Destiny in Cinders

Huo Qing wasn’t in Metalhand’s recycling house. He had been spending quite a bit of time on his formation studies and working on inheriting Metalhand’s business and connections. He also had to interact with the governing officials at Hilltwixt, so he barely had time to take a breather.

Nian Quan, on the other hand, started a new training cycle. His next tournament involved hunting feys and fiends in the badlands, so Principal He hired a few famous hunters from the badlands to teach him useful combat and survival skills. Since An Jing didn’t feel good about staying in his downtown luxury apartment alone, he chose to go to the recycling house instead.

”The plan went smoothly, but another troublesome thing popped up.” An Jing was quite glad that the Clearing Realm mystical qi had been converted to heaven purification radiance. But merely thinking about the half-dragon fiendmolt made his head hurt. ”I managed to kill one, but failed to collect the fiend materials. The other fiendmolts will definitely get stronger by consuming them. Well, it’s fine if it’s just the regular fiendmolts. I can still handle them. What I need to worry about is that half-dragon fiendmolt. If it gets stronger by cannibalizing its own kind... I need to kill it before that happens!”

Though his mind was made up, he wasn’t in a rush to return to Void Embrace. He decided to stay in Skysource for a few days to make some rapid progress with the heaven purification radiance before going back to set new traps.

Once he entered the rear building, he cultivated according to the plan he had laid out for Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal’s nine Qi Refinement seals. The first nine seals of Spirit Awakening started around the body and terminated at the soul. Between them were the seals for arms, legs, meridians, sinew, membrane, flesh and bone. The process started from the larger framework before slowly honing in toward the finer parts.

The seals of Qi Refinement had the same endpoint as the Spirit Awakening seals: the soul. However, it no longer reinforced the soul as a whole, but rather the three hun and seven po. [1]

The three hun comprise the heaven hun, earth hun and human hun, also known as the vital hun. The heaven hun, also called the true soul or the primordial psyche, never withered, diminished or perished. All sentient life was born with it, a mark of recognition by the universe itself. All lifearcs and destinies were bestowed upon the heaven hun.

The earth hun, also known as the yin wraith, wasn’t something one was born with and instead was something gained after one was birthed into the world. The earth hun gradually nurtured one’s wisdom, sentience and fundamental comprehensive capacities during the process of growth. It was the manifestation of all types of human karmic entanglement as well as the center of all things mental cultivation.

Upon death, the true sentience would enter the cycle of reincarnation while the earth hun transformed into yin sentience. The saying ”By cultivating only numinosity without cultivating the elixir of vivency, the yin wraith struggles to achieve sanctity even after ten thousand kalpas” referred to the fact that if one did not hone the bodily side of cultivation and nurture their vivency, they would eventually reach the end of their lifespan and expire. As a result, the human hun and seven po would scatter, leaving the earth hun lingering in this world as a ghost that struggled to take the next step.

Though all that sounded like soul cultivation that had nothing to do with the body refinement of Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal, it was anything but. The heaven hun was hard to cultivate. One typically only started grasping at it around the peak of the Goldcore Realm by achieving one’s dao merit, attaining a state impervious to rot and decay through the true spirit. Real progress could only be made on the heaven hun at the Primordial Deity Realm.

The earth hun corresponded to vivency. Many meditation and contemplation techniques aimed to hone it. As for the human hun, it was the collective amalgamation of one’s emotions, drives, desires, aspirations and memories. As the saying went, ”The heaven and earth hun are external. The only eternal hun is the vital hun.” The heaven hun was the true soul, the essence of being bequeathed by heaven itself. The earth hun was the totality of numinosity and the pivot of human karmic relations, yet didn’t have a corporeal manifestation of its own. Only the human hun governed the body, from which the seven po derived, a concept that was explained differently in varying ancient classics. Explanations ranged from seven emotions, seven virtues and even to seven innate qi.

”If you only want to hone your numinosity, you can simply treat the seven po like the seven emotions and six drives or seven colors and five virtues,” Yvelbane said. ”But body refinement also places some focus on the three hun and seven po. ’From heaven, the qi of the five phases. From earth, the five flavors. These form the three hun and seven po, and together with the five phases of the universe, they form the human being.’ That’s one way to conceptualize it. Another is to think of it as seven poisons, each representing a tribulation you have to overcome as you make progress on your path.”

An Jing furrowed his brow. ”Why do I get the feeling that people are trying to force completely different frameworks into a singular cohesive stream of explanations? There are already so many ways to conceptualize the three hun and seven po.”

”Well, I’m a sword. What would I know about you confusing humans?” Yvelbane was just a sword all of a sudden again. It nonchalantly continued, ”Either way, you don’t have to worry about all that with Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal. The order of manifesting the nine seals of Qi Refinement starts with the vital hun, continues through the seven po and ends at vivency. First, you’ll be cultivating your human or vital hun to derive the seven po, corresponding to your heart, brain, liver, lungs, kidneys, spleen and gallbladder. At the very end, you fuse all seven po into one, converting it into nourishment for vivency. At that point, the sound of innate qi will thunder across your entire body to manifest the Shang Resonance ability, finally fulfilling the conditions to build a foundation.”

The seven po of Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal corresponded to innate qi, specifically the ones being nourished in each internal organ. Each one of them would gain a manifested seal, granting yet another unique spirit-qi property to his body. An Jing, ever sharp, noticed the similarities to the martial path. ”I knew it. Isn’t this just like what the original wonders are when I couple them with the nine seals of Spirit Awakening? Modern wonders of the martial path can only be manifested when the body is aligned with innate qi. But in ancient times, it seems that people focused on refining the body first before going on to refine qi and build a foundation!”

