ngl kinda lame that you're forced to become pretty much a cultivating vampire after the expedition.
story wise i guess the reveal makes sense? but the way you're forced to penny pinch qi in the "normal" difficulty and above makes it so you can't use (or more so get heavily discouraged of using) your powers over saving it to upgrade your stats. to make matters worse your powers don't actually change the outcome of fights significantly over just using your physicals, so theres basically no reason to use say your new elemental stuff and lose 3 qi permanently over just passing a stat check for agility/constitution/strength. or god forbid you want to use your regeneration perk because now you spend 1 qi to regen, better stick with talismans and choose/roll another perk if you're not after poison immunity (which we might have lost anyway when our whole body got remade by tang wei)
if i could choose that i'd stay with inner energy, because honestly this whole qi business has not been worth it in any form or shape whatsoever, at least mechanically.