Foundation Establishment (1)
A scarlet talisman blazes to life — the power of the Red Sea Flame Spear unfolds in an instant, and crimson flame devours the entire warehouse.
"Have no fear! Snap off an arm or a leg, crush them to bits if you must — I'll leave that head of yours intact!"
The voice of Gu Do-ryun, the Blood Puppet Ancestor, thundered through the warehouse.
Wooden puppets hurled themselves at Cheon Woo-jin, smashing straight through the storeroom walls in their frenzy. Every one of them was bound to Gu Do-ryun's consciousness, and that connection let them exert power far beyond the limits of a mere low-grade puppet. More than that, unlike the puppets commanded by ordinary cultivators, each unit moved in organic concert with the others, weaving flawless coordinated assaults.
A desperate crisis.
Cheon Woo-jin kicked a wooden crate aside and leapt backward — angling for the warehouse's single window, the one path out. The instant Gu Do-ryun bellowed that he would never let him slip away, Cheon Woo-jin set fire to the talisman of the Red Sea Flame Spear.
In the next heartbeat, scarlet flame detonated and swallowed his entire field of vision. Releasing Sammae True Fire in a space this cramped meant the blast would catch Cheon Woo-jin in its wake as well — but he turned that very surge of force into his escape, riding the shockwave out through the shattered window. A puppet laden with Gu Do-ryun's consciousness flung out its arm to seize him, and by the barest sliver of a hair, it failed.
"You little wretch—!"
Gu Do-ryun's roar rose above the deafening thunder of the explosion. His true power could have shrugged off an attack like this without effort — but at the moment he was merely possessing a low-grade puppet. He could drive its performance past its limits, yes, but casting spells or discharging spiritual force was beyond it. In the end, every puppet he had gathered was swallowed whole by the inferno — and not just them. The Blood Puppet Sect branch burned down to its foundations.
So I've burned the Qingyun Merchant Guild's cargo along with everything else.
Even so, no apology stirred in him toward the guild. Their wares had been stolen from somewhere by force in the first place — the Qingyun Merchant Guild had built its fortune dominating the Green Forest Bandits and the Waterway Pirates of the jianghu, collecting tribute from them. The helpless common folk were squeezed dry by the bandits and pirates; the bandits and pirates were bled by the Qingyun Merchant Guild; the Qingyun Merchant Guild was plundered by the Blood Puppet Sect. The same law of the strong devouring the weak, visible anywhere one cared to look.
"Wh-what in the world happened?"
"The whole place went up in flames at once…"
As it happened, the retrieval team had just punched through the valley and reached the very doorstep of the branch compound. Faced with the sight of it engulfed in fire, they could only gape in dumbfounded disbelief. Bang Wi-sun of the Qingyun Merchant Guild in particular stood with her mouth hanging open, incapable of a single word. The plan had been to storm the place and reclaim the guild's cargo — and with it in ashes, there would be nothing left to salvage.
"Hyeok — you vermin…!"
"I will remember you! I will hunt you down! I will comb through every cultivator who has mastered Sammae True Fire until I find you, and then I will dye that scarlet daoist robe of yours anew with dark crimson blood…!"
"May you lie awake every night, trembling in terror, Hyeok…!"
Just then, a voice rang out that jolted every one of them wide awake. Gu Do-ryun's roar burst from the heart of the burning compound, echoing across the whole valley — and the cultivators of the retrieval team went pale with dread. A few of them lost control of their bladders outright. Such was the terror inspired by Gu Do-ryun, the Blood Puppet Ancestor: one of the Thirteen Sovereigns of the Moonlit Thirteen League, a monster of the Nascent Soul Realm.
Every gaze turned toward a nearby ridge. There, having escaped the inferno, Cheon Woo-jin touched down and steadied his breathing. By everyone's estimation, even if someone razed the Blood Puppet Sect branch, the Blood Puppet Ancestor himself would not have stirred. And yet the Ancestor had descended in person and was raging in fury — and the cause was unmistakably that man in the scarlet robe. He was surely the one who had burned the compound to the ground besides. So who, the onlookers wondered, was this "Hyeok" whom the Blood Puppet Ancestor named with such venom?
Before all those wondering eyes, Cheon Woo-jin showed no reaction whatsoever. Not one word passed his lips. He simply turned and walked away, mouth sealed shut, leaving the branch behind as nothing but blackened ash.
Gu Do-ryun will spend the days ahead chasing ghosts.
