Chapter 157
It had been a full fortnight since Baek Cheong had let her cultivation fall by the wayside.
Baek Cheong had spent that entire time glued to the Nameless Forum, passing day after day in blissful forum-scrolling.
Ever since compressing her bloated Divine Sense, she could enjoy it without a single worry.
She read new posts, left replies, and traded pointless chatter with the dao Friends.
She was idling around the forum board as usual.
Then a small notification blinked in from a completely unexpected place.
'Huh? What’s this…’
She had long since assumed the other party had gone dark, given up on it, and forgotten the whole thing.
Apparently, a new reply had been added to the comment she had left on the Divine Sense compression information post.
In other words, the question she had asked about where the middle and upper volumes of the Spirit Condensation Art were had finally received an answer.
‘After all this time?’
Half-doubting it, Baek Cheong followed the notification back to the information post.
Fortunately, the post had not been buried in the depths, so even with her Divine Sense reduced by half, she could reach it without much trouble.
After compressing her Divine Sense, she had secretly worried because she could no longer dive as deep into the Nameless Forum’s abyss, but this eased her mind.
And beneath the reply she had left, there was a brief answer.
[Dao friend(913.14): Where are the Divine Sense Condensation Art, Middle Volume, and upper Volume?]
└Dao friend(410.310): Up above.
‘Up above?’
Baek Cheong blinked at the absurdly vague words.
It was far too short to be called an answer, leaving her puzzled.
Still, when a cultivator said “above,” there was only one obvious place they could mean.
The Upper Realm was the place one could only step into after reaching the pinnacle of the Lower Realm and ascending.
Strictly speaking, it was called the Spirit Realm, but people of the Lower Realm simply called it the Upper Realm in a vague sense because it was above them.
'So it’s in the Spirit Realm?’
The moment that thought finished, she hung another reply beneath it.
[Dao friend(913.14): Can I get them in the Spirit Realm then?]
This time, perhaps the other party had not left, because an answer came immediately.
[Dao friend(410.310): Maybe, maybe not.]
‘…What is that supposed to mean?’
Unable to understand, she tried leaving several more replies.
Where in the Spirit Realm? From whom? For how much?
The more she pressed, the less came back.
Dao friend(410.310) showed no sign of appearing again.
‘Ugh, they went dark again.’
Baek Cheong stared hard at the reply and sank into thought.
Maybe, maybe not.
She turned over in her mind how such an ambiguous answer could have come back to the question of whether they could be obtained in the Spirit Realm.
Then one possibility suddenly flashed through her mind.
‘No way…’
The Spirit Condensation Art was divided into a lower volume, a middle volume, and an upper volume.
What she had was the lower volume.
‘Could the Lower Volume be the Lower Realm volume, the Middle Volume the Middle Realm volume, and the upper Volume the Upper Realm volume?’
The worlds where Cultivators dwelled were divided into the Mortal Realm, the Spirit Realm, and the Immortal Realm.
If those worlds were matched, in order, to the lower, middle, and upper, they could be divided into the Lower Realm, Middle Realm, and Upper Realm.
The Mortal Realm, commonly called the Lower Realm, was where she currently existed.
The Spirit Realm was the Middle Realm located directly above the Mortal Realm.
It was a place one could not enter without Ascension.
'…I think I’m starting to see the picture.’
The Immortal Realm could be called the true Upper Realm, far beyond even the Spirit Realm.
Once she reasoned that far, dao friend(410.310)’s ambiguous answer finally made sense.
The Divine Sense Condensation Art, Middle Volume was in the Middle Realm, in other words, the Spirit Realm, so it was correct that it could be obtained in the Spirit Realm.
But the upper Volume was in the Upper Realm, in other words, the Immortal Realm, so there was no way to obtain it in the Spirit Realm.
To the single question of whether they could be obtained in the Spirit Realm, the answer was yes for the Middle Volume and no for the upper Volume.
That was how the answer “maybe, maybe not” had come about.
‘Putting that aside…’
After she worked through it step by step, a chill ran down her spine.
She could set the Middle Volume aside for now; the real problem was the upper Volume.
The place where the upper Volume was located was none other than the Immortal Realm.
The Spirit Realm was a place one could barely enter even after crossing the enormous mountain called Ascension.
Yet the Immortal Realm was a height that lay unimaginably far beyond even the Spirit Realm.
Unable to measure it, unable even to get a feel for it, Baek Cheong froze blankly for a moment.
Then she abruptly came to her senses.
‘What am I even worrying about right now?’
She had only just stepped into the Divine Sense Condensation Art, 1st Level.
Ascension, the Immortal Realm, and the like were distant matters hundreds or thousands of years away.
‘I’m getting way too far ahead of myself.’
She had no idea how long it would take just to properly master the Divine Sense Condensation Art, Lower Volume.
There was no reason to clutch her head over the Middle Volume and upper Volume when she could not even reach them.
She shook off her lingering regret and left the information post.
Thanks to that, her enthusiasm for forum-scrolling had cooled as well.
After rolling around on her bed for a fortnight doing nothing but forum-scrolling, she was starting to feel restless.
