Soon, Yao Yao answered, "How is it? Did you win?"
She was still quite optimistic, probably thinking we were sure to win.
Speaking with some difficulty, I handed the Soul Seizing Token to Bing Bing. Bing Bing then told Yao Yao, "Sister, it seems something's wrong, blah blah blah..."
After she finished, Yao Yao also sounded a bit puzzled. But I had actually discovered the problem when Bing Bing was shooting earlier. Once I recovered enough to speak, I said to Yao Yao, "I suspect... the ammunition expenditure is directly proportional to the consumption of my true qi... You, you ask Lin Chi if this is the case."
"Huh?" Yao Yao was clearly hearing this for the first time. She immediately contacted Shen Xingyue and then Lin Chi.
About five minutes later, Zhang Xiaomiao replied via the Soul Seizing Token: "It's exactly like that. Things transmitted to the underworld through you, a living person, can be effective. But if it's an energy body and its abilities are consumed, it will simultaneously consume your own energy."
I nodded. As expected, it was similar to the law of conservation of energy, but the scope of conservation was something between me and the energy body I carried.
The energy body, of course, referred to the gunpowder in the bullets. When a bullet is fired, the gunpowder burns, consuming energy. This energy, released into the underworld, was equivalent to depleting my own energy.
I had already fired so many bullets, likely over a thousand rounds. The massive energy depletion had far exceeded what a normal human could withstand. It was only because I had the demon cores of Diana and Daji within me that I could endure until the end of the first battle before experiencing abnormal reactions. Without the enhancement of the demon cores, two volleys of aerial bombardment would probably have been my end!
"Then what do we do now?" Bing Bing asked anxiously. "The enemy hasn't retreated yet!"
"The main issue is that I still don't know how to use the demon cores of Daji and Diana. They're just anxious now, unable to help," I said. Before I fainted, I sensed them stirring within my abdomen, entwining and exerting force, but unable to combine their power to aid me.
"Yao Yao, ask them if there's any way the demon cores can help me?" I said.
Those two powerful demons were surely by Yao Yao's side. It was a pity they couldn't enter the underworld. Otherwise, with their strength, they wouldn't have needed these weapons; they could have just led the troops to charge.
One minute later, Daji answered the call, "Cheng Feng, there's a problem. Both the Whale God and I cannot establish contact with the demon cores inside you, so we can't help you. Unless you return to the mortal realm now, we can help you regulate them."
"I'm afraid there isn't enough time," I said. The enemy hadn't retreated and might just replace their commander's coffin and attack again shortly, as they had more siege ladders than the eight we saw, with more behind them.
"In that case, I'll teach you a mantra. You can try to regulate yourself," Daji said again.
"Alright, I'll try."
Bing Bing and Jiang Jun helped me down to the fifth floor, finding a quiet corner. The windows here were already sealed by falling rocks, and the room was quite dark. I asked Jiang Jun to go up and command, but to refrain from firing for the moment. I was worried about going into qi deviation. If I died, the guns in the hands of the underworld soldiers would likely turn into illusions and vanish into thin air, due to energy conservation!
Daji began to recite the mantra, teaching me the method of circulating qi, sentence by sentence. I sat cross-legged, with Bing Bing guarding me the entire time.
There were a total of thirteen mantras, corresponding to the thirteen meridians of the human body for qi regulation. When I reached the fifth mantra, Daji's demon core in my dantian suddenly awakened and began to circulate along the meridians. It completed a full cycle quickly, and I immediately felt a surge of spirit!
By the time I reached the twelfth mantra, Diana's demon core also began to obey instructions and fused with Daji's demon core—at least, that's how it felt to me. A warm stream of true qi flowed through my entire body. I no longer needed to guide the circulation with the mantra; they began to operate on their own, much like those old four-wheeled tractors in the countryside that could start up and run on their own after a few turns of the crank.
Engines hate long periods of stagnation. As long as they operate normally, they quickly warm up and can provide energy continuously. This is the significance of true qi to the human body.
After circulating true qi for about five minutes, my energy had fully recovered, even to the point of being excessive. Looking at Bing Bing beside me, I felt I was almost losing control...