Breakthrough
The next day, I put up another auction.
Easy money!
After work I stopped by the Thunder Pavilion, and the payment really had been sent.
Wait. If it works like this, I don't even need to keep money set aside for materials.
Next time I could just take the deposit and make the pill with that. There was no reason to spend my own coin first and then sit around waiting for a buyer.
Is this that creative-economy thing, or whatever they called it? Hahaha!
I bought the bare minimum of ingredients for the Viagra and spent the rest on a heap of True Origin Pills.
On the way back to my lodgings, figures who felt about Qi Condensation, third layer, came trailing after me, which threw me off considerably. Whether that was a relief or not, they slipped into the brush before long.
......
So the cultivation world has its LGBT crowd too.
After all those twists and turns, I made it back to my room and swallowed a True Origin Pill at once. I washed the lingering bitterness down with water and slipped quickly into circulation.
Feels like I might actually break through today.
Once I had digested every last bit of the pill's power, I took out the next one. At first I shook the bottle and counted what remained. Eventually I stopped bothering with that. Swallow one, and the moment it was digested, the next went in, and I circulated again. I stacked spiritual energy like a machine.
And at last—
Whoa... so this is what it feels like when the dantian is packed full of spiritual energy...?
I straightened my posture and guided the energy. One cycle. Then another. Each time a wave of spiritual energy circled through me, something like a mindscape began to take shape.
A still pond. Myself, seated at its edge, gazing down into the water. A silence that filled my ears to the brim. I looked into the depths. The water was the color of mud, and I could not see the bottom. I reached in and stirred, but the more I did, the more it clouded what lay before my eyes. I drew my hand back and waited.
How long passed? I watched the silt drifting in the water slowly sink. Stones that had been invisible a moment ago, and the sand spread between them, resolved one by one.
...What is this?
Who can make himself turbid, settle the impurity, and let the water grow clear?
Enlightenment came. It had finally come.
The way to keep from being seized by the vain thoughts that shake the mind was to shake myself — and thereby blur the boundary between myself and those vain thoughts.
I let the tension go. The spiritual energy I had not yet guided, I gathered slowly, in time with my breath, from the tips of my toes to the crown of my head. All of it that returned after passing through my whole body, I drew into my dantian. Not a single thread left out. Everything I had built until now.
I looked down at the clear pond within the mindscape. Now I could see all the way to the bottom.
"......!"
I straightened my back. Heat surged from deep in my lower abdomen and raced through my whole body, and I trembled down to my fingertips. Even so, I did not stop circulating. I drew, all at once, the spiritual energy that had been too much to bear only moments before — through my chest, around both arms, and back to the dantian. This time I took in all of it and still had room for more.
Eyes closed, I circulated once more. And once more after that. Slowly, I opened my eyes.
I looked down at the hands resting on my knees. I sent spiritual energy out to my fingertips and drew it back again.
At last, I had stepped past my own limit.
That morning, Yu Soha stood before the mirror and swept back her tangled hair. The makeup at the corners of her eyes was still perfectly intact. Just as Yeosusa had promised — it would not smear, not even overnight.
Haa... what on earth did they put in this medicine?
She set the mirror down and laid a hand on her lower abdomen. She had never gathered this much before.
Yu Soha went straight out to the courtyard and knelt where she had planted yang qi before. She smoothed the soil with her palm, then slowly let the yang qi she had gathered through the night flow in.
This time...
She put strength into her fingertips, and saw a yellow-green tip pushing up through the soil. Yu Soha held her breath. She moved her hand aside, bent low, and looked at the sprout. Two small leaves. After all the yang qi she had poured in, she had never once seen this.
"...It worked!"
She covered her mouth with a dirt-stained hand. If she let out a sound, she thought she might cry. She sat before the tree and breathed the rest of the yang qi into it, growing the sprout, thickening the stem, sending yang qi all the way to the tips of the branches.
And then the night blossoms opened wide. Before she knew it, a Night Blossom tree stood there, grown tall and proud. She leaned her face close to a blossom and breathed in.
"Ah... so fragrant...!"
Yu Soha kept her eyes closed for a while, then looked up at the tree again. Now came the wait for the treasure box. She went into her room, drank a cup of water, and returned to the courtyard.
A little later, she found a small wooden casket formed at the tip of a branch.
"At last!"
She set the cup down and stood. It was still no bigger than two knuckles of a finger. She cupped a hand beneath the treasure box and stood just like that, waiting until it grew large enough to fill her palm.
If I put this much yang qi into it, something good ought to come out, right?
