Chapter 236
The tower ships traveling to and from Cheonnam Immortal City increased day by day, and visits from outsiders to the clan never ceased.
Yet, following her father's stern orders, she stayed in her room without meeting anyone.
Meals arrived at the proper times, and she had more than enough high-grade spirit stones for cultivation.
She even got the repaired puppets back from her uncle, and by assigning them tedious chores, she could devote all her spare time to the Nameless Room.
The days were far too comfortable to call them punishment.
‘I could reflect for the rest of my life.’
Baek Cheong lay facedown on her bed, rummaging through posts on the Nameless Room.
She left replies to interesting posts, and whenever a Daoist picked a fight, she paid it back twofold.
It was just when she was about to settle into another fulfilling day under house arrest.
The boundary formation wrapped around the door announced a visitor.
“Are you in there?”
She immediately rose at the voice of Profound Void Perfected Person.
When she opened the door, Profound Void Perfected Person stood there stroking his beard.
His face was as gentle as ever, but something about him felt different.
“What brings you here, Perfected Person?”
“I came to see you before I leave.”
“Leave?”
Profound Void Perfected Person entered and sat down.
Though a teacup had been set before him, he did not touch it and simply gazed at Baek Cheong for some time.
“I have left Hyeonjin Sect vacant for too long. A sect master cannot remain a guest in another clan forever, so I suppose it is time for me to return.”
“Already?”
“There is still a mountain of teachings I have not passed on to you, but we shall have to leave them for the future.”
Nothing sounded strange about his words.
The master of Hyeonjin Sect needed no other reason to return to his sect.
Yet Baek Cheong did not take his explanation at face value.
If sect affairs had been urgent, he would have left as soon as they returned from the ruins.
Profound Void Perfected Person had spent the past month or so completing Cheonnam Immortal City's formations and watching Yeonha's spirit vein stabilize.
His sudden haste now, on the grounds that he had been away too long, sounded more like an excuse.
That brought to mind the ancient record she had read in the Jiaolong's throne room.
Part of the Upper Realm had fallen, the path to ascension had been blocked, and a true dragon slept in the fallen land.
Profound Void Perfected Person had occasionally fallen into deep thought ever since reading the record.
The reason for his departure was more likely connected to the secret history he had uncovered in the ruins than to Hyeonjin Sect's minor administrative affairs.
But she made no attempt to show that she had noticed.
There was no need to pretend she knew something when even a Nascent Soul great cultivator was choosing his words carefully.
“When will you leave?”
“I intend to leave right now.”
“Then please wait just a moment.”
Baek Cheong took white paper and dark ink from the desk drawer.
She mentally retraced the glyphs she had seen in the Jiaolong's throne room and selected only those belonging to the Heaven-and-Earth level.
Glyphs containing the flows of wind, water, earth, and space emerged one by one from the tip of her brush.
She transferred the order of the strokes and the positions where they interlocked from memory.
She could not draw the law glyphs in the first place, since she could not fully hold their forms.
The Heavenly Dao glyphs were not much different.
She could read them according to their meaning, but she had not mastered conveying the will and direction layered within them through a flat diagram.
Without letting greed get the better of her, she left on the paper only the Heaven-and-Earth glyphs she could confidently pass on.
After finishing the final stroke, she waited for the ink to dry and held out the diagram.
“These are the True-Text glyphs I saw in the throne room.”
Profound Void Perfected Person accepted the diagram without any particular expectation.
The smile quickly vanished from his face as he opened the first page.
His hand turned the pages more and more slowly.
As a quasi-fifth-tier formation master, he examined every True-Text glyph in the diagram without letting a single one pass unnoticed.
“You remembered even the strokes and spacing?”
He opened his mouth several times, then closed it again as though struggling to choose his words.
At last, he carefully rolled up the diagram and tucked it deep inside his robes.
“There must be countless formation masters who could search for centuries without finding a clue this valuable. Yet you are simply giving me something that would be difficult to obtain even by offering every treasure of my sect.”
“You helped me a great deal in the ruins as well.”
“What I did to help you is worth something entirely different.”
Profound Void Perfected Person let out a deep sigh and lightly stroked Baek Cheong's head.
An indescribable emotion was plainly written across his face.
“I owe you another enormous debt.”
“You don't owe me that much.”
“It would not cease to be a debt merely because you said it wasn't.”
He smiled gently, then suddenly lowered his voice.
“If this grand undertaking does not end as intended, several continents will fall into chaos.”
Baek Cheong's eyes widened slightly.
Profound Void Perfected Person did not reveal what the grand undertaking was.
Yet the warning that followed carried an unusual weight.
“So until you reach Core Formation, do not leave the Southern Continent. No matter what happens, you must not travel to another continent.”
She could not tell how the chaos was connected to her cultivation realm.
Leaving the Southern Continent was a distant matter for her to begin with.
She did not even want to leave the door of her residence if she could help it, let alone travel to another continent.
She had a vague idea of what the grand undertaking was, but did not press him.
“I won't leave the Southern Continent before I reach Core Formation.”
“Good. Knowing you've promised puts my mind somewhat at ease.”
Profound Void Perfected Person moved to rise from his seat.
Baek Cheong suddenly remembered something and spoke up.
“May I ask you something before you go?”
“Ask me anything.”
“The Heavenly Armor Formation Disc won't accept refinement.”
