Chapter 15: Qi Level

I took a deep breath. There were just two possible options and yet I had difficulty in picking an answer. So, I decided to take a midpoint. "Hmm, let me think about it." I replied.

"Oh, okay." Father replied as I got up after having the food.

That's when I remembered to ask one important question. "Father, when is the rookie tournament?"

"They don't have a date fixed yet. But, it'll be about five months later." He replied. I thanked them for the food and walked back to my room.

"Why didn't you just say yes?" Goldy asked.

I sighed. "Damn, I didn't expect this from you, Goldy! You do know that those two will be around the tournament, right? And it's like the second important scene in the game. So, if I'm around, I'm really afraid that I'll get tangled with them or the villainess as a matter of fact, in some way, shape or form." I replied.

"Meh, that's not that big of a deal!" Goldy spoke.

"Ha, I wish I can speak nonchalantly like you do about meeting the ones with solid plot armor. As a matter of fact, you have one too, right?" I asked.

"Nah, I'm just too strong for these humans to do anything against me. So, if you wanna be as nonchalant as me about that stuff, just grow as strong as me." He replied.

"Hmm, let's get to training then!" I spoke as I ran towards my room.

"So, what do you have?" Goldy asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked back.

"Well, like… Qi pills and stuff!" He replied.

"Oh, I got a ton! Like super high quality stuff for cheap rates! Behold!" I went under my bed and dragged out the boxes of Qi pills that I bought before the journey.

Goldy got close to the pills and took a look at it. He didn't seem satisfied when he completed his inspection. "Trash." He sighed.

"Huh?"

"All of this… It's just trash. For you, at least." He replied.

"What the hell, man? The old man in that shop sells quality stuff! Don't disrespect him like that." I spoke. I was kinda furious that he called my Qi pill collection as trash.

"No, I didn't mean it like that! It's just these pills are no longer compatible with your body." He replied.

"Explain. I'm not gonna understand shite if you don't explain stuff. And it worked pretty well in the game. So, why not here?" I asked.

"Okay, I'll explain. When you entered the game, it was a new character, right? A new character with no basics of cultivation, Qi and stuff. So, the character's Qi center is like a newborn baby's. It's never truly circulated Qi by themselves. So, if it's introduced to these cheap Qi pills which contain one year worth of Qi by the way, they can show tremendous growth. However, that's not your case." Goldy explained.

"But, why? I've never experienced cultivation or circulated Qi in my body!" I refuted.

"Look, that's not the case. Qi is life force, you see. So, if you were not circulating it, you would've been dead already." He replied.

"But wouldn't that mean that the babies would be dead by the time they're born?" I asked. I clearly didn't get what he was trying to explain.

"No, you missed a crucial point. I said that they never circulated Qi by themselves. But, it does happen unconsciously. So, even with your broken Qi center, you have unconsciously circulated Qi. You see, if Qi pills are given to one person who has never forcefully circulated their Qi, they would never understand the difference that it brings. They would only understand it later, once they circulate it by themselves and they could notice that they might have a higher intensity of Qi in them than a person who never used such a pill." He explained.

"I'm still not catching it." I shook my head. I cursed myself for being such a dunce.

Goldy sighed. "Okay, just clean the damn slate and listen to what I'm saying from now on. Okay, you still remember how 'The World of Cultivation' game worked?" He asked.

"Yea, of course!" I could at least reply to that confidently.

"Okay, then this will be much simpler. You remember how your Qi center had levels in it? Like jade green Qi for level one, ruby red Qi for level two and stuff?" He asked.

"Yea, I kinda remember it! So, what of it?" I asked.

"Hmm… So, you're level three, blue sapphire Qi." He replied.

"What! How the hell did that happen?" I was truly surprised by this revelation. I understood why I can't use these pills anymore, but I didn't know how it happened.

"You see… Since you had this curse and the Qi loss began at an early age,your family introduced your body to Qi pills at that stage. So, what happened was that when the reserve Qi inside you, which is already very little by the way, was introduced to the pill, it nourished greatly and your Qi increased. However, it didn't matter since all that Qi seeped out of your body and it only had that reserve Qi in you. But slowly, after consuming a whole lot of Qi pills, your inner reserve Qi slowly refined itself and turned into ruby red." Goldy explained.

"I see. That makes sense… like a bit of sense. But how did I get to level three?" I asked.

Goldy gave out a nervous chuckle. "That would be because of me. You received my core to fix your Qi center, right? So, the thing is that it couldn't naturally fix the center by itself. It needed a little external Qi to start the fixing process. So, I gave out a little bit of mine… Like an extremely small amount. A thousand years or something."

"You poured a thousand years worth of Qi into me!?" I was about to scream, but he closed my mouth.

"Hey, chill. I used most of it to fix the Qi center. However, like a hundred years worth of Qi got out and mingled with your inner Qi. So, it got to level three." He replied.

"Drag it back! What the hell did you do with my Qi center?" I asked. To use a thousand years worth of Qi for fixing my Qi center seemed like madness!

"Ah, your Qi center can store about seven hundred years worth of Qi now. It should've been six hundred, but since your Qi leveled up, so did the center." He replied.

My mind was in a frenzy when I heard his words. "Okay, let me just process it now. It's confusing but to get to level four in the Qi level, I have to collect about seven hundred years of Qi and then I have to expend that Qi altogether to expand my Qi center and my reserve Qi together, right? Wait, that puts my level ups under scrutiny. I didn't have a filled up Qi center in either of those cases." I shouted.

"Ah, this is so hard to explain!! Listen, your first level up actually took a lot more time than you imagine. What should have happened after you consume about thirty pills, happened after about a thousand pills or something. So, that's an anomaly. And you do know that the level up criteria for level two to three for a normal person is hundred years, right? Since, your Qi center was in the midst of development, your body thought of you as a normal person once it received the Qi and leveled up, in turn increasing the capacity by a hundred years, like a normal person." Goldy explained.

"So, if I wanna level up again, I would have to use the sacred pill, which has about thirty years worth of Qi, rather than the refined Qi, which has ten years worth and then start the long process of getting to seven hundred with it… So, if I reach seven hundred, will my body consider me as a normal person and increase the capacity by an extra three hundred or will it go up by seven hundred?" I asked.

"Seven hundred, since it'll recognize your Qi center this time, since it's developed… Honestly, that's cool, isn't it? Who else will have that level of Qi? You can train all the techniques that you want!" He spoke in excitement.

However, I had other things in my mind. "That is, if I ever get my hand on a sacred pill." I replied.

"Huh?"

"Don't you know?"

"What?"

"Damn, you don't remember how the character only gets a sacred pill once they complete a mission of one of the mid tier sects?" I asked.

"Ah, mid tier for sacred ones and higher tier for the next level Qi item, yea…" He mumbled.

"We're a low tier sect. We only have access for refined Qi pills. And I can't do missions either, since it will raise suspicions as to why I'm collecting the sacred Qi pills." I replied.

Goldy sighed, before giving out a bright smile. "Well then, we've got only one choice. We'll steal it!" He made a bold proclamation.