Chapter 3
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 3
Stepping past the curtain, Lee Hyun found an expansive clearing opening up before him.
Those who had passed the spiritual root test gathered in quiet, scattered knots. Hundreds of hopefuls had crowded the foot of the mountain gate that morning, but fewer than fifty had actually made it this far.
“Silence, everyone.”
A steady voice rang out across the open ground.
A middle-aged man in a gray Taoist robe stood atop a raised platform. Embroidered across his chest was a sect insignia depicting azure waves entwined with medicinal herbs. The moment he spoke, the applicants snapped their mouths shut, and a hushed stillness fell over the clearing.
The middle-aged man swept a measured gaze over the newcomers.
“I am Outer Sect Steward Wang Jin. When your name is called, step forward.”
He called four names in rapid succession. Those singled out possessed exceptional spiritual roots: a boy clothed in fine, shimmering silk, two delicate young girls, and a scrawny, barefoot child with dirt smudged across his cheeks.
“You four are candidates for the inner sect. Follow him.”
As the four children beamed with unrestrained joy, low, envious sighs rippled through the remaining crowd.
Lee Hyun, however, let out a quiet sigh of relief.
The sect poured vast resources and attention into its inner-sect disciples, and their cultivation progress was scrutinized with merciless precision. Under such watchful eyes, the chances of his physical body being probed down to the bone were uncomfortably high. For Lee Hyun, who needed to conceal the secret of his Ageless Body at all costs, the limelight was the worst possible place to be.
Once the inner sect candidates had vanished behind a guiding Cheongha Valley disciple, Steward Wang Jin turned his cold gaze back to the courtyard.
“Let me make one thing clear so none of you harbor foolish delusions: you are not yet official disciples of Cheongha Valley.”
A boy in the front row raised his hand hesitantly. “Senior… did we not pass the spiritual root test?”
“Having a spiritual root and becoming a true cultivator are two entirely different matters,” Wang Jin said, his voice flat and unyielding. “From this moment forth, your standing is merely that of outer-sect disciple candidates. Within the next one hundred days, you must succeed in Guiding Qi into the Body and step across the threshold into the 1st layer of Qi Refining. During this period, you will memorize sect regulations and learn to carry out your assigned chores.”
“What happens if we fail to achieve it within a hundred days?” another voice asked timidly.
“You will either be demoted to the Labor Disciples Courtyard to await another rare chance, or you will pack your belongings and leave the mountain gate.”
A heavy, suffocating silence descended over the aspirants.
“Even if you manage to break through to the 1st layer of Qi Refining, you will not automatically become outer-sect disciples,” Wang Jin warned. “Over the course of these hundred days, we will evaluate both your conduct and your character. Anyone caught bullying fellow candidates simply because their cultivation advances a step faster, or anyone caught pocketing sect property, will be expelled without exception.”
Wang Jin motioned toward a neat stack of wooden plaques beside him.
“Step forward and claim your identity tokens.”
The candidates lined up and filed past the platform one by one.
When Lee Hyun approached, Wang Jin glanced down at the roster.
“Lee Hyun. Triple spiritual roots: Wood, Fire, Earth. Bone age nineteen.”
“Yes, Steward.”
Wang Jin handed him a palm-sized wooden plaque.
Carved across the polished front face were the characters for Cheongha Valley, while the back bore Lee Hyun’s name.
“Do not lose it. You will need it to pass through checkpoints, receive your meals, and draw monthly supplies.”
“Understood.”
Lee Hyun lowered his gaze to inspect the token.
Though he had not yet developed Qi Sense, decades of life as a woodcutter handling every breed of timber told him this was no ordinary wood. The natural grain ran clearly through the surface, yet the plaque felt as heavy and dense as river stone. Pressing his thumbnail firmly into the edge left not even the faintest mark.
Even a standard wooden token issued to raw candidates far surpassed anything made by mortal carpenters. This, truly, was the threshold of an immortal sect.
True to its name, Cheongha Valley was cradled deep within an immense mountain ravine.
A sea of mist-veiled peaks stretched into the horizon, washed in pale blue haze. Towering at the center stood the main peak, Cheongha Peak, home to the sect elders and inner-sect disciples; to the east lay Herb Field Peak, carved into countless terraced spirit fields; and to the west loomed Pill Furnace Peak, where thick medicinal smoke billowed day and night without end. Farther down the ridgeline sat the Scripture Pavilion, whispered to safeguard tens of thousands of manuals and esoteric scrolls.
The candidate quarters were clustered along the lower slopes of Herb Field Peak.
Rows of modest mud-brick houses with slate-tiled roofs stepped down the incline. Two people were assigned to each room.
Lee Hyun stepped inside and dropped his bundle onto the floor. His roommate turned out to be a chatty sixteen-year-old boy named Wang So.
“How old are you, Brother?” the boy asked, dumping his pack on the adjacent cot.
“Nineteen.”
“Whoa, older than I expected.”
Nineteen is old?
Lee Hyun held his tongue. Counting his past life, his soul had lived for nearly eighty years.
