering enough solidified Qi, Meng Li built a pillar and tried to send it out to support the Dantian. However, to his surprise, the pillar actually failed. The backlash was quite intense, but to Meng Li, it was negligible. However, he was still confused as to why it happened. Until that moment, every time Meng Li failed, it was because the mysterious power which came out of the pillar didn't assimilate into the organ he was trying to support. However, in this case, the mysterious power clearly came out, and started assimilating into his Dantian. However, the strange thing happened. The mysterious power, despite pouring out for minutes on end, didn't stop. After some time, it stopped pouring out, but it was not like normal - he could see that it had not assimilated in full. In fact, it wasn't even halfway done. After it stopped pouring out, the pillar suddenly collapsed violently. Cracks formed on it, and Meng Li could do nothing to stop it. It eventually collapsed into pure Qi, but there was far less than what was used to create the pillar.
Meng Li had only one idea as to why that happened - the pillar was not big enough. So, he cultivated. He gathered solidified Qi within his Dantian. He gathered far more than what was required but from experience, he knew that the mysterious power was far more demanding the more he had to have. For example, the last ten percent were far more demanding than the beginning fifty. Thus, he gathered practically a hundred times what was required for a normal pillar. It was about one tenth of the total Qi he used to build the previous pillars. The power he gathered was extreme. The pressure the pillar created affected even his strengthened body and caused him some pain. It was only enough to make him frown a bit, but it was still astonishing. It had to be known that for him to be affected by the mere pressure of something, that something would need to have a cultivation of at least the origin core. Or at least from Meng Li's estimations it was so. Of course, that only applied to the pressure from outside, and the pressure from the pillar affected his inside directly, but it was still astonishing.
The moment the pillar emitted the mysterious power, the amount of it that poured out was much more than the entire previous pillar produced. He managed to complete practically half of the process instantly. Of course, as the difficulty grew exponentially, this speed didn't last long.
In the end, it was a close shave, but Meng Li managed to merge the pillar. It stood within his Dantian, like an emperor looking at its' subjects. Even looking at it would create a faint mental pressure. However, Meng Li was unaffected. He could only look at his Dantian in joy.
The instant the pillar formed, the space within his Dantian grew by ten times, and he could sense that its' sturdiness was also increased considerably. The pressure it could withstand was far more than before. Even if he didn't protect himself, he estimated that Qi Sea cultivators wouldn't be able to smash his Dantian even with their full power. It had to be said that the Dantian is an extremely weak point for any cultivator, and ordinarily, even a peak Qi Foundation cultivator could be crippled by a mere Qi Gathering ant. Thus, it was always heavily protected by the cultivator. With how much his Dantian increased in strength, how could Meng Li not be happy?
Now, he couldn't wait until he created pillars strengthening the other two Dantians. However, one thing had to be mentioned - the strange feeling in the back of his head didn't stop, and it only increased after he strengthened the middle Dantian. It was strange - if it didn't decrease now, then when would it? Meng Li didn't know, But he decided to finish supporting all three Dantians and think later. So, he sunk into cultivation.
Soon, he had enough energy to create another pillar like the one he used to support the Lower Dantian. This time, it took less time than previously to do so. And the first time when he did so, the huge amount of solidified Qi contained within his Dantian actually pressured him somewhat, but after strengthening it, it was negligible.
The creation of the middle Dantian pillar went smoothly. It seemed like the mysterious power required to support the middle Dantian was less than the lower Dantian. Meng Li wasn't exactly sure why it was so.
However, the strangest thing in his opinion was that the uneasy feeling in the back of his head which was only growing stronger with the pillars he built actually decreased significantly with the creation of this pillar. It was as though the feeling was targeted at the middle Dantian, and breaking through only helped him to feel it more clearly. However, Meng Li didn't dwell on it, instead creating the pillar to support the upper Dantian. That also went smoothly, and although he couldn't see any immediate difference, he could tell that it would help him immensely in the future.
Now it came time for Meridians. Meng Li wasn't quite sure where to start, so first, he decided to try and support the entire network at once. To his surprise, it worked! He could immediately tell that the capacity of his meridians grew practically ten fold, and the speed of Qi absorption also grew significantly. It was something to rejoice about, but Meng Li could tell that he could do better - he could support specific meridians.
In the end, after days of experimenting, Meng Li finally reinforced all of them. In the process, he learned a lot about the meridians of the human body. There were eighty one in total. They spanned through the entire body, connecting all parts of his body with the three Dantians. He also learned that they weren't only used for Qi - Vitality and soul power coursed through them as well, though not in such huge quantities. He speculated that it was because he was cultivating Qi, not those powers. Maybe there were other cultivation methods which focused on cultivating these specific powers, like focusing on the soul or the body. It was likely, but Meng Li wasn't interested for now. He might learn about it more in the future, but for now, he wanted to finally break through and finish with the pillars.
