Still jubilated by his findings, Alex walked into the white hall once again, now with a new knowledge of what it was supposed to represent. Pearl walked behind him, looking around as he sought to see what he could find there. It was the same white hall from all those months ago with four doors, one on each side, with 3 of them blocked completely.

“If this is Dantian, there has to be something to show that it is,” Alex said. “Intestines are like mazes, the belly stores food, the lung gardens breathed. What’s up with this then?”

What did Dantian do? Store Qi?

“Is the treasure really in here?” Alex wondered. The possibility just wasn’t there. Hundreds of thousands of people had been through this room, of which a few had to have realized the organ connection. They must have come here, in which case the treasure should have been somewhere here as well.

But it was not.

Alex stomped on the ground a bit. “This floor is made of the same white material as the wall. I can’t even dig through here to see if there is something under here,” he said. “Not that I think there is.”

What would be the point of bringing everyone to get your treasure, only to hide it where they couldn’t get it?

“No, something else has to be the case,” Alex thought, looking around. He walked toward the room, tracing his hand along the wall to see if there was something hidden there.

“How is this place a Dantian?” Pearl asked, thinking in the same direction Alex had. “For one, does the color have anything to do with its importance?”

Alex thought for a moment. “A white Dantian…” he thought. There was no such thing. “Dantians are mostly translucent. Maybe the white is representing that?”

“Then shouldn’t they be transparent?” Pearl asked. “They could’ve used glass.”

“Well, translucent isn’t transparent, but yeah, the white color still doesn’t make sense.”

“And these doors,” Pearl said. “A Dantian doesn’t have four openings. It only had two, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, that has been confusing me for a while. Dantian does have only two openings, but I don’t know if the hall is meant to perfectly represent the Dantian. It’s just there to mark the spot more like. Maybe that’s why the color is irrelevant too.”

Pearl thought for a bit and nodded. “Maybe we could be overthinking about this whole thing. What if this hall isn’t even relevant at all and we’re just trying to find meaning where there is none? Making a connection that isn’t supposed to exist.”

Alex nodded. “Very much possible,” he said. “But… I do believe there is a connection.” ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

Pearl didn’t argue. He looked around the room for any irregularities while asking, “Alright, let’s think for a moment that this is the perfect representation of a Dantian. What is wrong?”

Alex stopped tracing the walls and turned around to get involved in this little exercise that Pearl was doing. “Alright, there is the problem of color and the amount of openings for one,” Alex said.

“Maybe white is supposed to represent a lack of color,” Pearl said. “And maybe the other doors aren’t important, but it is only the open door that matters.”

“Alright,” Alex said. “Aside from that, there is the lack of Qi or something to represent Qi. The breathing gardens had air, the Mind palace had some sort of Spiritual headache-inducing stuff, and the Trueheart Plaza apparently had Saber aura. This… this has nothing.”

As Alex said that, he thought for a moment and shook his head. “That’s not right. There is a formation under here to receive teleportation from outside. Otherwise, we would’ve been scattered all around the secret realm when we came in.”

“A coincidence?” Pearl asked. “Or by design?”

“Has to be by design. With how meticulous the man was, I would doubt if he randomly made this place to be the first thing that everyone saw,” he said. “The first thing…”

Alex slowed down a little as a possible realization struck him. “We’re Qi?” he asked.

“What?” Pearl asked with a confused look.

“We are Qi,” Alex said. “We start in the Dantian and go to the other organs. We are what originate here and move away. We are the Qi here.”

Pearl gave it a thought and saw the possibility behind it. “Okay, if we are the Qi, then what does that mean for the sabers?”

“No, not the sabers,” Alex said as his mind began working. His thoughts ran before his words could and he had to stop as speaking as he quickly ran out of the room to arrive outside.

Whisker could barely keep up with what was going on at this point.

Alex walked out of the door, looking at the wide white path that led all the way to the maze and thereafter. It was there this whole time, letting the people, the Qi, the path to where they had to go.

“That’s… the meridians,” Alex said with a massive smile as he finally understood. “We are the Qi that walks on it, going to the other organs.”

“What does that mean?” Pearl asked excitedly.

“Take some Qi and put it on a path through a meridian, what do you get?” Alex asked.

Pearl finally understood. “A technique!” he shouted.

“That’s right,” Alex said. “This… is a technique. That must be the treasure of this secret realm.”

“The weapon replication technique,” Pearl said.

“Maybe,” Alex said. “Maybe it’s something different. Sure as hell isn’t the Sabers everyone is talking about.”

Alex took a deep breath as he finally felt that he understood the secret behind the secret realm. “This path, if I follow it within my body and use my Qi, I should be able to use the technique.”

“How easy is it?” Pearl asked.

Alex sighed. “Not easy at all. Maybe my Dao of Techniques will help me, but the worst problem I will have is that there are so many meridians, in the thousands if not tens of thousands, that I don’t even know where to begin. The start should be easy, but after that, it’s like the maze again. I have to keep trying.”

“We have time,” Pearl said. “We can go everywhere and see where this path goes through.”

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Alex nodded. “To start with, I need to know which Spiritual root I’m going to use this technique—”

Alex paused for a moment and his head twisted back, looking at the white hall again. “My god, I’m an idiot,” he said. “This isn’t a Dantian, this is a Spiritual root.”

“What?” Pearl asked.

“The meridians. They aren’t directly connected to the Dantian at all. They are connected to the Spiritual root, which is directly on the Dantian.”

“So this is a Spiritual root?” Pearl asked, pointing to the hall.

“Yes,” Alex said. “The four doors finally make sense too. The four primary routes out of a Spiritual root. Create, Control, Compliment, and Cultivate. I need to find which one this is.”

Since there was no way of notifying what sort of technique it was, Alex would have to try it all out.

“And since the hall is white in color, which could also be seen as a lack of color, I’m just going to assume that I’m working with the non-elemental Spiritual Root here.”