The Dao Seeker's Realm
After receiving the entry pass to enter the Cheongmun Clan Estate's territory, I headed to meet the Foundation Establishment elder there.
Cheongmun Mok, the Foundation Establishment elder of the Cheongmun Clan, checked my recommendation letter inside his room and said,
“Hmm, this is a recommendation from an elder of the senior generation. It seems I was recommended by one of the seniors of the current sect who has ascended.”
“An ascended senior?”
“It’s fine. Thanks to that, you don’t need to worry about anything. The authenticity of the recommendation letter is certain, so I will accept you as an external member…”
After that, he simply asked my name, age, nationality, and my current realm.
“My name is Seo Eun-hyun, currently thirty years old. Nationality is from Yeon Kingdom, Yeonsan City. My current realm is…” I have not yet mastered the Eonsiksul technique.”
“Hmm? You haven’t mastered the Eonsiksul technique?”
Cheongmun Mok’s eyes twitched.
His consciousness scanned my consciousness.
I had intentionally compressed my consciousness using Eonsiksul, making my size significantly smaller, equivalent to the First Layer of Qi Condensation.
“Even without mastering the Eonsiksul technique, your consciousness is at the First Layer of Qi Condensation. Your consciousness is exceptional. That’s why you were recommended. Do you know what spiritual root you possess?”
“I know it’s a Five Qi Spiritual Root.”
“Five Qi…?”
His eyes twitched again.
“…Sigh. Aside from the somewhat exceptional consciousness, there is no answer. Why were you recommended…? No, it’s fine. I cannot possibly dispute the matters of the clan elders. First, I will give you a symbolic identity pass as an external member. And I will also assign your residence.”
I followed the elder to a place in the territory.
The Cheongmun Clan Estate’s territory was not built on flat land like the Makri Clan or the Jin Clan, but in a rugged mountain valley.
Because of that, the dwellings of the Dao Seekers were not in the form of houses, but rather many carved into stone caves scattered throughout the mountain valley gorges.
Cheongmun Mok led me to the entrance of a stone cave and stopped, pointing there.
“This place is now your residence. From now on, you will live here, raise your cultivation, and fulfill the assigned tasks to build the clan’s merits. And when your merits reach a certain level, you will be able to receive support from the clan using those merits.
Originally, for external members and collateral lines, the clan provides basic Dao Seeking resources once every month. The more tasks you perform and the higher your cultivation level in those tasks, the more basic support you will receive, so remember that. Right now, since you only have talent but no legal force at all, and even no Dao Flower Core, the basic support allocated to you is…”
He rummaged through his pockets and took out a small box, handing it to me.
When I opened the box, a small dried Ginseng the size of a baby’s fingernail was inside.
It was much smaller than the arm-thick Ginseng I had harvested in Deungsunhyang.
“Looking at the size and appearance, it seems this is not wild Ginseng but farmed Ginseng. And it looks like it is five years old.”
“For now, be satisfied with that much. Once you reach the Elixir Cultivation stage and advance to Qi Condensation, from then on you will receive one Spiritual Stone per month. And, receive this as well.”
I received two books from Cheongmun Mok.
One was the Elixir Cultivation technique book, and the other was a book containing the Cheongmun Clan’s family regulations.
“Read the family regulations once and in the future, master the Elixir Cultivation technique to advance to the Elixir stage. And since you have now become a member of the clan, you must perform the mandatory tasks four times a month. If you want to take on tasks, come to me to apply for them. I will assign you tasks suitable for your level.”
“Understood.”
I received the books and the books from him and bowed, then entered the stone cave.
The stone cave was truly empty and open, but after having lived through several lifetimes, sleeping rough had become routine, so merely knowing that there was a ceiling and walls made me feel overjoyed.
I first took out the Elixir Cultivation technique book, Cheongmokbeopdan, given by Elder Cheongmun, and the Man-gye Dan-su-gwon I had bought from an old man at the Yeongdo Market, and unfolded them.
A while later, I closed the Cheongmokbeopdan and put it aside in a corner.
“This seems to be a somewhat sloppy technique book, even for a Five Qi Spiritual Root…”
The Cheongmokbeopdan had more incomprehensible words and was less detailed than the Man-gye Dan-su-gwon.
In comparison, the Man-gye Dan-su-gwon was comprehensive, with all techniques suited to each spiritual root, along with detailed information about the Elixir stage.
The process for creating a Dao Flower Core was roughly like this.
First, activate your own spiritual root and transform the dantian itself to optimize it for that spiritual root.
Then, gather the yin and yang qi, circulate it within the dantian, and give it the aura of the Primordial Chaos, making it suitable for receiving the heaven and earth spiritual energy, which becomes the Dao Flower Core.
But there was a problem.
