Chapter 147
She could not bring herself to believe that the Lower Realm she lived in was that much of a mess.
Ever since someone had said the Dust-Cleansing pill was an item from the Upper Realm, the mood in the Nameless Forum had begun leaning in one direction.
If an Upper Realm pill was openly lying around in a Lower Realm, then that Lower Realm had to be badly twisted somewhere.
In short, it meant the Lower Realm she lived in was a complete mess.
“No way.”
To her, the Lower Realm had only ever seemed perfectly fine.
It was a world lined with great Sects, where even soul transformation old Ancestors stood firm.
There was no way she could take kindly to hearing that something was wrong with such a Lower Realm.
More than anything, she would rather die than admit she lived in a Lower Realm that was that much of a disaster.
'There isn’t just one Lower Realm on the Nameless Forum, is there?’
Just then, a loophole occurred to her.
Countless dao Friends from countless Lower Realms gathered in the Nameless Forum.
Even the interface numbers alone came in every variety, so memorizing them all one by one was practically impossible.
So dao friend (2.2) might simply be talking nonsense.
Once her thoughts reached that point, she felt much more at ease.
Baek-cheong quickly wrote a reply.
[Dao friend(913.14): There isn’t just one Lower Realm in the Nameless Forum. Isn’t it plausible that somewhere out there there is a pill that can cleanse pill toxins?]
Since so many Lower Realms came and went, she tried insisting it was perfectly possible.
She knew it was a stretch, but she desperately wanted to believe it.
A reply came before long.
[Dao friend(2.2): I have watched the Nameless Forum for ten thousand years, so there is no mistake.]
“…Ten thousand years?”
Baek-cheong blinked at that unit of time beyond imagination.
It meant they had been active in the Nameless Forum, watching it, for ten thousand years.
At first, she had thought they were just an especially entrenched forum addict.
But ten thousand years was far too vast to dismiss them as a mere forum addict.
'That’s not a forum addict… that’s a ghost haunting the Nameless Forum, isn’t it?’
Once her thoughts reached that point, things stopped adding up.
As far as she knew, the peak of the Lower Realm was soul transformation.
Even soul transformation cultivators were said to live only around two thousand years at most.
Yet this person had watched for ten thousand years, so the timeline did not fit.
“What in the world are they?”
The answer was narrowed down to a few possibilities.
A great cultivator in a realm beyond soul transformation.
Or it is a long-lived species born with an extraordinary lifespan.
Or perhaps some strange case she could not even begin to guess at.
Whatever the truth was, they were not someone a mere Qi Condensation cultivator could rashly measure.
'Don’t tell me they can do an IP - no, a Divine Sense trace?’
Of course, she knew perfectly well that could not be true.
The Nameless Forum was an anonymous ocean spanning the Three Thousand Great Thousand Worlds.
It was not so flimsy that someone’s location would leak through a few lines of replies.
“Nah, surely not.”
Even as she repeated that in her head, she could not bring herself to reply right away.
If she needlessly poked at a sleeping ghost and suffered some calamity, there would be no telling what might happen.
Once she fell silent like that, dao friend(2.2)’s words began to weigh heavily on her.
A ghost that had watched for ten thousand years could hardly have been wrong.
In the end, that meant her Lower Realm was truly a mess.
“…Was it true?”
It was a fact she did not want to accept, but it was difficult to deny.
Now that she thought about it, a few things did come to mind.
She recalled the movement she had seen in the Eastern Region not long ago.
Scattered Rogue Cultivators had been forming an alliance and gathering territory Lords.
At the time, she had brushed it off as someone else’s business, unrelated to her.
But now that she knew the Lower Realm was twisted, it no longer looked like an ordinary movement.
“Are they seriously trying to separate the continent?”
Even so, this was something she should involve herself in even less.
No matter how the scheme unfolded, a mere Qi Condensation cultivator had no place sticking her nose in rashly.
“So what can I even do?”
For once, Baek-cheong’s face hardened, and she grew serious.
As the world became more unsettled, the only thing she could trust and lean on was her own cultivation realm.
Now was no time to be carefree enough to idly browse the forum.
“I should just do some training.”
In an exceedingly rare display, she shook off her lingering regrets and left the Nameless Forum.
She sprang off the Profound Jade Bed, entered the Training Room, and sat in the lotus position on the Jade Flat Platform where the Spirit Gathering Formation was laid.
Spiritual energy, dense as water, surged in and slowly soaked her empty Dantian.
* * *
Her firm resolve made it a little past the proverbial three days and actually lasted fifteen whole days.
Thanks to that, she managed to gather nearly one-tenth of her Dantian’s worth of spiritual energy.
She had even expelled some turbid qi while blindly stockpiling spiritual energy.
By the fifteenth day, the focus she had resolved to maintain hit rock bottom.
Her still-unappeased forum-browsing urge quietly raised its head in her small chest.
“But do I really need to do this?”
If she sat down and thought about it, reaching foundation establishment would not let her do anything in particular.
And reaching golden core or nascent soul would take an unfathomable amount of time.
By then, whether the scheme succeeded or failed, it would probably already be over.
“What am I going to do about it anyway?”
Since her self-justification fit together so plausibly, there was no reason to hesitate.
Baek-cheong left the Training Room without a trace of lingering regret and lay back down on the Profound Jade Bed.
