Gu Hao did not begin with qi.
He began with pain.
Not dramatic pain.
The kind cultivators learned to ignore.
He watched Gu Jian finish training and roll his shoulder once, subtly, before straightening his posture again.
"How long?" Gu Hao asked.
Gu Jian paused. "Since before I met you."
Gu Hao nodded.
"That's too long."
Cultivators treated pain as weakness.
They trained through it. Circulated qi past it. Let it harden into background noise.
On Earth, Gu Hao had seen what happened next.
The body adapted poorly.
Compensation replaced efficiency.
Potential narrowed quietly.
Here, it was the same.
Just… glorified.
Gu Hao requested volunteers.
Not the strongest.
Not the weakest.
The consistent ones.
Four Qi Condensation cultivators stepped forward.
Gu Hao did not ask them to sit cross-legged.
He asked them to lie down.
That alone felt wrong.
"This is not cultivation," Gu Hao said calmly.
"This is preparation."
He placed his fingers along the shoulder, neck, and spine of the first cultivator.
Not randomly.
Deliberately.
"Tell me when it hurts," Gu Hao said.
The cultivator hesitated. "Patriarch… it always hurts."
Gu Hao pressed slightly harder.
"There," the man gasped.
Gu Hao nodded.
He worked slowly.
Press. Hold. Release.
No qi.
No force.
Just attention.
The cultivator's breathing changed first.
Then his expression.
Afterward, Gu Hao asked him to circulate qi.
The man froze.
"…It didn't catch," he said quietly.
They tested again.
Another cultivator.
Different blockage.
Different reaction.
Some points caused warmth.
Others caused resistance.
Gu Hao adjusted.
Ancient earthen massage techniques.
Pressure-point therapy.
Meridian theory layered on anatomy.
Not a miracle.
A map.
Gu Jian watched in silence.
"This isn't healing," he said finally.
"No," Gu Hao agreed. "It's clearance."
Over the next days, Gu Hao refined the method.
Rules emerged:
Never before circulation
Never after exhaustion
Pressure follows qi flow, not forces it
Pain is information, not resistance
The cultivators stopped scoffing.
Then they stopped doubting.
On the sixth day, something shifted.
One cultivator completed circulation faster than ever before.
No surge.
No strain.
Just… smoothness.
"I didn't fight it," he said, confused. "It didn't fight me."
Gu Hao exhaled slowly.
This was it.
That night, Gu Hao wrote carefully:
Meridians are not gates.
They are roads.
Roads fail where they are neglected, not where they are used.
He closed the book.
This method would not replace cultivation.
But it would remove false ceilings.
And ceilings, once removed, never returned.