Chapter 21
Baek-Cheong froze in place like a stone.
At the exit/Entrance, she saw her father standing with his hands behind his back.
Her father was supposed to be away for a few days to inspect the Marketplace.
She couldn’t understand why he was here right now.
However, she simply hadn’t realized the time; while she was cooped up in the Training Room struggling to post a picture on the Nameless Forum, a few days had flown by like an arrow.
“F-father…”
A bead of cold sweat rolled down the back of Baek-Cheong’s neck.
Her pupils trembled slightly as if an earthquake had struck.
Instead of blindly shouting in anger, Baek Mu-Jin smiled and asked in a gentle voice.
“Did you finish the special Pill Refining Assignment given by Grandmaster Yak-seon well? I was secretly curious about the result since you needed the Dense Spiritual Energy of the Eastern Region.”
At her father’s probing tone, Baek-Cheong intuitively realized that her lie had been completely exposed.
Racking her brain for excuses would only make the situation worse.
Baek-Cheong quickly tucked her tail and meekly bowed her head.
“I-I’m sorry, father. Grandfather Yak-seon never gave me such an assignment. I just wanted to go into the Training Room, so I lied to grandfather Jin.”
She did not voice the unspeakable secret that she had extorted a massive Amount of Spiritual Energy to connect to the Nameless Forum and post a picture.
On the other hand, the smile lingering on Baek Mu-Jin’s lips vanished at the sight of his daughter obediently confessing her fault.
“Cheong-A, this father fully understands your desire for Training. However, if you try to forcefully raise your realm by relying on the energy of pills or a Formation without steadily building your foundation from the basics, your foundation will eventually collapse, and you will fall into the abyss of Qi Deviation.”
Baek Mu-Jin continued his lecture in a stern voice.
If a young child at the Early Qi Condensation Stage forcefully absorbed the energy of the Spirit Gathering Formation, there was a high risk that her energy meridians would be damaged.
“Come here. I need to check the condition of your Dantian.”
Baek Mu-Jin reached out his hand; Baek-Cheong approached as if resigned and offered her small wrist.
His rough fingers checked Baek-Cheong’s pulse and flowed true essence into it.
However, Baek Mu-Jin’s stiff expression turned to bewilderment.
“W-what is the meaning of this? You stayed in the Eastern Region where the Spirit Gathering Formation was operating for five days, so why is your Dantian so completely empty?”
Her father’s bewildered question rang out loudly.
It was understandable; despite swallowing the massive spiritual energy of the Training Room and top-grade Spirit Gathering Pills one after another, there was no massive spiritual energy in her Dantian, and she had barely preserved her true qi.
It was a miserable state, as if someone had forcefully squeezed out and absorbed her spiritual energy.
“Cheong-A! What on Earth did you do inside!”
At her father’s urgent interrogation, Baek-Cheong panicked, her lips merely parting and closing.
She couldn’t possibly answer that she had used up all her spiritual energy just to post a crude doodle image on the Nameless Forum’s Forum Board.
Unable to withstand her father’s fierce gaze, Baek-Cheong utilized her skill at spouting nonsense from the Nameless Forum and began blurting out whatever came to mind.
“T-that is… I felt like the spiritual energy in my Dantian was hovering on the surface, so I tried to consolidate my realm solidly. So I tried to combine the five attributes into one to achieve Five Elements Unification… but the energy all scattered.”
It was an impromptu piece of nonsense spat out by combining pedantic words.
However, upon hearing Baek-Cheong’s excuse, Baek Mu-Jin’s face stiffened like a man struck by lightning.
“Five Elements Unification!”
Baek Mu-Jin received a massive shock internally.
It was a profound enlightenment that cultivators with a Five Elements Spirit Root could barely catch a glimpse of only when they reached the Nascent Soul stage.
The Ultimate Realm that brought the Truth of All Things to a single point by clashing Conflicting Energies and intertwining the Cycle of Mutual Generation.
Even if it ended in failure and the energy scattered, the very fact that a mere ten-year-old child at the 3rd Stage Qi Condensation had approached the threshold of such high enlightenment on her own was a miracle in itself.
“Is that so…”
Baek Mu-Jin had recently been making inquiries to invite a rare Rogue Cultivator who had overcome the limits of the Five Element Spiritual Root and reached the Foundation Establishment stage to be his daughter’s Master.
But the reality unfolding before his eyes was mocking how futile his thoughts had been right now.
‘To think she awakened to the principles of all things on her own without anyone’s teachings and even tried to Master the high enlightenment of Five Elements Unification. What on Earth was I trying to do?’
Baek Mu-Jin fell into a deep sense of shame.
Had he been trying to shackle his daughter too much, treating her like an ordinary child?
Was he perhaps becoming a stumbling block to her growth by forcing excessive worry and control on a Peerless Prodigy trying to break her own limits and soar, using the authority of a Clan Head and the excuse of being a father?
In a fleeting moment, countless agonies and thoughts crossed Baek Mu-Jin’s mind.
Soon, the wavering in his eyes disappeared, and a firm resolve took its place.
“Cheong-A…”
Baek Mu-Jin gently lowered Baek-Cheong’s wrist that he had been holding.
His stern face softened like melting spring snow, taking on a deep benevolence.
“This father was truly foolish and narrow-minded.”
At the sudden change in attitude, Baek-Cheong merely blinked her eyes and observed the situation.
Baek Mu-Jin bent his knees to meet his daughter’s eye level and continued speaking in an affectionate voice.
“I tried to shackle you with hasty worries, not even knowing that you were striving to advance toward such high enlightenment. I must have acted so stiflingly that our honest and good Cheong-Yi even used Venerable Yak-seon’s name to tell a lie and sneak into the Eastern Region.”
