The Painting of Life within Azure Wood
"Hmm…"
The moment I stepped into the hall, the first thing I felt was a crushing sense of confinement.
Mist hung thick on every side, blanketing the world in gray.
The entrance that had surely been behind me mere moments ago was already gone from view.
I stopped walking and slowly looked around. There was little to see, and nothing that answered back — I had been dropped here entirely alone.
"……Split us up again, did you."
This secret realm seemed awfully fond of tearing people apart. Which, in the end, worked out in my favor — but still.
In any case, no matter how much I scanned my surroundings, there wasn't much to catch the eye. My own two feet and the faint outlines of things a few paces ahead were the whole of my world. Try to look even a little farther, and my vision simply cut off.
I scattered my spiritual qi and stretched my perception out wide, but unlike usual, it refused to spread far. Past a certain distance, it simply severed. That mist, apparently, was the culprit.
It's suffocating.
Having the things I normally felt without a second thought all hemmed in did not put me in a good mood. It was like being thrown back to my days as a mere practitioner.
"Well. I suppose I still have to move forward."
I drew a single Cheongsim bean from my satchel. The moment I formed a hand seal, the bean became a bean soldier.
"Forward."
The bean soldier marched off into the mist. But even as it advanced, its connection to me grew faint with startling speed. I forced it farther out, and before long the link snapped entirely. I tried several more times; the result never changed.
"Tch."
When I advanced a little myself, the severed bean soldier reverted to a bean and went tumbling across the ground. I crouched down, picked the beans up one by one, and tucked them back into my satchel. With the last one stowed away, I rose to my feet and folded my arms.
So scouting's off the table for now, then.
Well, it wasn't as though the bean soldiers were useless. At close range — like the one standing in front of me — they worked fine. It was only sending them far afield that failed. With my qi perception blocked, reaching out to find a path was a lost cause from the start.
It's not as if I'm completely out of options, though….
I lowered my gaze to my feet. Wherever I stood, I could feel the faint life-essence of spirit grasses. Faint, but unmistakably there.
Let's try this direction first.
I slowly lifted my foot toward where that flow felt strongest, and walked on into the mist — nerves drawn taut, of course.
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How long had I been walking? The life-essence that had registered only faintly beneath my feet at first was growing steadily richer.
The mist scattered spiritual qi, but this was different. My ability's resonance ran on a slightly different current than spiritual qi — something more primal. It sensed life-essence itself, the vital energy given off by living things. And that sense, it seemed, the blasted mist could not entirely shut out.
So there really is something out here.
I kept moving without slowing my pace. The stronger the life-essence beneath my feet grew, the thinner the mist seemed to become. And before long, the fog simply cut off — swept away as if by a blade.
"……Oh."
I stopped in my tracks.
Spread out before me was a small herb garden. After nothing but stone-slab flooring stretching on and on, something like this was the last thing I'd expected.
The garden was enclosed by a low fence.
"Now this finally feels alive."
Unlike the mist outside, the air itself was crisp. Dense, heavy spiritual qi pooled in every corner, and threaded through it came a rich wave of living essence.
I stepped slowly into the garden.
No warding formations, by the look of it. And yet the upkeep is immaculate?
Despite its age, the spirit herbs were all fresh and thriving. Better than that — every one of them looked long-cultivated. I approached the nearest herb.
It was a violet spirit grass with tips finely split, veins of gold coursing through the whole stalk. One glance was enough to tell it was no ordinary thing.
"A Purple-Gold Vein Grass? And two hundred years old, at that."
It had been on the list written in the jade ledger. Purple-Gold Vein Grasses were known to bear only violet leaves at first, gaining silver veins at a hundred years and gold veins at two hundred.
I turned my gaze elsewhere, and there were plenty of other spirit herbs too.
"Snow-Flame Crimson Heart Leaf over there. And Cinnabar Heart Grass, even Jade Bloom Grass?"
On one side, moreover, trees grew in what could only be called an orchard.
"Azure Jade Spirit Fruit — and Thunder Spirit Fruit?"
My eyes went round of their own accord. This was the kind of place that would make even a Foundation Establishment cultivator see red.
And when I looked deeper in, the names from the ledger lined up one after another: the Ghost-Azure Beard Orchid, its long azure whiskers trailing; even the Cold Moon Ice Heart Grass, said to freeze your hand solid at a mere brush of its leaves. All of them were herbs the sect had posted bounties for. And most had no short ages, either — a hundred years at the least, and some looked to be well past three hundred.
