Chapter 20
#4
A man named Ziqing had personally traveled all the way to this remote region in search of the ‘mysterious immortal who cures illnesses and grants people a rebirth.’ The story had set the jianghu abuzz in recent days.
For Ziqing, who had been struggling with a bottleneck for ages and was on the verge of reaching Foundation Establishment, the existence of that immortal was like a ray of light.
Ziqing hadn’t originally planned to stay on this mountain for long.
However, it had the advantage of abundant spiritual qi and rugged terrain, which kept mortals from venturing deep into it.
It was the perfect place to quietly gather spiritual qi with nothing more than a Bewildering Formation (迷惑陣).
So Ziqing set up a barrier halfway up the mountain and deployed a Spirit-Gathering Formation within it.
He bought four low-grade spirit stones at the market, buried them in the four cardinal directions, planted flags to set up the formation, then climbed to the summit.
It wasn’t exactly luxurious, but for a rogue cultivator, he had to be grateful for even this much.
Ziqing was a seventh-layer Qi Refining cultivator.
As a cultivator who wandered without a sect, he had no powerful master, dependable clan, or expensive pills.
Still, he was quick-witted.
He firmly believed that when it came to surviving for a long time in the cultivation world, good instincts mattered more than talent.
Knowing whom to bow to,
whose pockets you could pick,
and which rumors you could laugh off and which you had to risk your life to investigate.
Without that kind of judgment, a rogue cultivator wouldn’t last long.
The reason he had come all the way to this remote village in the back of beyond was that he’d sensed there might be an opportunity for a fortuitous encounter here.
The strange rumor went: ‘There’s an immortal who can cure illnesses and turn you into an unrivaled master.’
At first, he’d laughed it off.
Rumors in the mortal world tended to get exaggerated, after all.
But one name in the story was impossible to ignore.
Sword Demon Yan Nan-cheon.
Having once lived in the mortal world himself, there was no way he wouldn’t recognize that name. It was said that the old swordsman, who had stood at the pinnacle of the jianghu, had had his meridians examined by some nameless immortal and undergone a Reversal of Aging.
He’d assumed it was an exaggeration, but when he investigated, he found it was true. Naturally, he became intensely curious about the immortal’s identity.
Think about it. The cultivation world was nothing like the mortals’ imaginings—it was a bottomless abyss of unspeakable cruelty.
It was an abyss full of vile beasts who would gladly turn anyone with a good spiritual root into pills and swallow them.
And wasn’t it packed to the brim with people who, upon seeing a weaker cultivator, would search their storage pouch and take every useful artifact and spirit stone they could find?
Of course, Ziqing hadn’t led a perfectly clean life himself. Naturally—clean-living rogue cultivators didn’t survive long.
But what if…!
What if there really were still good people left in this rotten cultivation world?
What if there truly were an immortal who would heal an injured martial artist, open their meridians, and ask for nothing in return?
Ziqing reasoned that he, too, could ask that immortal for guidance.
A cultivator ultimately had to gather spiritual qi, so he chose the most spiritually potent mountain in the area and set up a barrier.
On the surface, it was a Spirit-Gathering Formation for collecting spiritual qi, but he’d mixed a Bewildering Formation into it as well.
It would make any mortal wander in circles, and if a greenhorn cultivator at the first layer of Qi Refining entered, it was designed to tire them out and let him subdue them.
That was more or less how rogue cultivators survived.
They didn’t win by fighting fair and square. They tied their opponent’s feet before the other person could even size them up.
As Ziqing sat there gathering spiritual qi, he sensed someone enter the edge of his barrier.
It was a young-looking boy wearing a bamboo hat.
At first, Ziqing didn’t think much of him. He was small, walked cautiously, and had a sword at his waist, but he didn’t have the bearing of a swordsman.
His clothes made him look like an outsider from the jianghu, but something about them seemed off.
‘Some greenhorn from the jianghu?’
