Chapter 146
At last, the cloud spirit Pearl gave in.
It had taken a full month of sitting out in the courtyard, coaxing and cajoling it.
The refinement that had crawled along at a miserable one percent a day had, before she knew it, passed the thirty-percent mark.
For an entire month, she had taken an inscribed spirit gathering pill every day, filled her Dantian, and poured that spiritual energy into it.
All that time she had spent with every nerve strung tight, unable to let her attention wander for even an instant, had paid off.
“Still, this is better than nothing.”
Even with it tamed roughly thirty percent, she could not use the cloud spirit Pearl to pull off any extraordinary art.
At most, she could adjust how much cloud it absorbed.
Even so, that was more than enough for her.
As long as she could avoid the disaster of leaving the peak stripped bare, that was sufficient.
“Shall I give it a try?”
Baek-cheong gently sent spiritual energy into the cloud spirit Pearl resting on her palm.
She ordered it not to swallow all the clouds draped over the peak, but to nibble slowly.
Sure enough, the cloud spirit Pearl answered with a fine tremor.
Soon, instead of the clouds around the peak’s waist vanishing all at once, they began to thin.
The cloud right before her nose was being drawn in by no more than a wisp.
Most importantly, it was not enough for anyone else to notice.
Only she, staring at it from right beside it, could barely tell.
Someone looking up at the peak from afar would never know the clouds had grown thinner.
'At this level, I won’t get caught.’
It was exactly what she had wanted.
Now she could raise the cloud spirit Pearl without worrying that the peak would be exposed and bare and she would be interrogated over it.
But one regret remained.
The clouds that gathered around the peak did not well up endlessly like those in the cloud sea.
Even if it absorbed only a little at a time, if it kept doing so all day, the peak would end up looking hollowed out all the same.
“Feeding it all at once is out of the question.”
In the end, she had no choice but to wait until enough clouds had gathered and then come out to the courtyard from time to time and feed it little by little.
It was troublesome, but far better than leaving it shoved inside the Storage Platform.
Once she had set her goal, her little chest felt much lighter.
Come to think of it, she had been so caught up with the cloud spirit Pearl that she had not looked at the Nameless Forum.
She was almost proud of herself for enduring the itch in her Divine Sense.
‘I’ve raised my realm, and I’ve tamed the cloud spirit Pearl too.’
At this point, she could laze around on the forum for a while without her conscience pricking her.
She had done more than enough training, so she even felt justified.
Baek-cheong stored the cloud spirit Pearl in the Storage Platform and headed to the Eastern Region.
Then, like a triumphant general, she flung herself proudly onto the Profound Jade Bed.
Once she popped an expensive Fasting pill into her mouth, her empty stomach felt pleasantly full.
As she chewed, she moved her Divine Sense and connected to the Nameless Forum.
“Dao friend(284.7): The senior disciple brother in the neighboring Eastern Region hasn’t come out in a hundred years.”
[It feels like only yesterday we entered seclusion together, but he’s been dead quiet. I wondered if he’d died, so I knocked. He yelled at me to piss off, so he’s alive, at least.]
“Dao friend(46.111): My spirit beast won’t eat spirit stones and only digs up dirt to eat.”
[At this rate, it’s going to develop the earth element or something.]
“Dao friend(108.8): If you accumulate merit and enter nirvana, you can achieve immortality.”
[Please take refuge with me before it is too late.]
The Nameless Forum, which she had entered for the first time in ages, was as noisy as ever.
Traces of all sorts of topics flaring up and dying down again were scattered everywhere.
After being away for a month, she had a mountain of posts to catch up on.
As Baek-cheong browsed the Nameless Forum, her lips jutted out in a pout.
“Everyone else is so happy… and only I am not!”
The unfairness of having spent a full month doing nothing but training suddenly hit her all over again.
Others could fill their Dantian in a few days, while she barely managed ten percent every ten days.
On top of that, she had even taken on the refinement of the cloud spirit Pearl. It had been pure misery.
She wanted to vent all the resentment she had stored up to someone, anyone.
She immediately began writing a new post.
“Dao friend(913.14): Training is way too hard.”
[I can’t even eat proper meals and have to make do with Fasting pills made from first-tier Jade Bee Honey, spirit fruit, and spirit beast meat. I’m doing Qi Absorption while sitting in a Spirit Gathering Formation laid over a quasi-second-tier spiritual vein, plus I’ve got a Profound Jade Bed that helps me draw in spiritual energy just by lying on it, but my Dantian fills up by a rat turd’s worth, so I seriously feel like dying.]
She wrote out everything she had been holding in, and it felt refreshing.
Since she had poured out this much hardship, she thought words of comfort would come back.
But the tone of every reply that appeared was strange.
[Dao friend(45.88): Privileged is whining again.]
[Dao friend(208.5): Damn Privileged bastard.]
[Dao friend(77.31): What’s so hard for someone doing Qi Absorption with a Profound Jade Bed and a spiritual vein under him?]
[Dao friend(112.40): Give me an Eastern Region too.]
