Grade Ascension
The blood-soaked Inner Disciple appointment ceremony ended before anyone quite realized how. Un Song-byeok, the man who had stirred up such a storm, walked out as if nothing of note had happened, and the other elders handled the cleanup afterward.
Wait.
When Han Yuhyeon looked at Baekri-wan, that was the shape her mouth formed.
So Han Yuhyeon made a show of leaving with the disciples, only to linger outside the Great Scripture Hall and wait. Before long Baekri-wan emerged. She casually unfolded the leaf boat at her waist and scattered it across the ground. The familiar leaf-boat flying vessel expanded until it could easily seat four.
Baekri-wan stepped onto the front left side; Han Yuhyeon took the natural spot to her right without a second thought.
“Did you know?”
Only after the leaf boat rose high enough that the people below shrank to the size of ants did Han Yuhyeon open his mouth. Baekri-wan glanced at him and answered.
“No. I didn’t.”
“You seem awfully calm for someone who didn’t know.”
“The Sect Master is more than capable of something like that. Nothing to be particularly startled about.”
“And yet you treated him that coldly even knowing what kind of man he is.”
Han Yuhyeon sounded faintly aggrieved. After all, most of his own assessment of the Sect Master had come from watching how Baekri-wan dealt with him.
“You shouldn’t judge the Sect Master by how I treat him. I’m me, and you’re you.”
“Well, yes, but still…”
“Someone can be a complete bastard to one person and a good son to another, can’t they?”
It was so obviously true that he had nothing to say. Having glimpsed Un Song-byeok’s true face, Han Yuhyeon was thoroughly chastened.
Looking down on Yeongil-ju as a mere tutorial region had been laughable in the first place. Tutorial or not in the game, for Han Yuhyeon this was reality. Approaching things as casually as he had when he rashly evaluated the Sect Master would get him killed.
“It really turned out just like you said, Elder. Once your position changes, everything becomes a pain.”
“Exactly. That said, it was predictable. You stood out far too much.”
“Did I?”
“Of course. Put yourself in the Sect Master’s place. Between an old late-stage Qi Condensation cultivator who clearly has no hope of ever reaching Foundation Establishment, and a young mid-stage Qi Condensation talent who looks certain to break through—who would you back?”
He had entered Baekri-wan’s service precisely to avoid being jerked around by the other elders, only to end up marked by the Sect Master himself. Still, being “marked” also meant being pushed forward, so it was up to Han Yuhyeon how he used that.
“If I’d been that old man Mun Il-pyeong, I would’ve quietly fled the mountain the moment the assassination failed. He was getting soft in the head. He must have thought no one would dare kill one of the few late-stage Qi Condensation cultivators left in the Baekun Sect.”
Baekri-wan’s voice carried a thread of laughter. When Han Yuhyeon glanced over, the corners of her mouth were actually twitching with genuine good humor.
“You look pleased.”
“I am. That old man decided on his own that I was a rival for the Great Elder seat and stuck his nose into everything I did. I wanted to kill him so badly. Seeing him like that was pure satisfaction.”
Baekri-wan might have better baseline character than the average cultivator, but she was still a person of this world. This was a place where “May the deceased rest in peace” was considered an insult and a mockery. He needed to throw away ordinary common sense.
“I felt good too. The bastard who tried to kill me is dead.”
“Right?”
Baekri-wan flashed a sharp grin and looked ahead. The wind swept back her bangs and bared her clear forehead.
Soon the leaf boat descended into the Talisman Workshop. They had arrived, yet Han Yuhyeon suddenly realized he had never heard why she had dragged him here in the first place. The Inner Disciple quarters he was supposed to move into lay in the opposite direction from the workshop.
“Don’t tell me the senior sisters of the Talisman Workshop are throwing a celebration now that I’m officially an Inner Disciple?”
He asked with a faint spark of hope. Even if none of them quite measured up to Baekri-wan, the workshop still had plenty of beauties. The thought of them gathering to congratulate him was rather pleasant.
Baekri-wan looked at him as if he had just said something insane.
“…No?”
“No. Wait here a moment.”
She casually crushed his hopes, stepped into her own quarters, and came back out. Her hands were full of talismans.
“…?”
When she simply held them out, Han Yuhyeon took them by reflex and asked,
“What are these?”
“That promotional video you filmed for spirit stones. The response has been excellent.”
“Ah.”
Right—he had signed that contract. The first time he filmed and sent her the video, though, she had paid him and he had used the talismans. He had even taken an advance on Spirit Talismans and Invisibility Talismans.
“You’re giving them for free?”
“Mm. After seeing the results, I couldn’t in good conscience demand spirit stones. They’re worth at least several dozen times what I paid.”
“That good a response, huh.”
Had she opened a whole shop or something? Still, the fact that his idea was working so well left him feeling proud.
“I’m not asking you to film one for every single talisman. Just shoot something whenever a good opportunity presents itself.”
“Is it really all right to be that casual? This is business.”
“You’re surprisingly uptight about some things. I told you already—trust.”
By now a solid foundation of trust had formed between Baekri-wan and Han Yuhyeon, far stronger than at the beginning. That was why she could hand over expensive talismans for free.
“Understood.”
“Good. Now go.”
“Go?”
“What else?”
Baekri-wan shot the question right back. Han Yuhyeon blinked.
“There’s really no celebration or anything?”
“Would there be?”