Cheon Woo-jin returned to Ghost Head City two days later. The detour he'd taken to throw off any possible pursuit had cost him considerable time. From now on, Gu Do-ryun would comb the world for "Hyeok" — an unidentified cultivator who wielded Sammae True Fire.
Cheon Woo-jin's Sammae True Fire drew its strength from the Red Sea Flame Spear, a dharma treasure of the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect, and so it bore the imprint of the Orthodox faction's philosophy and method of thought. That made it likely Gu Do-ryun would begin his search among the Orthodox sects. Moreover, Gu Do-ryun had never actually witnessed Cheon Woo-jin using the talisman — he had kicked the crate aside and drawn the talisman while hidden behind it. The senses of a low-grade puppet had their limits, so the odds were high that he never realized the fire had sprung from a talisman at all. Which meant Gu Do-ryun would start by investigating Orthodox cultivators of Core Formation and above.
Reaching Cheon Woo-jin — a Qi Condensation loose cultivator in the lower tiers of Ghost Head City — was, for all practical purposes, impossible.
I may find myself operating under a disguise like this more and more from now on.
As Seo Seol-ryeong had said, a tree that towers alone in the forest is always the first the wind breaks. Cheon Woo-jin already possessed the strength to fell cultivators of the Core Formation Realm, yet the monsters of the Nascent Soul Realm and the great sects could snuff him out like an insect without breaking stride. Until he had the power to answer them, he needed to avoid becoming their target — and in that light, creating a sort of secondary identity, as he had done here, was sound strategy. While his enemies fixated on "Hyeok," the mystery cultivator of Core Formation who wielded Sammae True Fire, "Cheon Woo-jin," the Qi Condensation loose cultivator of Ghost Head City, could quietly and unhurriedly build his strength.
Someday I'll face them directly. Until then, I have to grow.
With that thought, Cheon Woo-jin slipped a hand into his robe and touched his storage pouch. Inside lay the Yin-Yang Marrow Pearl he had just acquired.
With this, I'll refine a Foundation Establishment Pill and attempt the Foundation Establishment Realm.
He made his way to his hermitage within the Great Emptiness Cave Heaven Mirror. On the island drifting in that vast black expanse of space, everything was already prepared.
First, heat the furnace.
The alchemy furnace he had received from Jo Hyu stood installed beside the hermitage, and lighting a fire beneath it was the first step of the Foundation Establishment Pill's creation. But an ordinary fire would never do — a proper pill demanded true flame. Just as Taishang Laojun had smelted Sun Wukong in the Eight Trigrams Furnace with Sammae True Fire in Journey to the West, an alchemy furnace was, by its very nature, meant to be heated with genuine flame. The trouble was that a Qi Condensation cultivator lacked the ability to produce true flame — even one blessed with a fire spiritual root. And so, as a rule, cultivators at this stage borrowed the strength of another when refining pills.
But I have the talisman of the Red Sea Flame Spear.
Cheon Woo-jin used the talisman to conjure true flame. In its full fury, the fire would have burned this entire hermitage to nothing, but Cheon Woo-jin drew out only the faintest trickle of its power, and so it never came to that.
Using it in sips like this shouldn't even cut down the number of uses.
The moment true flame poured into the underside of the furnace, the whole vessel began to heat — and he could feel at once that its response was different from an ordinary fire. Confirmed that it was hot enough, he flicked his left hand to lift the furnace lid, then reached out with his right, extending his spiritual force to feed the foundation-grade ingredients in one by one.
The wood-element五行 spirit herb, the Greenwillow Springleaf Herb. The fire-element spirit herb, the Crimsonroot Fire Dragon Ginseng. The earth-element spirit herb, the Yellowearth Mountain Reishi. The metal-element spirit herb, the Whiteleaf Autumn Spirit Herb. The water-element spirit ingredient, the Golden Gall of the Dark-Road Giant Centipede King. And last, the base ingredient — the Yin-Yang Marrow Pearl.
With all six foundation ingredients sealed inside, he closed the lid.
That's every material in place.
Of course, loading the ingredients was not the end of it. Cheon Woo-jin slotted a single Operating Spirit Stone into the socket at the furnace's rim, and the Eight Trigrams pattern etched across the vessel began to shine with fierce intensity. Watching it, he extended both hands and poured out his spiritual force. He had to activate the furnace's functions with the spirit stone's qi while feeding in his own power, minutely tuning the balance of the eight trigrams.
Qian, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Li, Gen, Dui — every one of them must be adjusted with perfect precision.
