Chapter 44—New Blood Qi

In his wife’s room, Lei Feng stood alone before the painting.

He looked at her face for a long moment—the gentle smile, the orange robe, the waterfall behind them both. He let himself remember, briefly, the things worth remembering.

Then he shook his head, sighing.

"I really wanted to have a say in my son’s marriage," he said quietly. His voice was soft, for no one to hear. "That much, at least."

He turned toward the garden outside and lifted his head to the sky, his voice dropping to something more bitter and uncertain.

"I just hope when he remembers his past life memories fully... he will still acknowledge me as his father."

Most reincarnators, when their past life memories returned fully, either acknowledged their current life parents or left. Though only a few would ever agree to call their current life parents their actual parents.

He had accepted that possibility after a sleepless night. Accepting it did not make it hurt any less.

Lei Feng breathed slowly, then crossed to the casket and opened the compartment behind its doors. Inside were hairpins, jewelry, accessories—things he had kept exactly as she had left them. He did not take any of them.

He took the locket.

It was rusted brown, the chain corroded to the same shade. It looked like something found at the bottom of a lake. He held it in his palm and rubbed the surface with his thumb, feeling the rough edges.

"This is the last thing you left me," he said, his throat dry. "And it has all of your power for one use."

He closed his fingers around it.

After a moment, his expression firmed. "I just hope she is not fooling my son." He turned cold as he turned the thought. ’She knew about the Eternal Bond marriage contract. Only someone from a high background would know of that. Someone from that kind of background would not toy with a family like ours.’

He looked at the painting and let himself arrive at the conclusion he had already mostly reached. "I believe her." A pause. "But if my son is being deceived—she will pay for it."

He started to turn away from the painting and stopped mid-step.

’Wait... She mentioned—not married in this life.’

He rubbed his chin. A slow smile began to form.

"How about I test her sincerity by simply arranging her marriage with my son?"

He tucked the locket away and strode out of the room with the focused energy of a man who has found a productive direction for his afternoon.

In the main garden of the Lei household, the first experiment had already reached its conclusion.

The scholar—the handsome prisoner—was shaking. The trembling had escalated well past anything voluntary: his entire body rocked with the force of it, cracks spreading across his skin like the surface of old porcelain, red blood seeping from each line. The bleeding intensified with each second. The shaking became seizure-like in its severity.

Then his body exploded.

Boom!

The detonation was complete—flesh, bones, blood, and fragments spreading outward in every direction. Lei Cheng threw up a vine in front of him in the instant before impact, shielding himself from the wave. Hua Mingyue did not move. The debris simply did not reach her—everything swept away from her direction as though the air around her declined to cooperate with the mess.

The other prisoners had no such protection. They were drenched.

They screamed.

"I’m leaving—"

"I don’t want to die—"

Several fled toward the gates. Terror spread faster than the blood across the garden. At least two had wet their tattered prisoner uniforms.

Lei Cheng let the vine dissolve and looked at the carnage in the garden with a frown.

’Good thing I told the household maids and servants to leave beforehand.’ If they had been present, his father would have summoned him or rushed over to question and interrogate him.

He raised his hand. "Life Intent."

Vines erupted from the ground and shot across the garden in every direction, coiling around the fleeing prisoners and dragging them back in one smooth motion. They were deposited in a rough row in front of him, struggling and scared and drenched in things they would rather not think about.

"You are all on death row," Lei Cheng said.

The prisoners went still.

"The execution there is a clean one," one of them said, with the defensiveness of someone pointing out a relevant distinction. "One beheading. It’s over. Not—this."

"True," Lei Cheng agreed without argument. "But here is what the execution does not offer: if you survive my experiments, you are free. I will release you through those gates." He pointed at the Lei Courtyard exit. "And the constables will be notified. They will not search for you. You walk away free."

Silence.

Then—slowly, one at a time—several prisoners began to nod. Even death became negotiable when hope was placed beside it. Nine in total. The rest kept their mouths shut.

Lei Cheng released the nine who agreed and let the vines fall from them. He waved the rest away without further discussion, moving them away yet under control, tied tightly.

He turned to the large dark stain on the garden ground where the first prisoner had been. The smell reached him almost immediately—dark and wrong, the blood not the clean red of a living body but something deeper and stranger, almost black.

He covered his nose and stepped back. He felt nauseous and almost threw up.

Hua Mingyue appeared at his side, one finger holding the page in her book where she had paused, the rest of the volume closed around it.

"Why do you think you failed?" she asked, folding her free hand.

"Fusion." Lei Cheng thought it through. "Bizarre Qi carries intent—Bizarre Intent, which is a form of Dao. Blood Qi has no such quality. It has no inherent Dao. So when you try to fuse them, there is nothing on one side for the other side to hold onto. They reject each other."

Hua Mingyue nodded. She settled back into the rocking chair, which had been moved to the garden edge by her—presumably to avoid getting splashed by unspeakable things.

"Good. So how do you plan to break through a barrier that even the supreme beings could not cross?"

Lei Cheng clicked his tongue. "Don’t worry. I have time to figure it out."

