: Qi

As he entered the dimly lit room, Cheng Hua looked around only to see a messy room filled with many metals thrown to the floor. To the left, there was another room, from where the sounds of constant hammering could be heard.

As he slowly traversed the room, the hammering sounds stopped, and a voice full of might asked

"What do you want?"

Cheng Hua was momentarily stunned as he felt a current pass through his body, he quickly recovered and answered the voice:

"Good afternoon, sir, I am here to request you to make me a weapon."

"I don't have all day here to listen to you," said the voice,

"What kind of weapon do you want?"

"Unfortunately, I think that sir should come and look at this blueprint, I am after all, not sure if sir can understand it through words.

"Hah! A weapon that I do not understand how to make? Don't get cocky kid, show me the blueprint."

As the voice stopped talking, footsteps were heard, and soon a man looking to be in his mid 30's came out of the room.

He was tall and quite well built. However, his skin was white as snow, not befitting Cheng Hua's imagination of Chinese novel blacksmiths.

Not wanting to seem rude, Cheng Hua slightly bowed and took out a scroll from his inventory, then he handed it to the blacksmith.

The man did not even flinch when seeing the kid take a scroll out of thin air. After all, in this world, numerous treasures existed, and although spacial rings were expensive, they were not that rare.

As he opened the scroll, the blacksmith was stunned for a second before turning the paper 90° to the side, repeating it a couple of times the blacksmith finally raised his head and asked Cheng Hua with a now slightly milder tone

"Where did you get this blueprint?"

"I made it myself explained Cheng Hua, I am quite interested in weapons and decided to create something for myself, so please even if you cannot make this weapon successfully do not divulge the blueprint to others."

Hearing Cheng Hua's words, the blacksmith looked once again over the kid, from the head to his toes, he seemed like an ordinary child of 13 years of age, not like someone able to create such a weapon.

Although he had his doubts, the blacksmith nodded his head as he said

"Name's Zhao Fu, come to the backroom, explain to me how to make this."

Seeing Zhao Fu's approval, Cheng Hua followed him to the back room, where he told the man the methods of crafting the weapon.

Zhao Fu guided Cheng Hua to the exit after setting the time for him to come and see the weapon in 9 days.

As he walked on the street, Cheng Hua was lightly humming a song from Earth.

---------------------------------------------------

Cheng Hua was happy, after all the blacksmith agreed to make him a weapon, a police baton, although it seemed useless at first thought, it was about as durable as a staff. It had a smaller diameter, so while injecting it with Qi, the baton could become as sharp as a sword and provide a lot of defense thanks to the lightweight and durable materials. While it will not be a suitable weapon to use permanently, it was good for starters.

It took Cheng Hua quite a while to learn how the baton is constructed, in his last life, while in the army he had once worked for two months in a weapon factory undercover, so he had got to know how to build some weapons, although he couldn't make a nuke, he knew the basic construct of some widespread assault rifles and pistols, however in this world with such underdeveloped technology, a gun would stick out too much.

A melee weapon was much more suited to the current him, and since he had used the baton before, he already had quite some experience, so he did not have to start from 0 like he would if training the ways of the sword.

Holding this thought, he made a deal with the blacksmith, he paid 1000 gold upfront and had to pay 2000 more when coming to take the product.

It had to be known that from the win in the arena earlier, Cheng Hua made around 27k gold. It was an amazing sum to get on your first match in the arena.

So right now, Cheng Hua had 24k gold as spending funds, he decided to go to the cultivation room to train faster.

He entered the massive amphitheater. He was greeted by a beautiful young woman that guided him to a cultivation space. He paid 1000 gold to be able to meditate inside for 2 hours, as he entered the wooden room, the doors closed and Cheng Hua sat cross-legged in the middle.

He instantly felt a warm mass of energy floating around him that seeped into his pores and traveled throughout his body.

This was the first time Cheng Hua tried to cultivate. He reached the Body Tempering 2nd stage only because of his daily training and various skills.

This was a completely new experience for Cheng Hua, the warm energy passed through his meridians while emanating a slight heat that made his body comfortable.

Cheng Hua had lost the feeling of time while cultivating, and barely even noticed when a manly voice called to him from outside

"Your time is up. Please leave the room."

Cheng Hua halfheartedly stood up and left the room.

As he now walked to his house, Cheng Hua was still thinking about the energy that he felt in the cultivation room.

After that experience, he now seemed to see various particles in the air, some were like wind coming and going, some seeped from the earth, some came from the sun, and some simply existed without seemingly anything to come from.

It was a magnificent sight. Cheng Hua couldn't help but wonder

<Everyone sees this when they get a grasp on Qi?

Or maybe it's because of my high intelligence?>

And so while thinking on the source of such s beautiful scenery, Cheng Hua did not even notice when he got home, only then had he woken up from his trance and sat down to meditate.

As he did so, numerous particles in the air flew towards him, as if he was a black hole that sucked every little particle in its vicinity.

The Qi entered his body and circulated by itself through his meridians. Truthfully Cheng Hua was slightly worried. Since he did not have a cultivation technique, he might cripple himself if the Qi circulates in the wrong way.

That, of course, was the worst-case scenario. As Cheng Hua had barely just started cultivating, he had no foundation to break or holes to fix up. Typically in such a case, nothing would happen. Only the cultivation will rise much slower.

And so Cheng Hua carefully observed the Qi circulating through his meridians, it was like a piece of art, numerous tiny particles interconnected as they traversed his body, the glowing dots connected into rivers that flowed around his internal organs as it slowly stopped around his dantian region.

There it slowly condensed and became smaller until it became a speck of gas-like substance that slowly deposited itself in the dantian.

This was the first time Cheng Hua saw something like this, while he was in the cultivation room the Qi only traveled through his meridians and strengthened them.

Cheng Hua decided that he would go to the library the next day to research a little about Qi as he continued to cultivate.