C9

The next day, the entire hall was as lively as if it was a festival. All the recruitment announcements were posted on the wall. Among them, 17 guards were recruited (Chen Jing decided to adopt the inspiration that came out of her earlier discussions in the craft lab and the excellent dishes, etc., 4 teams, equipped with corresponding weapons, team fighting, and planning to temporarily set up 5 combat teams); 12 in the logistics department (5 in the mess hall, 2 in the management, 5 in the chore room); 12 in the medical department (that's all there is to do); 11 in the manufacturing department (Chen Jing suggested that all known skills be recruited as soon as possible, although it was estimated that there might not be enough recruits, since there would definitely be people in the protection team); and 2 merit points (not for now, two temporarily).

The logistics department and manufacturing department had two people each. Naturally, the medical department didn't have any recruitment points, but due to the absence of You Cai, there was only Xiao Qian in the Merit Division. As a result, not long after, Wei Dong shamelessly left Chen Jing and went to the merit points division to help out. Chen Jing was the only one left in the recruitment center who originally had the largest number of guards. After all, Wang Lei's injuries had yet to heal. Fortunately, Lu Min was there to help, otherwise, it would really exhaust Chen Jing.

At the recruitment site of the guards, Chen Jing found two important people: one was Zhang Bin, and the other was Huang Xiaogang.

Zhang Bin is a technician from the company's manufacturing technology department. He is 27 years old and is especially short. He claims to be 1.52 meters, but Chen Jing thinks that he is less than 1.50 meters. Naturally, there was no way Ye Zichen would have such a good impression of him. He just wanted him to go through the motions. Who would have thought that after displaying his skills, his eyes would almost drop to the ground. He couldn't help but exclaim in his heart, "Genius! Absolute genius!"

During the cataclysm, Zhang Bin had evolved to have a heaven-defying superpower known as agility. After awakening from the intense pain, Zhang Bin felt that his body was as light as a swallow and as fast as lightning. To be honest, Zhang Bin was the only survivor out of nearly a hundred people in the entire manufacturing and manufacturing department. Why? Since the manufacturing and technology department was located on the fourth floor of the company's headquarters, it was unknown who had been so stupid as to ask for open office space. Nearly a hundred people squeezed into the empty floors. After the catastrophe, the zombies were like a tide! And there was no place to hide. The survivors were utterly sorrowful. Zhang Bin was the only one who managed to escape using his agility and lightning speed.

Zhang Bin's display was done on the exterior wall of the craftsmanship laboratory (at this moment, the zombies near the dining hall were almost all killed by the people who fled to the dining hall). At that time, Zhang Bin used less than two seconds to climb from the smooth wall to the roof of the craftsmanship lab's third floor.

Huang Xiaogang's name was Xiao Gang, but he was not young at all, regardless of his age or size. Xiao Gang was 52 years old, he was 1.85 meters tall and weighed about the same as Wang Lei. However, he was not fat. He was truly strong.

Huang Xiaogang was not only not young, but his background was not small either. His father, Huang Gensheng, was a direct descendant of the Chen family. He had been studying at Chen's home since he was 5 years old. At the age of 15, Chen's home was occupied by the Japanese. Huang was born and wandered outside for a year, then coincidentally joined the Eighth Route Army, and after liberation, followed the army to settle in Sichuan. Huang Xiaogang was the youngest son of Huang Gensheng, but his understanding of Tai Chi was the best amongst his five siblings. He could be said to be his father's direct descendant and also the Chen family's direct descendant.

Now, Huang Xiaogang was a worker in the silk workshop. Beside the silk workshop was the National Laboratory for Light Weapons Research and Testing — the Central Laboratory. There was a platoon of soldiers guarding the workshop all year round. Since the guards and the company were not in the same system, he had a small cafeteria. After the disaster, Xiao Gang's target was naturally this small cafeteria. Together with the other men and women, he successfully escaped to the small cafeteria. However, together with the other five men and three women, he was trapped by over seventy zombies.

Two days later. Although there was still a lot of food to be had, there wasn't much water to be had. On the morning of the third day, the sounds of zombies and fierce fighting came from the north side of the small cafeteria. It seemed that some unlucky fellows had alarmed the zombies when they ran away, but this also created an opportunity for Xiao Gang and the others as the zombies in the south were attracted to the north when they heard the noise.

The next day, the 11 players managed to successfully escape to the cafeteria at around 10 a.m. on the third day. After eating the food prepared for them (Chen Jing knew that someone could escape to the cafeteria at any time, so she had already told the kitchen to steam as many steamed buns as possible), they heard from others that they were recruiting, so they all signed up.