He began to walk back and forth, thinking out loud.

"Bizarre Intent is essentially a Dao—an intent. Blood Qi has no Dao. So if the problem is a mismatch in quality, the solution is to give Blood Qi its own Dao—an intent that is compatible with its nature. Then they would have the same quality of existence, and the fusion would be possible."

He stopped and turned to Hua Mingyue, who had opened her book again.

"Yue—which intent is most suitable for Blood Qi?"

She lowered the book and looked at him. Her expression shifted very slightly. "Yue?"

He blinked. "You don’t want to be called that?"

She smiled faintly. "It’s fine. Continue." The name sounded strangely natural coming from him.

"There are many intents," he said. "But which one—for the blood specifically?"

"Pick an uncorrupted intent," she said. "For the purity of your body, it must be clean."

"I have a few in mind," he said. "Thunder Dao or Yang Dao, or Life Dao. If we’re talking raw power, Thunder Dao is the strongest. If we’re talking purity, Yang Dao is the cleanest."

"Pick Life Dao," Hua Mingyue said, folding her legs.

"Why? By my reasoning, Yang or Thunder would be—"

"Blood Qi is life," she said simply. "Life Intent is life itself. They share the same root. There is no better match. And research details."

He did not need further explanation. Suddenly, Supreme Yin’s notes made sense, as he never used another dao than life for blood Qi. Lei Cheng waved one of the prisoners forward at random—a medium-built man in torn prisoner robes who stepped forward with a composed face, though Lei Cheng could hear from the rapid rhythm in his chest how frightened he actually was.

Lei Cheng sat down on the ground and pointed for the man to sit in front of him. Both sat cross-legged, facing each other.

He generated a green Life Intent thread in his palm.

Lei Cheng recalled the man’s criminal record. Member of the Hungry Dog Gang. He had kidnapped over a hundred children under five years old, deliberately injured their eyes, ears, or broken their limbs to make them more convincing beggars, then forced them onto the streets and collected whatever money they earned. He had been caught in the act by constables—there was no question of innocent framing here.

Lei Cheng’s eyes went cold for a moment, then cleared.

He placed a hand on the man’s shoulder and began injecting Life Intent. After a few moments, his body had recovered, and the Blood Qi was restored to full. Lei Cheng moved back a little.

"Sense the energy moving through your blood," he said. "Blood Qi."

The prisoner closed his eyes. After a few moments: "Yes. I feel it."

"That is your Blood Qi. Now give me a strand of it—one would be enough."

The man focused. Slowly, a thread of energy the width of a human hair pulled free from his skin into his palm—crimson red, faintly luminous.

Lei Cheng took it into one hand. With his other hand, he guided a thin thread of green Life Intent toward it.

The two energies touched. They began to blend.

Over the course of several moments, the crimson color shifted—warming, brightening, transitioning from red to something between red and gold. Then it settled into a clean, rich gold.

For the first time since arriving in this world, he was holding something that could never be created easily.

’The fusion was surprisingly smooth.’ Lei Cheng smiled, held it, and studied it.

It felt different from anything he had previously encountered. The Blood Qi in its original form had been ordinary—just blood energy, dense and red. The Life Intent he used was vitalizing, clean, and restoring. Bizarre Qi from the golden fox had been chilly and eerie, the kind of energy the body instinctively wanted to flee from.

But this fused energy was something else entirely—warm in a way that was distinct from heat, soothing in a way that was distinct from calm. He had been tired from the morning’s experiments and reading, and from holding this single thread, he felt as though that tiredness had been replaced by something nourished. Not as powerful as Life Intent alone, but it possessed some quality of it.

Then he returned with variations of Life Intent to fuse with Blood Qi. After a few minutes, the Blood Qi in his palm shattered into pieces.

’Ten percent Life Intent seems to be the threshold,’ he noted. ’Any more and it destabilizes. It’s probably tied to cultivation level.’

He passed the existing golden thread back to the prisoner.

"Sense this. Understand the quality of it. I am going to inject Life Intent into your body now—fuse your own Blood Qi to match what you’re holding."

He pressed one hand flat against the prisoner’s chest.

Thud!

The man winced but made no sound.

With the hand on his chest, Lei Cheng fed a continuous stream of Life Intent inward. Under Lei Cheng’s control, the green intent flowed softly and gently through the body. The man guided his red energy to fuse with it, and Lei Cheng controlled the Life Intent to blend with the Blood Qi—making the process simple, smooth, and precise.

Minutes passed.

Then the prisoner’s eyes opened.

They glowed—a clear, bright gold.

"Stop, young master." His voice was steady. "My entire Blood Qi reserves are fused."

Lei Cheng withdrew his hand. "Good."

He pointed upward at the gray sky. "Now fuse it with Bizarre Qi."

The man’s expression became very still. He looked at the sky, and something in him resolved.

"This is it," he said quietly. "If I survive—I’m free."

He closed his eyes. There was no hesitation left. Only resolve. He reached upward with his senses, pulling the gray Bizarre Qi from the atmosphere down into his body. He guided it toward the golden Blood Qi within.

His body began to shake.