Spiritual Root (2)
What would have happened if Cheon Woo-jin had simply stayed where he was?
Mok-jeong would have torn his body apart with its monstrous strength. And then, the way a plant drinks up water, it would have drained every drop of his blood.
But that never came to pass.
Because in the instant before Mok-jeong's arm could reach him, Cheon Woo-jin opened his eyes.
"Instant Death."
Boom!
Mok-jeong shattered into countless fragments.
The Instant Killing Heavenly Eye — the divine ability that could terminate a designated target on the spot — had activated.
Twenty-four hours had already passed since he slew Heukha-ryong, which meant the eye was primed and ready for use once more.
So it works even on eyeless monsters.
Even a tree demon with no eyes possessed some sensory faculty for perceiving its enemies. In the game Yeongro Suseonjeon, every entity had a field of vision assigned to it — and eyeless monsters were no exception.
That was why techniques that required facing one another eye-to-eye worked identically on them. The Instant Killing Heavenly Eye was no different. As long as an eyeless monster had its body oriented toward him, the ability seemed to take full effect.
"……"
Cheon Woo-jin stared at the shattered remains of Mok-jeong.
In the old days, he would have seen nothing but splintered wood. But now, his eyes caught something else entirely — a wispy blue energy rising from the wreckage like heat haze.
It worked.
A smile crept across his lips. The fact that he could see that energy meant he had obtained exactly the result he had hoped for.
Now I can see spirit qi. Which means I have a Spiritual Root.
Originally, Cheon Woo-jin had been incapable of perceiving spirit qi at all. But now he could watch it escaping Mok-jeong's remains with his own two eyes.
The reason was simple: the Golden Core absorption was complete. With Heukha-ryong's Golden Core settled inside his body, he now possessed the same innate aptitude as those born with a Spiritual Root.
And not just any root — the same as someone born with a Water Spiritual Root.
Spiritual Roots came in grades. Among the Five Elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, a root specialized in a single attribute was considered the highest grade, since it allowed cultivation several times faster than one bearing two or three mixed attributes.
Cheon Woo-jin now possessed a Water Spiritual Root, specialized purely in the element of Water. That was because Heukha-ryong had carried one. Dragons and imugi generally cultivated their strength in deep water, and so very often bore Water Spiritual Roots — and the black haze dragon had been no exception.
It was also why Heukha-ryong's Golden Core had been pitch black. In the Five Elements, black was the color that corresponded to Water.
And on top of that, I should now carry the same traits as the Body of the Dark True Abyss.
The Body of the Dark True Abyss was a constitution specialized in dominating and accumulating spirit qi. Among the Five Elements, Water represented the power to store and condense — and the Body of the Dark True Abyss was that power taken to its absolute extreme. As he had confirmed in his status window earlier, Heukha-ryong had possessed that very constitution, and by absorbing its Golden Core, Cheon Woo-jin had acquired it as well.
Which means I now carry the same spiritual substance as a Water Spiritual Root fused with the Body of the Dark True Abyss.
Until moments ago, Cheon Woo-jin had been a mortal with no root at all. Now he possessed aptitude superior even to the disciples stuck with mixed杂 roots.
In that case……
He gazed at the blue spirit qi drifting out of the tree demon. It was dispersing and fading at a rapid rate, but he felt no particular regret over its loss.
That blue qi is Wood spirit qi — it carries the Wood attribute of the Five Elements.
It would have been different if Cheon Woo-jin himself had a Wood Spiritual Root. But to one specialized in Water, it was useless energy. So he simply stood and watched the blue qi scatter into the surroundings.
Absorbing spirit qi from some trash monster like that would only impurify my dantian anyway.
Cheon Woo-jin's goal was not to live out his days as some ordinary cultivator. He intended to pass the Qi Condensation Realm, where one learns to wield spirit qi; past the Foundation Establishment Realm, where one builds law-power; past the Core Formation Realm, where one forms a Golden Core; past the Nascent Soul Realm, where one transcends the flesh; past the Soul Formation Realm, where one escapes the lower worlds entirely.
He had to overcome every tribulation to come, reach heights mortals would not dare to imagine — and survive until the very end.
And he already knew what path he would have to walk to get there.
Right now I merely possess a Spiritual Root — I'm not yet a cultivator. So first, I need to learn a cultivation art.
A cultivation art was the cultivator's equivalent of a martial artist's inner-energy method. Training in one allowed a person to wield spirit qi. That stage was called the Qi Condensation Realm — the first step of any cultivator.
First objective: learn a cultivation art and become a Qi Condensation cultivator.
But no matter how thoroughly Cheon Woo-jin knew the game's mechanics, he could not train a cultivation art alone. He needed someone to teach him.
And as it happens, there's a perfect candidate for a first master.
Cheon Woo-jin rose to his feet. Somewhere nearby, he would be able to find the corpse of a martial artist — a warrior who had lost his life to a monster ambush near Mount Goeyu. Cheon Woo-jin intended to borrow that man's gear and change into his clothes.
To meet his first master, he would first have to borrow that warrior's identity.
Near Mount Goeyu, at the very edge of Heukha-ryong's territory, stood a small hermitage.
Its master was an old man whose face was carved with wrinkles. Yet his back was ramrod straight, and there was strength in every step he took. The old man was of a cadet branch of the Won Clan, the family that ruled this region — a martial master known by the epithet Gwiyeongja, the Ghost Shadow, who had served the clan with distinction for many long years. Now, however, he had withdrawn from the front lines and lived here alone, devoted to his own training.
"Are you present, Elder?"
A visitor had come to Gwiyeongja's hermitage. He appeared to be a boy not yet twenty, with eyes of a mysterious, unfathomable hue.
"Forgive my appearance. I was attacked by a wild beast on my way here."
The boy's clothes were torn in places, and caked with filth as though he had rolled through a mudflat.
"My name is Cheon Woo-jin. I recently became an external disciple of the Won Clan. Elder Won Hang of the clan sent me here — he instructed me to receive your teachings."
"A pleasure to meet you, child."
Gwiyeongja did not even listen to the end of the boy's words. Instead, he looked him over from head to toe, slowly and thoroughly. The boy's frame was unremarkable — he had clearly never trained martial arts properly, and no inner energy could be felt from him at all.
But the fact that his nephew Won Hang had gone out of his way to send him here meant only one thing: the boy possessed the very aptitude Gwiyeongja was looking for.
"For Won Hang to send you, you must carry remarkable talent. From this moment, I am your master. I will teach you a special martial art — so do exactly as I say."
"Thank you, Master……!"
Watching the boy bow his head, hands folded respectfully together, Gwiyeongja smiled with deep satisfaction.
A new head of livestock has arrived. I'll raise it well and eat it properly.
Gwiyeongja — the venerable elder of the Won Clan — was, in truth, a cultivator who had belatedly set foot on the path of immortality. The reason he took in disciples was to raise them as cultivators and then refine them into pills, adding their essence to his own power. He had already sacrificed more than a dozen children, and thanks to them, he had risen to a considerable level as a Qi Condensation cultivator.
Had the martial artists of the gangho learned of this, they would have condemned him as a devil fallen into the Demonic Path. But Gwiyeongja felt not a flicker of guilt. It was not that he was exceptionally cruel — he was simply the most ordinary kind of cultivator, the kind who regarded human lives as no more valuable than insects'.
And yet……
Gwiyeongja — the one who gets devoured won't be me. It'll be you.
Cheon Woo-jin had come to this place precisely because he knew exactly what kind of man Gwiyeongja was.