Pill Breakthrough
If that fact ever got out, monsters would come hunting for my life in droves. For someone like me now—still little more than a half-made Foundation Establishment cultivator, treated like livestock by others—it was something I had to bury with everything I had.
“No way you’ve seen something like that? Ah! The nasty rogue cultivator had it, didn’t he? Right?”
I trusted my older brother.
No—rather, I wanted to trust him.
But this was one thing I couldn’t tell him, either. The immortal arts cultivators possessed were often grotesque beyond reason, and merely knowing about such things could put a person in danger.
“No, he didn’t have anything like that. I was just asking because I was curious.”
“Aw, that’s a shame. If he’d had one, I could’ve told Master and gone to teach him a lesson. If something truly that precious existed, Master would gladly step in, too.”
A cultivator who moved not out of a disciple’s earnest plea, but out of greed for the rare treasure in another’s possession.
As I listened to my brother say something like that as if it were perfectly natural, I finally understood. There was truth in the words Jin Myeong had once spoken to me…….
Not the “righteous chivalry” the hypocrites of the orthodox path shouted about, nor the rule of “the strong are respected” that our own Divine Teachings preached, but a worldly, grasping creature driven by nothing but private appetite. That was what cultivators truly were.
“Disciple! A daoist is, by nature, one who climbs by trampling others beneath his feet and keeps everyone else under his heel. Etch this master’s teaching into your bones until the moment you die!”
The instant Jin Myeong’s voice, still ringing clearly in my ears, surfaced in my mind, my expression hardened. The Spirit-Binding Art that bastard had used was long since broken, but the aftereffects were still clinging stubbornly to my thoughts.
Seeing my stiffened face, my second brother hurried on.
“Don’t be too disappointed. In any case, revenge is worth more when we do it ourselves instead of leaving it to other people. With just these, we can get strong pretty quickly. Of course, this green pill is a little too precious to eat right now, so we’ll have to use some other method.”
Evidently, he thought my tense expression was the face of someone disappointed at not being able to take revenge right this instant.
So I gave a small smile and spoke to him.
“You said the pill’s power is too great to eat now, right? Then I’ll handle it.”
When I finished speaking, I flicked the pill in the refining furnace into the air with one finger.
My brother jumped in alarm, clearly having no idea what I was doing. At that moment, the sword-finger I formed with my index and middle fingers sliced through the empty air where the pill was falling.
Like a short dagger, I poured internal energy into the sword-finger and split the dropping pill cleanly in two. It was a result of freely wielded inner force that ordinary first-rate martial artists could never hope to imitate.
As expected of the son of a martial family, my second brother stared in shock, apparently realizing the deep martial significance hidden in that one move of mine, and his jaw dropped open.
The rogue cultivator Jin Myeong had sneered at martial arts as nothing more than crude tricks for commoners and had been killed for it, but as one of the Neung family, my second brother no doubt understood the value of martial arts better than anyone…….
“W-what are you doing? If you split it like that, the pill’s value will drop! We were supposed to take this to the market and trade it for a bunch of medicinal pills we could actually use…….”
At my brother’s words, which were so far from what I had expected, a bitter feeling filled my mouth as I replied.
“For pills like this, cutting them into pieces doesn’t reduce their value or change the power they hold. After all, a pill is nothing more than the condensed essence of spiritual herbs. The qi inside just gets divided into two as well.”
The medicinal pills of this world were still unfamiliar to me, but in my previous life, few people had consumed as many elixirs as I had. Medicines from renowned orthodox sects—too precious to waste on something like a minor internal injury—had often been divided and taken in portions.
“Really? Then that’s a relief…… Still, don’t cut it anymore. Let’s just take it to the market as it is and trade it for pills that suit our level.”
“At this point, I feel like we could just eat it ourselves. If you still think it holds too much power, then just cut it a few more times.”
At that, my brother shook his head at once.
“Medicinal pills for beginners in the Qi Refining stage are common enough, but even pills for the late Qi Refining stage get a lot harder to obtain. Naturally, the value is different, too. I don’t know the exact market price, but rather than splitting this up and eating it ourselves, it’d be far more profitable to trade it for pills that suit our level.”
He really did have a sharp head for money. No wonder people called him greedy. He was the type who would hardly ever do anything that put him at a disadvantage.
That made me chuckle softly, and I nodded obediently.
“All right. We’ll trade this for other pills at the market, just like you said. But we have one more pill, so that one’s definitely ours to split. One pill was yours to decide about, so it’s only fair that I get to decide what happens to the other one, isn’t it?”
My second brother, who had been struggling as if in serious conflict while staring at the remaining red pill, soon nodded and answered.
“Since you brought all of this back anyway, it’d be right to do it your way.”
My second brother was quick when it came to money, but it was still amusing that he would listen to me at moments like this.
My face brightening again, I obediently held out the red pill to him. For now, the first step was for him to put this red pill into the refining furnace and measure its value.
But when my second brother grabbed the furnace containing the red pill and started struggling with it for a long while, a different reaction began to appear.
Flash!
A red light burst out from the furnace. Judging by the pill’s color alone, it was clearly a fire-attributed pill.
The problem was the brightness of the light coming from the furnace. At a glance, there didn’t seem to be much difference in the qi it gave off compared to the green pill we had inserted earlier, and yet, for some reason, it emitted a much brighter glow than the faint light from before.
