Transmigrated into a Grandpa, Embracing the Laid-Back Life

"Not bad!" Lin Yu's voice suddenly became crisp and forceful, full of powerful confidence, "Although I am now only a remnant soul, unable to sweep your meridians with my spiritual sense so you can clearly view them, I can use a different method — I will guide your sense of qi, letting you use your own body to remember that one-and-only pathway!"

Su Ming felt his heart jolt violently, his breath halted.

"The human body itself is the most precise, most profound map!" Lin Yu's voice echoed in his mind. "When a certain acupoint is stimulated it will produce soreness, numbness, distension, or pain. When another point is touched it will trigger heat, coolness, chill, or flow. Your body will tell you! All I need to do is guide that faint sense of qi and make it run along the absolutely safe route I have deduced. At each crucial acupoint I will use a secret method to stimulate it, so you will imprint its exact location into your soul with the deepest bodily sensation!"

Those words struck like a thunderbolt in the night, instantly cutting through the fog in Su Ming's mind.

He trembled slightly from excitement.

"Master!" he blurted out, "When do we start?"

"No rush." Lin Yu's voice steadied, "Take out the Diagram of the Correct Human Hall you got from Xu Qing. Though rough, it at least marks the general path of the Twelve Principal Meridians. Memorize it first, commit the framework to your heart. Leave the rest to me."

Su Ming immediately fished the piece of coarse hemp paper from his bosom and, by the last thread of light filtering through the window, committed every character and every line to memory.

Night fell deep and silent.

Su Ming sat cross-legged in the courtyard, moonlight like water spilling over the yard.

He closed his eyes; the crude Diagram of the Correct Human Hall was already clearly imprinted in his mind.

"Ready, disciple?" Lin Yu's voice came at the right moment.

"Ready, Master!"

"Good. Calm your mind and draw out that thread of sensation from your Dantian." Lin Yu instructed, "Don't be afraid."

Su Ming obeyed. He carefully mobilized the faint glow in his Dantian, coaxing a barely perceptible, warm current out to wander aimlessly through his body.

"Hold it steady. Now, follow my command." Lin Yu's voice sharpened into intense focus. "Imagine your chest, from the midline outward about six cun. Yes, right there. That is Zhongfu, the starting point of the Hand-Taiyin Lung meridian."

Su Ming guided the warm current with thought, slowly moving it toward the position his master had described.

"Very good," Lin Yu praised, "Now keep it there. What comes next may feel…special. Endure it!"

No sooner had he spoken than Su Ming felt as if a cold, thin needle had jabbed suddenly into that spot on his chest!

"Ah!"

He inhaled sharply as the carefully gathered warm current instantly collapsed and scattered. A sharp sour-numb sensation rushed through his chest, nearly jolting him out of meditation.

"Idiot! Who told you to lose focus!" Lin Yu scolded without mercy. "I said endure it! If the qi disperses, gather it again! If you can't handle this little pain, what are you cultivating for — go home and farm!"

Su Ming's face drained of color. Gritting his teeth and ignoring the odd feeling in his chest, he settled his mind once more and recollected the scattered sensation.

But Lin Yu's inner feelings were far less calm than his words implied.

Oh my goodness, I think I went too hard that time. It's really hard to control the intensity of soul-force stimulation, like using chopsticks to pick up a fly. Nearly poked a hole in my disciple's lung. No, no, must be gentler.

The second time, when Su Ming again brought the sensation to that location, Lin Yu's movements were considerably softer.

This time the feeling was no longer a needle prick but like a drop of cold dew falling onto a red-hot iron plate with a faint sizzle.

An indescribable sour distension spread instantly from that point, making half his body tingle.

Prepared this time, Su Ming held his mind rock-solid and let the sensation circle and familiarize itself with that sour distension at the center.

"Remember it? This feeling!" Lin Yu barked. "This is Zhongfu! Now follow down the inner side of the arm about a palm's distance — there is Tianfu!"

Su Ming propelled the warm current by thought, slowly tracing the direction his master indicated.

On the Diagram of the Correct Human Hall that path was only a vague red line, but inside his body it was a dark unknown.

