Don't Interrupt My Training

It felt like being locked inside the Room of Time and Spirit. If I could at least talk to the help—no, to Cheon Nan-cho—it might have been bearable, but after getting sealed by the level restriction for bug-abusing in the Abyss, I still couldn't change maps, which meant I couldn't pull her out of my inventory.

Only after what felt like forever did the map loading finally finish. The instant it did, I yanked the help out of where she'd been stuffed in my inventory.

"Hey, Cheon Nan-cho. Get out here."

"Ueee..."

"What's wrong with her now."

Even shaking her around in my hand did nothing to bring her to her senses, so I stuffed Cheon Nan-cho back into my inventory and checked the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠minimap that had just reactivated.

"Hmm. Low-level map. In that case..."

I headed for the nearest question mark, one-shot a low-level elite mob with a Spoon that used a normal weapon as a sacrifice—without even bothering with Auto-Battle—then bunched slaughter energy into both hands and started digging into the ground.

With a skill called Tunnel Digging on top of everything else, I carved out a rat hole in no time, expanded it into a decently spacious chamber, and pulled out a few spirit stones I'd hastily scooped up before getting banished from the Abyss.

"Snap out of it and make me a spiritual land. I need to train."

After crashing from Core Formation all the way down to Qi Refining and climbing back up again, my realm was so unstable I felt like I was going to die. Stabilizing it meant I'd be stuck holing up and doing nothing but train for a while, so I shook Cheon Nan-cho every which way until I finally ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠managed to jolt her back to her senses.

"Th-this can't be used for a spiritual land! These aren't even supreme-grade spirit stones—they're ultimate-grade! One of these is worth ten thousand supreme-grade spirit stones!"

"So? You not gonna eat them? I brought five, you know? For real?"

"Kgh... kguh..."

These counted as material items, which was the only reason I'd been able to bring them at all. I'd barely managed to grab them while getting banished—slipping out of a map-clipping bug, then tumbling into a forward roll for good measure.

Material items and consumables dropped by Abyss monsters that exceeded level 450!

That ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was also why using the Abyss bug on a speedrun could get you touching the late-game crisis within ten years.

Of course, with the NPC personal-trade mode locking me out of high-level maps and their powerful shop-grade gear, it hadn't been that huge a boost for me—but for Cheon Nan-cho, it was apparently a different story.

"Ultimate-grade spirit stones! Even Golden Core cultivators would have their hands and feet shaking in fear of getting sniped if they were carrying just one! In the Lower Realm, you'd be lucky to even see one! Immortals who've gone past Nascent Soul, reached Spirit Transformation, and ascended to the Upper Realm might have one or two at most!"

She was broken. Maybe dumping late-game materials on an early-game help character had twisted her script. Or wait—were these materials currency? Since I couldn't use shops, I'd just been treating them as Cheon Nan-cho's meal ingredients.

Either way, while she threw a full-blown tantrum insisting these couldn't make a spiritual land, I used the low-grade spirit stones I still had left to put together a low-grade spiritual land, then lay down and let my body sink into the spiritual energy filling it.

Reaching Core Formation had let my condensed core start producing slaughter energy on its own, and I could even handle spiritual energy in small amounts now, so training in the spiritual land Cheon Nan-cho made turned out more helpful than expected.

Apparently people in sects and the like grew by entering supreme-grade spiritual lands or secret realms, but that was way too far from my situation. Join a sect and you couldn't leave that map.

More importantly, you couldn't earn experience.

How long was I supposed to sit still leveling up on training experience alone? I'd die of old age first. Wait—now that I thought about it, the reality patch had added lifespan as a time limit, hadn't it? Goddamn it!

But in a xianxia world, cultivators sat around training for decades or centuries at a stretch! Even if I could convert stacked slaughter energy into experience and push my realm that way, I still needed to train to raise the realm in the first place.

This was the xianxia mode maker's fault.

Why make a mode like this!

And why did I download and install it!

But I couldn't resist a large-scale mode I'd never seen before... and it even ran without any mod conflicts...! The problem was that my computer couldn't take it and exploded...! And the problem was my weak past-life self, who died just because a computer blew up!

Having thoroughly and perfectly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shifted the blame through that chain of stray thoughts, I sent Cheon Nan-cho off on captive exploration as an alarm before starting my training, then turned my gaze inward.

The Wheel of Slaughter Energy turned.

That familiar wheel—so familiar it felt like raising the skill level any further would fuse it completely with my soul—spun round and round inside my body, performing the first-stage refinement on the slaughter energy pouring from my Slaughter Core and spreading it through the fine meridians within.

