Chapter 137
At the Peak Lord’s words that it was possible, Baek-Cheong cheered inwardly.
She never dreamed that the dark, dull object she had shoved into a corner of her Storage Platform would be useful in a place like this.
[It really is best to just hoard things first.]
However, the Peak Lord looked back and forth between the Baekju and the dark object, then pulled his smoking pipe from his lips.
He soon looked down at Baek-Cheong with a peculiar gaze.
“You have a lot of luck for a young one.”
“…Pardon?”
The Peak Lord lightly shook the dark object.
“Not only did you seek me out right as This Old Man finished his work, but you also brought a Dharma Tool that isn’t even an item of our Lower Realm. And of all things, you happened to be holding the exact material that harmonizes with it.”
The tip of the smoking pipe pointed at Baek-Cheong.
“With this much, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call you a person of fortuitous encounters.”
It meant she was an incarnation of innate luck, someone who would have fortuitous encounters roll right into her lap just by walking down the street.
But Baek-Cheong blinked in bewilderment.
[What fortuitous encounter?]
Come to think of it, not a single thing had rolled in for free.
The Refining ticket from a 4th-Tier Alchemist was a rightful reward she had earned in exchange for taking the position of Top Ranker in the Martial Arts Competition.
The Baekju Dharma Tool was merely an item she had inherited that had been sleeping in the Clan’s Treasury.
And the dark object was something she had proudly bought by paying five mid-grade spirit stones.
She hadn’t obtained any of it through luck, yet he was calling her a person of fortuitous encounters.
[I gathered all this by doing the legwork myself.]
She wanted to refute him immediately, but she kept her mouth shut.
There was nothing good to be gained by nitpicking the Peak Lord’s well-meaning words.
He was a 4th-Tier Alchemist and a Nascent Soul Great Cultivator; arguing over every little detail would be ill-mannered.
[Insisting otherwise will only make me look ridiculous.]
Baek-Cheong pretended to agree and obediently bowed her head.
Seeing her display such modesty, the Peak Lord let out a hearty, satisfied laugh.
Watching from the side, Baek Mu-Yeong was inwardly grinning from ear to ear.
The Peak Lord of the Biun Sect’s Yeon-gi Peak had called Baek-Cheong a person of fortuitous encounters, which was an auspicious sign.
[Treating me like someone who coasts by on luck.]
The Peak Lord set the Baekju and the dark object down beside him, then turned his eyes to the mountain of materials Baek-Cheong had poured out.
Scanning the pile, the Peak Lord stopped his hand in front of the 2nd-Tier Supreme-Grade Dharma Treasure salvaged from the Cloud Sea Secret Realm.
“These will be enough.”
The Peak Lord sorted out the Supreme-Grade Dharma Treasure along with a few other materials and placed them aside.
Baek-Cheong’s eyes widened at the unexpectedly small amount.
“Is that all you need? If you need more…”
“Adding too much unnecessarily will only ruin the item.”
The Peak Lord gestured to the remaining materials with his chin.
“Take the rest back.”
Baek-Cheong promptly swept the remaining materials back into her Storage Platform.
[The less it takes, the better it is for me.]
If a single 2nd-Tier Supreme-Grade Dharma Treasure salvaged from the Secret Realm could transform the Baekju into a proper Dharma Treasure, it wasn’t something to regret; rather, it was a highly profitable trade.
The Peak Lord picked up the Baekju again and tapped it lightly with his smoking pipe.
“This thing is a rankless item that cannot be graded, and even its origin is peculiar.”
An intrigued light flickered in the Peak Lord’s eyes.
“However, it won’t take too long to forge it into a Dharma Treasure. Come back in three days.”
It was an unexpectedly short timeframe.
Concealing her welling joy, Baek-Cheong bowed politely.
“I leave it in your capable hands, Peak Lord.”
Baek Mu-Yeong, who was beside her, also bowed deeply.
“We are truly grateful and humbled by your esteemed assistance.”
After repeatedly paying their respects, the two of them withdrew from the Peak Lord’s Hall.
* * *
All the way back to the Guest Quarters, Baek Mu-Yeong couldn’t hide his excitement.
“To think such a history was hidden within a single bead.”
He shook his head several times, letting out exclamations of awe.
“Was it not an item that had slept in the Clan’s Treasury for decades? Even father kept it by his side his entire life, yet he never managed to uncover its origins.”
The Peak Lord’s words that it was not from their Lower Realm had come as quite a shock.
“It wasn’t a mere bead, but a treasure bestowed upon our Baek Clan by the heavens.”
Unlike her uncle, who was continuously pouring out his Admiration, Baek-Cheong was lost in other thoughts.
What wouldn’t leave her mind was the story the Peak Lord had told her.
The Peak Lord had said that the items the Void Fish spat out usually drifted in from other continents.
He also mentioned that items from other Lower Realms only got mixed in once in a blue moon.
[Not just other continents, but other Lower Realms too.]
But the more she chewed on it, the stranger it felt.
She wondered if “other continents” were ultimately no different from “other Lower Realms”.
The Boundary walls blocking the path between continents were so treacherous that even a Nascent Soul Great Cultivator could barely cross them.
Just like the barriers separating different realms.
