Chapter 25
Translator: penny
Chapter: 25
Chapter Title: Sea Severing Peak Direct Disciple Yong Yoo (4)
Wi Ahan had been living in resignation ever since she experienced the profound mysteries of life.
She had realized forty-five years ago that life never went as one wished, thanks to the High Heaven Sect enforcers who suddenly descended upon her family.
Hundreds of years prior, a man had committed an unspeakable atrocity within the High Heaven Sect and fled.
The sect claimed that since her family were his descendants, they had to pay the price, and they forcibly dragged them all away.
Naturally, the Wi clan protested.
Even if it was punishment for an ancestor's crimes, there had to be limits.
Their line stemmed from a collateral branch that had split off to form a new family, then split again into another collateral, and split once more—a connection so distant that hardly any blood tied them together anymore.
But the High Heaven Sect couldn't care less.
Determined never to forgive that bloodline, they ignored the elders' desperate cries of innocence, razed everything on the family's lands, rounded up every last member and servant, and turned them into criminal slaves.
They branded their souls to prevent escape, dyed their black hair a permanent, glaring red so they'd stand out anywhere they hid, seared slave marks into their flesh, and just like that, the Wi clan fell to become the High Heaven Sect's slave family.
During this ordeal, Wi Ahan's spiritual root talent was discovered, earning her a slight reprieve: she became a skilled slave instead of a mere criminal one, forced to cultivate a technique and learn formations and geomancy.
That was forty-five years ago, when Wi Ahan was just seven.
A few had eyed her as a potential disciple—her three-element spiritual root of earth, wood, and wind, with a mutated wind spiritual root—but once they learned her origins, they treated her as if she didn't exist.
As one of the most despised among the skilled slaves, Wi Ahan was saddled with the hardest, most grueling tasks as a formation master and geomancer. In the process, she gained exceptional skill far beyond her years, but to a mere slave like her, it meant nothing.
One day, while struggling through life like this, Wi Ahan was summoned alongside other formation slaves and made to stand before a certain woman.
Clad in flowing blue robes, the woman was breathtakingly beautiful, like a fairy descended from the heavens.
As she calmly inspected the slaves, she dismissed all but those at the Foundation Establishment Realm's first layer.
"Will the first layer of Foundation Establishment suffice?"
The slave overseer—who normally lorded over them like gods, arrogant and cruel—profusely sweated and bowed low, a testament to the woman's lofty status.
"Yes. It's for my disciple, not me... For dual cultivation, it's best if they're lower in realm than the disciple."
In that instant, Wi Ahan felt chills run down her spine.
Cultivators sometimes scanned slave skills with divine sense when borrowing them, but this was similar yet incomparably more invasive—a sensation of her very soul's roots being meticulously probed, laid utterly bare before an absolute existence.
Through it, Wi Ahan realized this woman before her had cultivated deeper than any cultivator she'd ever met.
"This one will do nicely."
"Uh...! Th-this girl... Are you sure?"
The overseer panicked when the woman selected Wi Ahan, but she nodded knowingly.
"It's for my disciple, so of course I'd prepare the best. I have no intention of adding my own impressions to interfere."
With that, the woman took Wi Ahan's slave token from the overseer and pulverized it to dust.
Thus freed from the High Heaven Sect's chains, Wi Ahan was led by the woman to some eastern region, where the woman briefly explained her situation to the man living there before performing the dual cultivation ritual, binding Wi Ahan eternally as his slave, and departing.
"......"
"......"
Wi Ahan gazed at the man who was now her master.
He stood over six feet two inches tall with a finely muscled frame. A black veil draped from his heroic turban masked his face, and his long hair was neatly bound into a ponytail.
Beneath faintly pink-tinged white robes gleamed silvery light armor, and at his waist hung a deep navy gourd bottle exuding the weight of ocean depths.
Above all, the scent wafting from his body.
A thick alcoholic aroma clung to him, the kind that no waterfall could wash away.
Wi Ahan tensed at the sight.
The High Heaven Sect's actions—hailed as paragons of righteousness—made it clear: cultivators were lunatics incomprehensible to ordinary folk, good or evil.
What "righteous path" justified hunting down anyone vaguely linked to a criminal through massacres and destruction, enslaving them all?
Word had it the High Heaven Sect faced no condemnation for such madness; other righteous sects praised them for upholding justice and humbling the demonic path.
So, naturally, she felt tense facing a cultivator stronger than herself.
'And that woman called him incredibly precious...?'
Wi Ahan recalled how the woman who brought her here had gazed at this man with utmost affection.
Treated as so dear by her—surely they were Dao companions?
Yong Yoo or Geum So-ryeo would find such speculation absurd, but Geum So-ryeo wasn't here, and Yong Yoo lacked the ability to read minds yet.
"Well then......"
