Chapter 13 - A New Truth
“You… you are really my younger brother Neung So, aren’t you? Not some old rogue cultivator who stole my brother’s body?”
My second brother looked at me with an awkward smile. So even to his ears, my words carried the weight of years and a depth that…
But just as he finished speaking, Yang Jeon promptly cut in.
“Neung Jeon! You’d better make absolutely sure that’s really your brother! If some other person used displacement arts and slipped into the sect, then the responsibility for it falls entirely on you!”
At last, my mouth, which had been closed for a moment, opened again.
“Just what are you all talking about?”
Immediately, my brother went on.
“Because you suddenly started speaking like an old man! You were stuck with that rogue cultivator for so long that you just picked up his manner of speech, didn’t you? Hm? Isn’t that it?”
I had already shed a great deal of my arrogance, yet it seemed there was still more to peel away.
With a wry smile, I replied, “It has been quite a long time since I last held on to something.”
At those words, my second brother’s eyes grew wet. He looked at me with tears brimming, then suddenly reached out and pat-patted my shoulder, as if he understood every last thing in my heart.
Then came an unexpected remark.
“So that’s how it was? If even a rogue cultivator coveted you, then I suppose your talent must be rather good. But no one here is without talent. You came into the sect by a more convenient route than the rest of us, so you should work several times harder than everyone else. Even then, it won’t be easy to shake off the looks people give you.”
Yang Jeon, who had been openly hostile toward me, tossed out what sounded almost like advice, then turned on his heel and walked away.
It seemed that bastard was not entirely a bad man after all.
“Just ignore whatever that guy says. Eat your sweet potato. Your brother will keep taking care of you from now on, so you don’t have a thing to worry about. What right do those punks have to say anything to my brother? If I run into any of them, I’ll give them all a proper beating.”
I no longer felt I needed my second brother’s help, but his words were certainly making me feel better.
So I quickly regained my smile and broke the sweet potato in my hand into two pieces. Then I held out the larger half to him.
“Let’s eat together.”
My brother looked at me for a moment, then took the half sweet potato from my hand.
And with a bright smile, he put it to his mouth. In that moment, I also made up my mind. I would share with him the things inside the sunset pouch I had taken from Jin Myeong.
He had given me the most precious thing he possessed, so I could willingly give him what precious things I had in return.
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“Here, everyone uses these stone beds that are carved right out of the rock. Once our realms improve later, we’ll be able to split a boulder like rotting radish.”
At this point, I could reasonably say the discussion about the quarters I would be sharing with my second brother was finished.
So I nodded to him and spoke the words I had been holding back.
“There’s actually one thing I haven’t told you yet. When I left that place, I took the rogue cultivator’s sunset pouch with me.”
My second brother stared at me blankly for a moment, then suddenly went wide-eyed and clapped both hands over his open mouth. It was unnecessary fuss; he could have simply closed it.
Despite his dramatic reaction, I continued speaking calmly.
“As far as I could tell, there were spirit stones and medicinal pills in there, as well as some magic tools.”
This time, he actually reached out as if to cover my mouth.
I tilted my head slightly and dodged his hand, and he lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Keep your voice down! Why are you talking so loudly about something like that?”
I didn’t understand why I should have to lower my voice even inside a private room, but I indulged him for the moment.
“I’ll share the things in that sunset pouch with you too, Brother, so if you need anything, just say the word.”
Fortunately, once I spoke in a lower voice, my second brother no longer made such a commotion.
That did not mean, however, that he had become calm.
“Do you even know how valuable those things are? Spirit stones and magic tools are items ordinary people can’t even buy with money. And a sunset pouch itself is already incredibly valuable. Just gathering enough merit to get one here takes a long time. I’d wager even among senior brothers in the middle stage of Qi Refining, it would be rare for anyone to own all of that.”
My brother’s voice, which had begun quietly enough, only grew louder as he went on. His excitement was plain to see.
