Both Li Shen and Li Shu appeared inside a room and looking around, Li Shen realize it was his own in the East Wing.
“Shen’er, stay here and rest for now.”
“Huh? But after what I did I wanted to offer an apology to those I've hurt. I’m guessing they’re in an uproar even now.”
Li Shu placed his hand on Li Shen’s shoulder and said.
“You can do that tomorrow on your birthday.”
“But-”
“Shen’er, remember, a prince need not worry about making others wait for them. For now, just rest, and I’ll come back for you tomorrow.”
Li Shen nodded and with that Li Shu teleported away.
A long sigh left Li Shen’s mouth before he placed Little Snow on the bed and left for the bathroom.
With a loud splash, Li Shen entered the oval wooden bath full of water causing some to spill out.
“It’s so surreal that so much happened in such a short time.”
A window was in front of Li Shen and he rested his head against the bath edge while he absentmindedly stared at the slightly orange sky as the sun sets.
He was lost in thought as he mumbled.
“Seven Great Ancestral Clans, Primordial Era, leaving the planet for some inheritance. What a family to be reincarnated in. I suppose I’ll spend some time on it in the future."
"But I’m more surprised about how much I changed during this time...”
The water in the bath was disturbed as Li Shen lifted his hand and placed it against his bare chest.
With his eyes closed, he felt his heartbeat.
There he also sensed a dark flame inside his chest, perhaps a result of the Cardinal Sin Manipulation Soul Art fusing with his Seven Sins Plum Blossom.
He opened his eyes after a moment and the dark flames appeared in his eyes, while his Seven Sins Plum Blossom with the flame ring around it appeared on his forehead.
“...And the powers I gained.”
Li Shen then looked around the bathroom but he saw that nothing was different than before, the world still look the same.
A thoughtful look came over his face before he lifted his palm. Immediately, a miniature dark flame appeared on top of it before it wilted away leaving a small plum blossom there.
“What's this supposed to be?”
Li Shen squinted his eyes and examined this small plum blossom. It was pitch black and he could feel the seven cardinal sins emanating from it.
He wanted to take the time to figure out the changes in his body and the powers he gained, but the way this was going he couldn’t make heads or tails of either the former or the latter.
Frowning, Li Shen shook his hand making the plum blossom dissipate. After which he grasp at the void while his Qi Sea in his dantian and Sea of Consciousness started to rotate in sync.
A suction force then came from his palm and Time Qi particles were drawn from the void. They entered his hand in streams and using the cultivation method he had created, Li Shen circulated the Time Qi through a specific path in his meridians before it reached his dantian.
His Qi Sea absorbed it before Li Shen paused its rotation.
“My cultivation is faster and smoother than before. As expected from having a hundred meridians opened. I feel like I don't even need to sit still like common cultivation practices. I could move while cultivating, though it would be a bit slower than normal.”
Li Shen thought for a moment with a hand under his chin. Soon, his eyes brighten and he said loudly.
“I’ll call this Constant Qi Circulation!”
“Establishing a connection with the Qi between heaven and earth and my dantian so I have a constant flow of energy. Cultivating any type of Qi Cultivation Method ultimately boils down to inhaling Qi, circulating and absorbing the purer form of that Qi breath before exhaling the remaining impure Qi.”
“I could create a constant motion between these steps passively. And although I might not be able to cultivate towards a breakthrough with this method alone, there were so many hours during the day I could spend cooped up in seclusion cultivating. With this, I can cut down on that time. The best thing about this as well, is that my Qi Sea would be directly connected to heaven and earth making it impossible to detect the Time Qi I’m absorbing.”
“But I’ll have to use my Qi Sea projection since my original Qi Sea in my dantian won’t work.”
With that, Li Shen smiled but he couldn’t contain his excitement and ended up bursting into arrogant laughter.
“Am I not a genius or what?! Constant Qi Circulation, I wonder why anyone had never come up with this concept, it’s so obvious!”
Li Shen was excited at this breakthrough of knowledge, he wanted to immediately establish a connection between his Qi Sea projection and the Time Qi between heaven and earth, but he couldn’t help but feel something wasn’t right.
“This concept, maybe I have heard of it before. It seems familiar somehow.”
This weird feeling made Li Shen frown and he tried hard to remember if this was something already invented in this era.
After a short moment, the water in the bath splashed around as Li Shen got up and yelled.
“That’s it! That’s where I got this concept from!!”
After yelling Li Shen clenched his fist in front of him.
“Those dreams my past reincarnation had was of different worlds. For some reason only after I had that dream while I was sealed in the plum blossom did I remember that back then I had those nightly dreams of growing up in different worlds. Are those perhaps past reincarnation? Was this not the first but one of many?”
“Shit, I was so preoccupied with everything else I didn’t question these strange memories.”
With a serious expression on his face, Li Shen said.
“My Constant Qi Circulation is similar to something I saw in one of my dreams. They cultivated a different form of energy called mana. And a high-level manipulation of it was them having it constantly circulating in their bodies. I had unknowing copied that concept and applied it with Qi instead.”
Li Shen’s face turned ugly.
“So I didn’t actually invent this concept, I only... copied it?”
“Ugh, God dammit!”
Li Shen let out one of many curses that drifted into Little Snow’s ears.
Raising her head from the bed, she tilted her head to the side while looking in the direction of the bathroom.
Li Shen grabbed a towel from a nearby rack and decided to get out.
His peaceful bath had been ruined by this bitter revelation.
Of course, he was fascinated by the memories he had unlocked from his past life, but they were still blurry. He also specifically remembered always being killed when he was very young, around the age of fourteen.