Failure, failure, more failure.

Sometimes the force was misjudged and the qi shattered.

Sometimes Su Ming's intent wavered and the warm flow lost momentum halfway.

Sometimes Lin Yu's soul-force stimulation missed by half a fen and produced not sour distension but a stabbing, burning pain.

In just one hour, fine beads of sweat dotted Su Ming's forehead and his back was soaked through. His face was pale, and he had bitten his lips until they bled.

This was more exhausting than a full day's work in the fields.

Lin Yu wasn't having an easy time either. This fine, meticulous operation consumed him greatly as a weak remnant soul. He felt like a burly man with an embroidery needle carving the Riverside Scene at Qingming on a single grain of rice.

My heavens, this job is not for the faint of heart. Had I known it'd be this troublesome, I should have tricked him into practicing Iron Head Skill instead.

After another failure, Su Ming's qi sensation was completely depleted and he swayed as if faint.

"Master… disciple… can't go on…"

"Trash!" Lin Yu's voice sounded weak but still severe. "You are only at the beginning! Twelve main acupoints on one meridian and you haven't even found the second! Get up, continue!"

Panting, Su Ming could sense the exhaustion in his master's voice. He knew his master was suffering more than he was.

He said nothing, only quietly ran the steps of the Aura Concealment Art to calm himself and recover his composure.

A moment later he opened his eyes again, the fatigue in them replaced by stubborn resolve.

"Again!"

This time, when the faint thread of qi reached his arm, Su Ming's concentration surpassed anything he'd felt before.

He no longer treated it as a mere task; he used his whole body to feel and remember.

"Right here!" Lin Yu's voice came at the perfect instant in his mind.

A gentle, precisely-timed stimulus arrived.

Boom!

Su Ming felt a tiny little firework explode at that point on his arm. A warm, tingly sensation flowed up the arm, resonating with the Zhongfu on his chest.

Connected!

The route he had groped through the darkness was, at that moment, linked by two bright points.

With the first success, the remainder of the process, though still difficult, flowed much more smoothly.

Chize, Kongzui, Lieque, Jingqu…

Each acupoint was imprinted into Su Ming by repeated failures and then precise stimulation, through the deepest physical sensations of pain, numbness, soreness, and distension.

When the qi finally reached the thumb-tip Shaoshang, Lin Yu's voice carried a trace of relief.

"Push through! Finish it!"

Su Ming's mind and thought united, the now somewhat strengthened warm current barreling without hesitation toward that final barrier.

Vzzz—

A faint humming sounded, not from the outside but directly in Su Ming's mind.

In that instant, from Zhongfu at the chest to Shaoshang at the fingertip, eleven lit acupoints seemed strung together by an invisible line, emitting a gentle glow.

The warm current traveled freely along that luminous channel and returned to the Dantian.

At the same time, from the ancient well in the courtyard, strands of imperceptible, cool spiritual energy — as if irresistibly attracted — surged toward Su Ming's body with unprecedented speed!

They followed the newly opened meridian route, were drawn in and refined, and finally transformed into a pure energy that poured into the Dantian.

The tiny speck of light in Su Ming's Dantian, originally the size of a grain of rice, flared up. Its volume visibly swelled and condensed. He felt his Dantian no longer as a point but as a small, warm "Sea of Qi."

His spirit power surged as well, and senses that had been only vaguely perceptible suddenly became incredibly clear.

He could "hear" outside the yard a late-returning beetle's six legs rustling across the ground.

He could "smell" the faint sourness of the neighbor's leftover soup starting to spoil.

He could "see" countless tiny dust motes floating in the moonlight.

The world had never been so clear, so vivid.

Qi Refining, first layer, stabilized!

Su Ming slowly opened his eyes.

His bright pupils seemed to hold a flowing galaxy. He looked at his hands, at the courtyard bathed in moonlight, and an unprecedented sense of mastery over his own power welled up inside him.

"Hmph." From the ring came Lin Yu's tired yet supremely satisfied chuckle. "Not completely inept after all."

Finally made it! My gold-medal bodyguard training plan: the foundation of stage one is finally laid!