Yet even as he thrilled at the value of the things I possessed, he did not try to claim them for himself. There was no shadow of greed in his bright eyes.
So I smiled and said to him, “However precious those things may be, they can’t be worth as much as the year I lost. For now, let’s start by taking the medicinal pills together. Up to now, I’ve only ever eaten herbs and roots that had a somewhat familiar form.”
At that, my second brother gave me quite an interesting answer.
“The medicinal pills cultivators carry all have very different properties, so you must never eat them carelessly. I’ve saved up quite a bit of merit over the years, so tomorrow let’s use that to buy a danro magic tool first. If you put a medicinal pill inside a danro magic tool and inject spiritual energy, you can tell what kind of item it is.”
The “merit” he kept mentioning piqued my interest, but there was something even more interesting in his words.
“After putting the pill in the danro, you’d infuse it with law soul, wouldn’t you? Not spiritual energy.”
The law tool Refining Soul Danro that Jin Myeong had first given me as a gift—I remembered perfectly how to use it. Jin Myeong had clearly told me that infusing law soul into the Refining Soul Danro could enhance the effects of a medicinal pill.
But my second brother let out a snort at my words and said something astonishing.
“Law soul is the same as yourself. If you blow it into a danro magic tool, that’s the same as splitting your fate and stuffing it inside. I don’t know what sort of benefit you’d get from doing that, but if you waste law soul like that, you’ll end up dead before ever reaching a higher realm. You’d be spending your life itself.”
So much of what I had learned from Jin Myeong. As expected, there was nothing trustworthy among it.
But there were certainly things Jin Myeong the rogue cultivator had left me that were valuable.
For one thing, the danro magic tool my brother had just mentioned was something he had left behind.
“Wow~ So there really was a danro magic tool? At this level of craftsmanship, it looks like something made by at least a late-stage Qi Refining cultivator.”
Seeing the Refining Soul Danro I had taken out, my second brother grew so excited that his voice rose again. The Refining Soul Danro had been a great help in revealing Jin Myeong’s black-hearted scheme, but I handed it over to my brother without hesitation.
“You can keep this, Brother. I have another one that’s similar.”
In truth, there had been no other danro magic tool in Jin Myeong’s sunset pouch.
Nevertheless, I willingly offered it to my second brother.
It wasn’t anything I had much use for at the moment, and it was a thing that reminded me of Jin Myeong, that miserable knot of ill-fated enmity.
Of course, to my brother, it was merely a danro magic tool with rather remarkable craftsmanship.
“Really? You’re saying I can have something this precious?”
Watching him immediately brighten at my words, I spoke with a small smile.
“In exchange, you’ll forgive me for getting scolded by Father because of me, all right?”
When I took the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill, such a thing had not even been a consideration for me. At that time, I had not yet been able to think of the people of the Neung family as my true family.
But the one standing before me now, I accepted as kin of my own blood. That was why I needed his forgiveness.
Fortunately, my brother grinned brightly and gave me a positive answer.
“Was there really such a thing? I already forgot about it.”
At that teasing reply, I gave a quiet chuckle and began taking out several more medicinal pills from the sunset pouch.
Among them was the herb root I had once eaten in Jin Myeong’s residence.
Amusingly enough, my brother reacted the moment he saw it.
“Oh? Isn’t this Red Fire Root? If you take this to the mission slip right now, they’ll give you a ton of merit. Some high-ranking cultivator offered a huge reward because he needed it to repair his magic tool. Let’s exchange it for merit at the mission slip, then use that merit to buy another medicinal pill.”
Red Fire Root…
Sure enough, this spiritual herb might hold greater value in its fire attribute than in the spiritual energy it contained.
Though I had not been able to increase my spiritual energy much by eating it, the surge of fire energy that rose through my body the instant I swallowed it had been rather troublesome indeed.
