Direct

  Once you’ve opened and purified all of your meridians, you will be able to use your internal Qi to direct the Qi in the air around you.

  This will allow you to perform Qi based techniques. Each sect will have its own techniques they will want their disciples to learn, but there is a good starting pce everyone should begin.

  You should ideally train three things. Your Amount, Your distance, and your Speed.

  First, the amount.

  The amount of Qi you can control at once will grow as you unblock more meridians, so making sure you have the proper control to hold it all will be important.

  To put it in an easy to understand way, If your hands are full then you’re likely to drop or spill some of the Qi you’re trying to wield. So it’s best to make sure you can hold it all.

  You can do this in a few ways.

  First you can attempt to simply have a good mental grasp of the exact amount of Qi you have. Knowledge is power, and understanding your Qi at an intimate level will give you better control of it.

  Or second, you can try to “bst” your qi. Simply aim to use rger and rger amounts and push your limits like you are training a muscle. Starting small is integral in making sure this method works.

  The second thing you need to train is your distance.

  To do so is actually quite simple. Form a bit of your Qi into a small ball, and move it further and further away until you lose control of it.

  This fits with training amount quite well, as the more Qi you’re controlling, the less distance you’ll be able to move it at first.

  And Third, is speed.

  We like to picture Qi as a liquid most often, but before you’ve cleared most of your impurities, you’ll have noticed that it’s quite hard to move. Even once you’ve cleared them all and begun the “Direct” training, you’ll likely find that your Qi moves more like honey than water.

  To increase your speed, you will need to keep the Qi, both within you and outside of you, constantly moving. It may help to be near flowing water in order to better picture the flow you’re trying to achieve.

  Combining these three forms of training will look retively simple, but your fine control will rapidly improve by doing so. To reiterate the points together, take a rge amount of qi, and move it around at a distance, very quickly. Seems easy enough?

  Conserve

  Qi techniques will use up your Qi very quickly if you don’t keep track of how much you have left. One way you can ensure you always have an advantage in a fight, is to properly conserve your Qi for the right moment.

  Once you’ve learned fine control of your Qi and can properly direct it, you’ll need to learn the minimum amount of Qi needed to fuel a technique. It differs from one technique to another, but you should never fall into the “more Qi = Stronger technique” pitfall.

  What makes your techniques stronger is greater comprehension of the Dao behind it, not merely the amount of Qi you force into it.

  To conserve your Qi, it is important to know what your techniques require, and even more importantly, to know when you don’t need those techniques at all.

  Fighting without Qi may seem counterintuitive but your sects wouldn’t teach you martial arts at all if not with the hopes that you would actually use them.

  Fight smart, and you may just find that a seemingly impossible fight is still very much winnable.

  Store

  By this time, you will have cleared your meridians and learned some fine control of your Qi, as well as how best to conserve your Qi so your techniques are viable. But what happens when you run out of Qi despite proper conservation? No one is perfect, and a drawn out fight may lead you to use up everything you have in an effort to survive. What do you do then?

  The next step in cultivation is to store your Qi into something called a Dantian.

  You will need to channel your Qi into the area just below your navel called the “Lower Dantian”

  Given enough time, the Qi will condense and form a liquid within the Dantian. This liquid is just highly condensed Qi, and it will mean that you will be able to draw upon that Qi as a source of energy. You won’t need to use much of it to achieve the same result as you would have before, allowing you to use less, and achieve more.

  Now there are three Dantians in total.

  The Upper Dantian will line up with your brain meridian. It’s easiest to think of it as right on your forehead.

  The Middle Dantian is within the chest, lining up with the lung meridians.

  And the Lower Dantian will line up just below your navel with your bdder meridian.

  You can store your Qi in all of these, but it’s best to work your way up from the bottom, and wait until one is full of condensed Qi before trying to fill the next.

  Transform

  Once you have stored your Qi, you will be able to condense it outside of your body. This will grant you access to intents, such as bloodlust, weapon intent, mental pressure, and Qi imbuement.

  Manifesting Qi outside your body as a solid structure, will allow you to create weapons that align perfectly with your Qi. No forged weapon will come close to the perfect bance that these weapons will give you. The shape they take will come from the heart, and will only change if your heart changes.

  You will also be able to use Qi to imbue objects such as weapons giving them increased durability and sharpness, or even throwing items like knives.

  This same technique will allow you to wield talismans and ride your sword to travel great distances in the blink of an eye.

  Bloodlust and mental pressure are quite simir, allowing you to exert your will on those around you, however there are some key differences.

  Bloodlust is drawing from the raw energy of your emotions through the use of Qi. this is dangerous to both the target and the user, as this can easily cause the user to lose control and massacre everyone around them. This technique is frequently used by demonic cultivators, but righteous cultivators will also use it as they have much more control over their emotions than the average person.

  Mental pressure is much weaker overall, requiring much higher proficiency to exert the same amount of force as bloodlust, but cks the risk factor that bloodlust has. This is also done entirely through the fine control of Qi.

  Weapon intent is a technique that requires a rge amount of Qi, but more so than that, it requires a deep connection with your weapon, and a fine understanding of the spirit behind the martial techniques of that weapon.

  Some never develop an intent within their lifetime, while others find that it just makes sense, and have no problem learning intent.

  Intent will allow you to attack with the force of your chosen weapon, even if you are not currently holding it. If you wield a sword, you will be able to slice through steel and stone with your sword, and even cut through wood and flesh without it! It will also allow you to use any vaguely sword-like item as a bde. Cutting through your enemies with a random branch seems quite appealing does it not?

  And stly, strong enough intent, will allow you to exert the will of your weapon on the space around you, projecting the raw concept of a “cut” onto an area allowing you to ssh from a distance, or even project a defense space around you with the concept of a “parry”

  Weapon intent can allow you to even breach a gap in cultivation stages allowing you to defeat opponents you otherwise might not.

  SorisBckwinter