Foundation Establishment, Part 2
Reason never speaks of possibility.
Therefore, truth should admit no exceptions.
That was why the night sky had turned as white as day and thunder had rolled over the mountain range with such a deafening roar.
To cultivate was to move farther and farther away from death.
Which meant that death and cultivation should never, under any circumstances, coexist.
Countless eyes glimmered beyond the clouds, trembling as if in a fit of convulsion in the pale light of dawn.
The sky’s pristine purity shuddered as it sensed Baek Sang-ah’s alien nature.
Heavenly Tribulation was the blade of heaven, cast down upon those who strayed from reason.
Even I, the avatar of a Great Immortal, only realized what was within you by becoming one with you. There is no way the heavens could have sensed the emptiness dwelling inside you.
And yet the fact that Heavenly Tribulation had descended meant the unknown within Baek Sang-ah was being watched with suspicion.
And in the laws that were meant never to change, the unknown was a variable that could not be permitted.
“Grrrgh?”
When a bolt of lightning, forged from furious heavenly qi, pierced straight through Baek Sang-ah, smoke rose from her body.
The sudden shock made her brows knot tightly, and her tail stiffened upright.
Baek Sang-ah rolled twice or three times across the ground, then started digging into the earth with her forepaws—no, with her hands.
What are you doing?
“Digging. I have to dig.”
What?
“Electric techniques are ineffective against ground types.”
Ground what? What does that even…
Confusion filled Muyeonja’s voice.
Baek Sang-ah, on the other hand, was deadly serious.
The training she had done in the Spirit Stone Cave now paid off. She dug faster than a mole.
Dirt flew in all directions in an instant, and before long her figure had vanished completely.
It wasn’t perfect, though.
Through the hole she’d made in the ground, only her tail stuck out, twitching.
The cultivators of Ungyu Sect stared at the sight, too stunned to speak.
It was their first time seeing Heavenly Tribulation, and also their first time seeing someone survive after being struck by that terrifying lightning.
They were almost numb with shock.
F-For now, the lightning won’t get me.
You foolish creature. Did you think Heavenly Tribulation merely meant thunder?
“Th-then…?”
Then the earth itself began to squeeze her, as though it had gained a will of its own.
With her sturdy body, Baek Sang-ah held back the pressing soil, but she couldn’t keep doing it forever.
The ground hardened and clenched around her throat.
The reason Heaven is angry is that you almost comprehended reason and reached Foundation Establishment without even performing a rite.
“It hurts.”
Since the rite had only just ended, and because you are a beast race, the circumstances happened to overlap in a way that made it possible.
“Tell me how to do it.”
Muyeonja let out a soft, thoughtful hum, then said,
Even so, you are still only at the Great Completion of Qi Condensation. Heavenly Tribulation will not remain long.
The pressure of the earth grew even heavier.
It felt as though even her spine was being crushed.
One of her ribs gave a sickening creak.
Endure that moment. Rising to Foundation Establishment can be done after you have prepared more thoroughly.
Muyeonja’s final words were calm, but the silence that followed them was heavy.
At that moment, the earth was wrapping around Baek Sang-ah’s body as if she were some living thing.
Just enduring isn’t enough.
What?
“I have to become Foundation Establishment.”
Do you understand what you’re saying? A mere Qi Condensation cultivator can’t possibly defy Heavenly Tribulation.
After listening to Muyeonja explain the cause and nature of Heavenly Tribulation, Baek Sang-ah dug her way out of the earth and escaped into the open.
At once, the clouds gathered overhead again, crackling with light.
Even though she was afraid of the pain and swallowed hard, Baek Sang-ah did not flee from the clouds.
She only stared at the light spreading from the heavens down toward the earth.
I still don’t know why I want to live.
What are you suddenly talking about?
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a reason to want to live.
That’s a contradiction!
Baek Sang-ah felt a familiar aftertaste drifting down from the sky.
Undeniable killing intent.
The aura of death.
I want to know. Why am I alive? Why do I keep living? I don’t know, so I want to know. That’s the reason I live.
Huh?
Death was frightening.
It was even more so because she had once had her life taken by it and felt everything she had vanish away.
