I Humbly Ask for your Wise Counsel, dao friend

Over the course of half a year, Baek-cheong filled nearly half her Dantian.

Of course, she had not spent those six months on training alone.

Even when she lay on the Profound Jade Bed enjoying the Nameless Forum, her Dantian filled itself on its own.

After half a year like that, with forum-scrolling mixed in, the Dantian that had seemed as vast as a sea had filled to somewhere around the halfway point.

“At this pace, things are going smoothly.”

It was a Dantian that had doubled yet again when she reached the eighth star.

If she had devoted herself without distraction, she would have filled it long ago and still have had time to spare.

But Baek-cheong was not so earnest that she could only cling to training.

Her daily routine was to lie on the bed, open the Nameless Forum, and mix in a little forum-scrolling.

Now and then, she also visited the marketplace.

Still, she no longer camped there for half a month or a full month like last time.

After suffering a severe bout of addiction, she had gotten the knack of knowing when to pull out.

“The marketplace in moderation.”

The problem was that forum-scrolling was not always fun.

When she kept the Nameless Forum open, there were plenty of days when only dull bait drifted by.

Not every conversation the dao Friends exchanged was interesting.

There were heaps of things she could not understand, especially because her realm was low.

She could barely follow even half of the conversations held by great Cultivator dao Friends about nascent soul this and soul formation that.

Even most of the posts on the information forum board catered to great Cultivators.

As a mere artifact forging cultivator, she did not have much room to join in.

'Seriously, they’re all old Monsters.’

She had known for a long time that artifact forging cultivators were few and far between on the Nameless Forum.

So on days when nothing but worthless topics rolled by, she got restless.

Lying there watching posts drift past in silence was surprisingly hard to endure.

‘I’m bored. Maybe I should try something else.’

In the end, whenever forum-scrolling grew stale, Baek-cheong quietly turned her eyes to other forms of training.

Fortunately, there was plenty to work on in the Eastern Region where she had entered closed-door seclusion.

She tinkered with pill refining and studied formation glyphs.

On truly boring days, she pulled books and jade slips from the study and leafed through them.

There were quite a few things she had left sitting around, including the talisman jade slip Talisman Master Yeon had given her and the Biun Sect’s formation introductory jade slip.

Going through them one by one was perfect for killing time.

Technique/Spell training was the only thing she kept firmly pushed aside.

Without Baekju, the efficiency simply was not there.

Baekju had become a magic treasure, so it was something she could only use after reaching foundation establishment.

For her current artifact forging self, even having it was just pie in the sky.

'Without Baekju, dabbling in technique/Spells just isn’t worth the effort.’

So it was better to put off technique/Spells until after foundation establishment.

The thing her hands went to most often, at least, was puppetry pill refining.

The five 2nd Tier Five Elements Golems she had stuffed into her Storage Platform were doing their part splendidly.

At first, they had been new golems and clumsy to control, but after half a year of handling them, she had grown quite used to them.

Thanks to that, she could once again browse the forum while having the Five Elements Golems refine pills.

“Now this is what I call true easy mode.”

The golems’ skill at handling medicinal ingredients improved day by day as well.

At last, they even succeeded in inscribing patterns onto upper-tier 1st-grade pills.

“Oh, they can handle upper-tier 1st-grade now?”

It was possible because her own understanding had deepened, and because they were 2nd Tier Five Elements Golems.

With this, even using golems, she could bring out inscriptions on any 1st-Grade Pill, regardless of rank.

But just when she had something worth showing off, she was tripped up by something from an unexpected direction.

If she refined even three or four upper-tier 1st-grade Inscribed Pills, the sky would turn suspicious.

Dark clouds would quietly gather over the once-clear Eastern Region.

“This again.”

Inscriptions were originally patterns that could only be engraved on pills with the heavenly dao’s permission.

If such patterns were artificially forced into place, there was no way the heavens would look kindly on them.

Dark clouds had gathered even when she was refining a large batch of low-grade inscribed spirit gathering pills.

Still, those had been thin clouds that amounted to little more than a warning.

But once it came to upper-tier 1st-grade pills, the very force with which the clouds gathered was different.

The moment she passed three or four, the air in the area grew heavy and hard.

If she got greedy here, there was every sign that a heavenly Tribulation would fall without fail.

“Haaah.”

Baek-cheong stopped the puppetry pill refining without hesitation.

It was irritating that the easy-mode method she had finally gotten used to was repeatedly interrupted by tribulation clouds.

Even so, she did not have the nerve to stamp out pills with a heavenly Tribulation hanging over her head.

She stored away the half-finished pills and stepped out of the Eastern Region.

When she entered the courtyard, the dark clouds gathering in the sky came into view at once.

Fortunately, they had not thickened enough for a heavenly Tribulation to fall.

Once she stopped pill refining, the tribulation clouds that had been gathering began to scatter little by little.

Standing in the courtyard, she stared up at the dispersing dark clouds.

“Could I feed those to the cloud spirit Pearl?”

Suddenly, she thought of the cloud spirit Pearl sleeping in her Storage Platform.

It was a territory lord that could not resist clouds and greedily sucked them in.

If she fed it the entire mass of dark clouds, they might disappear cleanly.

'Oh, that’d be killing two birds with one stone.’

She could clear away the tribulation clouds and fatten up the cloud spirit Pearl.

Just imagining it made for a fairly convincing picture.

But Baek-cheong soon shook her head.

'No, wait. Those aren’t ordinary clouds.’

Tribulation clouds were on an entirely different level from clouds hanging around the waist of a peak.

There was no way a mere territory lord could devour clouds of the heavenly dao.

If she carelessly shoved the cloud spirit Pearl at them, a perfectly fine territory lord might be reduced to ash.

