Chapter 143
Five days had passed since Baek-cheong began secluded cultivation.
During that time, Baek-cheong filled each day quite productively, messing around on the forum whenever she took a break from fortifying her Dantian.
With her back against the Profound Jade Bed, she felt spiritual energy flow into her Dantian all on its own.
Thanks to that, she no longer had to be stingy with the thin trickle of spiritual energy spent every time she wrote a single character.
Even if she wrote posts and left replies to her heart’s content, the bed faithfully refilled her Dantian.
“Now this is living like an Immortal.”
Whenever cultivation got stale, she messed around on the forum; whenever the forum got stale, she went back to cultivation.
After spending five days like that, she had somehow learned a fair amount about Buddhist cultivators.
At first, it had been nothing more than bait about damned monks and the like.
But after following it for all five days, the picture became fairly clear.
A Buddhist cultivator was a cultivator who walked neither the orthodox path nor the demonic path, but a heterodox path.
Most of all, among the dao Friends of the Nameless Forum, Buddhist cultivators’ reputation scraped the bottom of the barrel.
[Dao friend(112.40): Buddhist cultivators try to stick a straw into you whether you’re orthodox or demonic.]
[Dao friend(77.31): I hear once you take refuge, you become a Sucker who offers up merit for the rest of your life.]
[Dao friend(208.5): I’m telling you, believing that is dangerous.]
Every last one of them gnashed their teeth at Buddhist cultivators and waved the whole thing away.
Apparently their proselytizing, following people around and telling them to take refuge, was exceptionally persistent.
Since Baek-cheong had never experienced it firsthand, she could only nod along.
“Well, salesmen are annoying everywhere.”
She was scrolling through replies as the bait unfolded.
Then, all of a sudden, an unfamiliar Buddhist-cultivator dao friend appeared and slipped through the barrage of criticism.
『Dao friend(108.8): Not all Buddhist cultivators are like that.』
[If one accumulates merit by oneself and enters nirvana, one can become a Living Buddha. Should you take refuge with me early, you can attain ageless immortality.]
That meant a Buddhist cultivator who had been hiding among the dao Friends all this time had finally shown their true colors.
Their scrupulously polite tone felt all the more oily for it.
Other dao Friends swarmed in to point fingers, but Baek-cheong’s gaze was caught somewhere entirely different.
“Merit…”
That talk of merit from the Buddhist-cultivator dao friend kept nagging at her.
Come to think of it, there was something she had completely forgotten.
Once, out of curiosity, she had pressed karma on a post written by an eminent Cultivator who had descended from the Upper Realm.
It had been a trivial prank, but the dao Friends had made a huge fuss, saying a great Power had taken offense and that the culprit would not get far.
All without knowing that she was the one who had pressed karma, sprawled in her abode.
Merit, karma, and Dao traces were what she had learned then.
“Will it work if I press it again?”
As a test, Baek-cheong pressed karma hard on the Buddhist-cultivator dao friend’s proselytizing post.
It was karma for someone shouting about accumulating merit. It made a fitting pair.
[Merit 0 / Karma 0]
But the numbers did not budge.
No matter how much she pressed, the karma that had once risen as if in answer stayed silent.
“Is it over once I use it one time?”
Ever since she had pressed karma on the eminent Cultivator’s post, she had not been able to press it on any other post at all.
Even now, quite some time later, it was the same.
It seemed that once she pressed it, her Dao traces ran out or something.
If so, then she would have to replenish those Dao traces before she could press it again.
“But how do I build up Dao traces?”
This was where she hit a wall.
She did not even know what Dao traces were.
Baek-cheong immediately began combing through the Nameless Forum.
But the more she tried to dig up Dao traces, the less she could get her hands on.
The phrase Dao Trace was so vague that a mountain of posts showed up in the search results.
Anything that contained dao and trace got dragged in, making it hard to sift out anything of substance.
On top of that, there were few dao Friends who properly understood merit and karma in the first place.
Even when she managed to find a related post, it was all empty nonsense with no substance.
She considered asking the dao Friends outright instead.
But she soon shook her head.
'It probably won’t be good if I carelessly reveal this.’
When karma had been pressed the last time, the dao Friends’ reactions had been anything but ordinary.
Since they trembled over Great Powers and the heavenly dao, this was not something to bring up lightly.
She needed to hide the fact that she possessed something called Dao traces.
Then there was only one answer.
She had no choice but to figure it out on her own.
As it happened, now that she was in secluded cultivation, she had all the time in the world.
She made up her mind to dig into it herself in between cultivation sessions.
'Since it’s come to this, should I run some experiments?’
As she thought of karma, one possibility occurred to her.
The eminent Cultivator from the Upper Realm had been so horrified by the two karmas.
If karma had some effect even outside the Nameless Forum, then perhaps Dao traces were tied to influence.
