Hunyuan Qi (simplified: 混元气, traditional: 混元气, pinyin: Hùnyuán Qì) is a rare neigong that can be cultivated only in celibacy: whether the practitioner is a man or a woman, the power vanishes on marriage. It is Xiao Banhe’s signature skill.
In Mandarin Duck Blades
Hunyuan Qi is the only power that can match Zhuo Tianxiong’s Thirty Palms of Heaven Shaking. Its training is arduous and its power easily lost, so it is rare in the wulin. When Zhuo’s handshake with Xiao Banhe ends even, Zhuo recognises it, and is baffled: his spies have told him Xiao has a wife, a concubine and a grown daughter. Xiao turns this into his denial that Xiao Zhonghui is his daughter, since a practitioner of the Hunyuan Qi cannot have children, and proves the point with a sweep of his sleeve that sends a gust at Zhuo. Later, when Zhuo strikes at Yuan Guannan, Xiao’s Hunyuan Qi meets Zhuo’s palm and drives both men back two steps.1
The reason Xiao can keep it emerges at the Zhongtiao Mountains: he is a eunuch, and his marriages are a disguise.2
Notable practitioners
Behind the scenes
Hunyuan (混元) refers in Daoist cosmology to the undifferentiated origin before the division of yin and yang. The third edition writes the name 混元炁, using an older form of 气.
See also
- Mandarin Duck Blades martial arts
- Xiao Banhe — signature practitioner