'And while we’re at it, a heavenly Tribulation would probably fall on me too.’

To begin with, the heavenly dao was not an opponent to prod thoughtlessly.

The heavenly dao was something akin to the will of the world.

If one defied it carelessly, one might be bound by restrictions, or expelled beyond the world.

With bad luck, one’s very existence might even be erased.

The very idea of using a territory lord to swallow tribulation clouds meant she had been looking down on the heavenly dao.

“Nothing good comes from touching that.”

As Baek-cheong looked up at the dark clouds scattering, she slowly sank into thought.

“A heavenly Tribulation is definitely going to appear when I reach foundation establishment.”

Dark clouds gathered even after three or four pills.

Then there was no question about a breakthrough that raised her entire realm to foundation establishment.

She had often offended the heavenly dao’s sensibilities before.

But she did not think those actions were the true reason tribulation clouds appeared.

“Grandfather Yak-seon does plenty of that sort of thing too.”

Yak-seon, of all people, was a grandmaster who inscribed patterns as easily as he ate a meal.

He possessed the skill to inscribe even 4th-grade pills.

And yet, aside from the inscribed five elements pill, not a single dark cloud had gathered over Yak-seon’s head.

She was the only person whose sky turned strange over three or four 1st-Grade Inscribed Pills.

“In the end, the problem is my existence.”

Baek-cheong instinctively understood that her very existence was heaven-defying.

That was why the heavenly dao glared at her even over trivial pill refining.

Looking back, there were clues.

When Yak-seon refined the inscribed five elements pill before, a heavenly Tribulation then fell as well.

At the time, she had thought tribulation struck simply because it was a heaven-Defying pill.

But if she considered it carefully, the inscribed five elements pill had been refined for her sake.

It was more correct to say that the karmic ties involving her had drawn in the heavenly Tribulation.

“So that was because of me too.”

If so, the root of the heavenly Tribulation clinging to her lay in herself.

“I wonder what the cause is. My previous life? The nameless body? Or my spiritual root?”

Not one of them was ordinary.

The mere fact that she had reincarnated with memories of her previous life was unusual.

The nameless body that had allowed her to reach the Nameless Forum was the same.

So was the Five Elements Heavenly Spirit Root, which surpassed a heavenly spirit root by more than fivefold.

There was no way to know which of them had put her outside the heavenly dao’s favor.

'No point thinking it over. It’s not a problem I can answer.’

Only when her head began to throb did Baek-cheong shake it and set the thought aside.

Seeing through the heavenly dao’s inner workings was beyond her ability.

Only one thing was certain.

If she wanted to reach foundation establishment, she had to overcome the heavenly Tribulation first.

‘I’d better prepare in advance.’

That did not mean there was any reason to be blindly terrified.

A heavenly Tribulation did not fall with indiscriminate brutality regardless of the realm.

The side sending it down also measured the vessel of the one receiving it.

A heavenly Tribulation faced upon reaching foundation establishment ought to be one that could be endured at the foundation establishment level.

“The problem is, ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivators never even get to see a heavenly Tribulation.”

Originally, a breakthrough to foundation establishment did not come with a heavenly Tribulation.

In most cases, heavenly Tribulation was something one faced starting from the golden core.

The reason a mere foundation establishment breakthrough would draw a heavenly Tribulation was that she was a heaven-defying existence.

In other words, she alone had to undergo a trial others never experienced.

'So I’m the only one dealing with something no one else has to.’

That did not mean she could block the heavenly Tribulation or dodge around it.

A heavenly Tribulation was a trial that questioned one’s qualifications.

If she blocked it or avoided it, she would end up half-baked.

It meant that even after painstakingly raising her realm, she would remain a deficient cultivator.

Granted, even then she would still be stronger than an ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator.

'Avoiding it isn’t the answer either.’

In the end, she had no choice but to take it head-on.

Take it, but make it hurt as little as possible.

'If I’m getting hit anyway, isn’t there a way to get hit gently?’

Having thought that far, Baek-cheong left the courtyard and returned to the Eastern Region.

She flopped down on the Profound Jade Bed and moved her Divine Sense with practiced ease.

As soon as she connected to the Nameless Forum, she posted on the Chat Board.

“Dao friend(913.14): Is there any way to gently take a lightning tribulation?”

[A way to take it without it hurting, or something like that.]

It was absurd, but she figured she had nothing to lose.

Sure enough, dao Friends swarmed in at the ridiculous question.

[Dao friend(11.23): Didn’t you say you were artifact forging? How does an artifact forging cultivator undergo a lightning tribulation?]

[Dao friend(88.4): There’s the old monster showing his true colors again. You were so good at pretending to be artifact forging, too.]

[Dao friend(729.3): Have you ever seen the heavenly dao go easy on someone while hitting them?]

[Dao friend(48.21): Ah, I too want to take a lightning tribulation gently.]

It was exactly the reaction she had expected.

All she got was sarcasm asking how there could possibly be a way to take a lightning tribulation gently.

Well, any sane dao friend would answer that way.

A lightning tribulation was judgment driven down by the heavenly dao; there was no room to talk about taking it gently or anything of the sort.

'Well, that’s true.’

Baek-cheong gave up on the urge to clutch at straws.

She was just thinking that she had gotten her hopes up for nothing and was about to leave the Nameless Forum.

Then one reply abruptly slipped in.

[Dao friend(7.7): It is rare, but there is such a method.]

It was the dao friend who had once given her the decisive guidance that allowed her to comprehend the lightning glyph.

That very dao friend was now opening by saying there was a way.

“So there is one!”

Baek-cheong’s little heart thumped.

Her eyes shining, she hurriedly left a reply before the dao friend could disappear.

[Dao friend(913.14): I humbly ask for your wise counsel, dao friend.]