“What spiritual roots do you have, Brother? Mine are Earth, Metal, and Water—three spiritual roots! The steward told me if my purity were just a tiny bit higher, I could have qualified as an inner sect candidate…”
“Mine are Wood, Fire, and Earth.”
Wang So rattled on without pausing to catch his breath.
“I’m definitely going to claw my way into the inner sect. People say that if an outer-sect disciple makes outstanding contributions, they can earn a promotion. What about you, Brother? What’s your goal?”
“Well… I’d like to learn how to cultivate spiritual herbs and concoct pills.”
Wang So chuckled. “Come on! A real man ought to have bigger ambitions than pulling weeds!”
Lee Hyun ignored the teasing and neatly arranged his distributed supplies. Each candidate had received two sets of coarse gray robes, cloth shoes, a thin quilt, wooden bowls and chopsticks, and an inkstone, brush, and blank notebook.
That evening, three thin booklets were delivered to each room:
Cheongha Valley Outer Sect Rules, Primer on Cultivation, and the Cheongha Qi-Guiding Formula.
Among them, the Cheongha Qi-Guiding Formula was of paramount importance.
It was the most fundamental entry-level cultivation manual preserved by Cheongha Valley. Because it possessed no distinct elemental bias, any practitioner could cultivate it regardless of their spiritual root composition. Once a candidate achieved the 1st layer of Qi Refining, they would finally be allowed to choose an elemental cultivation art aligned with their spiritual roots and designated responsibilities.
Lee Hyun turned the coarse parchment pages carefully.
Ink illustrations mapped out meridians across a human silhouette, annotated with specific breathing cadences and methods for guiding ambient spiritual qi into the lower dantian.
Formal instruction commenced at dawn the next day.
Before the first light pierced the mountain mist, the candidates gathered inside a vast, drafty hall, sitting cross-legged across the stone floor.
At the front sat Wang Jin alongside two senior outer-sect disciples.
“The first step of cultivation is learning to sense the spiritual qi scattered between heaven and earth,” Wang Jin stated, his voice echoing cleanly off the stone walls. “Do not try to force it into sight with your eyes, nor try to seize it with your will. Regulate your breathing, discard stray thoughts, and wait patiently for the moment ambient energy aligns with your spiritual roots.”
The candidates shut their eyes.
Lee Hyun matched his breathing to the verses written in the Cheongha Qi-Guiding Formula.
He drew in a long, even breath, held it still in his chest, and exhaled with steady control.
At first, he felt absolutely nothing.
The only things registering in his awareness were the unforgiving chill of the stone floor and the rhythmic rustle of forty-odd breathing bodies around him.
Before long, his knees grew stiff and numb.
A dull ache crept up his lower back.
Sitting like this for multiple shichen every single day?
Cultivation was far more physically taxing than he had imagined. In the stories from his previous life, protagonists merely shut their eyes, and days slipped past like flowing water. In reality, sitting frozen on cold stone for even half a shichen was an agonizing test of endurance.
Fortunately, decades of backbreaking labor as a woodcutter had forged an iron spine. Every time Lee Hyun felt his posture sagging, he quietly straightened his back and redoubled his focus.
On the first day, he sensed nothing.
The second day yielded the same silence.
On the third morning, a young boy seated in the front row suddenly snapped his eyes open, his face flushed with ecstatic disbelief.
“I felt it! I really felt it!”
A senior outer-sect disciple stepped over, inspected the boy’s pulse, and nodded curtly.
“You have merely perceived spiritual qi; you have not yet succeeded in Guiding Qi into the Body. Do not let arrogance disrupt your focus. Settle your mind.”
By the fifth day, three candidates had caught their first glimpse of spiritual qi.
By the tenth day, more than twenty had succeeded.
Wang So bounced into their room that evening, practically vibrating with excitement.
“I saw it, Brother! Tiny specks of light floating right past my face! I couldn’t grab them with my hands, but they were definitely drifting all around me.”
“Is that so?” Lee Hyun replied calmly.
“You still haven’t caught the scent of it, Brother?”
“Not yet.”
“Ah, don’t sweat it. We’ve still got ninety days left.”
“Right.”
Lee Hyun remained composed on the surface, but he knew time was ticking.
Falling behind and landing in the Labor Disciples Courtyard would ruin everything. If he were assigned to break rocks in the spirit stone mines or shovel dung in the spirit beast pens, his chances of gaining access to spiritual herb fields and refining manuals would plummet to zero.
Every evening after collective instruction ended, Lee Hyun climbed onto his cot and resumed the meditative posture, running through the Cheongha Qi-Guiding Formula over and over again.
While other candidates formed factions, boasted of their lineages, or slipped out to wander the valley paths, Lee Hyun never left his room.
On the twentieth night since entering the sect, a turning point finally arrived.
Lee Hyun sat cross-legged on his straw mattress, his breathing sinking into a rhythmic, silent rhythm.
A cool mountain draft drifted through the open window shutter.