Deep self-reproach and apology dripped from Baek Mu-Jin’s voice.
Baek-Cheong cheered internally, but outwardly she bit her lip and put on a seemingly wronged expression.
“Still, as a parent’s duty, it is a terribly painful thing to quietly watch a child, a mere youngster, walk a perilous path. Please understand this father’s worry.”
Baek Mu-Jin opened his arms and hugged Baek-Cheong’s small body tightly enough to transmit his warmth.
“From now on, I will not interfere and tell you what to do regarding your Training methods. Walk the path you desire, according to your own will. The Baek Clan will simply be a sturdy nest so that you can spread your wings.”
It was a firm intention to fully acknowledge his daughter’s genius and withdraw all control.
Held in her father’s arms, Baek-Cheong looked at her father’s broad back and merely gauged his mood.
“Did I get away with it?”
It was definitely a crisis where she could have been severely scolded or grounded, but the situation was turning out bizarrely well.
It seemed the word Five Elements Unification, which she had spat out randomly, had caused her father to misunderstand completely.
“I might have a Talent for spouting nonsense…”
Whatever the case, the fact that she had escaped the immediate crisis was Extremely Fortunate.
Baek-Cheong pretended to be moved and hugged her father’s neck in return.
“Thank you, father. I’ll be careful not to cause you worry.”
Baek Mu-Jin burst into a hearty laugh and gently patted Baek-Cheong’s back.
“Now, your body must not be feeling well with your spiritual energy completely empty. Go back to your Abode and rest. I’ve finished the matters at the Marketplace, so I will stay by your side for a while and take care of what you need.”
At Baek Mu-Jin’s words, Baek-Cheong shouted in joy internally.
If her father stepped up personally to provide the support needed for her Training, obtaining spiritual medicines or Training materials would become much easier.
“Yes! I’ll rest well and come greet you tomorrow morning.”
Baek-Cheong bowed with a bright face and hurried down the Back Mountain.
* * *
Returning to her Abode, Baek-Cheong locked the door and threw herself onto the bed.
The pain experienced in her energy meridians after pouring out massive spiritual energy in the Training Room, the dizzying moments of almost getting caught by her father.
The fatigue of a day that had raged like a storm washed over her all at once.
“Still, the results are definite.”
Baek-Cheong couldn’t hide the smile spreading across her lips.
Although her spiritual energy had hit rock bottom, the pride of successfully pulling off an image-spamming terror that would go down in the history of the Nameless Forum made her small chest swell with pride.
“Should I check their reactions a bit more?”
Rubbing her tired eyes, she moved her faintly recovered Divine Sense to connect to the Nameless Forum.
Thousands of replies were pouring in beneath the crude doodle picture post she had uploaded.
It seemed as if all the attention of the Nameless Forum was focused on her.
[Dao Friend (11.23): Forum Admin! Block this bastard from the Nameless Forum immediately! He broke the unspoken rule!]
[Dao Friend (88.4): No matter which corner of the Lower Realm you are hiding in, I will definitely find you and tear your limbs apart!]
[Dao Friend (201.9): That doodle… the more I look at it, the more it pisses me off.]
[Dao Friend (77.21): Dao Friend (913.14) is a bastard worse than a robber.]
The cultivators' anger blazed fiercely, showing no signs of cooling down.
Most of them were inflexible figures who had lived their entire lives amidst strict Training and saving face.
This kind of low-class, primal provocation could be considered a fatal insult that tramples upon the common sense of cultivators.
“Pfft, they’re all seriously pissed off.”
However, Baek-Cheong merely giggled while rolling around on the bed.
She savored the strange sense of superiority that came from the fact that she was making an uproar in the entire Nameless Forum.
As she was looking through the replies like that, her gaze stopped on a sharp reply.
[Dao Friend (55.19): Do not be blinded by anger and miss the essence. Have you estimated the size of the Divine Sense consumed to project that crude doodle? It is a massive Divine Sense amounting to at least 11 pages. The bastard’s claim of being in the Qi Condensation Stage is clearly a lie. Dao Friend (913.14) is definitely a cultivator at the Late Foundation Establishment Stage pretending to be in the Qi Condensation Stage for deception.]
At Dao Friend (55.19)'s seemingly sharp analysis, the atmosphere of the public’s reaction to the reply instantly cooled down.
The suspicion spread that the person they thought was a malicious troll might actually be a cultivator hiding their true strength.
[Dao Friend (11.23): Late Foundation Establishment Stage? Nonsense.]
[Dao Friend (88.4): Why would a Foundation Establishment stage cultivator do such a thing…]
Watching the process of the cultivators' reactions changing from anger to bewilderment, Baek-Cheong snorted.
“I’m at the 3rd stage of Qi Condensation, you idiots.”
Of course, she had not the slightest intention of revealing the truth.
There was nothing more uncool than explaining oneself to clear up a misunderstanding built up in a Community.
“In times like these, you lose if you yield.”
Scraping together her slowly recovering spiritual energy until none was left, she left a post.
“Dao Friend (913.14): It’s pathetic how you guys are trembling just because I posted a single picture.”
[Being too scared of Jinseonkasu to fully utilize the Nameless Forum is the real mark of an idiot.]
At that, the cultivators of the Nameless Forum expressed their doubts at the unfamiliar expression.
[Dao Friend (201.9): Jinseonkasu? What’s kasu?]
[Dao Friend (248.22): Is it slang used in the Upper Realm?]
However, unfortunately, Baek-Cheong didn’t even have the time to check the replies.
Due to the excessive use of spiritual energy and Divine Sense all day long, she simply fell into a dead sleep as if fainting.