After listening to Huang Xiaogang's introduction, Chen Jing understood that he had picked up another treasure. Thus, Chen Jing had everyone make room for Xiao Gang to perform a round of Taiji Fist before he fought with Yang Weidong. Wei Dong's strength, Chen Jing had experienced it firsthand. Because Chen Jing had competed with Wei Dong before, even though Chen Jing's strength had more than doubled after consuming Fusarium oxysporum, he was still no match for Wei Dong.

When Xiao Gang began to demonstrate the traditional Chinese culture of Tai Chi boxing style by style, the pleasing tai chi instantly stirred Chen Jing's heartstrings. After Huang Xiaogang had finished demonstrating the Chen Family's thirteen forms, Chen Jing stood rooted to the spot, as if in meditation. Just as Lu Min was about to call for Chen Jing, she was stopped by Huang Xiaogang. He called for the surrounding people to keep quiet, knowing that Chen Jing had entered the world of martial arts for a rare moment of epiphany. He remembered that when he was sixteen, he had it himself, but it was only for a few minutes. However, the benefits to him in the past few minutes had been great, giving him a qualitative boost in his comprehension of Taiji.

Two hours later, Chen Jing opened his eyes. Just now, Chen Jing had indeed comprehended the concept of taiji. However, the period of epiphany was not long, only slightly more than half an hour. However, after Chen Jing woke up from his enlightenment, he felt a hot spot appear in his lower abdomen (Chen Jing did not know the acupuncture points, otherwise he would have known that the hot spot was the Middle Yuan Acupoint, which was the lower Dantian). The hot spot then moved upward along a bright line, passing through his navel, and then followed the midline of his abdomen up his throat to his lower lip, and then coiled around his mouth and stopped at the root of his upper teeth. At this point, Chen could still feel with his divine sense that there was a bright thin line running up from the root of the upper tooth and through the brain and down the back of the spine. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a barrier at the base of the upper teeth that prevented the flow of heat (by this time the hot spots coming out of the lower abdomen had become a stream of heat after dozens of hot spots along the way).

Even though Chen Jing did not understand the meridians, he understood that the warm current was the inner Qi, and the membrane at the root of the upper teeth was the profound entrances to life and death between the two meridians. Having read countless martial arts novels, Chen Jing understood that the two meridians would not be easy to open. After all, the people who could open the two meridians were super experts like Guo Jing and Qiao Feng.

Chen then used his spiritual sense to control the flow of heat back to his lower abdomen. He then controlled the flow of heat down his Yin, into his lower abdomen, and up his spine to the root of his upper teeth before returning. After a few rounds, the flow of heat became more and more intense. At the same time, the flow of heat also made Chen Jing's entire body comfortable. Therefore, Chen Jing happily controlled the flow of heat back and forth. More than an hour later, the increasing heat actually broke through the membrane separating the root of the upper teeth. After that, it became unstoppable and began to flow rapidly through a large circle. Half an hour later, the flow of heat became as turbulent as a stream. However, the rate at which the flow of heat increased became slower and slower. Thus, after more than two hours, Chen Jing stopped.

Seeing that Chen Jing had woken up, Huang Xiaogang came over to ask how he was feeling. Facing a master like Xiao Gang, Chen Jing naturally explained in detail about his previous situation. This time, Huang Xiaogang was stupefied. Honestly speaking, it had taken him more than twenty years to open the Ren Du and Du Meridian, but Chen Jing had only taken him two hours. Was the world really that crazy?

Actually, what Xiao Gang had just thought was the truth. Not bad, this world had gone crazy. No one in the world knew that this catastrophe was not a biochemical virus! The source of the problem was the whirlpool hole that had appeared between Jupiter and Mars more than a hundred years ago. It was a wormhole that had appeared out of nowhere, and the other space that the wormhole was connected to was a space with a very high energy density. On March 31, the mist energy from the alternate dimension finally approached Earth. It then began to envelop the entire planet in a matter of minutes, starting from the Eastern Hemisphere.

At this moment, Earth's life force, which was used to living in an environment where the energy density was extremely thin, began to evolve involuntarily after being suddenly surrounded by high density energy. Of course part of life fails and loses its life; most of life, though successful, loses itself under the influence of powerful energy and becomes another form of life (such as zombies); only part of a determined life retains itself in the process of evolution. Of course, there is a small portion of life that has not evolved due to its insensitivity to energy.

Generally speaking, any life form can absorb the energy in the environment to gradually improve their own strength. This kind of cultivation can be divided into passive cultivation and active cultivation. Passive training is when a living body instinctively absorbs the energy in the environment to improve itself. This kind of training is still effective in environments with high energy density (such as the current Earth). But in an environment of scanty energy (such as the Earth of the past), it would have no effect at all. The other type of training was active cultivation, which was to strengthen the absorption of energy through qi refinement and body refinement. Naturally, the effects would be much better. For example, Master Huang Xiaogang, even in such a sparse environment, he still had some effect.

