Chapter 184
If I crossed over to another continent, my realm number might change.
If this hypothesis happened to be right, it would open a whole new era of trolling.
Until now, no matter how entertaining a trolling opportunity was, she had to play it safe in the end.
If she crossed the line, she could fall out of the moderator's favor and be struck by the hammer of a ban.
But if she could travel between continents and switch realm numbers, that would change everything.
If Daoist(913.14) got banned, she could simply switch to a new realm number.
A troll who had no reason to fear being banned.
‘Just thinking about it gives me thrills.’
Baek Cheong wiggled her toes beneath the blanket and sank into happy fantasies.
But her wishful thinking stopped right there.
The problem was that simply crossing to another continent was already a distant prospect.
She had heard there was only one passage connecting the Southern Continent to the Central Continent, at the southernmost tip.
Even the journey from the Yeonha Baek Clan to that passage was daunting.
Monsters swarmed every stretch of the road, and cultivators harboring ill intentions were hardly uncommon.
As someone only in the early Foundation Establishment stage, she certainly could not make that journey alone.
When one's cultivation was low, there was no escaping the fate of relying on the clan's escort wherever one went.
In the end, to travel around freely, her cultivation had to be strong enough to support it.
‘So it's cultivation again.’
She had to cultivate to browse the forum, and raise her realm to stir up trouble.
It was a cycle that had repeated like a broken record ever since she was born into the cultivation world.
But before she could raise her realm, she first needed to overhaul her cultivation methods.
On the day she advanced to Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment, she had ultimately been unable to complete the condensation and had been forced to rely on quasi-integration.
The problem was that relying on quasi-integration stirred up the latent spiritual root at the bottom of her dantian.
If she relied on quasi-integration every time she raised her realm, it would be like spoon-feeding her latent spiritual root a regular meal.
In a pinch, she could choose Black-grade or Yellow-grade cultivation methods from Baekgyeong Pavilion and switch to ones suited to the five elements.
But with lower-grade cultivation methods, condensation would still be just as difficult, so she would have to rely on quasi-integration every time she broke through.
To push her realm higher through her own strength without relying on quasi-integration, she needed at least Earth-grade cultivation methods for all five attributes.
Heaven-grade methods would be ideal, but collecting five sets of Heaven-grade cultivation methods was something one could only hear about in a dream.
Five Earth-grade methods were the realistic minimum threshold.
But even after turning the second floor of Baekgyeong Pavilion upside down, she had found only the Earth-grade water-attributed Yeonha True Water Art and one wood-attributed method.
She was lacking the fire, earth, and metal attributes.
If she begged her father or uncles, they would somehow procure them for her.
But she was already in the process of searching far and wide for extremely precious Earth-grade cultivation methods, so it was obvious that resources would be spent and years would pass.
For someone who wanted to switch cultivation methods immediately, that was far too long.
‘But I have the marketplace, don't I?’
Once that thought occurred to her, Baek Cheong's eyes began to sparkle.
The Nameless Forum marketplace was where items from throughout the Lower Realm gathered.
Besides, she happened to have 137 premium spirit stones that had been rolling around uselessly because she had no good way to spend them.
‘So this is what all these spirit stones were meant for.’
She logged on to the Nameless Forum without delay.
She went straight to the marketplace board and ran a search.
The first search term was five-element cultivation methods.
『Daoist(281.5) Selling: Jade Slip of a Five-Element Cultivation Method. Black-grade. 3 premium spirit stones.』
[Usable up to Foundation Establishment. Daoists with five-element spiritual roots buy it from time to time.]
『Daoist(96.31) Selling: Yellow-grade Five-Element Cultivation Method book. 30 mid-grade spirit stones.』
[An item one of my clan's Ancestors practiced in his youth. Clean condition.]
『Daoist(190.8) Selling: Bundle of three Five-Element Cultivation Methods. Yellow-grade. 50 mid-grade spirit stones for all.』
[We had stockpiled them because there are many descendants with five-element spiritual roots in the clan. Putting them up while clearing out the warehouse.]