What was more, even when Ziqing swept the boy from afar with his divine sense (神識), he couldn’t sense a single trace of true qi in the boy’s dantian.
It was common knowledge that anyone with a spiritual root would react to the surrounding spiritual qi, however faintly.
All the more so if they were a cultivator.
Even if they were breathing, even if they were trying to conceal their aura, their dantian would draw in a little of the spiritual qi of Heaven and Earth.
Like someone standing by the water with their hem getting wet, everyone inevitably bore traces of contact with spiritual qi.
But this boy was different.
Ziqing couldn’t sense a thing.
‘A mortal among mortals, with not even a spiritual root?’
Quick-witted as ever, Ziqing chuckled.
“A bug.”
It seemed the boy had wandered into the barrier by chance and gotten lost.
‘Heh heh, maybe I’ll give him a little scare.’
He was probably the young master of a well-to-do family in a town at the foot of the mountain, who’d taken a wrong turn.
His face was so delicate that his pale skin stood out even in the fog. Ziqing found himself briefly intrigued.
Watching how a mortal reacted after getting trapped in the barrier would at least give him something to do.
A mischievous, wicked smile spread across Ziqing’s lips.
“Perfect timing. My cultivation’s been stuck, and I’m bored out of my mind. I’ll terrify that little brat and use his despair as an ingredient to stew him into a Human Essence Pill (人元丹). Even if he’s only a mortal, he should give me a small boost toward breaking through to Foundation Establishment.”
He formed a hand seal, and the Bewildering Formation spread out.
Ziqing manipulated the formation and twisted the paths through the fog.
When the boy walked right, the path would fold to the left; when he turned around, the trees he’d passed would vanish. Ziqing toyed with him like that.
He even added illusions, filling the air with the cries of monstrous beasts, hoping the boy would grow so terrified he’d bawl his eyes out.
But something seemed strange.
Though the boy was lost, he didn’t look the least bit flustered.
The boy tilted his head, then crouched against a rock and scratched something out with a stick.
“Let the coefficient of resistance be beta (β)… the law of conservation of energy for work…”
“Well, he’s pretty calm for a mortal kid. But you’re scared, aren’t you? You must be terrified. You want to cry, don’t you? This Bewildering Formation should make it feel as if the whole mountain is playing tricks on you.”
Now he was waving his hand around in the air, doing some bizarre thing Ziqing couldn’t make heads or tails of.
“Has he gone mad? Tsk, tsk. I’ll descend in all my splendor, pretend to rescue him, knock him out, and turn him into pills.”
With a face that pretty and skin without a single blemish, untouched by the world’s impurities, he could make fine medicinal material.
Among rogue cultivators, there were even wicked recipes for making Blood-Nourishing Pills by mixing a mortal’s fresh blood with certain herbs.
Ziqing didn’t consider himself a demonic cultivator, but surviving in the cultivation world sometimes required getting your hands dirty.
‘I came chasing rumors about an immortal and ended up picking up a mortal. My luck isn’t bad, after all.’
He straightened his robe and descended from the summit.
He used his specialty, the Cloud-Dodging Art, and made his way down lightly.
Out of habit, he swept the area with his divine sense.
But something was strange.
The closer he got, the denser the spiritual qi became.
‘Aha, he’s a fresh-faced little brat who’s only just entered Qi Refining.’
Because the boy’s spiritual root and dantian were so weak, Ziqing had mistaken him for a mortal.
‘What a windfall! He’s a cultivator? No wonder he’s so beautiful, like a Nascent Soul elder who’s possessed a beauty’s body. There couldn’t be better material for pills. No, perhaps I should try dual cultivation with him?’
Wasn’t this a ‘ginseng’—more precious than wild ginseng?
There could hardly be a better windfall.
‘Ah, that child must have come looking for the immortal, too.’
If it came to it, he could practice dual cultivation with the child to raise his realm, then eat him to help him reach Foundation Establishment.