‘Maybe I should cultivate again.’
Baek Cheong closed the Nameless Forum and rose from her seat.
She sat in lotus position atop the Spirit Gathering Formation in the Training Room of the cave abode.
The Spirit Gathering Formation, directly connected to a spiritual vein, drew the spirit energy of heaven and earth into the room until it filled the air.
As usual, she began Qi Absorption and drew spirit energy into her Dantian.
Yet even though it was the same Qi Absorption as always, it felt strangely different today.
After she compressed her Divine Sense with the Spirit Condensation Art, the flow of spirit energy drifting through the air was as clear as if she could grasp it in her hands.
She could read exactly where the spirit energy filling the room existed and how it flowed.
It felt like walking with her eyes open down a road she had always traversed blind.
As she observed the flow of spirit energy, she realized an unexpected truth.
‘I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time.’
Her method of Qi Absorption had been inefficient.
Until now, she had thought there were only two routes by which spirit energy entered the body.
Through the breath through the nose and through the pores of the skin.
She had assumed the spirit energy of heaven and earth naturally entered the body only through fixed routes.
But the spirit energy she directly observed was completely different from what she had imagined.
Spirit energy was bound to no object; it drifted freely.
It crossed walls, passed through flesh, and caught on nothing.
The meridians merely made its movement smoother, and it settled in the Dantian only because the pull of the spirit root caught and held it.
Therefore, there was no reason to force it through the passages called breath and pores.
If she willed it, she could draw in spirit energy through any part of her body.
‘I’m only realizing this now?’
The realization did not stop there.
If spirit energy passed through all things and was not bound to objects…
Then all things in creation were made of spirit energy and immersed in it.
‘Everything is made of spirit energy.’
The instant her thoughts reached that point, Baek Cheong naturally slipped into trance.
As her consciousness grew dim and hazy, Qi Absorption began to happen on its own.
Every pathway in her body opened wide and drew in spirit energy.
Even filtering the turbid dregs from the spirit energy she drew in and expelling them flowed as smoothly as water.
Compared to the rate at which her Dantian had filled when her narrow assumptions had limited Qi Absorption to fixed Passages, the rate at which her Dantian filled was incomparable.
While she was in a trance so deep that she was not even aware of herself, the Five Elements Spirit Root received nourishment for the first time in a while and shone faintly.
Wood, fire, earth, metal, water.
The five elements supported one another in mutual generation, drinking in spirit energy to their fill and beginning to grow.
But the Five Elements Spirit Root was not the only thing that took in that light.
Another spirit root sleeping deep within her Dantian opened its eyes as well.
As the Five Elements Spirit Root accepted nourishment, the latent spirit root greedily sucked in several times more.
Without Baek Cheong even noticing, it began to swell at a monstrous pace.
* * *
It was nearly fifteen whole days later.
Her consciousness, which had been submerged in trance, suddenly surfaced.
What roused her from trance was none other than her empty stomach.
Hunger rose so fiercely it twisted her organs, making it impossible to remain in trance.
“Ugh, I’m hungry…”
When she slowly opened her eyes, the inside of the cave abode was unchanged from when she had entered.
‘How much time passed?’
Rubbing her foggy head, Baek Cheong checked her Dantian first.
As she gauged the spirit energy that had accumulated there, her eyes went round.
‘It was filled by a whole tenth?’
After she reached the 9th level, her Dantian had become so oceanic that a single sea was not enough to describe it.
That such an enormous Dantian had filled by a tenth in just fifteen days was astonishing.
It meant that whole-body Qi Absorption was that efficient.
Since she was examining her Dantian anyway, she turned her attention to her spirit Roots as well.
For some reason, there seemed to be a change in her spirit Roots too.
But no matter how hard she looked, all she could sense was that they were more active than ever.
‘Something does feel different… What is it?’
Spirit Roots were never the sort of thing that changed visibly in the first place.
She could only vaguely sense that they had grown livelier; there was no way to gauge exactly what had changed or how.
'Eh, who knows. If they’re more active, that must be a good thing.’
Baek Cheong brushed it off as nothing important.
She had a far more pressing problem.
She was so hungry her stomach felt pasted to her spine.
‘Ah, I need to eat something first.’
As a stopgap, she pulled a Fasting pill from her Storage Platform and tossed it into her mouth.
It was a medicinal pill that let one forget hunger even without eating any grain.
Normally, one pill would easily carry her for several days.
But for some reason, even after swallowing the Fasting pill, her stomach did not feel full at all.
‘…Huh? Why am I this hungry?’
Even after she swallowed another pill, it was the same.
Far from fading, her hunger only made her belly rumble noisily.
Considering she had spent fifteen days in trance, it seemed understandable, but still strange.
'If a Fasting pill won’t do it, then I’ve got no choice.’
Baek Cheong took a contact jade token from her Storage Platform and infused it with spirit energy.
She meant to tell her attendants to bring in plenty to eat.
'While I’m at it, I’ll have them set out a proper feast.’
Only then, as she thought of filling her stomach, did her mood improve.
Cultivation and enlightenment could wait; right now, all she wanted was a warm meal.