Chapter 12
It wasn't the gaze of someone who had given up and been broken.
Had Decia been mistaken?
Nine's eyes were truly shining, sparkling beautifully.
It was the gaze her older sister had worn as a child, the one Decia had loved so much.
"Hup."
Nine rose from the sofa with a light effort.
As if she no longer felt any aversion toward Decia, she cast off the blanket wrapped around her like a snake shedding its skin.
"Decia. I think I'm going to be a little busy from now on, so let me ask you one last thing.”
“H-huh?”
Decia was dumbfounded by her older sister's sudden change in demeanor.
Nine, who had seemed so listless, suddenly seemed to have grown much taller.
Nine shook out her snow-white hair and snatched Pou, who was floating in midair.
“Mom didn't want us to know the schedule for the Foundation Establishment Tribulation, right? She may look cold on the outside, but she's warmhearted inside…….”
Decia nodded with a blank look.
“Then, as her children, we should help lighten her burden.”
Nine chuckled as if her dazed little sister were adorable.
A cool hand settled with a pat on the crown of Decia's head. A sensation she'd often felt long ago.
Nine slowly stroked Decia's hair.
“In the next month, I'll reach Qi Refining before the New Year is over. Got it?”
“What? How can you? You've been stuck at the Lifespan-Severing Stage for fifteen years. There's still a tenth of your lower dantian left unfilled.”
Heh.
Nine looked impressed.
So someone at Qi Refining Great Perfection can read another person's dantian?
Her longing for cultivation burned even brighter.
“Just trust me. I mean… I found a talent I didn't even know I had.”
Decia stared, as if spellbound, at her older sister's confident expression.
She seemed like a completely different person.
Rationally speaking, it made no sense.
She'd spent years unable to sense spiritual energy, then nearly her entire life barely filling nine-tenths of her dantian. That was the kind of talent she had.
How could someone with that kind of talent reach Qi Refining in just one month?
But Decia wanted to believe even that flimsy hope.
Thud, thud.
Nine pushed Decia toward the front door.
Decia could easily have resisted, but she pretended she couldn't match Nine's strength and let herself be pushed to the door.
“Then, give Mother my regards.”
“…Okay, Older Sister.”
Slam.
The door shut.
Decia stared blankly at the front door, then soon chuckled.
Thanks to her divine sense, she could see everything happening inside the house clearly.
Ding.
The elevator arrived.
Decia leaned against the elevator wall and closed her eyes.
A faint smile was on her face.
“Dao Heart (道心)…. I saw a possibility.”
***
Thud, slide.
“Hiek, gasp……. I-I thought I was going to die.”
As the bravado she'd forced herself to muster faded, Nine collapsed face-first onto the sofa.
Her small body trembled, demanding rest.
She quickly picked up the blanket sprawled across the sofa and wrapped herself up in it again.
After groaning for a long while with her face buried in the sofa, Nine suddenly raised her head.
‘What exactly triggers my fear of people?’
The question came to her out of nowhere.
In what situations did I become afraid of people?
It started with a phone call with Eun Seolhwa.
I called her without thinking, as usual, but I simply couldn't bring myself to speak.
The very situation of talking to someone felt like immense pressure.
The strange thing was, communicating by text or community chat instead of a phone call wasn't a problem at all.
‘And virtual reality felt more comfortable than reality.’
If Nine were thrown out onto the streets of reality right now, she'd definitely panic.
It was a chilling thought just to imagine it.
“Is it my perception?”
The thought suddenly occurred to her.
Her younger sister, Decia.
When she'd first seen her, it had been so long since they'd met that Nine thought an unfamiliar intruder had broken into her home.
But once she realized it was Decia, the near-panic gradually subsided.
A familiar person was more comforting than a stranger, and family more comforting than a familiar person.
If that was the case, the distinction between reality and virtual reality fit, too.
The Other-Side Cultivation World might be called virtual reality, but it was another world hardly any different from reality.
Yet Nine had walked around the city comfortably.
Perhaps it was easier because she knew it was virtual, rather than true reality.
The scattered clues came together.
The problem wasn't the physical space or the other person's existence itself.
It lay in Nine's brain—in her perception, which processed it all.
‘Hmm…. Perception. Then, if I perceive the entire world as my home, could I trick my fear of people?’
After following that thought to its conclusion, Nine shook her head dejectedly.
It was absurd arrogance.
Setting aside the idea of bending the world's standards,
freely controlling even her own instincts and subconscious was beyond her.
Nine had heard of a concept like this somewhere.
“Was it the Dao Heart?”
A mental domain one had to build in order to reach Foundation Establishment.
