Chapter 143 - Zhou Liqiang
Zhou Liqiang was a young man. His entire life had been one long journey through darkness, and he had never thought that light would shine upon him before he met the twins.
When he was born, his parents were the owners of a small restaurant. This restaurant was reasonably successful, but they were not satisfied with their lot in life.
They had always wished to move out of the mortal world, to transcend the limits of ordinary people, and enter the world of cultivators.
Upon getting a son, they saw a possibility to achieve their biggest dreams, and their expectations and hopes were all projected onto Zhou Liqiang.
He was a boy, and naturally, he would be able to cultivate. If they were lucky, he might even be a genius that was only seen once every thousand years.
When Zhou Liqiang was just a child, he was always pressured by his parents to become the strongest expert in the Empire, to work hard, and to achieve greatness; however, the little boy was somewhat timid. He was not the arrogant young master that the parents had hoped for.
Initially, they felt that his hesitation and slight anxiety was due to him not having refined any Qi, and thus being unable to feel just how mighty he was.
So, the parents invested all the money they had saved up over the years to buy a cultivation method. Although it was extremely expensive for the parents, this method was, in fact, not much better than the public method that had been provided by the government to all youths in the Empire.
However, these parents had no knowledge about cultivation, and they only looked at the price tag. Considering that it had cost them all their savings, it had to be quite a skillful cultivation method, right?
The parents never considered the child's opinions or feelings. They just kept pushing onwards.
Usually, a child would begin cultivating Qi when they reached the age of ten. However, the parents of Zhou Liqiang were of the impression that having a headstart would harm no one, and thus they ordered their child to begin cultivating at the time he was seven.
This indeed showed that they had no prior knowledge about cultivation.
A body naturally took time to develop, and so did the dantian. The dantian was the location where the Qi was stored within the body. It would travel to every part of the body through the meridians, but in the end, the dantian was where it was stored, and where it ended when fully refined.
The dantian was located in the lower abdomen, below the navel, and it was extremely fragile at a younger age.
It began developing when one was three years old, and would be fully formed when one was nine.
Even though it was fully created when one was nine, not many would risk it to begin cultivating by then, as everybody was different. It was better to wait another year, and ensure that no accidents occurred.
Haste was not a good idea when cultivating; one truly needed to be patient.
From when he was born, Zhao Liqiang was always put under immense pressure by his parents, and since he began cultivating before his dantian had fully developed, he caused much damage to his own body.
The Qi was too violent. The underdeveloped dantian was unable to withstand the sheer pressure that it was continually suffering from, so small leaks began appearing in the dantian wall, causing the Qi to dissipate at a slow speed.
These small holes in the dantian were impossible to heal. They grew larger and larger the more Zhao Liqiang cultivated, and soon he was losing the Qi as soon as he was refining it.
His dantian, which should have been full of Qi, was now full of holes, and what had been stored in it from the beginning had long since been lost.
Zhao Liqiang was too young to understand what was happening, and his parents had no idea what to expect. They had been eager and rushed, and thought that everything was in perfect order. They could not sense his Qi but assumed that this was due to them being too ordinary next to him.
As time went by, Zhao Liqiang was feeling his body's uselessness. Although he, and everyone around him, assumed that he was a cultivator, Zhao Liqiang could not feel the increase in strength. All he could feel was how his body gradually matured, but the Qi kept leaking through his dantian.
He could realize that something was wrong, but the reason why, and what had happened kept eluding him.
After realizing that the Qi had left his dantian, he began cultivating like a madman. He hoped that if he refined Qi at a rapid pace, he would make up for the leakage, but he soon found out that it was impossible.
The swifter he refined the Qi, the bigger the holes in the dantian wall would become, leaking more at a time.
As soon as this realization hit him, Zhou Liqiang was trembling in fear. His parents had pressured him since childhood, but now he was unable to handle their expectations. He was a failure.
Horrified by what his parents might be able to do, he grasped a knife in the dead of night, and snuck into his parents' bedroom. The knife was raised, and their throats were slit.
It was at this time he met the twins. They assisted him in getting rid of his parents, and they helped him sell the restaurant before they used the money to open up the brothel where they now hid.
He, who had lived in fear, oppression, and worry all his life, finally saw himself as a living being, and put all his gratitude onto serving those two women who had appeared in his time of need.