First, with Qian, blazing with the purest yang force, and Zhen, erupting like a thunderclap, he shattered the material structure of the six ingredients. Next came Kun, the vessel of yin, to steady the flames, and Kan, the emblem of water, to draw out the essence within them. Then Li's fire burned away the moisture and condensed the extract, while Gen, unmoving as a mountain, anchored the center and bound it together. Last, Xun's wind warmed it gently, and Dui — rippling calm as a pond — smoothed and refined it, and the smelting of the Foundation Establishment Pill was complete.
Cheon Woo-jin stood before the furnace, feeding it spiritual force without pause. Each stage demanded its own fine-tuned balance of the trigrams, so he could not so much as step away. Wave after wave of scorching heat rolled off the true-flame-heated furnace, and the fragrance of the qi-laden spirit herbs saturated the air around him. Honestly, the conditions were harsh enough that drawing a proper breath was a struggle. His heart ached to step away for a moment and catch his breath — but with no way of knowing what might happen inside the furnace, it was impossible. In the space of an eyeblink, the flames could run wild and reduce every ingredient to char. Then he would have to start over from nothing. Weighing that risk, he could not leave his post even for a moment.
These are ingredients I risked my life to gather. I cannot — will not — fail.
How much time had passed? In Cheon Woo-jin's eyes, as he smelted on past ten days without once thinking of rest, a light appeared. An auspicious glow was leaking out from beneath the furnace lid.
With trembling hands, he quenched the fire and raised the lid. From the furnace, still radiating heat, a single pill floated up, gleaming deep indigo.
"Ah…!"
He held out his palm and drew it in with his spiritual force. The moment the indigo pill settled into his grasp, he could feel the auspicious principle sealed within it. He knew it instinctively: this was a Foundation Establishment Pill of the highest possible quality.
Cheon Woo-jin felt something swell up in his chest. He had endured so much hardship for this single pill. He had thrown himself into battles that would have been unimaginable in his old world, dared to challenge opponents a cut above him — even risked a confrontation with a Nascent Soul monster. But it was precisely because he had borne those risks that the pill was now in his hand. Because he had fought with his life on the line, he had won the strength that would let him keep on surviving.
This is my power to survive.
Taking the Foundation Establishment Pill and ascending to the Foundation Establishment Realm would not merely extend his lifespan. It would arm him against the countless dangers of this world — for the world was crawling with transcendent beings who could swat Cheon Woo-jin dead as casually as crushing a bug. If he did not wish to die a dog's death at their hands, he had no choice but to grow stronger. In this brutal world of immortal cultivators, that was the only path to survival.
Well then…
First, Cheon Woo-jin bathed in the spring beside his hermitage. The water was a spirit spring, laced with living qi — it was thanks to springs like this that fields and paddies could be tilled on an island floating in the void. Once the cleansing was done, he climbed the mountain at the heart of the island. If the island itself were taken as a single formation, the summit was its center. Seated there, Cheon Woo-jin arranged spirit stones at the four cardinal directions, poured nearly every stone he had amassed into reinforcing the array — and then placed the Foundation Establishment Pill in his mouth and swallowed.
"…"
Nothing stirred within his body. But that was only to be expected — the ritual had not yet even begun.
"Whew."
One long, deep breath. Then Cheon Woo-jin pressed his palms together and opened his mouth.
"Heaven and earth, nature's own order — scatter every foulness to the winds."
"Within the grotto, the mystic void shines radiant in the Grand Origin."
"Mighty spirits of the eight directions, grant me my natural state — the talisman of the Spirit Treasure proclaims to all the Nine Heavens."
"Qian Luo Da Na! Dong Gang Tai Xuan! Slay the demons, bind the fiends, deliver the ten thousand multitudes—!"
⟨ Opening of the Altar ⟩
The instant he began chanting the invocation that purified heaven and earth, summoned the spirits, and opened the altar, the entire island began to respond. The sky that had been nothing but blackness flushed blue, and the ground of the island soaked itself in crimson. And within it, a change came over Cheon Woo-jin's body — he began to radiate an aura of yellow, tinged toward gold.
All this time, as a cultivator, he had been hammering against a wall. His feel for wielding spiritual force and his technique in casting spells had grown steadily, yet his rank as a cultivator had stood frozen in place. His total reserves of spiritual force held steady at the same ceiling, and his body had not improved by a single hair since reaching the Great Perfection of Qi Condensation. Today, that wall would come crashing down.
The altar built from the whole of the island stood complete; every element linked itself to Cheon Woo-jin at its center. And in that moment, the pill's potency surged through his entire body all at once — an explosive torrent of energy engulfed him from head to toe.
The ritual to ascend to the Foundation Establishment Realm had begun.