Spirit fruit or magic treasure, she didn't care which. She only hoped something solid would come of it. Yu Soha carefully plucked the fully ripened treasure box and gripped it firmly in both hands. Freshly picked, it was still warm.
Once the harvest was done, she watched the tree dry out and collapse. A short while later she sat once more before the patch that was nothing but bare soil and opened the lid.
"...A Clear Spirit Fruit?"
She studied the silver patterns playing over the blue-jade spirit fruit. Bringing her nose close, she caught a fragrance that was cool and yet sweetly rich. A precious spirit fruit, used in the cultivation of divine sense.
Yu Soha took a clean cloth from her storage pouch and spread it beside her. She carefully moved the fruit onto it, then murmured the name once more.
"A Clear Spirit Fruit... I should get at least five mid-grade spirit stones for it..."
She wrapped the spirit fruit in the cloth, placed it in the treasure box, closed the lid, and rose at once.
"I'll buy it for six hundred low-grade spirit stones."
Yu Soha looked at the merchant. He turned the Clear Spirit Fruit over once more, then nodded.
"Not a flaw on it, and the medicinal potency is full. At this price, I am treating you quite well."
"...Then so be it."
She answered as she always did. Beneath the table, though, her hands were locked tight together.
I was only expecting five mid-grade spirit stones, and I walked out with the equivalent of six? This pill is seriously incredible...! A hundred spirit stones in, and five hundred more in profit.
The moment she stepped out of the shop, she drew her jade slip and sent a message to Va-agra.
The next morning, I sat in my lodgings eating dumplings and opened the gallery.
"Oh? A real review finally went up?"
They even handle the advertising themselves. How very dutiful.
I took a big bite of dumpling and opened the message box as well. There was a message from BloomingDay.
Three pills? And selling to this person is basically selling under the table. It won't even touch demand on the gallery... This is very good.
I sent a reply at once.
Oh?
How much money does this person even have?
Six hundred spirit stones, and not a peep about a discount — straight to sending the deposit.
I tipped the rest of the dumpling into my mouth and headed for the alchemy hall. The moment I stepped inside, the steward called me to a halt.
"You've reached Qi Condensation, second layer?"
"Yes! I broke through last night."
"Hm. Then from today, you'll take on a junior as well. Your monthly pay will rise to twenty spirit stones. Congratulations on the breakthrough."
"Thank you, Steward! I'll work even harder!"
The steward pointed to the empty workbench beside him.
"Take charge of preparing the medicinal solutions over there. As for your assistant... Soyeon. You'll go."
"Yes!"
"Jin Myeong. I'll assign you a new assistant."
Jin Myeong looked at me, then belatedly bent at the waist.
"...Yes. I will do as you command, Steward."
I ducked my head at once. I'd nearly burst out laughing. That crumpled face, fists clenched and trembling — and he was putting on that show right in front of the steward? I didn't need to think hard. That bastard was definitely short on social sense. A moron, in other words.
"Congratulations. No — congratulations, Senior!"
Soyeon gathered her knife and bowls and came to my workbench.
"Thank you! I'm glad to have you as my assistant."
"I'll be in your care from now on!"
I smiled and cleared a place for her bowls. Soyeon even brought over the herb basket she had kept on Jin Myeong's side and set it down beside the chair.
"I'll leave the preparation to you. I'll extract the solution myself."
"Understood!"
Jin Myeong left his newly assigned assistant standing and glared at the workbench opposite. Seated before the furnace, Kang Jihun was breathing spiritual energy into the fire. The flames climbed, even and unwavering.
That bastard...
Only a few days ago he'd been groveling. Head down, Senior this, Senior that. Bowing and scraping, exactly as Five Elements Spiritual Root trash ought to!
And a worm like that dares to stand in the same realm as me?
Jin Myeong ground his teeth, hard.
"Um... S-Senior? What should I start with?"
"Hey, you fuck. The senior hasn't even opened his mouth, and the assistant's already asking questions? Where the hell did you learn that shit? Work is something you find for yourself, you damn mutt. Am I wrong?"
"I-I'm sorry!! I'll correct it!!!!"
"Get lost, you worthless piece of shit. Go prep the herbs properly."
After venting on the assistant, Jin Myeong was still panting, unable to swallow his rage.
A fortuitous encounter. It has to be. If it weren't, Five Elements trash like that could never break through so fast.
But if it was an encounter that could haul even garbage like that up in a single stroke, then just how extraordinary was it?
I have to take it. No matter what.
Kang Jihun said something to Soyeon and laughed, bright and easy. Watching him, Soyeon laughed too.
That bitch never smiled once when she was under me... and she laughs at a word from trash like that...?
Jin Myeong trembled.
I have to kill him. I have to...!