Nine Heavens Jade Heart Herb
Roughly nine months remained until arrival.
Long if he called it long, short if he called it short—a somewhat awkward span of time. As Jin Somyeong considered how best to spend it, he swept his gaze through his subspace and began taking stock, one by one, of the treasures among his gains that he had yet to digest.
The Red Dust Heart Lotus has to be saved for when I challenge the Deity Transformation stage later, so leave that aside...
He saw the flower resembling a dandelion and the root plant shaped like a jellyfish, but passed over them as well. He still had not discovered the names or proper methods of ingestion for those fifth-grade spiritual herbs.
The next thing that caught his eye was the Nine Heavens Jade Heart Herb, said to temper Divine Sense.
Nine Heavens Jade Heart Herb. Let’s go with this.
He decided to invest the remaining nine months into this spiritual herb. Divine Sense was a sense directly tied to combat; the stronger it became, the better.
How much Boundless Great Ability would it take to copy a fifth-grade spiritual herb? Since it’s a Deity Transformation-grade herb, it’ll probably be at least in the hundreds of millions.
He examined the Nine Heavens Jade Heart Herb root, which had recovered to about seventy percent, turning it this way and that before giving a small nod.
One month later, he began pouring eighty million units of Boundless Great Ability into Ten Thousand Flows Recovery.
The tip of the root, which had healed while still split apart, opened again, and a new root began to grow. Like fresh flesh knitting over a wound, it returned to a complete state.
By the time he had invested roughly thirty million units of Boundless Great Ability, a bluish-green stalk had sprouted from the perfectly restored root. When he poured in another fifty million, fresh green leaves unfurled as well.
Is that it?
When he examined it with the Thunder Sense Insight Law-Breaking Eye, he found it still lacking. The moment he poured in the additional Boundless Great Ability he had recovered over the course of a week, reddish fruit resembling wild raspberries finally formed upon it.
Done!
Jin Somyeong stared as if enchanted at the Deity Transformation-grade spiritual herb, the Nine Heavens Jade Heart Herb, restored to its complete form. Since he had revived the herb that had first existed only as a root, all that remained was to copy it.
To copy it... it’ll cost about a hundred and twenty million units of Boundless Great Ability.
Copying a Deity Transformation-grade spiritual herb while still at the Nascent Soul stage required a considerable investment. Of course, this was absolutely nothing to complain about.
What matters is that it’s possible.
The process was somewhat complicated, but if he looked only at the result, he could now obtain a Deity Transformation-grade spiritual herb every two months. And not just any herb, but one that tempered Divine Sense—far more precious than ordinary spiritual herbs.
Others could spend not two months but several hundred years and still never accomplish such a miracle. They might yearn for it even in their dreams, but it would remain impossible.
Another month and a half passed. As soon as his Boundless Great Ability recovered, he used it to copy the spiritual herb, and in the remaining time he acclimated to his strengthened body after the Five Viscera Hundred Refinements Art reached great success.
Done!
After investing well over a hundred million units of Boundless Great Ability, he finally succeeded in copying the Nine Heavens Jade Heart Herb.
So this is a Deity Transformation-grade spiritual herb.
He stared intently at the two Nine Heavens Jade Heart Herbs, then surveyed his surroundings. He saw the fourth-grade formation he had installed to prevent anyone from breaking into the cabin, as well as his clones standing guard with expressionless faces.
Mugeuk. Come out for a moment.
Finally, he even called Mugeuk, who had been diligently sleeping in the spiritual herb field of the Mental Secret Realm, and asked them to stand guard.
Wing-wing!
Mugeuk, now stronger thanks to the sharpness they had absorbed in the sword hall of Paeseongdojang, shone with dazzling light and traced a circle in the air. The sword energy they proudly displayed had grown sharp enough to make his skin prickle, and the sight was rather like a child boasting about having grown taller.
Watching Mugeuk circle him eagerly, as if telling him to trust only them, Jin Somyeong smiled and closed his eyes.
Crunch!
He compressed the forearm-sized Nine Heavens Jade Heart Herb with his spiritual power and swallowed it in one bite.
The spiritual herb melted in his stomach and transformed into golden energy. It flowed along his meridians, and the instant it reached the spot between his brows, every sound in the world went silent, and his field of vision expanded with terrifying speed.
An endless ascent continued. In a single instant, his consciousness soared beyond the Nine Heavens and reached a lofty place from which it looked down upon the world.