Inside that draft, Lee Hyun suddenly caught something else—something extraordinarily faint, yet undeniably distinct.
At first, he wondered if it was a trick of exhaustion.
Behind his closed eyelids, the darkness began to shimmer with minute specks of light, drifting like glowing motes of dust in an empty room.
One aura burned with the faint warmth of embers; another settled heavy and still like rich earth. Intertwined among them was a subtle, lively hum of vitality, reminiscent of fresh green shoots pushing through springtime soil.
Recalling the mnemonic verses of the Cheongha Qi-Guiding Formula, Lee Hyun locked his intent onto the nearest trace of vitality.
It was the tender wood energy.
The wisp of light drifted closer, dipping past his collarbone and sinking down toward his chest.
The moment his heart fluttered with excitement, his concentration slipped, and the wisp instantly dissolved into thin air.
Lee Hyun took a slow breath, steeled his mind, and reached out again.
A second strand of ambient qi dissipated near his shoulder.
A third wisp managed to slip past his navel, only to fray and vanish right before crossing the threshold of his dantian.
He lost count of how many times he tried and failed. Outside the window, the pitch-black sky slowly faded into the pale blue hue of pre-dawn.
Finally, an impossibly thin strand of vitality pierced cleanly into his dantian.
A sudden, faint warmth blossomed in his lower abdomen.
Suppressing the urge to celebrate, Lee Hyun gently guided the strand according to the formula, coaxing it to circulate within his lower dantian.
After three complete revolutions, the wisp condensed, becoming slightly clearer and more rooted than before.
This did not mean he had broken through to the 1st layer of Qi Refining; he had merely succeeded in sensing spiritual qi and drawing that very first wisp into his body.
It worked.
A quiet rush of triumph washed over him. Perhaps his aptitude was ordinary, but his temperament was suited for this slow, methodical path.
From that dawn forward, Lee Hyun hoarded spiritual qi into his dantian wisp by wisp.
Having unlocked the initial sensation, finding the ambient currents again was far simpler than starting from nothing.
Even so, progress was painfully slow.
Dragging even a single thread of external qi through his flesh drained his mental focus dry. Forcing the process brought splitting headaches and bouts of sharp nausea.
Steward Wang Jin had explicitly warned them against reckless ambition:
“If you grow greedy before your meridians are naturally nourished, you will tear your pathways apart. Those who perceive qi early are not guaranteed to break through first.”
His warning had proven all too real. The child who had first sensed qi on day three grew impatient, attempted to force a flood of ambient qi through his chest, vomited a mouthful of black blood, and was hauled off unconscious to the Medical Courtyard.
Lee Hyun kept that cautionary tale burned into his memory, advancing at a deliberate, measured pace.
One month after stepping through the sect gates, at the crack of dawn.
The spiritual qi pooled within Lee Hyun’s lower dantian finally breached an invisible limit. What had been a calm, stagnant pool suddenly spun into a violent vortex.
Whoosh!
A scorching current surged out from his lower abdomen, violently pushing upward into the narrow, unyielding meridians of his torso.
It felt as though boiling oil were tearing through his blood vessels.
Wherever the qi battered its way forward, ancient blockages shattered. A searing agony, like thousands of white-hot needles scraping against the inner lining of his skin, flashed through his limbs.
“Ngh…!”
Lee Hyun clamped his jaw shut, refusing to let out a cry.
The turbulent heat branched through his chest, coursed down his shoulders, and reached the tips of his fingers before reversing direction to hammer back down into his dantian.
His fingertips throbbed as if swelling to bursting, and in a single heartbeat, every one of his senses expanded outward.
Across the room, he could hear the faint grind of Wang So’s teeth in deep sleep. In the pale morning gloom, he could distinctly count the individual dust motes tumbling through the air.
His frame shuddered as the sensation of an internal dam breaking washed over his marrow.
Clinging tightly to the final mnemonic verse of the Cheongha Qi-Guiding Formula, Lee Hyun forced the qi into a second circulation.
The searing pain turned into a clean, roaring heat.
As the third circulation slammed into completion, a brittle, invisible barrier deep within his core shattered cleanly.
Boom!
A deafening roar, like the collapse of a mountain reservoir, thundered inside his mind. The qi gathered in his dantian erupted throughout his entire meridian network, washing through his flesh before settling back into his core like a calm, fathomless lake. The energy that had once been as frail as a strand of spider silk was now a distinct, steady river flowing under his command.
Lee Hyun snapped his eyes open.
Even in the dim, pre-dawn light, every contour of the room jumped out in staggering clarity. The rough rings of the wooden storage chest, the hairline crack running down the mud-brick wall, and even a single loose hair resting on Wang So’s quilt were stark and unmistakable.
Inside his flesh, a vitality incomparably denser than mortal vigor pulsed with steady power.
Lee Hyun curled his right hand into a fist.
It was nothing more than a simple contraction of bone and sinew, yet his shoulder, forearm, and knuckles moved in flawless, terrifying unison. Every fiber of his body responded instantaneously to his intent.
Is this… what it means to be a cultivator?