He waved in the friendliest way he could, hoping to put the boy at ease.
“Fellow Daoist! A pleasure to meet you!”
And. Then.
One second after he extended his divine sense from close range.
Ziqing’s heart went THUD! and plunged through his ribs into the abyss.
The boy had lightly snapped his fingers.
He hadn’t chanted a spell formula or even formed a hand seal.
Then the fog he had scattered gathered together, transforming into something shaped like a triangular prism in the boy’s hand.
The boy let the sunlight shining through the thinning fog pass through it, casting a radiant rainbow into the air as he smiled with satisfaction.
Ziqing’s jaw trembled, and his mouth fell open.
‘He can perform a spell without even chanting a formula, much less forming a hand seal?!’
It was common knowledge that Qi Refining cultivators couldn’t directly control the spiritual qi of Heaven and Earth.
They could only use magic arts (法術), because they hadn’t yet gained the authority to command the spiritual qi of Heaven and Earth.
And even then, only basic magic arts.
To make one work, they had to chant a complicated spell formula, form hand seals, and forcibly squeeze out their own true qi just to create a single fireball, water arrow, or earthen wall.
Why? Because Qi Refining cultivators were still standing at the threshold of Heaven and Earth. They had no authority to command the spiritual qi of Heaven and Earth.
Foundation Establishment cultivators, on the other hand, were different.
Once they established their Dao foundation and awakened their spiritual sense, they could forcibly draw in the spiritual qi of Heaven and Earth to perform arts.
Forcibly making the spiritual qi of Heaven and Earth obey with a mere gesture or thought, and instantly casting a spell—that was the realm of spiritual arts (靈術), wielded by great cultivators at Foundation Establishment and above!
The crude output of a Qi Refining cultivator’s magic arts and the spiritual arts of a Foundation Establishment cultivator, who could command nature, were worlds apart in both difficulty and power.
That was what it meant to be on an entirely different level.
And yet the boy was humming as he shaped water from Heaven and Earth without a single incantation, and even freely manipulated light, which belonged to none of the Five Elements.
‘A spiritual art?’
Cold sweat ran down Ziqing’s spine.
Only then did he extend his divine sense more deeply.
Until a moment ago, he’d thought the boy was a mortal, so he’d only given him a cursory glance.
This time, he carefully examined the relationship between the boy’s dantian and the surrounding spiritual qi from close range.
It was an act that could have killed him outright, but Ziqing was so shocked that he failed to recognize the danger.
And he almost stopped breathing.
It wasn’t that the boy lacked energy.
It was that none of it leaked out.
Sure enough, the area around the boy harmonized perfectly with the spiritual qi of Misty Cloud Mountain.
There was no trace of forcibly concealing his true qi, no shell of a defensive art, and no odd sensation from a talisman hiding his cultivation realm. It was simply so natural that it seemed like nothing was there.
Like incense burning inside a sealed jar, with not a trace of its fragrance escaping the lid.
‘Impossible… Could it mean…?’
There was only one state like this in the cultivation world.
Returning to the Origin.
The realm of a great cultivator who had comprehended the laws of Heaven and Earth and completely contained their own energy within themselves.
Just as a mountain was a mountain, water was water, and a rock was a rock, merely standing there made one part of the surrounding scenery.
That was exactly how the boy seemed.
He was displaying the realm of an unrivaled master, the sort that Foundation Establishment elders used when traveling through the mortal world.
An unrivaled master who looked like a mortal? That was the most dangerous kind in the world.
A Foundation Establishment cultivator who’d reached Returning to the Origin? It made no sense.
And on top of that, the boy might actually be a woman pretending to be a man.
Ziqing thought the person must have been born a man with yang energy, then transformed into a woman to cultivate the principles of yin.
Ziqing’s lips went dry.
Unable to restrain himself, he studied the person more closely in his quest for the truth.
‘I shouldn’t… They’ll take my head.’
He should never have done that.
“Huh?”