Therefore, due to the high density of energy transmitted from another space, the current Earth was already a cultivation paradise. Therefore, Chen Jing's achievements from a few days ago (which was not an hour or two, but just the energy absorbed by his body) were equivalent to Huang Xiaogang's decades of practice.

In addition, Chen Jing had another advantage Huang Xiaogang couldn't compare to, and that was the detection ability that Chen Jing had evolved to possess. As the saying goes, there are four aspects to training: talent, resources, luck, and hard work. One of the resources involved was the environment, cultivation techniques, and spiritual medicines. And cultivation techniques were the route that led the inner Qi forward. In fact, the meridians within a person's body were as dense as spider webs. Of course, there were thick and thin meridians. The Ren Meridian that everyone spoke of was actually a meridian linking up 24 of Ren Meridian's main meridians. However, how to connect them together could be counted in the hundreds. A good cultivation method would allow one's meridians to be as wide as possible when circulating inner Qi. This way, one would have twice the results with half the effort. The heaven defying aspect of Chen Jing's Discipline was his ability to find the best meridian channels, which was equivalent to the most top-level cultivation technique.

Thus, when Huang Xiaogang heard that Chen Jing's Discipline had discovered the path of inner qi, his excitement could not be described with words. What was the most important thing to a cultivator? That was without a doubt a cultivation technique. Why? This was because talent, environment, and destiny were all fated by the heavens. They were not something that a human could do. But hard work can be controlled by oneself. The remaining two items were about spirit herbs and martial arts. To be honest, spirit herbs were also something that could only be found by luck. For example, the fir fungus Chen Jing had eaten the day before yesterday, the chance of finding another one was close to zero. If one wanted to improve their cultivation speed and height, cultivation techniques were of utmost importance. Chen Jing's superpower, on the other hand, provided a shortcut for creating top-level cultivation techniques.

After that, the recruitment of the guards was temporarily suspended. Chen Jing and Huang Xiaogang (Yang Weidong also joined in later) spent more than three hours to come up with a set of top-level inner force skills from the Qi Cultivation Path to the Ren and Du Meridians. Of course, Chen Jing was only in charge of explaining his own feelings and answering questions, while the two of them were experts (after all, the two of them had trained in the internal energy for many years). In the end, the two of them divided the internal energy cultivation technique into three levels: the first level, which combined with the comprehension of the Tai Chi concept; the second level, training Ren Meridian and Du Meridian; and the third level, to open the profound entrances to life and death.

Afterwards, Chen Jing and Xiao Gang witnessed the heaven-defying power of this cultivation technique. Why? He had to start from his cultivation when he heard that Yang Weidong had enlisted into the army at the age of 20. Two years later, he would join the Southwest Falcon Special Forces, and at the same time become a volunteer soldier. After entering the Special Forces for about two years, Wei Dong had helped his comrade Ma Wenbin block a bullet during a drug enforcement mission, and the two had become sworn brothers. Ma Wenbin was the descendant of Ma Xuli, a master of Xing Yi Martial Arts, but he was not a direct descendant.

Ma Wenbin remembered the saving grace and brotherly friendship of Wei Dong and passed on the Xing Yi inner force skill he inherited from his family to Wei Dong. Wei Dong then began to train in it for more than ten years. However, Xing Yi Martial Arts's style was to use force to fight. It was like thunder, and it emphasized the concept of swift and fierce. Compared to Wu Dang and Tai Chi, which were pure Internal Martial Arts systems, it still emphasized external techniques. Therefore, the Xing Yi inner force cultivation method that Wei Dong trained in was on a whole different level compared to the Chen family's Taiji cultivation method that Huang Xiaogang inherited as his direct disciple. If there was no spiritual energy from another dimension (The cultivation world usually referred to the energy that could be absorbed by life as spiritual energy), it could be said that Weidong would never be able to open up the two meridians.

Therefore, even though Wei Dong had trained in internal energy for more than ten years, he was only at the initial stage of his training. Due to the abundance of Lingqi in his internal energy, Wei Dong had advanced by leaps and bounds in the past two days.

Therefore, when the new Chen's internal Qi cultivation method was concluded, Wei Dong immediately decided to cultivate his internal Qi again. However, perhaps because Wei Dong's spirit sense wasn't as strong as Chen Jing's, or perhaps because it was more difficult to cultivate inner Qi, it took Chen Jing only a few minutes to open up Ren Meridian and Du Meridian, while it took Wei Dong nearly two hours to open up Ren Meridian and Du Meridian using a new route. After that, it was time for them to witness a miracle: it only took Wei Dong an hour to open the profound entrances to life and death between the two branches.

Seeing that Wei Dong was able to open the Ren Du meridians so quickly, Xiao Gang was tempted. However, in the end, he gave up. After all, he had opened the two meridians for more than twenty years, and his meridians had been trained extensively.