Ah...
A lake rippling with sunlight. A sandy shore dyed by sunset. Snow mountains sleeping within mist. Reed beds swaying in the wind.
The radiant landscapes beneath the sky came into view all at once.
And then, as though the sun had set and night had arrived, the world was stained in darkness.
In the silence that followed, as if he had sunk into the deep sea, the last thing that remained was himself.
In that place, even his five senses vanished, leaving only emotion vivid and clear—dazzling joy, rapturous achievement, a heavy homesickness, and the unease surrounding him.
Within that strange ascent soaring above the Nine Heavens, he watched himself from a step removed.
He forgot even the passage of time.
When he suddenly came to himself after drifting through an instant that felt like eternity, he was already back inside the cabin of the flying ship.
“...”
He felt hollow, as though he had awakened from a long dream. Jin Somyeong sat blankly for several minutes, lost in a strange feeling difficult to put into words, then drew in a deep breath.
He rose and paced the cabin as if taking a stroll, releasing his Divine Sense.
Forty kilometers, fifty kilometers, sixty kilometers...
It easily surpassed his former limit of sixty kilometers and expanded all the way to seventy.
“As expected.”
Applause came from him of its own accord.
Some might think the effect was unimpressive for having consumed a Deity Transformation-grade spiritual herb, but that was not the case at all. Ordinarily, the Divine Sense possessed by a Great Circle Nascent Soul cultivator extended fifty kilometers.
In other words, Jin Somyeong had already reached the upper limit attainable at the Nascent Soul stage, and yet he had advanced even further. That was not something to be dismissed lightly.
Once I cross a minor boundary and reach the late Nascent Soul stage, my Divine Sense should surge again.
And that was not the end of the changes. It was as though his senses had become extraordinarily keen; the detection ability of his Divine Sense had risen to a higher level.
If his Divine Sense before had been a loose net wide enough for fingers to pass through, now it had become a tightly woven silk cloth that would not allow even a single needle to slip in.
As proof, he could now detect the Ghost Demon scale he wore as a necklace. Before, he had been able to stare at it with his own eyes and still fail to perceive it with Divine Sense, but that had changed.
It meant his Divine Sense’s ability to grasp his surroundings had become far stronger, allowing him to see what had once been invisible.
That’s a relief.
Lately, he had been troubled by the frequency with which concealed enemies managed to ambush him, but this eased that concern. Jin Somyeong nodded in satisfaction, then smacked his lips.
Roughly half a year remained until they arrived at Hwanmongjingyeong.
I can eat it at least three more times.
While wondering what to do as his Boundless Great Ability recovered, he decided to condense his Blood Armor again. With the Five Viscera Hundred Refinements Art reaching great success, the incantation of the Blood Armor Condensation Chapter had improved as well.
The new Blood Armor would surely surpass the one he had used before in every way. He needed to recreate it.
The moment he recited the incantation of the Blood Armor Condensation Chapter and focused his mind—
Cr-r-r-rack!
His Blood Armor condensed amid agony that felt as though his flesh and bones were being ground whole.
Filthy painful.
The torment of wringing out his bodily essence remained unchanged. He did not know how long he endured, but the Blood Armor was eventually completed successfully. The armor, which had originally retained a reddish hue, had turned completely pitch-black.
It had reached the realm of Black Armor.
He examined the black curtain that vaguely resembled shadow for a while, then first took a thorough rest. After restoring his exhausted body, drained from squeezing out his bodily essence, he reshaped the newly born Blood Armor into a round oval like a shield and floated it in the air.
Clang!
He slashed it with a sword coated in sword aura, but it did not so much as scratch.
Most Nascent Soul cultivators wouldn’t even be able to graze it, would they?
Marveling, Jin Somyeong swung his sword again.
This time, he called Mugeuk to amplify the sword energy and even accelerated with lightning movement.
Jjeong!
Only after exerting his full power—excluding techniques with aftereffects like Condensing Light to Extinguish Dust—was he barely able to create a single hairline crack.
Just as he let out an exclamation at its durability, which was far sturdier than he had expected—
Hm...?
The tiny crack healed in an instant and vanished without a trace.
It recovered on its own?
Joy came first, followed immediately by understanding. This was an effect born from the Five Viscera Hundred Refinements Art reaching great success.
If Blood Armor that could be deployed at the speed of thought possessed durability of this degree... then he could likely consider himself immune to Nascent Soul-grade spells.
