The late-afternoon wind swept along the glass corridors of the hotel reserved for the candidates, golden sunlight pouring down like a thin veil of mist. As he stepped into his room, Duong Minh felt as though all the sounds of the world had been drained away, leaving only silence wrapped tightly around him. Yet this silence unsettled him more than noise ever could. On the battlefield, he knew what to do. Here, in an empty room, with the vague Path of Dao stretching before him, he was no longer certain where he stood.
He lowered himself onto the long chair by the window and closed his eyes. The neural pathways Lyra had once accelerated during the trial still seemed to hum faintly inside his brain, leaving him suspended between clarity and dream. In three days, the Path of Dao examination would begin, and Duong Minh was not sure he was ready. He was not even sure what to call the thing that awaited him.
After a while, he sat cross-legged on the bed, spine straight, hands resting lightly on his knees. His breathing gradually slowed, deepened. Somehow, this meditative posture felt familiar—almost instinctive to his body—though no one had ever taught him.
When his thoughts stilled, the first thing he sensed was the vibration of Spiritual Energy. Not wind, not breath, but a delicate layer of tremor, like an invisible filament stretched taut across space—the same force he had touched in battle without ever being able to explain it.
Now, in calm reflection, he realized Spiritual Energy had not appeared only in moments of life and death. It had been responding to him all along: when he faced the monk Phap Vien after his descent into demonic corruption, when his consciousness stratified in the final illusion trial, even when he was pushed beyond the limits of endurance. Spiritual Energy gathered around him, moved in accordance with his intent, even seemed to support him in certain fleeting instants.
And yet he understood something clearly: he had never studied the Path of Dao. He had no foundation. No cultivation method. No opened chakras. No understanding of guiding energy. What he had done emerged only in extreme situations, like an innate ability forced awake by crisis.
It did not feel like cultivation.
It felt as though somewhere inside him, a door had been left slightly ajar for a very long time, waiting only for a violent impact to burst it open.
And the most frightening part?
He did not know who—or what—had opened that door. Was it the resurrection within the Digital Ocean? Or something older still, from his first life?
The thought led him toward a memory he had avoided for years: the memory of his father.
His father—Doctor Duong Anh Hai—was not a Dao Cultivator, yet he was the first person to teach him about "energy." As a child, Duong Minh had watched his father place a hand near a patient's body, close his eyes, and say that the "light" around them dimmed where pain lingered. At the time, Duong Minh assumed it was simple reassurance, until he saw patients truly recover after those sessions of qigong healing.
His father once placed Duong Minh's small hand upon his own chest and said:
"The human body is like a river. Every illness begins at a place where the current is blocked. I only try to listen and find where it is stuck. You try listening too."
Back then, Duong Minh had felt only warmth from his father's palm. Now, sitting in meditation, he understood: perhaps his father had been trying to pass on something neither of them had possessed the words to explain.
But as time passed, his father's body grew weaker. Though he healed countless others, he began coughing, losing sleep, growing thin. When the hospital announced the cancer diagnosis, they said the cause was "unknown." Yet Duong Minh knew. His father had absorbed too much stagnant energy and suffering from others. Without a cultivation method, without Spiritual Energy drawn from heaven and earth to cleanse himself, the method of "aura synchronization" he had unknowingly invented was like throwing open his own door and inviting in every malignancy his patients carried.
That death left a fracture in Duong Minh—a crack that never truly healed.
Now, feeling the vibration of Spiritual Energy around him, he wondered whether his ability to perceive it was an unconscious inheritance from his father.
He opened his eyes and called within his mind:
"Lyra. Compile everything you have on the Path of Dao. On qigong, chakras, the fire serpent… everything."
Like a drop of water falling into a lake, a pale blue glow rose within his field of awareness. Lyra's voice sounded soft yet luminous:
"Understood. I will explain in the clearest structure possible."
Information flowed into his mind—not as a torrent of cold data, but as measured words with rhythm and tone, as if Lyra wished him to understand not only with intellect, but with intuition.
According to her account, when Spiritual Energy on Earth had once been thin, the Path of Dao scarcely existed in the form known today. Cultivation revolved around qigong for vitality: regulating breath, nourishing energy, meditating, healing through breath and focus. Occasionally, there were those fated individuals who glimpsed energy fields around the sick, or sensed currents rising along the spine. They experimented, recorded crude observations, passed them to the next generation. From such fragments, qigong became the first foundation of the Path of Dao.
Duong Minh listened, an image forming in his mind. If qigong was merely learning to "listen to the body," then perhaps his father had been right all along—only lacking sufficient Spiritual Energy to go further.
"Go on," he said.
Lyra explained that chakras were transitional hubs between consciousness and biological energy—not exactly acupuncture points, not physical organs either. Some chakras, once opened, awakened special abilities: the heart chakra allowed perception of others' aura fields; the brow chakra—the Heavenly Eye—revealed energetic vibrations; the crown chakra connected to Spiritual Energy of heaven and earth. When linked together, a current called the Fire Serpent rose along the Ren and Du meridians—what the ancients called the Minor Heavenly Circuit, what Dao Cultivator called spiritual ignition.
In eras of weak Spiritual Energy, qigong could only strengthen the body, heal illness, heighten intuition. But in places where Spiritual Energy was denser—mysterious leakage points like Kunlun and the Himalayas—some Dao Cultivators truly touched Spiritual Energy. They could perform extraordinary feats: attune to nature, stabilize mental states, even execute movements beyond ordinary human capacity. A rare few encountered spiritual relics—stones, ancient trees, herbs that had absorbed Spiritual Energy for centuries—and advanced like the wind.
Yet such people were so few they could be counted on one hand.
Lyra paused, her tone sharpening.
"You can see Spiritual Energy. You can touch it with your mind. But you cannot yet absorb it into your body."
"Why?"
"Because your chakras are not opened. If you attempt to draw energy in without pathways, it is like pouring water into a sealed vessel. Pressure will build until something breaks."
She continued:
"In your case, the brain could be damaged. Or worse—loss of control over Spiritual Energy. It would seek escape and destroy your meridians."
Duong Minh swallowed. "I understand."
He inhaled deeply, relaxed his thoughts, and returned to meditation. Instead of trying to draw energy inward, he focused on observing his breath, sensing the vibration of space, letting his consciousness gently brush against the faint currents of Spiritual Energy around him.
The room grew still. Spiritual Energy gathered like thin mist, vibrating with his intent. Yet it remained outside, circling him as though awaiting a signal.
He understood.
He was still standing outside the door of the Path of Dao.
The door stood wide before him, clearer than ever. He could feel its breath, even see it respond to his thoughts. But he had not yet stepped through.
In three days, the Path of Dao examination would begin.
It would be the first time he truly faced the road his father had once unknowingly walked—a path that could heal, and could also destroy.
Duong Minh opened his eyes.
The Geneva sky was pale blue at dusk, like the surface of a lake before rain.
Three days. Then the Dao Gate would open.