It took far less time ho Edward to concentrate after the constant practice and he entered the trance-like state easily enough. His intent this time was clear cut though not simple.
Natural Qi from outside his body stated steering as Edward sent a general command for it to enter his body. Almost unnoticeable amounts of qi that already in his body moved at the same time as it started to congregate into one line that began flowing near his skin and pulling in the Qi from outside. Edward had managed to move that small amount of Qi without any backlash or stinging pain after many painful tries. It was the newest and topmost layer of Qi that had entered his body and thus it hadn’t completely integrated.
The small band of Qi that went around his body and pulled Qi inside of it continued on its path all over Edward’s body, it was his idea that he would need to first make the Qi his own in order to do anything else and he thought that making circles around his body under his intent constantly making it conform to his will would make that process extremely fast compared to the usual.
Thus, after fifteen minutes and tens of rotations, Ed felt that it was finally time to move on to the next step. With every single ounce of mental power, he had left Edward commanded the Qi to stop the rotations and flow to a certain spot in his body.
By now the small wisp of Qi had grown much bigger, the Qi it held in it was more than all the Qi Edward had ever wielded so far added together. Hence it wasn’t an easy fit to do what he wanted to do, but the power of a human’s mental faculties should never be underestimated.
The Qi flew in a rush towards Ed’s navel where the Dantian is usually said to be. Edward commanded it to stop there and start swimming in a tornado-like form. He used his everything to change its shape as it swirled around itself. From a haphazard tornado to a compact sphere, the transformation was slow and difficult, but it happened. It continued constricting and growing smaller and smaller, the Qi there moving at incredible speeds with slight amounts escaping during the whole process from Edwards control.
Edward knew he had succeeded when the sphere stopped moving about and clicked into place. Suddenly an indescribable feeling came over Edward. Pure ecstasy, bliss. His mind went numb and his breath got stuck in his throat as the feeling literarily flowed throughout his whole body.
He was a little ashamed to think that it felt one thousand times better than an orgasm, as his first thought right after it went away and his brain started working again, and especially ashamed that his second thought was that he had indeed orgasmed after losing control of his body.
‘Note to self, whenever done in the future don’t use fresh underwear.’ Edward commented to himself as he quickly got up and hid somewhere to wash up and change clothes.
“Where are you going?! Are you okay? Did it succeed!?” Adel yelled as her brother didn’t say anything right after spasming where he was sitting for a minute without taking a breath during that time.
“I will give the details later! It went well!” Edward answered as he ran away trying to retain some of his dignity.
“Yes sir!” A police officer saluted and bowed to his superior as he left the office. Living the two people there to talk alone.
“So…. Are we going in Sir?” Zhou Tong, the assistant doctor, said slowly to the greasy Head of police across from him.
“….. What do you think? It took you long enough to find where that license plate was last seen… I almost died waiting.” The Head of police sat back in his extra wide and comfy chair as he nagged at Zhou Tong for his supposed tardiness.
“Though Sir it still is unclear where in the mountains they are living.” Zhou Tong gathered his courage and stated at the Head.
‘Where can they be? They are just two people! They probably leave in a tent in some abandoned dirt path. Get everyone to march up those paths till they find them. Remember that we want them alive!”
“Yes Sir! What about the required authorization by the Governor Sir?”
{BANG!}
“As if you need to care about that! Do you think I can’t even ask my old friend for some simple authorization?! Are you mocking me here?!!” The man’s fat jiggled around as he yelled and spit furiously at Zhou Tong for his comment.
“if you want to go anywhere in life then you better learn to be a good and obedient dog that doesn’t speak more than he should!...... Don’t step out of line again. You got that?”
“Yes Sir! Please forgive my rudeness!” Zhou Tong bowed down to the Head of Police as he rushed out of the door and carefully closed it. His nails had by no drawn blood from his palms and even his lip was bleeding as his head grew red from the increased blood pressure.
He took a few breaths to calm himself down and walked away as if nothing had happened, cleaning the blood off of himself with some handkerchiefs that he always carried around.
“Hahahahah! I can’t believe it, Ed! Hahaha!” Adel smacked the ground while holding her stomach dying of laugher. She laughed and laughed till tears came out of her eyes.
“It’s okay Ed. Don’t feel bad about it. At least you succeeded.” Said Adel as she gathered herself slightly, though her quivering lips revealed exactly how she actually felt.
“Wait till you get to it and we will see how you laugh then. Hmph!” Ed said as he turned away from his sister in fake anger.
“How are you feeling though?” Adel said and Edward turned around ready to retort her when he saw her and understood that she actually meant that question.
“It… is actually pretty weird. I will have to get used to it but to make it simple enough for you to understand…. If I grabbed the Hatchet right now to go and cut a tree…, the strength I put in would be enough to cut it in one swing but the Hatchet would just shatter in pieces from the force of the swing… That is the feeling I am getting.”