There were, indeed, listings available.
But the farther she scrolled, the worse the offerings looked.
They were all Black-grade or Yellow-grade.
Then again, it wasn't strange.
Even on the Nameless Forum, cultivators who had reached a high realm with five-element spiritual roots were rare.
Since there were so few people who practiced them, high-grade five-element cultivation methods would hardly appear on the marketplace.
Still, thanks to the board's slow updates, old sales posts had piled up intact.
She had been scrolling upward through the posts for quite some time when it happened.
A familiar realm number caught her eye.
『Daoist(718.44) Selling: Five Elements Returning-to-Origin Art (五行歸元功). Earth-grade. 40 premium spirit stones. [Sold]』
[A cultivation method that returns the five elements to a single root. This is the method this one used to reach Incarnation, so it is worth the price.]
‘Senior Daoist 718.44?!’
It was the Daoist who had cultivated with a five-element spiritual root all the way to the Incarnation stage and ultimately ascended.
That Daoist had also opened the path of the five elements' mutual generation for her.
If it was a five-element cultivation method that senior had put up before ascending, it had to be the genuine article.
But unfortunately, it had already found its buyer long ago.
‘What a waste. If only I'd been born a little earlier...’
She was practically sick with envy wondering which Daoist had bought it.
Swallowing her disappointment, Baek Cheong continued scrolling through the posts until her divine sense caught on a listing.
『Daoist(237.309) Selling: Boundless Five-Element Cultivation Method. 50 premium spirit stones.』
[A five-element cultivation method usable from Qi Refining to Incarnation. For a five-element spiritual root cultivator, there is nothing better for evenly developing all five attributes.]
It was the listing from the lunatic she had noticed at Baekgyeong Pavilion.
The Daoist who had allegedly bought up a million people with five-element spiritual roots and experimented on them.
The item itself looked convincing, but it left her with an uneasy feeling.
There was no mention anywhere of what had happened to the million people.
‘No matter how desperate I am, this is a step too far.’
Baek Cheong passed it by without hesitation.
In the end, she concluded that there was nothing worth salvaging among the five-element cultivation methods.
‘Well, there's no reason to insist on a cultivation method integrated into one from the start.’
All she needed, anyway, was Earth-grade cultivation methods for the fire, earth, and metal attributes.
She already had Earth-grade methods for water and wood from Baekgyeong Pavilion, so filling in the rest would complete the five elements.
She changed the search terms and searched through the methods for each of the remaining attributes, excluding water and wood.
Then listings poured in, in numbers that made the earlier results look pitiful.
『Daoist(505.77) Selling: Blazing Yang Art (炎陽訣). Earth-grade fire-attributed cultivation method. 15 premium spirit stones.』
[An item that came from a prestigious sect. Do not ask about its source.]
『Daoist(72.19) Selling: Cultivation Method for Mutated Thunder Spiritual Roots. Heaven-grade. Price upon inquiry. 10,000 premium spirit stones.』
[I have yet to find anyone capable of learning it, so I'm putting it up for sale. Daoists with thunder spiritual roots, please reply.]
『Daoist(614.3) Selling: Five or six earth-attributed cultivation methods. From Earth-grade to Yellow-grade. 10,000 premium spirit stones.』
[Clearing out the warehouse. Discount available for buying them all at once.]
There were cultivation methods for mutated spiritual roots, as well as methods for every imaginable attribute.
Their grades ranged from Heaven-grade to Earth-grade.
As expected, listings were common because cultivators who specialized in a single attribute were common.
‘Good. There should be enough here to pick and choose from.’
But there was one thing preventing her from getting too excited.
Cultivation methods were on an entirely different level from pills or magical artifacts.
With a fraudulent listing, losing a few spirit stones was the end of it, but learning the wrong cultivation method could reverse her qi and cause cultivation deviation.
Fortunately, every listing was either a book or a jade slip.
If they were unknown magical treasures, she would have to worry about someone hiding a Nascent Soul inside and stealing her body.
It would be difficult to pull off such a trick with mere books and jade slips.