Along the meridian paths created inside my body through the Body Refining Art I'd renamed Transformation, I stacked the refined slaughter energy layer by layer.

Because it was refined, I could pack in far more slaughter energy than before—but with Transformation's skill level still low, one wrong move would burst a meridian, wreck my body, and drop my HP. That much, though, was something the regenerative power of slaughter energy could cover.

"Puzzle... no. More like the nail-biting edge of Tetris..."

I repeated the process of stacking refined slaughter energy through the wheel into every meridian in my body, piece by precarious piece, like playing Tetris. Fail and you started over from scratch—but proficiency experience kept rolling in, and I was getting more used to it than at the start. There was still a problem, though.

The process itself was the method of a Body Refining Art that tempered the flesh from the inside out. Originally, of course, you just filled every meridian with spiritual energy and held it there to train.

Yu Hee, who'd learned the Body Refining Art as a skill, skipped all that and was brute-forcing the technique by wrecking her own body, trusting nothing but her regeneration.

Naturally, the tempering speed was fast.

And just as naturally, the speed of stacking slaughter energy into every meridian—Tetris, basically—got faster too, which meant I started failing more and more often.

"Let's see who wins!"

Obviously, I lost.

That was the end of the idiot who'd tried to reach something only possible after mastering the Body Refining Art through a cheap shortcut. Setting aside my resolution to train this properly once I hit Golden Core, I moved on to the next stage of training.

I'd been grinding proficiency mainly on the Transformation skill, but the wheel's skill level had climbed quite a bit along the way, so this time I started the process of refining the wheel into my Natal Dharma Treasure.

In Cheon Nan-cho's words, a Dharma Treasure that became one with the soul—and if it was going to be my Natal Dharma Treasure, it had to be the wheel made of slaughter energy. What else could it be?

A dedicated weapon! Hell yeah!

Apparently if you refined it with your own spiritual energy and grew alongside it over long years, it would even awaken a spirit. Did that mean it became a talking sword—no, a talking wheel? Or did it just get auto-attack or some other auto function slapped on?

It was an extremely interesting topic.

The catch was that this so-called refining was incredibly tedious and tricky. For one thing, my spiritual energy amounted to a handful. And if I tried refining it with slaughter energy instead, the wheel was already a lump of slaughter energy, so it just got absorbed rather than refined—a humble little drawback.

I was still grunting and struggling with it when a message window popped up, which meant captive exploration must have finished.

What interrupted my training wasn't Cheon Nan-cho—it was a pair of neutral NPCs just passing through.

"Senior! There's already someone here!"

"What? Impossible! What kind of idiot would build a cave dwelling in a place like this just to train?! There's no boundary formation, not even a single marker stone! Are you sure you didn't see wrong?"

"But—!"

"But nothing! A bizarre cave that looks like some beast dug it out couldn't form artificially! At best, it'd be...?"

"...These NPC bastards..."

Idiot? Beast? Fuck—if you invaders so much as turned from green dots to gray on my minimap, you were Auto-Battle material, you damn NPCs!

Slaughter energy erupted uncontrollably from Yu Hee's small body.

The only reason I hadn't attacked first was the thin thread of reason that saw the green dots. If they'd been gray—neutral NPCs—the two cultivators who'd popped out of the event would already be dead.

And of course, the two cultivators could tell that perfectly well. The difference was that the one who actually faced me and took the slaughter energy head-on dropped straight into a prostrate bow, while the one who'd only felt the slaughter energy immediately spun around to run.

And the moment he turned his back, the green dot on the minimap that marked a friendly NPC bled into gray—the color of a neutral NPC.

Naturally.

"Auto-Battle."

The nameless cultivator was torn into seventeen pieces—not so much for interrupting my training as for running his mouth wrong.

"So. Why did you interrupt my cultivation? And before that—why are you still green?"

"That bitch dragged me here by force, calling herself my senior, and shoved me into this place! She said she sensed a dangerous aura and there might be a good Dharma Treasure! I never had any intention of interrupting Senior's cultivation!!!"

Ow, my ears!

I frowned at the earache, and he must have gotten even more terrified, because he started half-sobbing his grievances.

"How could someone as lowly as Foundation Establishment possibly deceive Senior..."

"Shut up. Why are you green."

"Green, you say?"

"Ugh, never mind—goddammit, there weren't even interactions or dialogue options like this originally. Take that and get lost."

I pointed at the corpse still split into seventeen pieces that wouldn't disappear because I hadn't reclaimed the slaughter energy while refining the wheel. He scooped up the body parts with spiritual energy in an instant and fled—and unlike before, he stayed a green dot the whole way until he left the minimap.

What the hell is the criteria for this, fuck. No—before that, what even is this special event.