If so, wouldn’t there be some kind of reaction if she casually dropped a name with influence?
To test that and play troublemaker on the side, Baek-cheong wrote a new post.
『Dao friend(913.14): Why is there no Jesus?』
[He resurrects in three days.]
In her previous life, it was a name everyone knew.
The dao Friends ought to react in shock, or at least show some kind of response.
But the replies that came back were completely different.
[Dao friend(208.5): Once you reach nascent soul, you can resurrect in a day, can’t you?]
[Dao friend(77.31): If you use a term with such an imprecise meaning, no one can understand you.]
[Dao friend(46.111): Which sect is this Jesus person from?]
The dao Friends only poured criticism on something they had never heard of.
There was even a dao friend who guessed Jesus was from some sect.
'So it’s no good after all?’
By the standards of her previous life, it was a name that would not be out of place at the level of a True Immortal.
And yet not only was there no ■■ censoring over the characters, but not even the tiniest shred of weight emanated from the name.
She had been trying to test indirectly whether Dao traces were connected to influence, but she had missed spectacularly.
'So it’s not this either.’
Baek-cheong racked her brain for a long while.
No matter how she weighed and turned it over, she could not find a clue to obtaining Dao traces.
Then, all of a sudden, she tried approaching it from another angle.
If tricks did not work, perhaps it would be better to take the straightforward approach.
She promptly wrote a new post.
『Dao friend(913.14): What do you all think I am?』
[A fresh young Genius at artifact forging?]
She tossed out the question, and replies poured in.
[Dao friend(284.7): An old monster pretending to be an artifact Forger.]
[Dao friend(317.8): The amnesiac avatar of some True Immortal.]
[Dao friend(45.88): An obnoxious Privileged artifact forging cultivator.]
[Dao friend(33.3): Hrrrgh.]
Every one of them was spouting whatever they pleased, so there were no useful answers to be had.
As she was scrolling through the replies, her gaze stopped in one place.
'Oh, it’s dao friend formation glyph.’
It was dao friend(33.3) who had shown up after a long absence.
This was the dao friend who had tried to foist the Jinmun Formation Diagram on her, only for her to learn it instead, and who then crawled out without fail whenever a formation glyph appeared as bait.
Last time, they seemed to have suffered a shock for some unknown reason and to have been unable to leave a proper reply.
“Now that I think of it…”
As she watched that sorry state, Baek-cheong thought of a way to build up Dao traces.
The Buddhist-cultivator dao friend had certainly told people to accumulate merit.
Come to think of it, Baek-cheong had done no small amount of giving on the Nameless Forum herself.
Though much of it had been nonsense, she had given many dao Friends enlightenment; she had shared the method she had discovered through her own research to improve pill quality; and as a result, the Five Elements Pill Refining Method, the hope of Five Elements Spirit Root holders, was circulating through the Nameless Forum.
“Maybe helping other people builds up Dao traces?”
It was a fairly plausible hypothesis.
If merit accumulates, Dao traces might fill along with it.
Conveniently, a dao friend groaning over their inability to comprehend formation glyphs was right in front of her.
There could be no better target to help.
Baek-cheong magnanimously left a reply for dao friend(33.3).
[Dao friend(913.14): Formation Glyphs aren’t something you memorize; they’re something you read. Think of every stroke as a waterway spiritual energy passes through. Don’t memorize the whole diagram. Just trace the flow - where the waterways gather and where they split. If you release spiritual energy at the points where formation Glyphs interlock through mutual generation, they’ll run on their own. The formation eye is the pond where the waterways gather in one place. That’s why it was easy for me.]
It was a reply that laid out the principles of formation glyphs without holding anything back.
It was rare for anyone to explain the secret they had awakened to themselves so kindly.
Of course, it was easy only for Baek-cheong.
She had not considered that other people could look at writing that contained enlightenment and still fail to comprehend it even after dedicating their whole lives.
No sooner had her reply gone up than dao friend(33.3) reacted.
[Dao friend(33.3): Hrrrrrrgh!!!]
└Dao friend(11.23): They’re seriously dying, aren’t they?
The Hrrrgh had become longer and far more urgent.
The previous time, at least something resembling words had been written, but this time even that was nowhere to be found.
The follow-up reply was just as incomprehensible.
After that, no more replies appeared from dao friend(33.3).
“After I went to the trouble of explaining it.”
Baek-cheong grew sulky and stuck her lower lip out.
She had thought that after spoon-feeding them this much, they would at least gain some enlightenment. She had never expected them to take the meal and run.
After waiting for a long while with no response, she lost interest and withdrew her Divine Sense.
“After I explained it so simply… they really have no talent.”
Baek-cheong clicked her tongue and muttered coolly.
Then she burrowed back into the bed.