If so, it was possible that each Continent making up the Lower Realm was originally a separate Lower Realm of its own.
Of course, the divided continents weren’t quite large enough to be called full Lower Realms.
Even if they had each been different Lower Realms, there was no way to know how they had somehow merged into one.
The Central Continent, known as the Sosang Realm, was an especially peculiar place.
The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like an unknown variable, with it surrounded by a Boundary wall that even Nascent Soul cultivators dared not challenge.
[It seems like everything the Void Fish spat out was from another Lower Realm to begin with.]
Hadn’t he said that what the Void Fish ate and spat out crossed between various Lower Realms?
Since an item swallowed by a Void Fish in one Lower Realm would be regurgitated from the mouth of a Void Fish in another Lower Realm, the things spat out in the Cloud Sea Secret Realm had to be items that crossed over from other Lower Realms.
If one assumed that the continents were originally separate Lower Realms, it all made sense.
The continents were practically neighbors separated by a single Boundary wall.
The items flowing in through the Void Fish would naturally mostly belong to nearby continents.
Conversely, items from far-off Lower Realms would only get mixed in on rare occasions.
[Come to think of it, isn’t that the same reason why there are unusually many Soul Transformation cultivators?]
She had heard that if there were more than three Soul Transformation cultivators in a Lower Realm, there would be issues related to ascension.
Yet in their Lower Realm, across all the continents, there were a total of nine Soul Transformation cultivators.
Considering that the Pacheon Sword Saint would soon reach the Soul Transformation stage, and there were 5th-tier demonic beasts, their number exceeding ten, including one called the Demon Venerable.
[Maybe ascension is blocked.]
Until now, Baek-Cheong had assumed that the Soul Transformation cultivators were simply choosing to stay behind rather than ascend.
But thinking about it now, it might not be that they weren’t ascending, but rather that they couldn’t.
If the path to the Upper Realm had been distorted because multiple Lower Realms had merged, the pieces roughly fit together.
When her thoughts reached that point, even the story about the Eastern Heaven Rogue Cultivator Alliance gathering Territory lords from other continents took on a different meaning.
A Territory Lord, if properly matured, was one of the materials used to create a Blessed Land of the Eastern Heaven.
Ascension, the Eastern Continent, the Territory lords.
The scattered pieces were on the verge of completing a single picture.
[Could it be… are they planning to tear off the entire Eastern Continent?]
If they were going to detach the Eastern Continent from the merged Lower Realm and return it to being its original Lower Realm.
They might even be able to force open the blocked path of ascension.
As her thoughts reached that conclusion, Baek-Cheong ended up chuckling.
[Ah, what a ridiculous idea.]
Tearing off an entire Continent didn’t make any sense to begin with.
Even if there really was such a scheme, it wasn’t a problem for a mere Qi Condensation cultivator like her to worry about.
Even if it were true by some one-in-a-million chance, it would be awkward to tell anyone else.
Above all, an event of such a massive scale would inevitably be exposed, so there was no way the higher-ups wouldn’t know about it.
[It has nothing to do with me.]
Baek-Cheong brushed away the speculations swirling dizzily in her head without any lingering attachment.
Setting aside the headache-inducing calculations made her stifled little chest feel at ease.
There was something else that was immediately important to her.
In just three days, the Baekju would be reborn as a proper Dharma Treasure and fall into her hands.
Furthermore, she still hadn’t received the compensation the Biun Sect had promised to prepare.
She felt a bit guilty inwardly, but since she had legitimately only brought out two items, she didn’t mind.
[I’ll thoroughly collect the Secret Realm compensation and receive my Dharma Treasure.]
A reward offered by a Great Sect like the Biun Sect was bound to be extraordinary.
Just thinking about it brought a natural smile to her lips.
[At this rate, I’m getting a very solid haul out of the Biun Sect before I leave.]
Until then, she needed to constantly act as a troublemaker to protect the items she had put up on the Marketplace.
“I’ll go in and rest now.”
“Alright.”
Leaving her uncle, who was still wrapped in shock, behind, Baek-Cheong entered her room.
Then, she connected to the Nameless Forum and watched the Righteous-Demonic Debate.
It seemed to die down a bit.
[Dao Friend (913.14): But what’s the standard for distinguishing between the Righteous and Demonic factions?]
[They say doing bad things makes you Demonic, but the Righteous Faction does bad things too.]
She deliberately added firewood to draw out fierce reactions from the Dao Friends.
[Dao Friend (11.23): That kind of Mortal way of thinking is just…]
[Dao Friend (837.11): In the Righteous Faction, they tell kids with spiritual roots that Immortals and Mortals are different, and once they walk the path of cultivation, they make them kill their own blood relatives and villagers.]
└Dao Friend (32.248): That’s not a bad thing; it’s an inevitable process to sever useless affections and karma as an Immortal.
└Dao Friend (837.11): I heard they even disguise it as the work of a Demonic Cultivator and kill everyone just to make them focus on their Training?
└Dao Friend (32.248): Because a desire for revenge is a good motivation for Training.
.
.
.
Watching the replies become increasingly overheated, Baek-Cheong nodded in satisfaction.
“Just fight amongst yourselves for a good five days.”
By then, she would be leaving the Biun Sect and heading back home.