One day, after more time had passed, one man and two women appeared on the outskirts of Jeolhanbingok.
They were cultivators selected by Mansumaeng, people who, for various reasons, had deep connections to Hong Seol.
Whoooooosh!
Amid the violently driving snowstorm, they examined the surrounding terrain and nodded.
“There’s no doubt. This is the entrance to Hwanmongjingyeong.”
“Mm. Fellow Daoist Ju and Cultivator Jin don’t seem to have arrived yet.”
“They will come if we wait a little. More importantly, this may only be the outskirts of Jeolhanbingok, but it’s far too cold. How about we get out of the wind first?”
As if by unspoken agreement, all three nodded and quickly searched the area.
“What about that mountain range? If we dig a cave and block the entrance, it should at least keep out the wind.”
“That sounds fine. Let’s go at once.”
They dug into the middle slope of the snowy mountain and hurriedly sealed the entrance, after which the only man in the group took out a handful of talismans.
Fwoosh!
The bundle of talismans burned to ash, then transformed into blue flame and gathered in midair as a will-o’-the-wisp. The cultivators gathered around it as though warming themselves by a campfire and let out sighs.
“Haa. Now I feel like I can live.”
“Can you contact Fellow Daoist Ju? I’d like to know when he’ll arrive.”
“I tried just now, but perhaps because of the blizzard in Jeolhanbingok, the transmission talisman isn’t working properly.”
Once the cold had been handled in a rough sense, the topic of their conversation naturally drifted toward one thing: Ju Gwang and Jin Somyeong, who had yet to arrive.
“Mmm, they’ll arrive within a month at the latest, won’t they?”
“As long as nothing unexpected happens along the way, they should.”
As the girl, who seemed to possess a lively personality, chatted with the man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, the short-haired woman who had not spoken a single word until then, Chae Yeonbi, toyed with the sword at her waist.
“Jin Somyeong... His reputation is so widespread that I’ve wanted to meet him at least once. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Right! I heard he’s strong enough to transcend his cultivation realm. I wonder what his secret is.”
The girl nodded as though in agreement, but the only man among them merely smiled awkwardly.
“Why do you look like that?”
“Mm. To be honest, I’ve heard the rumors about Cultivator Jin as well, but... I don’t know how many of them are true. There are simply too many stories that are hard to believe.”
When the two women’s gazes turned to him, the man with the awkward smile hurried to continue.
“Setting aside the other rumors, they say he encountered a Deity Transformation-grade Insectoid and survived. Frankly, I found that one rather difficult to believe.”
“What’s the problem? The Deity Transformation stage? Or the Insectoids?”
“Naturally both are a problem, but if I had to choose one, it would be the Insectoids.”
The girl paused and tilted her head.
“The Insectoids are more of a problem than the Deity Transformation stage?”
“They say the Insectoids possess such powerful regenerative abilities that the concept of a vital point hardly exists for them. In other words, even if you caught one off guard and pierced a vital spot, it would mean nothing.”
“Are the Insectoids really that remarkable a race? Why haven’t I heard of them?”
“Because they are a race that vanished long ago. They were so dangerous that the cultivators of ancient times joined forces and exterminated them.”
“How dangerous could they have been...?”
“Their tenacious vitality was one problem, but they say their reproductive ability was tremendous as well. Apparently, with just a single breeding nest, an entire continent could be covered in eggs within a month.”
Perhaps imagining a continent covered in insect eggs, Chae Yeonbi furrowed her brow in displeasure.
“That doesn’t add up. If they were such a tenacious race, how did the cultivators of ancient times exterminate them?”
“Who knows. I don’t know that much either. If we are talking about ancient times, then it was at least a hundred thousand years ago. How accurate could records from that era be? Perhaps everything I’ve told you is wrong information.”
The others, who had fallen silent, soon accepted that.
A hundred thousand years was a span so remote that mountains and rivers could have changed thousands, even tens of thousands of times. With records that old, even distinguishing truth from falsehood was difficult.
Could a fairy tale made up for children not have survived by chance and come to be regarded as a true tradition or legend?
“Ah, of course, I absolutely do not mean to deny Cultivator Jin’s ability. Even if only half the rumors are true, he is already someone with divine abilities strong enough to be counted among the foremost in the world.”
A silence settled as all three sank into their own thoughts.
Then, from the sky, a powerful Divine Sense spread out and swept over them.
Someone had arrived.