Anyone could see at once that the value of this red pill was definitely higher than that green one.
“Good heavens! At this level, this is a medicinal pill fit for at least Foundation Establishment cultivators!”
As if he had come to the same conclusion as me, my brother exclaimed, and just as I turned my gaze toward the red pill in the furnace, he suddenly snatched it up and hid it behind his back.
When I looked at him, asking for an explanation with my eyes, he fidgeted for a moment before speaking.
“Let’s forget this one and eat the green pill instead. If we, who don’t even have proper cultivation yet, ate something like this, it would be a ridiculous waste. Besides, we were only going to split one of the two anyway, weren’t we?”
“So cutting up the pill earlier wasn’t a waste after all. If we were going to eat it now, we’d have to divide it even smaller anyway.”
When I reacted as though I was going along with him for now, my brother finally let out a sigh of relief and took out the red pill he had hidden behind his back.
Taking the red pill again, I set it down carefully and began cutting the green one apart once more. The pill split in two, and then each half split in two again…….
Every time my sword-finger swept past, the number of pill fragments increased in an instant. My second brother could only stare, swallowing hard at the changes that unfolded in the blink of an eye.
Of course, by now I knew very well that his expression was not one of astonishment at my martial realm, but one filled with anticipation at the thought of eating the pill fragments.
So, without expecting much, I held one of the finely divided medicinal fragments out to him.
But once he actually took it in hand, it was only then that a reaction to my martial skill finally came spilling from his mouth.
“Still, your martial arts really have improved a lot. Even on the day you left home, I was surprised because you showed a realm greater than I’d expected, but now it feels like you’ve become even more amazing than you were then.”
At that, I gave a snort of laughter and shot back at him.
“I share a precious treasure with you, and now you’re praising me so you don’t feel guilty?”
Apparently struck right where it hurt, my brother panicked and hurried to change the subject.
“Huh? No, that’s not it. I mean it because you really do seem that amazing. And, of course, I’m grateful that you’re sharing something this precious with me. Oh! You do know cultivation methods, right?”
It was a clumsy attempt to brush past my question and shift the conversation.
Of course, I had no desire to torment him any further, so I went along with his intention.
“I learned one cultivation method from the rogue cultivator who held me captive. If it doesn’t cause any problems when I later learn the Hyeondo Sect’s cultivation method, I planned to use that to refine the medicinal pill I’m eating now.”
“I see. As long as it isn’t some terribly strange cultivation method, there shouldn’t be any issue. The guest experts who joined our sect all came here after learning different cultivation methods themselves.”
When one first learned martial arts, the techniques already learned would sometimes interfere with learning new ones.
But cultivation methods seemed to be different entirely. That was probably why it was so common for outside cultivators, called guest experts, to join a sect.
“Then I suppose I’ll just eat my pill now, too.”
Having said that, I picked up a small fragment without hesitation and tossed it straight into my mouth. My second brother, not wanting to be outdone, quickly stuffed the medicinal fragment in his own hand into his mouth as well.
But the medicinal fragment we had eaten this time was different from the spiritual herbs I had consumed so far in this borrowed body.
The instant it entered my mouth, it melted away, transforming into a mass of spiritual qi larger than itself and charging straight up toward my upper dantian.
At that unexpectedly violent movement, I quickly began to circulate the cultivation method I had learned from Jin Myeong—the Chaos Heaven Secret Law.
First Stage: Qi Refinement, Awakening the Soul!
Shape spiritual qi, open the soul, and let the first light dwell within the body.
A hole above the head of the law soul formed by the pea-sized qi I had been circulating until now. It was a process faithful to the first-stage verse of “opening the soul,” yet until now, I had not known how large that hole had to be to complete the first stage.
But the moment that massive clump of qi came in—enough to instantly swell the pea-sized qi I had been using into something like a small chestnut—the limit I had not understood until now appeared all at once.
In an instant, an acorn-sized hole appeared above the law soul’s head, and at last, as if announcing the completion of the first stage, the qi that had been used to widen the opening slipped neatly into that hole and settled inside the law soul.
But my rise in cultivation did not end there. The mass of qi that had settled inside the law soul was no longer content to remain still; instead, it began to writhe violently.
So I rode that momentum and immediately entered the next stage of the Chaos Heaven Secret Law.
Second Stage: Expanding the Soul, Forming the Foundation!
The soul accepts spiritual qi and forms its base; body and soul shall become one.
It was a simple verse about body and soul linking together, but the process could never be simple. It was the connection between the law soul within my inner world and my actual flesh-and-blood body.
And yet the medicinal fragment I had consumed held the power to make that difficult thing possible. The qi writhing inside the law soul slowly bored its way out, pushing through the law soul and extending trunk-like branches of power.
Branches of power that had grown not from the hole above the law soul’s head, but through the law soul’s entire body.
As those branches slowly lengthened, my consciousness, which had been peering into my inner world, also began to move gradually outward.
And when my awareness finally awakened at the level of ordinary breathing meditation rather than inward contemplation, those branches of power at last reached my physical body. I forgot the hardships of my past in one breath and stepped directly beyond the first star of Qi Refining into the second-star realm.
Of course, the changes my body felt after ascending two realms in a single leap were tremendous.
Not only had I gained the ability to circulate spiritual qi as naturally as I moved internal energy, but a new sense—something that seemed to reveal what a true cultivator really was—had awakened within me as well.