Chapter 154
Another three months passed.
The time she had spent shut away in seclusion, devoted solely to Qi Absorption, had paid off.
The Dantian that had been on the verge of the 9th level was now filled to the brim.
With an Inscribed Realm-Breaking Pill and a push from her Mind Sword, the barrier to the 9th level collapsed so smoothly it was almost anticlimactic.
‘It really is easier.’
Baek Cheong advanced to Qi Condensation, 9th level without any particular crisis.
With great perfection right before her eyes, the foundation establishment she had awaited for so long was no longer far away.
Advancing to the 9th level did not only expand her Dantian.
As her Dantian doubled, her Divine Sense grew along with it.
Her Divine Sense, which had remained at 31 zhang, had reached 35 zhang before she knew it.
For Divine Sense at the qi condensation stage, that was an absurd range.
'Let’s see…’
Curious about her newly expanded Divine Sense, Baek Cheong stretched it out at full strength.
The spreading Divine Sense swept over every corner of the cave abode.
It was practically a living radar with a reach of 35 zhang.
Yet the moment her Divine Sense passed the 30-zhang mark, a familiar pain knocked against her skull.
It was sharper than the headache she had suffered at the 8th level.
‘Ow, ow, so it was too much after all.’
Frowning, she hurriedly drew her Divine Sense back.
Once the extended Divine Sense was gathered back into her Dantian, the pain seemed to subside.
But even after she had withdrawn her Divine Sense, the headache did not disappear entirely.
A faint throbbing lingered in one corner of her head.
It was only about as bad as losing a bit of sleep, not so severe that she could not endure it.
Still, the fact that pain remained even after she had withdrawn her Divine Sense bothered her.
It clearly meant something had gone wrong with her Divine Sense.
When she traced the cause back, one thing came to mind.
She remembered something Pacheon Sword Saint had once warned her about.
With a qi condensation body, she lacked the vessel to contain so much Divine Sense.
‘It was fine back then…’
At the 8th level, it had felt only slightly sluggish around the 30-zhang mark.
It had been so, so, so subtle that she had dismissed it as nothing serious.
But now that she had reached the 9th level and her Divine Sense had swollen to 35 zhang, things were different.
‘And I thought it would be fine this time too.’
The problem was that the road ahead looked bleak.
If she reached the 10th level from here, her Divine Sense would grow even larger, and the symptoms would surely get worse.
Even if she somehow managed to reach foundation establishment after twists and turns, her current situation would not naturally resolve itself.
No matter how much larger her foundation establishment vessel became, her Divine Sense would bulk up just as much.
If she only raised her realm without learning to manage her current state, she would merely repeat the same cycle in late foundation establishment.
‘This might be worse than I thought.’
Having reasoned that far, Baek Cheong quietly felt a sense of alarm.
Normally, it was the sort of thing she would have put off, telling herself she would think about it later.
But the more she considered it, the more it looked like a fire right under her feet.
Forget an eternal forum-browsing life; the higher her realm climbed, the more she might ruin her health.
‘I’ve got to do something about this.’
However, all cultivation Methods that dealt with Divine Sense were troublesome.
Methods for Divine Sense were either famously rare or came with side effects.
If she carelessly touched one, she was more likely to wreck her Divine Sense or mind than cure her overgrowth.
Still, she could not just sit on her hands.
‘The Nameless Forum should have something.’
Baek Cheong immediately connected to the Nameless Forum and looked through the information board.
When she typed Divine Sense into the search bar, related posts came up one after another.
Most were far removed from her situation, so she flipped through the pages quickly.
She had gone through several pages…
The throbbing headache had vanished before she knew it.
'Huh? It doesn’t hurt.’
An old question she had once had suddenly came back to her.
Back when she had climbed back through the marketplace and had all of her Divine Sense occupied, she had wondered why her head did not hurt the way it did when she spread her Divine Sense at full strength.
She had not known the reason at the time and had let it slide, but now she had a guess.
As she flipped through posts on the Nameless Forum, she found her Divine Sense being occupied bit by bit.
Because her overflowing Divine Sense was draining away into the Nameless Forum, the pressure on her vessel disappeared as well.
That meant the headache had been caused by her Divine Sense being retained.
‘It works well enough as a stopgap, but…’
But it was too early to be happy.
Her Divine Sense was occupied only while she was connected to the Nameless Forum.
On top of that, the more Divine Sense was tied up, the hazier her vision became and the duller her mind felt.
She could not spend all day glued to the Nameless Forum and drifting around blankly like a mortal.
‘I need a fundamental solution.’
Even if she endured it with the pain-relieving effect, it was nothing more than a stopgap.
At least, with the headache gone, Baek Cheong was able to dig carefully into information related to Divine Sense.