“A thousand-spirit-root person needs one day, a true-spirit-root person needs one month, a miscellaneous-spirit-root person needs one year if fast, or three to five years if slow.”
The more spiritual roots one has, the more the time to create the Dao Flower Core increases exponentially.
A thousand-spirit-root person only needs to activate one spiritual root, optimize the dantian, and gather the yin and yang qi to polish the dantian into the Primordial Chaos True Qi, which can be achieved in a day.
However, Dao Seekers with spiritual roots above the true-spirit-root must activate two spiritual roots and optimize the dantian with the spiritual root’s aura, and the two auras must perfectly merge into the dantian.
Even for two-spirit-root, it was said that they could only achieve it by perfectly optimizing the two auras in a 5:5 ratio, but from three-spirit-root onward, it became extremely difficult to match the uniformity of the qi.
Therefore, even true-spirit-root people with three spiritual roots were said to devote time to uniformity for three months.
From four or five spiritual roots, it was the beginning of hell, as the world knew.
Yes, they had to perfectly match the concentrations of the five spiritual forces, and during the evolution of the dantian with Primordial Chaos True Qi, the concentrations of the spiritual forces could never change.
“Hmm…”
I read the Man-gye Dan-su-gwon and the Dan-su Bunseokjeon, understanding the Elixir stage.
And I organized my thoughts and drew a conclusion.
“No problem.”
Spiritual qi uniformity?
That problem had been perfectly solved when I advanced to Five Qi Consorting with the Origin and reconstructed my entire body.
Right now, my five spiritual roots were perfectly uniform.
Just activate all the spiritual roots and insert them into the dantian, and it was over.
Moreover, the requirement that there should never be any abnormality in the uniformity of the spiritual roots when evolving the dantian with Primordial Chaos True Qi, or that one must never lose concentration, was meaningless to me.
“Compared to maintaining Sword Qi all day in training, this is not difficult at all.”
Furthermore, using the Eonsiksul given as a gift by the Bucktail Ghost Man would make my training speed somewhat faster, so time was not a big problem for me either.
The last remaining problem was the spiritual energy to use for training.
—Warrure
There were still over a thousand Spiritual Stones left from those taken from the Makri Clan’s Dao Seekers.
I spread the Spiritual Stones poured out from the box throughout the stone cave and savored their spiritual energy.
“Hmm, this much should be…”
Probably no need to worry about training.
I briefly estimated the spiritual energy of the Spiritual Stones and then put them back in the box, then went to find Cheongmun Mok to receive my mission.
Since it was a mandatory task four times a month, it would be better to just finish it all at once and train with peace of mind.
When I went to him, Cheongmun Mok gave me a simple but burdensome mission.
“Go to a small village in the Jueon City of the Byeokra Kingdom and check if a person with a spiritual root has appeared.”
I teamed up with a collateral member of the Cheongmun Clan and headed to Jueon City.
***
“I wondered where the Dao Seekers had been recruiting new members from all this time, and it turned out to be like this.”
While performing the mission with the Cheongmun Clan’s collateral member, I learned the question I had been curious about.
How were the Dao Seeking clans able to maintain their numbers for hundreds of years by recruiting new members from somewhere?
If they married people of the same clan who were born with spiritual roots, inbreeding would eventually deepen genetic diseases, and it didn’t seem like they would marry external members of other clans that looked competitive.
However, all Dao Seeking clans were doing missions to collateral members of their own clans, supplying people with spiritual roots from all over the country.
They even found people born with spiritual roots relatively easily.
“It’s quite unbelievable.”
In most cases, at least eight out of ten children who claim to have seen ghosts or keep seeing hallucinations were born with spiritual roots.
By going to a village rumored to have a child who sees ghosts or a peculiar child, you could find someone with a spiritual root.
“Without needing to know what type of spiritual root it is, detailed verification is necessary, but just whether or not they have a spiritual root can be seen at a glance…”
A person with a spiritual root or pierced spiritual vein has their consciousness protruding outside the upper dantian, forming a ring around the brow.
Although their consciousness size was only about two times larger than the head, possibly because they hadn’t mastered the Eonsiksul technique,
it was very easy to identify because ordinary criminals leaked their ‘Yi’ in the form of mental intention rather than consciousness.
“That child must be the one who sees ghosts.”
The Cheongmun Clan’s collateral member, Cheongmun Byeong, who had teamed up with me this time, pointed to one of the beggars lying under the bridge in the Guryeong-hyeon of Jueon City.
The child had bruises all over his body and was looking at the flow of heaven and earth spiritual energy with somewhat hazy eyes.
“The spiritual vein is pierced.”
I looked at the form of the consciousness surrounding the child’s upper dantian centered on the child’s brow and said.