“Feeling?”
“Yeah and weirdly I fell that it is completely right. With no room to doubt it.”
“What is that? Some sixth sense awakening?”
Edward shrugged at Adel’s questions since he truly didn’t know anything. Though she was probably in the right direction since Edward himself would describe the feeling like instinct.
It was nice and all to e able to think but Edward was completely and utterly exhausted and sleep took over soon enough. It was probably the greatest sleep he had had in ages.
It took 10 hours for him to wake up. The sun had risen a while ago and even the breakfast cooked by Adel was starting to get cold. Edward got up from the ground and sat down on the wooden chair where he usually ate his breakfast.
He finished it in lightning speed before he headed over to Adel who was working hard on the House.
Today would be the day when they finished the two bedrooms. The whole house was made out of wood, even the modern, more insulated rooms of the house, which wasn’t really a problem since it looked nice without needing paint and thus, they wouldn’t have to deal with that whole ordeal.
They got to work sawing wood, polishing, nailing boards in place, and carrying. It went smoothly albeit with a few broken wooden boards as Edward put a little too much strength in his movements.
“And…. It’s done! We sleep in beds tonight boys!”
“Who are you talking to Ed? Have you finally gone crazy?”
“Oh shut up. I wanted to say it. You got a problem!?”
The two enjoyed their time as they did they placed the previously concealed mattresses on the bed inside of their rooms and without hesitation jumping on them and stretching, feeling the soft fabric instead of the hard ground for the first time in a week felt so good that they almost dozed off.
They didn’t sleep though and instead kept working. Just because their rooms were now finished didn’t mean that they could get lazy all of a sudden, instead, they started working even harder.
Plenty of times they messed up since they weren’t experienced builders or anything of that short, but it didn’t matter much as they had the stamina, strength, and patience required to fix those mistakes and keep moving relentlessly. Qi really helped them in every single way conceivable.
They could see, hear, smell, and feel things better than ever before. They both grew taller and any imperfections their body had gathered in their lives so far were completely reversed as they stood straight without any pains. Their muscles had grown stronger their skin tougher and their bones were probably getting more unbreakable every second.
A few days after Edward had formed his very own Dantian he was practicing moving Natural Qi around like usual. It had become much easier after the Dantian was formed which Ed understood as his Mental power becoming stronger, and thus even a normal person could see something almost transparent, like a sparkling wisp floating in circles around Ed. It went slow and then fast in many directions and curves, it straightened and dropped, it spread out and congregated in a sphere. It truly was a wonder to look at.
As Edward was playing with the Qi and training his abilities at controlling them, he suddenly had an idea. He had understood previously that he couldn’t simply do whatever he did with Natural Qi to his Inner Qi and thus formed the Dantian. Now though that he had formed it why couldn’t he take a small amount of Qi from it and make it exit his body?
Almost as if the Qi was waiting for some disconnected from the evermoving sphere that was his Dantian without breaking the shape and flowed straight out of his body and into the ball that he had created in front of him.
Edward stared dumbfounded at the sphere of Qi that ha gone from transparent sparkle to hot ball of fire in a split second. As if it was second nature to him Edward could keep that Fireball under control and move it much better than before. He noticed though that he couldn’t change its shape. This said a lot about how Inner and Outer QI interacted. If Edward’s reader side were to describe it, then he had just used the most classic out of all the spells in the world. He had just cast a Fireball.
He was excited! So excited in fact that he stood up and tried to run towards Adel to inform her when he remembered that he was still controlling the ball. He turned to look at it and its form had already distorted enough for him to understand that he had messed up. With everything he could, he commanded the fireball to fly up into the sky.
It shot off at a speed probably more than 90 kilometers an hour when only a few seconds later it blew up.
It would be more correct to say that it expanded but it happened fast enough for it to break the sound barrier and thus the clap of the barrier-breaking echoed all around the mountains, waking up the area completely as all animals grew a little restless for some time till everything went back to the usual calm as if nothing had happened.
The orange and red fire that had spread in the air essentially dissolved into it as any and all signs of its existence disappeared.
“Ed! What was that!?” Adel came running over right away, checking to see if everything was fine.
“Don’t worry so much. It was just mt way of celebrating about my new discovery.” Edward said, not giving the full story since he didn’t want Adel to worry and nag at him.
“….. Okay then. What was that new discovery?!” Adel said with newfound excitement. She had read and written down all the books they had rented the past month and was even keeping records of everything we experienced and thus she was really excited to hear the news.
As Edward was explaining things to his sister some police officers near a lone cherry tree looked up at where the sound similar to an explosion sounded only to see something like orange smoke spread and disappear in the air.
“Shui! Report right now to Mr. Zhou, I will try to get a closer look.”
“Yes Sir!” The policeman answered as he turned around and marched opposite of his superior, he entered the police car further down and used the radio to report to every other officer sent on this mission.