She'd heard that cultivators who reached Foundation Establishment could construct even their own way of thinking as they pleased, until it completely transcended the limits of ordinary people.
Flutter~
“Ahaha.”
Pou tickled the tip of her nose in midair.
Nine stopped her deep contemplation and stood up from the sofa.
There was no use thinking about it now.
“Everything in cultivation comes down to one's realm.”
In the end, it all circled back to one's realm.
Only with sturdy roots could one bloom beautiful flowers.
Nine took Pou and headed for the cultivation room.
There was one month left until the New Year.
She'd told Decia she'd reach Qi Refining,
but Nine's goal wasn't merely breaking through to Qi Refining.
“Let's casually make it to the fourth star of Qi Refining.”
If she couldn't even manage that much, she might as well donate Pou to her talented little sister.
Flutter?
Pou tilted its head in midair.
***
What did it take to reach Qi Refining?
To the old Nine, it had been an extravagant notion, a vain and lofty bit of knowledge she had no need to look into.
But not anymore.
[User: Eun (銀) Nine (羅引/Nine)]
[Talent: Five-Element Spiritual Roots 4 / 10000]
[Constitution: Talisman Dao Sacred Body Rank 1 10 / 10000]
[Cultivation Arts: Lifespan-Severing Art 8th Star 4/15000 / Introductory Talisman Dao Art 7th Star 1500/15000 / Body Tempering Art-12th Revision 3rd Star 50/200]
[Current Realm: Lifespan-Severing Stage 90%]
>
[User: Eun (銀) Nine (羅引/Nine)]
[Talent: Five-Element Spiritual Roots 400 / 10000]
[Constitution: Talisman Dao Sacred Body Rank 1 190 / 10000]
[Cultivation Arts: Lifespan-Severing Art 8th Star 1000/15000 / Introductory Talisman Dao Art 7th Star 4200/15000 / Body Tempering Art-12th Revision 3rd Star 50/200]
[Current Realm: Lifespan-Severing Stage 100%(+120% compressing….)]
The cultivation room was filled with waves of green light.
Blue talismans shone like stars among them.
The green and blue light were both emitted by talismans.
170 low-grade Might Talismans.
And 10 mid-grade Might Talismans.
Nine was tired of being surprised by now.
“Making mid-grade talismans with the lowest-grade method. I'm terrified of my own talent.”
All of this had been accomplished in a mere day.
It took one minute to draw a single low-grade talisman.
Even including the time needed to absorb spiritual energy and refine spiritual power, it took no more than three minutes.
With the 10,000 credits she'd received from Ryu Yeonhwa, she bought one low-grade spirit stone, and used the remaining 2,000 credits to buy paper and ink.
Nine packed the 180 talismans she'd made into a parcel box.
“What a pain….”
Riiip, riiip.
Since the talismans couldn't be damaged during spatial transport, Nine carefully applied the tape, her lips pursed.
Talismans were so small that all 180 of them fit inside a tiny shipping box.
“Hehe, send.”
Nine pressed the send button on her terminal.
It was a dedicated spatial transport route for exclusive contractors, which Ryu Yeonhwa had sent her.
[Ryu Yeonhwa: Ms. Nine! I received the talismans you sent! The credits should be deposited into your account in a few minutes!]
[Eun Nine: Thank you….]
[Ryu Yeonhwa: No, I should be thanking you! If you ever get your hands on an unappraised item, send it to me first! Promise!]
[Eun Nine: Yes….]
Ding!
At the sound of credits being deposited into her account, Nine's eyes lit up.
She quickly tapped the hologram and switched to the screen showing her account information.
170 low-grade Might Talismans: 53,700 credits.
10 mid-grade Might Talismans: 33,000 credits.
The total after deducting the 1% exclusive contract fee was…
[Current Balance: 85,800 credits]
‘Kyaaah!’
Nine let out a shrill scream inside her head.
It was an absurd amount.
A fortune that only a mid-stage Qi Refining cultivator could lay hands on, at the very least.
Yet that fortune was sitting right there in the account of Nine, who was only at the Lifespan-Severing Stage.
“Then there's no need to hold back, is there?”
Nine swiped through the hologram floating in the air again.
The screen she found was a cultivation-art sales site jointly managed by the government and corporations.
Hundredfold Star Force (百間星勢).
Nine grinned and went into the [Me]ㅡ [Cultivation Arts] ㅡ [My Bookmarked Cultivation Arts] section.
The cultivation arts she'd carefully gathered one by one for the day she broke through to Qi Refining glowed seductively.
“Hehe, my cute little babies. Mom worked hard to earn money for you!”