I would like to share some interesting content I found on the internet:
"炁,音同“气”，是中国哲学、道教和中医学中常见的概念，人的第一个灵体所需要的能量，不同于气。“炁”乃先天之炁，代表无极，“气”乃后天之气。"
source:
https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/918897106472642179.html
It seems like the "炁" is more on the inborn natural vital force.
To Tomasso: That's why Chinese characters will never be written in form of Pin Yin, and it's only for pronunciation learning purpose because Chinese is not a phonetic language. Besides, Pin Yin (in alphabet way) doesn't exist in ancient Chinese society until 1958.
The interesting thing is that the confusion you mentioned not only found in Chinese, when I try to learn Japanese, the romaji would also cause similar confusion, so it is better to learn the language in their actual form instead of the "pronunciation system".