After he built the last pillar, the nagging feeling in the back of his head stopped. And, he felt as though he was... Whole. As if his existence was complete. Despite it being merely a fleeting feeling, Meng Li was still amazed. During that brief moment, it felt as if he was one with the world... As though all of the mysteries of heaven and earth were revealed before his eyes.
Sadly, despite having that feeling, it was ultimately just that - a feeling. Meng Li didn't get any comprehension from that. Still, it was an amazing experience.
With Meng Li finishing, he was ready to break through to the next stage - Pillar Merging. It was self-explanatory, but there were several important things. First off, he had to choose a main pillar. Previously, he wanted to merge every pillar into the one supporting his entire body, but now, he wasn't so sure. The pillar supporting his lower Dantian was the one which required the most Qi and which was the most important to the current him. He had an extremely faint feeling that abandoning that pillar supporting the lower Dantian was a grave mistake.
Ultimately, he went with his intuition and decided to make the lower Dantian pillar the main one.
Merging pillars was a simple process - he simply had to choose two pillars and merge them. There was only one catch - the merge was not an equal one. It was impossible to balance two pillars to a point of equilibrium, so one pillar was absorbed by the other. The absorbed pillar would disappear forever, and although the body part it strengthened would be strengthened, the body part which was strengthened the most was the one supported by the pillar absorbing the other pillar. The main pillar was simply the pillar which remained in the end - it was possible to merge two pillars, and then merge the remaining pillar into the main one. Thus, Meng Li went on mergin the pillars in a specific fashion. First, he merged the pillars supporting specific body parts and the bones which were in those body parts. This reduced the count of pillars in his Dantian by two hundred. Then, he merged the pillars supporting specific muscles into the pillars supporting the body part those muscles were a part of. This, too, reduced the count of pillars by seven hundred. And so on - more specific pillars were merged into pillars supporting broader parts. The finger segments into fingers, the fingers into the hand, and the hand into the arm and so on.
In the end of this process, Meng Li was left with the pillars representing his organs and the one pillar representing the body itself, now much stronger, with many pillars merged into it. Meng Li decided to merge all of the organs into the one large 'body' pillar.
Find authorized novels in Webnovel,faster updates, better experience,Please click www.webnovel.com for visiting.
Now, he was left with only eighty six pillars. Those were the pillars supporting the meridians - eighty one of them, as well as the three Dantians, the body itself, and one pillar supporting the entire meridian network. Meng Li was at a loss as to how to proceed. He wanted to fuse all of the pillars into the pillar supporting the lower Dantian, but how was he supposed to go about doing so?
Meng Li decided to first reduce the numbers of pillars. The pillars supporting the meridians couldn't be merged together, but they could be merged into the meridian network pillar. And so, Meng Li did that. He was left with five pillars. He decided to merge the meridian network pillar into the pillar supporting the entire body.
He succeeded, but the process was hard. Previously, he only needed less than ten minutes to merge two pillars, but to merge those pillars, he spent more than an hour. He was actually sweating during the process too - the mental strain was intense. However, Meng Li carried on.
To further reduce the number of pillars, he started merging the upper and lower Dantians. However, to his surprise, during the initial stages of merging, the equilibrium, which normally collapsed practically immediately, actually lasted for a few seconds. It was fragile, and could end with only the slightest of disturbances, but it did exist. Meng Li hurriedly pulled apart the pillars. Fortunately, while the initial equilibrium was present, he could stop the merging at any time without a backlash.
What just happened was astonishing to him. It was said to be impossible! How could two pillars be merged without one immediately gaining an advantage!
Such an event was unheard of, but Meng Li had to analyse the situation properly. He initially wanted to merge all the pillars into one and he chose the lower Dantian as it was the most relevant to his cultivation, but all three of them were equally as important - if he could, he would prefer they exist on equal terms, and not in an order. Thus, if he could somehow manage to merge them and still keep them separate entities, it would be for the best. However, a problem occurred. If he merged two of the Dantians, then the resulting pillar would be far stronger than the remaining one, and would immediately dominate the merge. If he wanted to merge them on equal terms, it would have to happen at once.
It was unheard of to merge more than two pillars at once, but it was also unheard of to merge two pillars without one assimilating the other, so what did he have to worry about? If it really ended up failing, he would simply stop the fusion and withstand the backlash before doing it the normal way. He was confident he would survive in such a case.
With a solid plan, Meng Li immediately jumped into action and brought the three pillars close to each other.