"What luck."
At this level, I could have ended this entire secret realm's harvest right here and no one would call it strange. I stood dazed for a moment before shaking myself back to my senses.
Harvest first. Everything else after.
I drew a jade chest from my satchel. My hands went to the Purple-Gold Vein Grass first — two hundred years, harvestable this easily. Careful not to wound the herb, I dug it up as gently as one would handle an infant. Each time one settled into my palm, the number of jade chests in my satchel grew.
Being a small garden, the quantity wasn't overwhelming — but on quality, it was a rout.
And I didn't forget to gather a few of the branches bearing spirit fruit and some of the soil from the spirit fields. My heart wanted to uproot the spirit trees whole and take everything, but my satchel simply lacked the capacity. So, with the paltry scraps of knowledge I had left, I took cuttings instead, thinking I might attempt grafting later.
Thinking of the jade chests filling my satchel, I lost all thought of food.
"Full just from looking. I'd say that's enough, no?"
The fields where the spirit herbs had grown stood empty before I knew it. As I looked over the bare plots, a small building standing at the far end of the garden caught my eye.
"Huh?"
Had I really been so absorbed in the garden that I'd missed that until now? I hurried my steps toward it.
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Please let something be in there….
No formation guarded the building. If one had been laid, it would have been on the spirit fields from the start.
Creeeak.
The door wasn't locked. I eased it open and stepped inside.
The interior was as spare as the building's exterior: a single low table, several shelves of medicine cabinets along the wall, and on the inner wall, one old landscape painting in ink.
I gave the medicine cabinets a rough once-over first, but they were nearly empty. At most, dried scraps of herbs, or a cracked jade bottle holding some elixir long past its potency.
"So the herb garden really was the main body, then."
I clicked my tongue and turned to leave — then stopped. There hung the old landscape painting, as if sketched in ink. It looked like nothing more than an ordinary decoration, and yet, inexplicably, the thing nagged at me.
There was no collector's seal where a painting would have one, none of the peculiar aura of a magic treasure either. And yet — no particular feeling at all, and somehow it still drew me in. What would you even call that?
I approached the painting slowly. Up close, it looked even more ordinary.
"Which is exactly what makes it suspicious."
I gathered spiritual qi at my fingertips and let it flow into the painting's surface. Nothing happened. Feeling vaguely foolish, I snatched my hand back and hid it behind me.
"What. Is it really just a decoration?"
I glared at the painting a moment longer, then shook my head.
Be satisfied with what I harvested from the garden. Greed taken too far does no one any good.
The moment I turned and started toward the door, an old memory flickered through a corner of my mind.
……Ah.
I'd read it once in the jade ledger. Ancient magic treasures, it said, would sometimes fail to respond to spiritual qi alone — one had to offer essence blood to rouse them back to life.
I stared down at my fingers. In novels and animations, people naturally bit their fingertips open for blood. Or bit their tongue.
Self-mutilation isn't exactly appealing….
I looked back at the painting. It was as silent as if nothing had happened — no trace even of the qi I'd just fed it remained.
"Do I really have to go that far?"
Just in case, I tried again with a far greater volume of spiritual qi. Still no reaction worth the name. I narrowed my eyes.
"……Fine. Just the one drop."
Even with my index finger held to my teeth, I hesitated for a long while. Then it struck me — why on earth would I bite it open?
There happened to be something suitable in my satchel. I took out the Bloodletting Needle and lightly touched my fingertip to its point.
Prick.
A red bead of blood welled slowly at the tip of my index finger. Before it could vanish, I hastily let one drop fall onto the painting.
Vmmm.
Light bloomed and spread from the painting that had been still mere moments before. Life seemed to rise from the ink-drawn scene, as if it had found its source at last. The drop of blood on the painting's surface was sucked inside before I could blink — and then the mountains and valleys within the painting split open, and something stepped out of it.
I doubted my eyes for a moment.
"A deer…?"
No — closer to a reindeer, really. It was small of body, its fur gleaming with a mysterious silver sheen. The antlers above its head branched in many directions, and like tree limbs, each branch bore leaves. With every step the creature took out of the painting, plants sprouted briefly from the floor and faded away.
The reindeer-shaped figure stayed half within the frame, only its head emerging, and gazed quietly at me. There was no hostility to be felt. If anything, it looked almost pleased to see me.