The person’s dantian wasn’t some little spring.
The true qi visible on the surface was as faint as that of someone at the first layer of Qi Refining. But beneath that single drop of true qi lay a space with no end in sight.
Empty, yet deep. Still, yet vast. An ocean so immense that the moment he put his divine sense inside, he felt he would lose his way.
And in its very center, five energies were in motion.
Beep!
This was absolutely not a SIMPLE cultivation method.
Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal.
Five attributes that should have clashed with one another were joined in a single loop.
Water Qi cooled Metal Qi, Metal Qi refined the grain of Wood Qi, Wood Qi nurtured Fire Qi, Fire Qi awakened Earth Qi, and Earth Qi held the flow of Water Qi in place once more.
Ah, this was the universe—a microcosm!
The principles of Heaven and Earth were contained in that dantian.
Not only the principles of the Five Elements—Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth—
but the exquisite harmony of a man and a woman, like Dao partners practicing dual cultivation, surely embodied the Dao of Yin and Yang.
A lake where Yin, Yang, and the Five Elements had sprouted—no, an ocean.
「All things beneath Heaven 天地萬物, above ten thousand people 萬人之上
」
It was exactly that.
Awe, and more awe!
Having encountered such an astonishing fortuitous opportunity on the verge of death, Ziqing was so moved as a cultivator that tears streamed down his face.
But that was one thing, and this was another.
‘A Golden Core? Nascent Soul? Or perhaps an old monster of an equivalent realm had undergone a Reversal of Aging and was traveling in a child’s body?’
The information he had gathered over time flashed through Ziqing’s mind like a revolving lantern.
The rumor about an immortal who cured illnesses, Sword Demon Yan Nan-cheon’s Reversal of Aging, and the beautiful young man—or woman—under a bamboo hat who hadn’t revealed their name.
It seemed as if all the pieces fit together.
In Ziqing’s mind, all the information he’d gathered joined together and led him to a single conclusion.
‘T-that silent-cast, instantaneous spiritual art! And the realm of Returning to the Origin, with not a trace of true qi leaking out! There’s no doubt. This person has mastered the principles of nature and undergone a Reversal of Aging (返老還童), wearing the outward form of a teenage boy!’
‘Judging by this, they must be an old monster at the great-perfection stage of Foundation Establishment! They’ve sealed themselves away in these remote mountains, traveling incognito and honing themselves in preparation to form a Golden Core!!’
Ziqing’s legs trembled like aspens, then gave way beneath him.
Ziqing remembered what he’d just done.
He’d trapped this person inside his barrier, toyed with them using the fog, and even planned to stew them into a Human Essence Pill.
He was furious with himself for his own stupidity.
There was only one way to survive now.
First, prostrate himself as low as possible.
Then beg for forgiveness.
Thud!
As if to atone for his disrespectful desire to turn this person into pills and eat them, he dropped to his knees and flattened himself against the muddy ground.
“Eek! Foundation Establishment?! Ah, this worthless junior failed to recognize a great senior and committed a grave offense.”
“……”
‘They’re not saying anything. I’m dead.’
“My divine sense (神識) is too feeble, and that is what led to this. Please forgive my rudeness with your magnanimous heart, Senior, and I shall devote myself even more diligently to my cultivation…”
‘Shit! I’m screwed! What do I do? I’m a dead man!’
“……Huh?”
It seemed the old monster had seen right through his petty trick and was displeased.
‘Damn it, should I escape with the Water-Escape Art? No, how could I possibly run from a Foundation Establishment old monster?! That’s absurd.’
He’d prospered by making pills out of people,
and now he’d meet his downfall as a pill himself.
To search for any way to survive, Ziqing…
had no choice but to put his so-called ‘ass-kissing strategy’ into action.
As far as Ziqing was concerned,
there was no way to defeat a cultivator wielding the power of Yin and Yang and the Five Elements, who was in the midst of forming a Golden Core.
That was simply impossible.