Cheongmun Byeong nodded and went down under the bridge.
The beggar family suddenly became flustered when a Cheongmun Byeong dressed in fine clothes approached, and they stood up while whispering.
“Hey, what’s the name of that kid?”
“Oh, sir. That kid is called Gusaam. If I offended you by looking at you arrogantly, I apologize. That kid is talking nonsense about seeing ghosts…”
At that moment, Gusaam suddenly screamed and pointed at me and Cheongmun Byeong.
“Uwaaak! A-a ghost! There are ghosts! Waaaaak!”
Since he had never seen someone with consciousness like us before, his reaction was excessively violent.
The beggar family’s head’s face twisted and he gnashed his teeth.
“That damned kid is speaking rudely to a noble, go get a club! I can’t let that kid’s mouth run wild…”
“It’s fine. By the way, do you have any intention of selling this kid to us? We’ll buy it at a high price.”
Clink!
Cheongmun Byeong took out a purse full of money from his pocket and handed it to him.
The beggar head looked at the purse with a puzzled expression for a moment.
“W-what, why is this…? No, what use is a kid like that…”
“Shut up. Are you selling or not?”
At Cheongmun Byeong’s words, the beggar head quickly went over, grabbed the child’s arm, and dragged him over.
“Ah! Y-yes. I’ll sell. I’ll sell. Haha, you! Come here, today you’re lucky. Go wear good clothes and eat good food! Come, follow these people!”
“F-father, I don’t want to! These aren’t people! People leak thoughts like threads, but these ones have hollow thoughts! They’re definitely demons!”
“You damned kid, still blabbering about that ghost demon! Don’t follow these people!”
The beggar boy shouted in fear, seeing our consciousness.
Cheongmun Byeong sighed and said to me.
“You take that kid. I don’t want to drag around that dirty guy.”
“…I understand.”
Eventually, after being beaten several times by his father, the boy was sold to us, and his father received the purse full of money and sprayed golden mental intention wildly.
“Uwaaak! Uwaaaaaak!”
The boy cried as if the world was ending while being dragged to me.
Instead of blocking his mouth with a magical technique because it was noisy, I let him cry to his heart’s content.
“Cry, it must be so sad, but you have to cry.”
Eventually, Cheongmun Byeong couldn’t bear the boy’s crying and quickly walked away, putting distance between me and the boy, and I held the boy’s hand and continued listening to his crying.
How long he cried, I finally spoke to the hoarse child in a calm voice.
“Don’t worry. We are not demons. Just… think of us as people of the same kind as you.”
“Hic, hic…”
However, the child’s consciousness was pitch black like thick ink clouds.
It was the mental intention of sadness.
“…We can never meet our mother and father again?”
“Well, when you grow up, you may come back to meet them again. When you grow up, master the Eonsiksul technique, and after some time passes to the level where you can take on tasks, you can come back.”
“…What do you mean?”
“You’ll understand later. Don’t worry, you can meet again.”
At my words, the sadness mental intention covering Gusaam’s consciousness seemed to lift a little.
I asked the Cheongmun Byeong walking ahead.
“What will become of this child?”
“First, go to the clan and have your talent checked. If the talent is true-spirit-root or higher, you will be entrusted to external members for education, master the Elixir techniques and basic techniques, and then the kid will be treated as an external member.
But if it’s miscellaneous-spirit-root, that kid will be entrusted to the clan’s subordinate water and stone people, and enter as their adopted child. After studying there for a few years, when he advances to Elixir Cultivation and then to Qi Condensation, that kid will become a subordinate water and stone person. If he builds merits, he may even aim for promotion to external member.”
“Then, what if a thousand-spirit-root is found?”
“Then the main family will come personally to take him, educate him, let him master the Eonsiksul technique, and marry him as a son-in-law to the main family’s direct line. And he will grow up receiving support from the main family’s direct line. But I have never experienced such a case in my life.”
“I see…”
I roughly understood the personnel recruitment of the Dao Seeking clans and asked him again.
“Today, since this child’s family was beggars, it was easy to bring the child. But what if the child is a commoner?”
“Even commoners have nothing that money can’t buy in the secular world. Well, sometimes even if they refuse to take the money, they take them through the power of criminal families, saying they will adopt them. Whether it’s money or power, it’s the same.”
“What if it’s the child of a criminal family?”
“That’s even easier. If it’s a big criminal family, they know about the existence of the Dao Seeking clan, so they will send their child with the right to do so, and if it’s a small sect and they don’t know about the Dao Seeking clan, they will eventually hand it over under the pressure of the power of a bigger criminal family.”
“Hmm, I see…”
While listening to his explanation, I deepened my understanding of the Dao Seeking clans.
I comforted the child and returned to the Cheongmun Clan Estate with him.