Faced with that icy dismissal, Han Yuhyeon trudged down the hill of the Talisman Workshop. Free talismans or not, the disappointment still stung.
In all the dozens of times Han Yuhyeon had played Yeonhwa Seonrok, there was one phrase he had always treated as pure gold: life is a solitary path in the end.
In a cultivation world this full of backstabs, no words had ever been more useful. Of course, now that it was reality he had gained an ally in Baekri-wan—but even she had to be regarded as someone who might bare her fangs at any moment. Hadn’t Un Song-byeok, the Sect Master of the Baekun Sect he had so casually underestimated, also been a beast hiding its teeth?
“In the end I have to get stronger myself.”
Baekri-wan’s talk of trust had left him a little confused, but the absolute law of this world remained the same: he had to grow powerful. Trust might exist, yet the kindness that looked after the weak absolutely did not.
After a long while the Mongan Hyeolseo unfolded before his eyes once more. The first time he had opened it he had possessed only 250 lowest-grade spirit stones; now he had 100 lower-grade stones—at least several dozen times more wealth.
It was the kind of feeling that would let a man walk past a luxury department store without his shoulders shrinking.
A moment later the yellowish Mongan Hyeolseo appeared in front of him. Normally it would have flipped open with a flutter of pages. This time, for some reason, the book refused to open.
In the world of the Mongan Hyeolseo he was a spiritual form without arms or legs. He could not simply reach out and open it himself.
Just as he was completely at a loss for how to proceed, the book vibrated and began to blaze with light. The radiance enveloping the Mongan Hyeolseo flickered, then vanished together with the book itself.
The sense of loss that hit him then was indescribable. For a second he truly believed the Mongan Hyeolseo had disappeared.
But as if to soothe that wounded feeling, another book began to rise. It was still the same Mongan Hyeolseo, yet subtly different. The yellowed paper that had looked like an ancient tome had lightened a shade toward white. Not a dramatic change.
What changed?
The instant the thought formed, one side of the book opened. The words written there were as follows:
Your funds have surpassed 100 lower-grade spirit stones for the first time!
Conditions met. The grade of the Mongan Hyeolseo is rising.
At those words Han Yuhyeon recalled the phrase that had appeared when the Mongan Hyeolseo first manifested.
III. The grade of the Mongan Hyeolseo will rise upon fulfilling certain conditions.
He had never known what those conditions were and had simply buried the thought; apparently the criterion had been his funds all along.
The grade had risen. Han Yuhyeon’s heart began to race. Exactly what had changed?
As always, the entries of the Mongan Hyeolseo spread open before him.
Price: 5 lowest-grade spirit stones
No change in price, at least. Shouldn’t a grade-up come with some kind of discount? Still, even Han Yuhyeon had to admit the goods in the Mongan Hyeolseo were already dirt cheap. Wanting further discounts would just be greedy.
Price: 20 lower-grade spirit stones
As he kept flipping, an item he had never seen before appeared. The Flame Pearl—a higher-tier version of the Flame Oil that raised the Fire spiritual root. Its addition made sense; the Flame Oil, a lowest-grade root item, could only raise the spiritual root stat to a maximum of 100.
Oh.
Han Yuhyeon let out a silent gasp of admiration. An entirely new category of entry had appeared.
Price: 1,000 upper-grade spirit stones
Yeon Cho-cho—he knew that name. An extremely popular beauty NPC among players of Yeonhwa Seonrok. Of course she was an NPC he would never encounter at his current level or in this region, so there was no reason to buy the information right now. He didn’t have the spirit stones for it anyway.
The ridiculous price aside, the important point was that the Mongan Hyeolseo now sold information on NPCs.
Funds: 104 lower-grade spirit stones
Converted into lowest-grade stones that would be around 104,000. Of course even spirit stones of the same grade fluctuated in value depending on time and place.
So what should I buy?
He immediately ruled out things like high-grade Invisibility Talismans that he could purchase anytime, anywhere. That left cultivation methods or pills that raised stats.
In the end Han Yuhyeon decided on stats. His current cultivation method was decent, and methods were relatively easy to obtain, whereas pills that directly raised base stats were genuinely hard to come by. The Mongan Hyeolseo was for buying the things that were normally scarce.
In truth there was far too much to buy. By dumping every point into Luck he had left every other stat in complete trash territory.
Constitution, spiritual power, mental strength, comprehension, spiritual roots, technique, charm—there was hardly a single decent value among them. He had patched spiritual power and the Wood root somewhat, but the rest remained pure garbage.
This is the chance to raise all the stats I’ve been lacking.
Han Yuhyeon began purchasing as carefully as he could calculate: Flame Oil, Water Wall, Metal Core, and Earth Origin to raise the spiritual roots, plus Primordial Qi Pills to increase maximum constitution, Spirit Essence Pills to raise maximum spiritual power, Serenity Pills to heighten mental strength, and Profound Comprehension Pills to improve comprehension.
Among those, he deliberately pushed anything related to technique or charm further down the priority list. They simply weren’t important to him right now. Being constantly insulted for his looks did make him briefly consider raising charm, but the veteran player’s iron conviction that no stat was more worthless than charm proved stronger.
Perfect.
With that, Han Yuhyeon finished his shopping and left the Mongan Hyeolseo. Over two hundred pills now packed his storage pouch. That many would be more than enough to fill every hole left by dumping everything into Luck.