“The Heavenly Armor Formation Disc?”
“I engraved my divine will into it and infused it with spiritual power. I even tried the incantations for refining dharma treasures, but no trace linking the artifact to its master appeared.”
“Since it is an ancient relic, it must not be like an ordinary dharma treasure. If you do not mind, may I examine it for a moment?”
“Yes.”
Baek Cheong took out the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc from her spatial dharma treasure without hesitation and held it out.
It was an artifact she would not even have placed before someone else.
But even when Profound Void Perfected Person had first seen the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc, he had merely congratulated her on obtaining such a fortuitous opportunity and shown no greed.
Moreover, he had risked his life to protect her in the ruins.
If she could not trust someone like him, there was no one she could ask.
“Let me see...”
Noticing her trust, Profound Void Perfected Person accepted it with even greater care.
He rotated the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams in turn on his palm and traced every hexagonal pattern along the rim.
He even drew several glyphs from his robe and floated them around the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc.
The True-Text glyphs seeped into the black jade, then returned before long.
After examining it for a long time, he tapped the center of the formation disc with a fingertip.
“I understand the reason.”
“Why is that?”
“This object originally housed an artifact spirit.”
“An artifact spirit?”
Baek Cheong looked at the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc again.
The Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams continued moving slowly, as though nothing had happened.
“High-grade artifacts can develop spirituality on their own over the passage of time, or someone may deliberately place an artifact spirit inside them. The traces of an artifact spirit having once dwelled inside the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc are clear.”
“But it's gone now?”
“Yes. I cannot know why it disappeared. It may not have endured the passage of time, or it may have left before the ruins were buried.”
Profound Void Perfected Person pointed at the Central Palace with one finger.
“The artifact spirit seems to have been the medium that linked the formation disc to its master. The space remains, but the spirituality meant to occupy it is gone, so no matter how you attempt refinement, no trace will form.”
“Then is there no way to refine it?”
“It would be difficult in its current state. However, there is a way to resolve the problem.”
Profound Void Perfected Person returned the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc with both hands.
His gesture made it clear that he had no intention of holding on to the precious ancient relic any longer than necessary.
“You only need to let a new artifact spirit dwell within it. If new spirituality fills the vacant place, it will accept refinement as well.”
“A new artifact spirit...”
“I would like to find an artifact spirit for you as well, but I cannot delay even for a moment now.”
Baek Cheong received the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc and held it to her chest.
Since he had already given her enough help, she shook her head and said,
“What you've told me is enough.”
“Yes... We shall meet again someday.”
Profound Void Perfected Person checked until the very end that she had properly placed the diagram inside her spatial dharma treasure.
He then repeated his admonition not to leave the Southern Continent and departed from the residence.
His steps were faster than usual, and as soon as he mounted his flying dharma treasure, he disappeared beyond Cheonnam Immortal City.
‘An artifact spirit...’
Baek Cheong placed the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc on her lap.
As she rubbed the Central Palace with one finger and sank into thought, the turtle demonic beast came to mind.
The Heavenly Armor Formation Disc was an artifact discovered in the Gui Dragon's dwelling.
The small piece of belly shell the turtle demonic beast had given her bore a law glyph.
The shell fragment had opened the door from the depths of Yeonha to the ruins, and the turtle demonic beast had guided her there precisely.
When the ruins collapsed, it sensed the danger, came back, and even saved her life.
There were too many circumstances lining up to believe that an ordinary third-tier turtle demonic beast had accomplished everything by coincidence.
‘It must be a descendant of the Gui Dragon, nine times out of ten.’
If it truly shared blood with the Gui Dragon, there was a good chance the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc would accept the turtle demonic beast.
It had lived for hundreds of years as a third-tier demonic beast, so it possessed more than enough spirituality to become an artifact spirit.
It would be difficult to find a being better suited to fill the place of the vanished artifact spirit.
‘That would be a little...’
But Baek Cheong was not pleased in the slightest.
That was especially true if, as she suspected, her merit had sent Profound Void Perfected Person along to hasten the fortuitous opportunity the turtle demonic beast had received.
The turtle demonic beast had given her far more in return than the value of the high-grade spirit stones she had fed it.
‘That's probably right.’
The usual method of installing an artifact spirit was to entice the soul of a spiritual creature into the artifact and trap it there, or to subdue it by force.
It was called an artifact spirit only because the name sounded impressive; once bound to an artifact, it was no different from a slave unable to defy its master's will.
If she tricked the turtle demonic beast and put it inside the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc, she would be repaying kindness with enmity.
‘There has to be another way.’
Profound Void Perfected Person had only said that she needed to let a new artifact spirit dwell within it; he had not told her to capture the turtle demonic beast and put it inside.
Since the cultivation world was vast, there were surely other methods as well.
If there was something she did not know, she already knew where to ask.
‘Nameless-emong!’
Baek Cheong set the Heavenly Armor Formation Disc down beside her and lay comfortably on her bed.
Without even sitting up, she moved her divine sense to connect to the Nameless Room, where countless posts came into view.
She began entering the terms artifact spirit and refinement into the search bar, then stopped.
If she was going to ask, it would be better to state the conditions clearly.
She immediately composed a new post.
『Dao Friend (913.14): Is there a way to refine an artifact whose artifact spirit has disappeared?』
[Is it impossible without an artifact spirit?]