The result of the detailed examination showed that the child was finally determined to be a miscellaneous-spirit-root, and was to enter as an adopted child of the subordinate water and stone people behind a criminal family in the Byeokra Kingdom.
Anyway, the child’s life would change a lot from before.
I received another mission from Cheongmun Mok and went to find new spiritual root candidates, and I was able to complete all three months’ worth of missions.
Even though it took time to roam the Byeokra Kingdom,
this mission was treated as one, including finding the rumor and going to the source of the rumor to check if the spiritual vein was pierced,
and the mission to bring the spiritual root holder to the territory was treated separately, so there was no rush of time.
I gained about three months of time and returned to my stone cave.
“Now that I have time, I should try to master the Elixir technique.”
I blocked the entrance of the stone cave with some wooden planks, laid out over a thousand Spiritual Stones around, and sat in the lotus position in the center.
The Five Elements Technique, a Elixir technique for thousand-spirit-root people, recorded in the Man-gye Dan-su-gwon.
I began to absorb the heaven and earth spiritual energy flowing around by operating the Five Elements Technique.
—Uung—
While absorbing the spiritual energy, I activated the spiritual roots inside me according to the formula.
And I operated the Five Elements Technique, recalling the feeling when the Five Elements Spiritual Energy had flowed harmoniously into my body back when I was at Five Qi Consorting with the Origin.
The Five Elements Spiritual Energy flowed according to the guidance of the Five Elements Technique and began to be drawn into my dantian.
The spiritual energy poured into the dantian through the five spiritual roots.
Normally, at this stage, other Dao Seekers would devote all their strength to uniformizing the spiritual energy, spending years on the uniformity of the spiritual energy.
But I, since the spiritual energy itself of my entire body was perfectly uniform, just pouring the existing spiritual energy into the dantian would create spiritual energy in perfect uniformity.
In an instant, the dantian achieved perfect uniformity of the spiritual energy.
I started optimizing the dantian for the Five Elements Spiritual Energy according to the formula of the Five Elements Technique in this state.
Time passed.
One day, two days, three days.
And when five days passed.
I finally succeeded in optimizing all the spiritual energy into the dantian.
“Now, half is done.”
The remaining task was to absorb the yin and yang qi, circulate it, and turn it into the Primordial Chaos True Qi to evolve the dantian so that it could accept legal force.
Normally, thousand-spirit-root Dao Seekers took several months or even years to absorb the heaven and earth spiritual energy at this stage, but I was different.
—Uuwung—
I pulled the spiritual energy directly from the over a thousand Spiritual Stones around me.
—Kugugugugu!
I clenched Spiritual Stones in both hands and madly sucked in the spiritual energy.
Although the efficiency of absorbing the spiritual energy was very poor because I was a thousand-spirit-root person, I would compensate with the quantity of the Spiritual Stones.
While absorbing an immense amount of spiritual energy, I divided the spiritual energy back into yin and yang qi according to the formula of the Five Elements Technique.
Then, I circulated it again in the dantian and mixed the yin and yang qi into the Primordial Chaos True Qi.
Using the Primordial Chaos True Qi created that way, I filled the dantian to the brim and evolved the dantian itself anew.
—Kugug—
Changes were happening in the dantian.
The balance of the uniformly unified Five Elements Spiritual Energy was about to be disturbed by the drastic change, but with my firm consciousness, I perfectly stabilized the balance of the spiritual energy and endured the action of the Primordial Chaos True Qi.
How many times did I repeat operating the Five Elements Technique and pushing the Primordial Chaos True Qi into the dantian?
Finally.
—Beok!
It seemed as if light was coming from the dantian, and the Primordial Chaos True Qi no longer absorbed into the dantian and changed the dantian.
Instead, the dantian began to operate the Primordial Chaos True Qi on its own, purifying the Primordial Chaos True Qi and gathering it into pure spiritual energy.
“Haa…”
I exhaled and tested the Five Elements Spiritual Energy inside my body.
The Five Elements Spiritual Energy moved as I wished.
—Hoo-eup—
When I took a breath, the heaven and earth spiritual energy naturally absorbed into me according to my intention.
I realized that I had reached the Great Completion of the Five Elements Technique.
And what it meant was clear.
“Now, I can enter the Qi Condensation stage.”
I opened my eyes, went outside the stone cave, and asked the criminals doing odd jobs in the Cheongmun Clan Estate what day it was today.
And I learned that it had been a month since I entered the seclusion.
“Anyway, since I did the three months’ worth of missions in advance, I have about two months left.”
The decision was quick.
I went back into the stone cave and took out the Ohwol Ipdo Gyeong.
“While there is still time left, shall I try to advance to the First Layer of Qi Condensation?”