Outside the door, there was continuous sound of fluttering sleeves, but no one rushed into the Hall.
This was the rare, priceless and unique treasure, the Jade Annulus of He Clan, which the warlords of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods were falling over each other in their eagerness to obtain, the land under the heavens' one and only priceless treasure from the tale ‘Returning the Jade Annulus to Zhao', which was on everyone's lips for all eternity, the one Qin Shihuang use to obtain the world and unify China.
At this moment, suddenly Xu Ziling felt that his connection with his own country's thousand-year history could not be broken.
A gentle and reserved voice calling out the name of Buddha came from the door, followed by, "Pinseng [lit. impoverished monk, a humble term use by monk of himself] Bu Chen [his name literally means ‘not to be angry' or ‘no hatred'] is the chief of our Temple's Four Great Protector Vajra, with specific responsibility of guarding the treasure. If Shizhu [benevolent master (term used by a monk to address a layperson)] is willing to get back on the right path, Bu Chen promises to let Shizhu leave.”
Xu Ziling took a step forward and stretched out his hand to grab the treasured jade annulus.
A burst of difficult-to-describe ice-cold air penetrated the palm of his hand and entered in.
Deliberately changing his voice, Xu Ziling let out a harsh laughter and said with voice full of furious rage, "Since Laofu dares to come to take the treasure, I have enough confidence that I am going to be able to leave. I just don't know whether Bu Chen believe it or not.”
A cold humph came from the outside, followed by a strong, overbearing voice shouting, "Ignorant fanatic, you dare to come to Buddhist's peaceful place and display shockingly bad behavior. If you don't lay down the treasured jade immediately and leave the holy temple, don't blame my, Bu Chi's [lit. not stupid/foolish] demon staff for not showing mercy.”
Xu Ziling quietly raised his true qi, while very carefully he sucked the cold air from the jade annulus into the palm of his left hand, passing through the yangyu meridian on the outside of his elbow, to the jianjing acupoint on his shoulder, and down toward dai meridian, and as the final stretch of the journey it went to du meridian on his back.
Right now his biggest problem was that his qi has been dispersed, plus he received the Jade Annulus of He Clan's influence; if he could not change the situation, his only option was to obediently accept Bu Chen's ‘kind intention' by abandoning the treasure and covering his head and sneaking away like a rat.
Hence his most critical priority was to see whether he could rely on the Secret to Long Life's fantastic inner qi to tame this treasure.
Cold qi was everywhere. Xu Ziling felt as if his meridians were about ready to burst, the jittery feeling in his heart seemed to be ready to explode at any time, the hair on his body stood on its roots, and his eyes, ears, mouth and nose seemed to close up that the pain was unbearable.
Only the zuqiao acupoint inside the yintang [not sure what it is, 印堂] on the space between his eyebrows still had clarity, so that he did not turn crazy.
While clenching his teeth to bear the pain, struggling hard to fight the threat of fire deviation, he roared in laughter and said, "Anybody dares to enter the Hall door even for half a step, I will apply my inner power to crush this trinket, so that nobody will get it.”
Another deep and low voice outside the door said, "Pinseng Bu Tan [not greedy]. Shizhu is mistaken; for such thing as sacred treasure, it is the deepest mystery of God and Buddha who will determine its fate, absolutely not for a mortal to decide. If Shizhu can destroy this treasure, it is simply the Will of Heaven!”
This moment, Xu Ziling's mind was fully focused on the Jade Annulus of He Clan, also concentrated the cold qi inside the meridians in his entire body; he was already at the stage where he could not bear anymore.
The most frightening was that his whole body was unable to move a single step; even if he wanted to put the Jade Annulus of He Clan down, he did not have the strength to do so.
Suddenly his energy and qi rose up violently.
He clearly felt a huge Buddhist monk was coming down on his back, and yet he had absolutely no way of dodging or dealing with it.
At the beginning he was still able to control the speed of the cold air going through his meridians, hoping to add to, and fuse with, the burning hot yang power within his body, to take full advantage of it.
Who would have thought that as he absorbed the cold qi, the mysterious force from the Jade Annulus of He Clan suddenly grew exponentially? Like a surging tide and rolling waves it rushed into his system, turning itself into a vast and mighty, violent cold stream, so that his own true qi was smashed and crumbled into pieces.