”That’s what progress looks like. It opens doors to many new possibilities,” Yvelbane agreed. Though it was an ancient sword, it wasn’t the least bit opposed to modern ways. ”You’ve already manifested Temporal Grasp, so you have a strong soul. Your vital-hun cultivation is around seventy to eighty percent ready. I believe you can try to manifest the first and second seals of Qi Refinement back-to-back!”

”Let’s give it a try.” He didn’t hesitate and took out the True Talisman and consumed the heaven purification radiance around it. A pure stream of origin qi immediately filled his soul to the brim.

As Yvelbane had said, An Jing’s vital hun was reinforced by Temporal Grasp, giving it incredible stability. All he needed was to inscribe the seal to affix the whole structure, which went smoothly with the help of heaven purification radiance. His Evenstar seal seed let out blinding starlight as it burrowed into his soul, manifesting the first seal of Qi Refinement almost instantly.

He immediately felt that his soul had been reinforced even further. The control he had over spirit and lethal qi grew even firmer. Not only was his soul even more attuned to his body after the seal manifested, it also harmonized better with spirit and lethal qi. In a way, the spirit and lethal qi had become a part of his body and could be reinforced by the soul. The ”jurisdiction” his vital hun had over his body also expanded.

At the very end of manifesting all nine Qi Refinement seals, spirit and lethal qi would permeate the entire body while the vital hun would brim with power. The practitioner and heaven would be harmonized as one through the expansion of the soul and one’s spirit and lethal qi, converting the environment around oneself into a microcosm as if it was part of one’s body. Such a phenomenon was the prototype of a domain, the parallel of the martial path’s step of establishing an internal formation world by bypassing the heaven-earth gateways to link heaven and earth together.

”The first seal is finally done.” An Jing sensed that there was still a lot of heaven purification radiance and continued to consume it. His vital hun then derived seven streams of light. Starting from his spirit roots as the origin, they spread through his blood capillaries and meridian network, intertwining deeply with his internal organs.

He was in no rush to rapidly boost his combat capabilities, so he chose to manifest the seal of his heart, the source of bodily vigor and the ”swallowing thief” that serves as the foundation of the stamina cycle. Manifesting that seal greatly increased the rate of qi recovery and also prevented external toxins from entering the body. To achieve it, one had to first stop the heart from pumping. Martialists were fully capable of doing so while not in combat by using vigor to maintain blood circulation, but it still had to be done with care. If he couldn’t restart his heartbeat, An Jing would be in great trouble.

Fortunately, he had Temporal Grasp. Thanks to the extra clarity brought by manifesting the first seal of the vital hun, he was able to use Temporal Grasp just as he temporarily stopped his heartbeat to rapidly inscribe some seals inside and outside his heart. Then, he used the blood in the heart as the medium to spread the seals throughout his internal organs. The heaven purification radiance he consumed gradually burned away. Seals gushed all throughout his body like a waterfall and eventually, the swallowing-thief po was manifested!

Since he still had some energy left, he decided to put it toward preparing for his third seal, which was to be situated near the brain. That was the source of human intellect, also called the corpse-dog po, the cornerstone of sentience. Manifesting it increased one’s sensitivity to qi, further enhancing one’s fine qi control, allowing one to automatically count any external qi attacks.

The process of manifesting this seal took much longer, requiring a temporary cessation of thought so that the soul could form the seal innately and gradually. The sensation was quite unlike what An Jing had expected. Temporal Grasp’s thought acceleration couldn’t quite keep up; it could only be used to double the usual speed of his thoughts, which was much slower than what he was used to. In the end, he only made some minor progress for his third seal after using up the heaven purification radiance in a day.

”That was some decent Qi Refinement progress.” When he opened his eyes, a ring of light levitated behind him. There were seven firelights on the ring, corresponding to the embers of his seven po. One of them burned intensely and another flickered as if it would ignite soon. He could feel that the spirit and lethal qi in his body were even more potent than before thanks to his stronger heartbeat that allowed the qi to gather quickly in the part of his body that needed it.

”With this, I’ll be able to start cultivating the martial path’s Brightmirror Heart earlier than I had planned.” Using Heaven’s Child Art to observe his internal state, he sensed that his wonders had made quite a bit of progress too. While the martial and immortal paths were separate, they both existed within his body. Strengthening one side would benefit the other as well, much of it thanks to the huge boost he got from defeating the fiendspawn. A genius like him was meant to cultivate both paths in parallel.

Standing up, he could sense how much stronger he had gotten. His spirit sense could be spread out along with his Evenstar or blood lethal qi. He would be able to surveil an area by leaving a drop of blood or learn what someone had been up to in the past ten or twenty days by tapping them on the shoulder like some paranormal detectives he had read about.

That was the reason Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal was considered such a powerful technique. Other techniques needed to be paired with specific spells such as Blood Intent or Qi Psychometry. For people who have reached dao initiation or dao mastery in this immortal cultivation technique, however, spells were merely base-level techniques, while arts were deeper applications of those techniques once one gained better familiarity with them. People who cultivated high-level techniques to mastery could perform them for granted.

1. Hunpo 魂魄 is the typical phrasal noun that refers to the soul. Some Daoist teachings break it down further. See more: https://dao-world.org/2025/05/28/3-hun-and-7-po-the-taoist-souls/ ☜