Instead of comforting her, every single one pointed a finger at her.
There were plenty of dao Friends gnashing their teeth and calling her Privileged.
“No, this is seriously unfair.”
From the outside, it might look like the complaints of someone spoiled by luxury.
But no one understood the inside story - that she had been saddled with a heavenly punishment that doubled with every realm.
How could they possibly know the sorrow of having to pour in five times as much spiritual energy as a heavenly spirit root just to take a single step?
Everyone had their own burdens to bear, yet it felt as though only she was being especially condemned.
'Fine. How would any of you know what I’m going through?’
As soon as she thought that, the desire to stir trouble raised its head in one corner of her little chest.
Since they were already calling her Privileged, she wanted to really rile them up.
“And I happen to have just the thing.”
Baek-cheong took a jade bottle from the Storage Platform.
Inside was a single pill, pale and hazy like a cloud.
It was the Dust Cleansing Pill she had received from the Biun Sect as a main-round reward.
A heaven-defying item said to cleanly wash away the pill toxins accumulated in the Dantian and meridians.
Among the dao Friends, the accepted truth was that once pill toxins accumulated, there was nothing to be done.
That made a pill that could cleanse pill toxins the perfect troublemaking material.
She included the Dust-Cleansing pill in a picture post and uploaded it for everyone to see.
“※Dao friend(913.14): You guys don’t have a pill that cleanses pill toxins, do you?”
[I do.]
The single pale pill appeared clearly in the picture post.
Beneath it, she even added a line meant to really get under their skin.
Sure enough, the effect was immediate.
The Nameless Forum, which had been relatively calm, boiled over in an instant.
[Dao friend(411.93): ???]
[Dao friend(88.4): Don’t lie.]
[Dao friend(46.111): Does such a heaven-Defying pill exist?]
[Dao friend(11.23): She’s got a record with things like the five elements pill, so I can’t dismiss it as a lie either.]
[Dao friend(55.19): I know it’s obviously Troublemaker bait, but for some reason it’s bothering me.]
Countless dao Friends swarmed in like bees.
There was no way to verify its authenticity, and that seemed to make them all the more confused.
The idea was too bizarre to dismiss outright as nonsense, or as something made up just to stir trouble.
The very claim that it could cleanse pill toxins had crashed head-on into the dao Friends’ common sense.
On top of that, because she had previously sold the five elements pill, she did have some credibility.
“This is exactly why I stir up trouble.”
Baek-cheong watched the boiling forum board with satisfaction.
The more replies appeared, the more excited she became.
Just as she was savoring the reward of having riled them up so thoroughly…
One reply caught her eye.
[Dao friend(2.2): Such a pill should only exist in the Upper Realm, no?]
└Dao friend(317.8): How does dao friend know that?
└Dao friend(4.8): And what do you know, dao friend, to butt in?
With certainty, they said that a pill capable of cleansing pill toxins was something that ought to exist only in the Upper Realm.
Everyone began pressing dao friend(2.2), asking how dao friend(2.2) knew such information.
Someone even left a reply asking whether the Dust-Cleansing pill was real.
While she stared blankly, an argument broke out among the dao Friends.
All sorts of information poured out about Upper Realm pills and pill toxins and everything in between.
Her troublemaking post had somehow turned into a Discussion Forum.
But because of the reply dao friend(2.2) had left, none of it registered.
“A pill that exists only in the Upper Realm?”
Baek-cheong quietly looked down at the Dust-Cleansing pill in her hand.
The pale pill simply rested there, brazenly unbothered.
She had definitely received it from the Biun Sect perfectly normally.
And yet, according to the dao Friends, it was a pill that should only exist in the Upper Realm.
'Don’t tell me I’m in the Upper Realm?’
A ridiculous thought crossed her mind, and she immediately shook her head.
The place she was connected to right now was unquestionably the Lower Realm Nameless Forum.
If this were the Upper Realm, there would be no reason for her to be connected to the Lower Realm Nameless Forum.
More than anything, there was no way the Upper Realm would be such a cramped, tiny world.
On top of that, the highest realm here was only soul transformation.
At this point, there was no room to doubt that this was the Lower Realm.
But the problem lay elsewhere.
“Then why is a pill that supposedly exists only in the Upper Realm here in our Lower Realm?”
No matter how hard she racked her brain, it did not add up.
There was no reason an item of the Upper Realm should exist so casually in the Lower Realm.
Just as she had been agonizing over it for quite some time, she remembered something Orabeoni had once told her.
He had said that the Central Continent was called the Sosang Realm.
It was said to be a paradise with dense spiritual energy and good spiritual veins laid throughout.
Long ago, some great powers had supposedly imagined that the Upper Realm must have been like that and named it the Sosang Realm.
At the time, she had simply brushed it off as a flattering nickname for a paradise-like place.
“But… was it not just a name?”
She had never thought anything of it until now, but she had ended up taking the red pill without meaning to.
Perhaps the name Sosang Realm was not merely a metaphor after all.