When any meridian was unable to withstand the incoming pressure and burst, that would be the stage when fire-deviation was irreversible.
While crying in his heart, ‘my life is finished', the heavy Buddhist staff struck his back.
With a loud bang Xu Ziling's mind was severely shaken, his tiger-body violently shook, but to his own surprise he did not hear the sound of his flesh snapped and his bones shattered.
Instead, he heard a stifled grunt from behind.
‘Poof! Poof! Poof!'
Along with the sound of heavy breathing, he also heard footsteps going away, so he knew that the attacker was jolted by the reaction force and was staggering back out of the door.
The instant he was hit by the staff, Xu Ziling felt his body relaxed.
It was as if the cold qi that was nearly causing him to suffer fire-deviation suddenly found a venting point, so just like a bursting dam, the flood of water was using the Buddhist staff as the channel to discharge out of his body.
Furthermore, his body suddenly felt empty and floating; the feeling was so unbearable that his knees nearly gave up to bring him down to the floor,
Xu Ziling did not dare to be negligence; he promptly aroused his inner qi.
A wonderful thing happened.
The ‘snatching the heaven and the earth' essence of the burning hot true qi from the yongquan acupoint of his left foot mixed with the Jade Annulus of He Clan's cold energy still from its source invading his body from the palm of his left hand.
Realizing what happened, the quick-thinking Xu Ziling, this time learning from experience, regulated his true qi to synchronize its speed with the incoming cold qi from the Jade Annulus of He Clan, so that the two converged at the ocean of qi below his dantian, the most important acupoint shengsi qiao [life and death opening/orifice].
‘Bang!'
He heard the sound of heavy object falling to the ground and repeated shouts from behind him.
Xu Ziling did not have the leisure to wait. He knew that if he did not immediately bring the Jade Annulus of He Clan's fantastic cold stream invading his body under control, this time he could forget about leaving this place alive.
With an abrupt intake of a mouthful of qi, he dispelled the jittery feeling and restlessness, which came from the Jade Annulus of He Clan's influence, completely out of his mind and flung it far away into the ocean, while tightly guarding a bit of sobriety and calmness in his zuqiao acupoint, and putting his mind completely on the ocean of qi.
This was the basic skill ‘concentrating the mind to enter the acupoint' taught by Fu Junchuo. It's just that when Fu Junchuo taught him, she had never dreamed that he would use it under this special case that nobody has ever heard about.
One hot, one cold, two qi power coming from two different sources, like arrows entering the qi ocean.
Xu Ziling knew that this was the moment between life and death, success and failure. His spirit was as clear and quiet as the moon in the well, with the mind controlling the strength, transforming the true qi within his body into a vortex of strange energy, like a winding stick or a long snake, coiling itself around the cold qi from the Jade Annulus of He Clan entering his acupoints.
If he had not had rich experience mutually linking his qi with Kou Zhong's yin and cold true qi, this moment his natural reaction would be trying to expel the terrifying cold qi invading his body with all his strength, and would not attempt to use it for his own.
After training the ‘converging yin and yang' with Kou Zhong, within his true qi, there was yin hidden in the midst of yang, removing the danger of lone yang growing uncontrollably, but the true qi was still yang and hot; the yang was still dominant, with yin as the supplement.
Only the cold qi from the Jade Annulus of He Clan was greatly different from Kou Zhong's; it grew and multiplied without end, brimming with vitality. Xu Ziling was unable to specifically define the cold qi from the Jade Annulus of He Clan. It was very different from any qi energy generated within the human body; it carried an irresistible force, enormous without equal.
The small sized Jade Annulus of He Clan, only three cun square, stored some kind of seemingly endless, inexhaustible terrifying energy.
The two streams of qi finally converged at the ocean of qi.
Xu Ziling raised a mouthful of true qi again, he spun his own true qi to wind around the cold qi.
‘Boom!'
He was completely at a loss of what happened; only all his meridians felt expanding, and then immediately shrinking. Swelling and shrinking, he felt his nerve was being pounded by a big iron hammer.