But precisely because she had once resigned herself to death, she knew that simply avoiding it and enduring it was not the answer.
When she had been human, the only thing she had left after accepting death was emptiness.
She hated that.
She hated ending that way again, with nothing at all.
You said the heavens are sending Heavenly Tribulation because they don’t want me to reach Foundation Establishment.
Of course. You have not been permitted to do so. Naturally they would oppose it.
Then I just have to reach Foundation Establishment. Once I’m there, heaven won’t be able to reject it any longer.
That is nothing but sophistry.
The presence of lightning once again gathered over her head.
When Baek Sang-ah saw it, she sat down in a full lotus posture instead.
You idiot beast! Cultivation has a proper path. For billions of years, countless senior cultivators have already laid down the answers. Why would you try to stray from that road?
“A highway isn’t the only kind of road. There are national roads too, and dirt roads. If nothing else works, I can fly. And I’m a shark, so I can swim.”
You’re still making those incomprehensible comparisons. Did I not tell you not to use metaphors like that?
“Yeah. I’m a beast, so I forgot.”
And now you don’t even know how to reach Foundation Establishment!
With her eyes closed, Baek Sang-ah shook her head.
“Foundation Establishment is about building the five elements. You looked like you didn’t know, so I told Muyeonja just now.”
As all her senses slipped into sleep, the ten thousand things of the world only grew clearer.
The heavenly qi that blanketed the sky, the suffocating pressure flowing from the stars, the rage trembling between them.
Baek Sang-ah slowly narrowed her consciousness.
Drawing back the awareness she had spread outward through Great Void Divine Method, she focused entirely on her own inner world.
And then the currents within her body became distinct.
The essence of Great Void Divine Method is to empty first.
And then to fill the empty vessel.
Using the cultivation she had accumulated until now, Baek Sang-ah drew the flow of nature into her body.
At the end of her left knee: fire.
At the end of her right knee: water.
The two opposing five elements were pushed to opposite sides, forming extremes.
Then, once more, at the tips of her left fingers: wood.
And at the tips of her right fingers: metal.
The two conflicting qualities were driven to each side of her fingertips, reaching their utmost points.
The opposing elements took their places in four directions, and vermilion spiritual energy surged upward as if running wild.
Then came earth, taking the center of the five elements that did not harmonize with one another in those four directions.
When it settled into the lower abdomen, the axis of the five elements finally found balance.
The fire and water upon her knees no longer opposed one another.
The wood and metal at her fingertips no longer collided.
All of them, every one, revolved quietly around a single point.
The axis of earth sinking deep within her lower abdomen.
The five elements possessed opposing natures, yet the five of them were brought into balance.
Then Heaven roared.
This time, it was not a single bolt of lightning.
Under the trembling sky, countless white flashes split apart and, at last, poured down all at once toward Baek Sang-ah.
You senseless brute! Even a Great Immortal would not cultivate so recklessly! Move now!
No altar was needed.
Baek Sang-ah’s own body, with the full axis of the five elements carved into it, was itself an altar.
The five elements had color.
Fire was red, water blue. Wood carried green, metal white. Earth was yellow.
And when the five elements of different colors met and overlapped into one.
It became black.
Only black.
Even in Dam So-dam’s eyes, now opened after she had reached Foundation Establishment, she could see what had formed at Baek Sang-ah’s center.
A sphere that looked like a black mass.
Something akin to the Taehu that knew no end.
An abyss of a calamity past, with no light shining into its depths.
Even Dam So-dam had never heard of such a thing. Neither had Cultivator Yun.
The moment the two of them saw the black point at Baek Sang-ah’s center, they both rubbed at their eyes almost at the same time.
As if they couldn’t believe it.
How… how can this be…?
While Muyeonja murmured in amazement, the sky flashed more than a few times.
Then the heavens split open with a sharp crack.
All the clouds hanging over the mountain range were torn apart at once, and light, sound, and wind were all buried and vanished together.
A silence as though time itself had been extinguished.
Within that stillness, a blade of colorless light descended.
Baek Sang-ah opened her mouth slightly and drew in a deep breath.
Then a voice sounded in her head—neither male nor female, neither human nor beast.