Above all, she possessed forty pages' worth of compressed divine sense.
No matter what trick was hidden in a jade slip, she would notice it if she thoroughly examined every inch of it.
She immediately began scooping up one seemingly promising listing after another.
[Payment complete. 15 premium spirit stones deducted.]
[Daoist(505.77)'s item has been sent to the storage pouch.]
She picked up anything marked Earth-grade for the time being.
Even if it was Black-grade, she bought it if the seller bragged that its incantations were extraordinary.
She bought it if the name sounded promising, and bought it if the price was dirt cheap.
As long as she managed to find even one proper cultivation method, she could regard the rest of the failures as tuition.
After frantically scooping them up, she found that she had over thirty.
More than half of her spirit stones had melted away in the blink of an eye.
‘I should be able to get at least two good ones out of this many.’
Baek Cheong immediately set about inspecting the cultivation methods.
She took the books and jade slips from her storage pouch and examined them one by one with her divine sense.
To give the result first, there was no such thing as an overlooked Earth-grade cultivation method in this world.
From the very beginning, fraudulent listings came one after another.
The fire-attributed jade slip advertised as Earth-grade had a convincing cover, but its contents were merely a Yellow-grade cultivation method.
The Black-grade cultivation method advertised as having extraordinary incantations was an ordinary item with only its name changed.
There was even a book filled with nonsensical incantations that contradicted themselves from beginning to end.
‘At this point, this isn't fraud anymore. It's art—art.’
She was so furious that she had almost reached the point of admiration.
Some of the items went beyond fraud and had been deliberately tampered with.
They were jade slips in which a few lines of the incantations from an otherwise sound cultivation method had been subtly twisted.
If someone learned one without realizing it, their spiritual energy would likely run rampant and reverse their qi and blood.
But because she had examined so many cultivation methods, she was able to spot the tampering.
‘Well, well. They twisted this part and this part, huh?’
Baek Cheong went beyond pointing out the twisted sections and corrected them back to their proper form.
As a result, a perfectly sound Black-grade cultivation method hidden beneath the tampering was revealed.
‘Is this actually a gain instead?’
After sorting through the cultivation methods, about a dozen remained.
Most were Black-grade or Yellow-grade, making them mediocre.
After going to all this trouble to raise the grade of her cultivation, holding onto a Black-grade method would only bring her back to square one.
At least two Earth-grade methods had turned up.
One was a fire-attributed Earth-grade cultivation method called the Blood-Splitting Flame Art.
Its power was worthy of an Earth-grade method, but the problem was how it had to be learned.
The more vital blood one burned and offered as fuel, the faster one's cultivation power grew.
There was a limit to giving up flesh to gain bones, but this was like mortgaging one's entire body.
She had switched cultivation methods to avoid the latent spiritual root, only for the new method to consume her body instead. That would defeat the entire purpose.
‘Rejected.’
The other was the metal-attributed Earth-grade Geng Metal Art (庚金訣).
Its incantations were pure and its flow smooth, leaving no room for criticism.
Even compared with the Earth-grade cultivation methods she had examined earlier at Baekgyeong Pavilion, it was a genuine article that fell short of nothing.
‘I finally found one!’
Baek Cheong hugged the jade slip and rolled around on the bed.
After celebrating for a while, she quietly began working out the numbers on an abacus.
The spirit stones she had spent buying the cultivation methods came to nearly eighty in total.
The Earth-grade cultivation method she had salvaged was the Geng Metal Art alone.
‘Eighty premium spirit stones for one Earth-grade method...’
The figure was painful enough to sting, but when she considered the matter carefully, it was still a profitable deal.
If she had gone through the clan's connections to procure an Earth-grade cultivation method, it obviously would have cost far more than this.
And the time it would have taken was beyond comparison.
‘Right, it was cheap. I can use the remaining spirit stones to find fire and earth methods.’
She had roughly sixty premium spirit stones left.
The calculation that one Earth-grade method cost eighty had already vanished from her mind.
At this rate, it seemed she could easily salvage about two more.