How long had they stood like that?
The man finally spoke.
Wi Ahan flinched, but he ignored her and pointed to a field in the corner of the eastern grounds.
"You'll help me grow spirit crops and spirit herbs there from now on."
Wi Ahan, well aware of her own beauty, had feared he might demand her body, but his order was utterly mundane. Relief washed over her.
"Understood. When shall I begin?"
"Uh... You don't need to help right now. Feel free to roam the eastern grounds."
"Pardon?"
"I need to cultivate."
With that, he settled on the platform and began cultivating.
"......"
Wi Ahan stared at him in bewilderment. Hadn't he requested a formation slave because he needed one?
She watched him with utter confusion, but he truly ignored her existence, devoting himself solely to cultivation.
One day... two days... one month... two months......
Six whole months.
For half a year, he ignored her completely, pouring every moment except meals into cultivation.
"Hoo......"
Having successfully transferred all his excess spirit energy to his reinforced roots over those six months, Yong Yoo at last turned back to the jade slip detailing the Three Lives One Origin Scripture to master it.
He'd already scanned its contents with divine sense, but now he deliberately unfurled it, reading each character etched with care.
Beyond what divine sense revealed, he discerned the script's style—the engraver's mindset, emotions infused at the time.
In hasty, scattered strokes, he sensed the creator's urgency to capture a sudden insight; in unusually deep, meticulous ones, emphasis on core principles; in subtly varying shapes, the painstaking pauses between each glyph amid endless frustration and walls.
Thus reverently absorbing the jade slip while grasping the creator's psyche, Yong Yoo rescanned it with divine sense, imprinting the insights with that added understanding.
No technique, spell, or divine ability was mere tool for cultivation or combat; they were cultivation manuals infused with the author's enlightenment, pursued Dao, and experiences.
Having fully mastered the Three Lives One Origin Scripture and the creator's intent, Yong Yoo first tended the spirit field with spirit farming techniques.
At last, he had work for Wi Ahan.
"Hey, come here for a sec."
"Yes? Oh, yes......"
Stunned that the man who'd said nothing for half a year now spoke to her, Wi Ahan hurried to his side and inspected the spirit field.
"I want to divide the field into three sections, each rich in fire, water, and wood spirit energy. Help me out."
"Understood."
At Yong Yoo's request—not difficult at all—Wi Ahan inscribed markers around the field with her spirit power, precisely dividing and directing the incoming spirit energy into the three types.
"Ooh. You set up formations so effortlessly. Impressive."
"......It's nothing."
Embarrassed by Yong Yoo's admiration as he watched, Wi Ahan cautiously withdrew.
Confirming the formations worked, Yong Yoo began planting seeds—not merely sowing, but linking each seed's latent soul directly to the spirit field, artificially crafting ideal conditions for spirit crops and herbs to grow.
Wi Ahan itched to question his meticulous planting but held back, unsure of her master's temperament.
'If he was going to do this, why not plant half a year ago?'
Had she asked, Yong Yoo would have explained that Foundation Establishment-grade seeds demanded so much care that planting them would have prevented any cultivation for months.
In truth, they proved even more demanding than he'd anticipated; Yong Yoo and Wi Ahan spent every hour monitoring the field, adjusting conditions and spirit flows to the seeds' needs without a moment's rest.
"Once you nurture the environment like this, the seeds will eventually adapt and reshape their surroundings themselves. That's when we'll get some breathing room."
Sympathizing with her shared toil, Yong Yoo patiently explained spirit farming to Wi Ahan, but her thoughts wandered elsewhere.
'Is this guy planning to squeeze spirit farming out of me too? I have no talent for it......'
In spare moments tending seeds, Yong Yoo checked the brews he'd steeped earlier.
The orange fruit had lost its potency after repeated nectar spirit liquor extractions, fading to a dull apple hue; the Wood Fiend Queen's essence root still brimmed with energy as brewing material, so he stored it carefully.
'Looking back now, nectar spirit liquor feels so lacking. I thought it was decent then... But after reading the sect's texts, the flaws are obvious.'
The spirit farming and brewing manuals he'd bought off the market paled against the High Heaven Sect's treasured volumes—worlds apart in depth.
'Still, hate to waste it. Time to drink and cultivate.'
About three months later, as the seeds began self-sustaining growth.
Yong Yoo brushed dirt from his hands, prepared nectar spirit liquor brimming with water, wood, and fire energies, and assumed position.
"Don't touch the seeds unless there's a problem."
With that to Wi Ahan, who watched silently, he downed three bottles in succession and began cultivating the Three Lives One Origin Scripture.
'By the way, having little Ahan around means I can't remove this veil. Should mention it to Master.'
In his mind, Yong Yoo called Wi Ahan "little Ahan," but...
Yong Yoo was 47. Wi Ahan was 52.