Rain falls from emptiness, yet emptiness is not wetted; wind stirs the void, yet the void is not broken.
“Rain falls from the sky, but the sky does not get wet. Even when the wind blows, the void is not wounded.”
A few streaks of light struck Baek Sang-ah, but the situation was utterly different from before.
The lightning pierced her body, yet it was sucked into the black sphere at the center of Baek Sang-ah’s being.
And so Heavenly Tribulation was swallowed by something black without edge or limit, something whose end could not be measured, and disappeared.
“Hoooh, sniff….”
At last, when Baek Sang-ah let out a breath, smoke drifted away with it.
The clouds in the sky dispersed, dawn rose, and the stars closed their eyes.
Cultivator Yun and Dam So-dam stared at the spectacle, speechless and dazed.
Only after Heavenly Tribulation vanished, and the black sphere that had been visible at Baek Sang-ah’s center was no longer seen, did they finally exhale as deeply as she had.
What in the world did I just witness? I’ve never even heard of a Qi Condensation cultivator receiving Heavenly Tribulation and taking it in.
To reach the same level as my senior… do I need to cultivate for several thousand more years?
Baek Sang-ah knew instinctively.
The reason Heavenly Tribulation had disappeared was that, even though heaven rejected her, she had still reached Foundation Establishment.
The axis of the five elements remained intact within her body.
“Sister!”
“B-Baek senior. Are you all right?”
The moment everything was over, Dam So-dam ran toward Baek Sang-ah, and Cultivator Yun followed after her.
Of course, the other cultivators of Ungyu Sect did not remain still either.
After witnessing that astonishing sight, they watched Baek Sang-ah’s expression and slowly crept closer.
And the first to reach her side was none other than Rangi.
“Grrr…”
“Rangi.”
Rangi licked Baek Sang-ah’s cheek with her rough tongue, as if asking whether she was all right.
Baek Sang-ah understood the beast’s language. Of course she did; she, too, was a beast.
“I’m fine.”
“C-Can you tell us what happened?”
“Baek senior, how could this…?”
Baek Sang-ah blinked.
In truth, even she could not properly explain why the heavens had suddenly brought down Heavenly Tribulation.
Though it seemed like Muyeonja had told her about it, putting that into words herself was still difficult.
“Just. I think it was something amazing.”
So Baek Sang-ah said it the way she usually understood things.
As for things like Malrangjiche or a single Earth spiritual root, those were, in any case, good things.
Discovering the Spirit Stone Cave had been a good thing.
Seeing the wraith left behind in the cultivation chamber of the Spirit Stone Cave had been a curious thing.
And the fact that Heavenly Tribulation had fallen—that was an amazing thing.
Even after answering, when Cultivator Yun and Dam So-dam were still blinking in confusion, Baek Sang-ah added an explanation.
“So, it was an amazing thing. It was like something deep inside my womb got all stirred up, then suddenly went pop and got quiet.”
“Y-Your womb?”
“Yeah. There’s a womb in the lower abdomen, isn’t there?”
“No, Sister, I think that’s a little different….”
In the end, Cultivator Yun asked no further.
Not only had he never heard of such a phenomenon before, he also thought Baek Sang-ah simply didn’t want to explain it.
Heavenly Tribulation appears when one rises in realm and Heaven rejects that advancement… Could it be that Baek senior just leaped beyond Golden Core and reached Nascent Soul? Then was that black mass some kind of Nascent Soul?
Instead, he agonized inwardly.
But if so, how was she able to break through at that exact moment? She hadn’t even performed a rite. Truly, she is a mysterious person.
Still, he harbored no suspicion toward Baek Sang-ah.
Dam So-dam reaching Foundation Establishment, the discovery of the Spirit Stone Cave, and the stability of Ungyu Sect—all of it had been thanks to Baek Sang-ah’s grace.
Huh. So a method this crude could actually work. You always surpass even my imagination. No wonder the Great Immortal took such interest in you.
While Cultivator Yun sank into thought, Baek Sang-ah, walking slowly behind him, looked down at her fingertips.
For some reason, they tingled.
And then she saw it.
Flash.
“Huh?”
Electricity crackled from the tips of her fingers.
The world was a place where nothing could be predicted even one step ahead.