So this made his knowledge about those different worlds limited. Well, that was even if his theory about them being memories of past reincarnations was real.
He wasn’t sure.
He wished Avarice was here ss he could talk about it with him.
A sad feeling washed over Li Shen as he thought about Avarice.
"Haah! He said to live this life for me and him, not regret his passing."
Li Shen smacked his cheeks as he paused at the door.
"However, about those memories..."
Li Shen frowned
He found it creepy, that each dream he had ended with him dying at the age of fourteen, or just before he could reach that age.
“Was that a coincidence, or was that a sign of something ominous?”
“I could have died today, so maybe I unknowingly dodged a predestined assignation. A result of Heaven's Blessings? Hm, but I also lived past fourteen in my past life.”
"Then again, if that demoness hadn't interfered, I would have been in my village when it was destroyed so..."
Li Shen shivered.
He was starting to scare himself the more he thought about it, so decided not to think about those coincidences. Yes, that's right, coincidences.
Li Shen had worn pants and a one-piece robe that was untied, about to head for his bed but paused
Looking down at his clothes, he saw that they were shorter and tighter than he remembered.
“Have I grown a bit?”
After moving his arms and twisting his waist, he came to the conclusion he had indeed grown a bit.
"I'm a growing boy after all."
Li Shen chuckled as he moved towards his bed and lay down flat on his back.
Little Snow got up and cuddle against his side. As a habit, Li Shen traced his index finger across the long scar on her back, which was usually hidden by her snow-white fur.
As the moon fully came out, Li Shen closed his eyes and began creating the connection between his Qi Sea projection and the Time Qi between heaven and earth.
Minutes passed quickly and not before long hours went by, with some progress showing after.
As the Qi Sea projection in his Sea of Consciousness slowly rotated with the plum blossom projection in the middle, Time Qi particles could be seen appearing before being sucked inside of it.
That Time Qi would then circulate through his meridians getting its purer form extracted before entering his Qi Sea in his dantian. The impure Qi would be expelled from his nose and mouth as he exhaled.
A harmonized process had been created after hours of trying.
Seeing that the concept worked, reaffirmed that the places he saw in his memories might be real.
However, going from theory to practical application was never easy. Forming a complex system in his body like this was only possible with his Qi Sea projection acting as the bridge between the Time Qi in the outside world and the Qi Sea in his dantian, otherwise, it would have been impossible for Li Shen to do it.
That also meant this method of passive cultivation could only be done by him. That was another fact that made his cultivation, and him as a person, unique in this era, or any era for that matter.
Becoming a unique cultivator was what Li Shen wanted, and he was slowly becoming that, albeit he still had a long way to go.
His Heavenly Law comprehension was still in the initial stages, him having only reached a basic level of comprehension of the six natural elements. After comprehending them, Li Shen had planned on moving on to a complex Law, the Law of Time.
That was why he chose to cultivate Time Qi. Somewhere along the way, he was going to fuse the Qi Cultivation System with his Heavenly Law comprehension.
He wasn’t exactly sure which realm of Qi Cultivation where this was possible, but since it was derived from Heavenly Law comprehension and was even a round about why of cultivating it, Li Shen figured combining them must be possible.
In realms like the Nascent Soul Realm, one no longer just manipulates Spiritual Qi but the laws they contained and between heaven and earth.
Perhaps he could start from there by trying to mesh his Heavenly Law comprehension and Qi Law Comprehension in that realm.
However, there was a problem with Li Shen’s plan. His Heavenly Law Comprehension would have to keep up with his Qi Cultivation and vice versa.
If one falls behind the other, Li Shen would be forced to stop one so the other behind could catch up.
This was just one of the challenges though and they were many more nuances he had to think about further.
As for his Soul Cultivation, the more he traversed both his Qi Cultivation System and his Heavenly Physique, his soul would inevitably get stronger making his Soul Attacks even more terrifying.
His Fleshly Body was in a similar situation, he doesn’t have to actively cultivate a Fleshly body technique to make it stronger. He was going to but after having the Chaos Qi reconstruct his body, he chose not to.
He didn’t know what type of Fleshly Body cultivation method would be suitable for him to cultivate when he himself didn’t know his physique fully.
And there were his current Daoist Magic spells and Soul Arts.
He had already established which persona could use which.
Let’s say in an unlikely scenario an assassin suddenly burst down his room door.
Li Shen as the second prince who couldn’t cultivate would use his well-known Supreme grade soul to dish out Soul Attacks using Soul Arts as well as a terrifying physical prowess.
Similar, if he were to sneak out now to hunt down some evildoers, his Faceless Hero persona would be a long-range attacker with a mysterious and powerful Daoist Magic that could conjure endless Sword and Blade Elemental Qi.
He’ll similarly have a stronger fleshly body as well.
Li Shen didn’t know if it was safe to use his Time Qi while he was the Faceless Hero.
It was still rare that out of all the types of Qi someone could use Time Qi. And that person was in the Sea Expansion Realm cultivator no less. That type of talent would definitely draw more than a few pairs of curious eyeballs.
But he couldn’t just refuse to use it in fear of that outcome, what would be the point of cultivating it then if he didn’t use it!
Having it as a trump card his Faceless Hero persona could use seemed like the ideal situation.
With that, Li Shen finish organizing the distribution of his powers.
It was a hassle having to do it, but if he didn’t, his mind would be all over the place and he would eventually come to make mistakes. He would be no different from his previous temperamental self then.
“Oh wait, I almost forgot about that power.”
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