“Dao friend(718.44): On orthodox arts for expanding Divine Sense.”
“Dao friend(150.2): Basics and applications of Divine Sense operation.”
“Dao friend(89.4): A consideration of Divine Sense cultivation Methods.”
The posts that came up mostly discussed ways to expand Divine Sense or put it to use.
There were some in-depth considerations, but every one of them mentioned side effects.
Warnings lined up one after another: if one expanded Divine Sense forcefully, the mind could break, or one could fall to a heart demon.
'These aren’t what I need right now.’
The problem was that her situation was peculiar.
Other people lacked Divine Sense and were desperate to increase it.
But in her case, the trouble was that she had too much; her circumstances were the complete opposite.
After all, no one had ever heard of a mere Qi Condensation cultivator possessing golden core-level Divine Sense.
Finding a similar case was like plucking a star from the sky.
'Well, of course, cases like mine aren’t common.’
Even so, Baek Cheong could not give up and continued rummaging through the posts.
Then an unfamiliar title caught her eye.
“Dao friend(410.310): On compressing Divine Sense.”
The very idea of compressing Divine Sense was something she had never heard of.
Curious, she opened the post and read.
[Divine Sense is, by nature, something that sees farther and contains more the wider it is spread. However, there are realms one cannot reach by spreading it alone. Compress Divine Sense, and the story changes. Divine Sense whose volume has been reduced and whose density has been raised can accomplish feats spread-out Divine Sense would never dare attempt. It can tear through and penetrate another’s Divine Sense, pierce restrictions placed on a magical treasure, or even contend with a Cultivator separated from you by an entire major realm. Compressed Divine Sense grows smaller in size, but it also leaves the bounds of the ordinary, so its possibilities may be called endless.]
As Baek Cheong read down the post, her eyes shone.
‘Do they really compress Divine Sense?’
Until now, she had only been looking for ways to shave down or manage her bloated Divine Sense.
But compression was a different story.
If she condensed her Divine Sense into a smaller form without removing any of it, her vessel would no longer overflow.
‘This might actually…’
It was a direction different from what she had imagined, but it seemed like it could be a sufficient solution.
As a bonus, compressed Divine Sense could do things she had been unable to do before. Two birds with one stone.
However, the post omitted the most important part: how, exactly, one compresses Divine Sense.
It explained what compression was, but did not include a single method.
'I need the method if I’m going to use it.’
Without hesitation, Baek Cheong left a reply.
[Dao friend(913.14): How do you compress Divine Sense?]
After leaving the reply, she waited for a long while.
But even after half a day had passed, there was no answer.
The dao friend who had made the post did not show up at all.
‘Ugh, no answer.’
Unable to wait any longer, Baek Cheong searched the entire forum board with Divine Sense compression as the keyword.
But the phrase Divine Sense compression itself was rare, so there were only a few posts per page.
Aside from informational posts, everything else in casual posts was nonsense.
Even as she turned the pages, mentions of it were so sparse that plenty of pages had no posts at all.
She kept turning through one empty page after another.
Around the time she had gone back 33 pages…
She noticed a marketplace listing bearing a familiar interface number.
It was a listing put up by the dao friend who had just explained Divine Sense compression.
“Dao friend(410.310) is selling: Spirit Condensation Art. 50 high-Grade spirit Stones.”
[A cultivation method for compressing and governing Divine Sense.]
At the listing, Baek Cheong unconsciously froze.
Until she entered that information post, this was a dao friend she had never once encountered on the Nameless Forum.
It looked as though they had listed the effects of compression in plausible detail, deliberately withheld the method, and intended to sell the cultivation method instead.
And the price was no less than 50 high-Grade spirit Stones.
Considering she had bought a bundle of pill recipes covering the 1st to 5th tiers for 10 high-Grade spirit Stones, it was not a price to take lightly.
‘This lines up way too neatly.’
More than anything, the Nameless Pavilion had skipped it, although it was an old marketplace post.
It felt as if someone had precisely laid out bait for those suffering over their Divine Sense.
The information post she had just skimmed had explained that Divine Sense cultivation Methods always came with side effects.
Even if this were a compression method, there was no way it could be perfectly safe.
'From the fact that they even wrote a description, it doesn’t seem fake.’
Of course, since it had been posted in the marketplace, it probably did compress Divine Sense exactly as written.
False information could not even be registered on the Nameless Forum Marketplace.
The problem was that the more legitimate a cultivation method looked, the more some hidden price might be lurking within it.
It might be an elaborate trap, laid step by step from the information post to the listing in order to hook someone in the same situation she was in.
‘Is this… a trap?’
Unable to click purchase lightly, Baek Cheong glared at the sale post for the Spirit Condensation Art.
She could not readily judge whether it was a solution or a trap.