Unlike the medicinal pills of the martial world, not all pills were used to increase one’s strength; each had its own proper use.
“Fine. We’ll do it that way. But do things like healing talismans, such as the Green Wood Talisman, also require special materials like this?”
“Of course. When making magic tools or implements for cultivators, you have to use materials imbued with spiritual energy. If you make them from materials without spiritual energy, then they’re just ordinary objects that common folk can use. As best as I can tell, most of what’s here is probably material used to make some sort of item.”
No wonder my cultivation realm had not increased properly despite my steady consumption of spiritual herbs from the sunset pouch. It seemed there had been a reason all along.
Even though Jin Myeong had spent the last year teaching me cultivation knowledge, he had never once mentioned even these most basic matters.
Because he had regarded me not as a true disciple, but as little more than livestock raised in his home, he had only taught me the bare minimum necessary to raise my realm.
And even those scraps of information could no longer be trusted…
At last, having confirmed once more just how bad my situation really was, I let out a low sigh and took out the two wooden boxes I considered the most special items of all. Until now, I had kept them only because I did not know their value.
“Oh~ This already looks unusual just from the outside.”
With my brother’s little prompt, which raised my expectations a bit as the boxes sat on the dirt floor, I slowly opened one of them. The moment I did, a faint fragrance began to drift out, just as it had when I first encountered the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill.
These two pills were clearly of high quality, yet unlike the identical wooden boxes they had been stored in, the colors of the pills themselves were different. One was a dark red, as if blood had been congealed into a lump, while the other was a faint green.
“You said you can tell what they are if you put them in a danro and infuse it with spiritual energy, right?”
“That’s right. Most danro magic tools are made to emit different colors and amounts of light depending on the energy of the medicinal pill inside. Fire-attribute pills give off red light, and water-attribute pills give off blue light, for example.”
At that, I suddenly remembered the sight of the Refining Soul Danro glowing when my blood had been placed inside it.
The Refining Soul Danro had emitted a soft red light.
Then my blood must also have been a fire-attribute medicinal pill. Which meant the single spiritual root I possessed was likely of fire attribute as well.
While I was lost in that thought, my brother had already snatched up the green pill and put it into the Refining Soul Danro.
“Without even looking, this seems like a wood-attribute pill, so let’s try it first.”
He then strained his face as if wrestling with a dragon while holding the Refining Soul Danro, but a long time passed and nothing happened. My blood had caused the tool to glow the instant it went inside; this was strange.
Wait—hadn’t he said that to determine a pill’s attribute and the power contained within it, you had to infuse it with spiritual energy?
Why had my blood shone without any spiritual energy being poured in?
Just as I began recalling that moment, which seemed to hide some crucial secret, my brother finally spoke after all that struggling.
“There! It really is wood attribute after all. But this doesn’t seem like something beginner Qi Refining cultivators like us can use. The light’s coming out awfully strongly. Look at this.”
When my gaze turned to it, the same faint light I had seen before revealed itself once more.
“This much light is strong? Then if there were a medicinal pill that gave off this level of light without even being infused with spiritual energy, how precious do you think it would be?”
At my question, my second brother let out a soft laugh and answered.
“Even this much is the sort of thing a late-stage Qi Refining cultivator would use. If there were a pill that shone like this without any spiritual energy being poured into the danro, then it would be a truly precious item fit for Golden Core cultivators. But when would we ever get the chance to see something like that?”
Golden Core…
Qi Refining cultivators endure grueling training to become Foundation Establishment cultivators, and those Foundation Establishment cultivators, through an unimaginably demanding process, become monsters of the Core Formation realm.
But beyond even those Core Formation cultivators lay the next realm, Golden Core, a stage they themselves could not dare to casually look down upon. For us, who were still only beginners in Qi Refining, it was a high realm so distant it might as well have been in the heavens.
The problem was that the precious medicinal herbs used by those high-ranking cultivators were made from parts of my own body.