With practiced ease, she moved her Divine Sense and connected to the Nameless Forum.
The Nameless Forum she entered after fifteen days was still in an uproar over her.
The topic had not cooled even after several days and was being chewed over here and there.
“Dao friend(317.8): Which Lower Realm is dao friend(913.14) even from?”
[If they have an Upper Realm pill, the Lower Realm they’re from doesn’t seem like an ordinary Lower Realm.]
“Dao friend(88.4): I’m starting to get a feel for dao friend(913.14)’s identity.”
[The only explanation is that they’re a soul transformation old monster pretending to be at qi condensation.]
“Dao friend(411.93): That pill that cleanses pill toxins is all a lie.”
[There’s no way a pill like that exists in the first place.]
She could let the other chatter slide.
But the slander that the pill was fake was absolutely impossible to overlook.
Having them insist that the genuine article she had received from the Biun Sect was fabricated made anger flare in her.
So she wrote a new post to provoke the dao Friends.
“Dao friend(913.14): I listed that spirit fruit in the marketplace for 1,000 high-Grade spirit Stones.”
[It’s one of the pill ingredients for a pill that cleanses pill toxins.]
She thought this would be enough to make the dao Friends snap and shift the topic.
But the replies that came back were tepid enough to deflate her.
[Dao friend(45.88): Even so, 1,000 high-Grade spirit Stones for a single spirit fruit when nobody even knows the pill formula is a bit…]
[Dao friend(208.5): Then what was the one that went up with it for ten thousand?]
[Dao friend(112.40): Why list it in the marketplace if you weren’t going to sell it anyway?]
At the mention of the ten-thousand one, Baek-cheong’s small chest jolted.
More than anything, she was afraid to brag about having misused the Nameless Forum.
If things went wrong, she might catch the forum admin’s eye and have the hammer brought down on her.
'Anyway, that’s not the point.’
From the start, the dao Friends had no interest in whether the pill was real.
The price was too high; why list it if she was not going to sell it - they only latched onto side issues.
'This isn’t how this was supposed to go.’
Baek-cheong stared blankly at the Nameless Forum, the wind taken out of her sails.
Her fluster lasted only a moment before stubbornness slowly surged up.
Now that it had come to this, she wanted to stir things up properly.
“Do I have no choice but to do that?”
What came to mind was the marketplace.
As it happened, her Storage Platform was full of jade bottles packed with inscribed spirit gathering pills she had refined herself.
“As a Troublemaker, I have to commit to the bit.”
Baek-cheong decided to list the inscribed spirit gathering pills on the marketplace one by one in a row.
Originally, the marketplace did not allow false information unrelated to an item.
If someone put up a talisman and insisted it was a pill, it would not be registered as such.
So even if she wanted to rile people up with a plausible lie, she had no way to do it.
The saving grace was that inscribed spirit gathering pills were indeed pills.
The finishing touch would be setting whatever prices she pleased.
“Dao friend(913.14) for Sale: a pill. 100 high-Grade spirit Stones.”
[Pill.]
“Dao friend(913.14) for Sale: a pill. 1,000 high-Grade spirit Stones.”
[Pill.]
She deliberately set the prices just like she had for the items she had listed last time.
Identical pills were lined up, with only their prices ranging from one hundred to ten thousand.
Anyone could see it was a Troublemaker stunt loaded with intent.
“Dao friend(388.13): There they go again. Is this another marketplace Troublemaker stunt?”
[Ten pills with nothing but “pill” written on them. What a concept.]
“Dao friend(11.23): But because it’s dao friend(913.14), I can’t help caring.”
[What if a real pill that cleanses pill toxins is mixed in among them?]
“Dao friend(46.111): The 100 high-Grade spirit Stones one is cheap enough to take a shot at.”
[Even if it’s a dud, I won’t feel bad at that price.]
Baek-cheong watched the boiling Nameless Forum with satisfaction.
The more posts multiplied, the more excited she became.
'Yeah, this is what I’m talking about.’
Just as she was reveling in the Troublemaker act, it happened.
Out of nowhere, her Storage Platform trembled faintly and a notification appeared.
[Dao friend(33.7) has purchased your item. 100 high-Grade spirit Stones have been paid out.]
[The pill you sold has been transmitted to dao friend(33.7)’s Storage Platform.]
“This actually sold?”
Baek-cheong’s eyes went round at the unexpected turn.
She had never dreamed that the item she had laid out as a Troublemaker stunt would actually sell.
Judging by the fact that the 100-stone one had sold, the buyer seemed to have purchased it on the off chance.
While she sat there bewildered, a new post appeared in the Nameless Forum.
“Dao friend(33.7): Graaagh! It’s a spirit gathering pill!”
[It’s inscribed, sure, but it’s still a spirit gathering pill!]
The dao friend who had just bought the item from the marketplace raged fiercely.
[Dao friend(913.14): What were you expecting?]
└Dao friend(33.7): A pill that cleanses pill toxins, obviously!
└Dao friend(913.14): I never said I was selling that.
└Dao friend(33.7): But dao friend(11.23) clearly said…!
└Dao friend(913.14): This is dao friend(11.23)’s fault, then.
Baek-cheong was dumbfounded by how quickly the whole thing had happened.
To think they had been baited by another dao friend into buying her item.
All of a sudden, her Storage Platform contained an awkward 100 high-Grade spirit Stones she could not even use.