Before I knew it, the reindeer had stepped fully out of the painting. The room, small to begin with, was now nearly full.
The creature twitched its nose and sniffed the air — as though sensing the energy emanating from my body. I reflexively started to lean back, then stopped myself.
The Plant Spirit Physique, is it.
Soon the reindeer's teal eyes wavered, just slightly. And then its mouth slowly opened.
"I would ask."
The reindeer talks!?
It was a young woman's voice — neither low nor high.
"Are you my new master?"
It was a line that carried a certain dissonance, but the reindeer was looking straight at me as it spoke. Absurd as it was, the moment hardly felt right for laughter. The creature was entirely serious.
"Well, I'd say I'm the one who woke you… yes?"
"Hm. The one who roused me from sleep, I took for at least a Core Formation cultivator. And instead, a mere fledgling who cannot even form a foundation. Well — the bond of master and servant is already struck, so nothing can be done."
I'd gone to the trouble of drawing blood to wake it, and that was the response I got. Separately from my indignation, though, I could clearly feel it — something had, in fact, been bound.
The reindeer swept its teal gaze up and down over me, then let out a small sigh.
"Your peculiar bloodline must be what woke me. Had it been otherwise, no Qi Refining cultivator could ever have roused me from sleep — not in ten thousand years."
I folded my arms.
"So? What's this about a master?"
"That painting is a treasure called the Cheongmoksaengjungdo — a small Cave-Heaven held within. I am its artifact spirit."
"A Cave-Heaven? And an artifact spirit?"
"That is so."
With that, the reindeer glanced back at the Cheongmoksaengjungdo.
"It has been closed for ages untold, and I too slept within it. The power carried in your blood woke me and reopened the entrance."
I glanced down once at my fingertip.
So that wasn't a pointless stunt after all.
"Good, then. Does that mean I'm the master now?"
"You have merely earned the right to enter as my master. To become the true master of the Cave-Heaven, your cultivation falls short."
The reindeer looked me squarely in the face.
"This Cheongmoksaengjungdo is a Cave-Heaven spatial treasure; only when a cultivator of Core Formation or above nurtures it within their body can it be handled in full."
"Core Formation… so in the end, it comes down to realm."
With a Cave-Heaven treasure right before my eyes, being unable to do with it as I pleased was a bitter thing indeed. As if reading my mood, the reindeer added, calm and even:
"I do not mean to refuse you. You simply cannot bear it yet."
"Then — could I use even a small part of it, perhaps?"
"A corner of the outer reaches, no more."
"And the rest is still sealed?"
The reindeer only nodded. Even so — I had no idea how vast the place was, but that alone would be a great boon to the me of right now.
"And when I reach Core Formation later?"
"Then you will hold the whole Cave-Heaven in your grasp. Even a Nascent Soul cultivator would turn green with envy over such a treasure."
"Sounds good. And it's not as if I can't use it at all right now."
The reindeer spoke again.
"And one thing more. I acknowledge you as my master — but until you become the true master of this Cave-Heaven, do not presume upon my respect."
A fair demand. For a cultivator of such lofty realm to go fawning and calling a mere Qi Refining nobody "master" would have been an unseemly sight. At the very least, she wasn't openly contemptuous. And once I reached Core Formation, I'd be recognized as master in truth.
That was more than acceptable terms. I shrugged.
"Fine by me. Expecting honorifics from my senior elder felt a little odd anyway."
"I find you agreeable. Now then — follow me."
The reindeer turned.
"There won't be any trouble if I go in right now?"
"Do not fret. Were you to come to harm, I would have to sleep away another age."
So saying, the reindeer vanished into the painting. I shot the spot a sidelong glance and, just to be safe, drew out a bean soldier.
"You go in first."
The bean soldier walked up to the painting and pushed itself in. Its head vanished first, and then the rest of it followed.
Even after entering the Cave-Heaven treasure, the resonance, surprisingly, held.
"Hm. Doesn't seem to be anything wrong."
At that moment, the reindeer's head abruptly popped back out of the painting.
Gah — that startled me.
Paying no mind to my startled face, the reindeer said its piece.
"Wastefully cautious, aren't you."
"It's called being alive."
"A fair point. Come in, then."
I drew a short breath and stepped up to the Cheongmoksaengjungdo. When I pushed one arm in first, a warm life-essence wrapped around it. Feeling nothing amiss, I pressed my whole body through.
And what met my eyes was a tiny world — a world of its own.