Not a second kind of qi, but the same qi unobstructed. 真 is doing the work of ‘genuine’: when craving and agitation subside, what follows of itself is the real thing rather than something manufactured.
The temptation is to read 真氣 as a special substance. It is not. In this line the adjective is the whole point: qi that is genuine, i.e. qi that has not been stirred up, is what arrives once the stirring stops.
That makes the sentence a claim about method. Nothing is added and nothing is cultivated; the practice described is subtraction.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
Search the glossary
Reading path
This term belongs to Foundations — the five core concepts, in the order the Suwen introduces them.