A Cruel Fate, or a Fortunate Encounter
When I fell silent for a moment, lost in tangled thoughts, Seop Myeong-gyeol spoke again.
“Who told you that you were a Heavenly Spiritual Root?”
“Someone who wasn’t a yao immortal, but didn’t quite seem human either. That was what he told me.”
After finishing that sentence, I paused for a moment before finally telling her about what had happened with the mountain wanderer, Jin Myeong.
“He forcibly took me as his disciple, then made me cultivate the Chaos Heaven Secret Law that you said was a technique for raising livestock. Later, when I asked him about it, he said that once I reached the late Qi Refining stage, he intended to kill me and turn me into a pill.”
Yet Seop Myeong-gyeol’s reaction to my words was unexpected.
“A cultivator who looked at you and called you a Heavenly Spiritual Root claimed he only meant to kill you and make a pill? That’s as absurd as stuffing a Qi Refining cultivation method into a jade slip meant for Golden Core methods. A Foundation Establishment pill can be made even by ordinary mortals.”
In truth, I had never once doubted that the final words spoken by Jin Myeong, the rogue cultivator who had been certain he could not kill me, were a lie.
Even now, after it had been proven that most of what he had said to me was false, I had never questioned that part. I had simply thought he had no reason to lie to me about that.
Then what, exactly, was true?
Jin Myeong had terrible enough fighting skills that he could have lost his life to me, and yet he had wanted me to improve my cultivation. Was he really the sort of master people called a Earth Dao Foundation Establishment expert, a formidable Foundation Establishment cultivator at the level of the Earth Dao?
Or perhaps…
At that moment, the image that surfaced in my mind was that of a fox demon with patches of fur missing from its body. A great fox yao who had been unable to resist greed and taken a spiritual vein that did not suit its own nature.
Because of that, it had been able to show off by commanding demon beasts of other species or trapping a Foundation Establishment expert in an illusion, but its true power had been greatly weakened.
Could Jin Myeong have been such a being as well?
At the very least, when it came to greed, Jin Myeong would never lose to some fox demon.
And yet, even if that were the hidden truth, it still did not explain why he had wanted me to advance in cultivation.
If he had never intended to make me into a pill, then why had he wanted me to grow stronger? The stronger I became, the greater a threat I would have been to him…
Then, all at once, I came to a realization.
I had thought of something else he might have wanted.
“The way for you to obtain a new body. That would be through a spell that exchanges two people’s souls, wouldn’t it?”
“Exactly. Rather than forging a new body that suits my soul, it would be far faster to find a proper vessel to hold it. If this is the Nine Palaces Tower, then there should certainly be a formation related to that.”
Only after hearing Seop Myeong-gyeol’s words did everything finally make sense. The reason Jin Myeong had wanted me to grow stronger.
He had needed enough power to defeat me after my soul was transferred into his body. The reason he had kept lying to me even though the truth was plainly something else was because he had wanted to make my soul submit in advance with those vile words.
After all, if I were to transfer into his body right away, the Soul-binding Art he had cast would be broken as well. Thinking of the fates that had clung to me like the brands of a slave, I became certain that my guess was not wrong. He and I really were bound by a wretched, hateful fate.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Hmm~ So this formation is called the Soul-Falling Prison Circle Formation? For something with such an imposing name, it’s awfully crude. It’s hard to believe the Nine Palaces Tower hidden inside a formation like this is the real thing. There’s no way all the cultivators who searched for the Nine Palaces Tower over the years could have failed to see through something this clumsy.”
After I used a flying magical item to lightly pass through the mist formation surrounding the Nine Palaces Tower, Seop Myeong-gyeol let out a rather deflated remark.
But even if this wasn’t the real Nine Palaces Tower, it didn’t matter to me, because I had already confirmed one more thing on the way here.
So, ignoring Seop Myeong-gyeol as she fell silent, apparently deep in thought, I leaped down from the wooden horse and entered the tower.
The thick scent of aged wood greeted me, along with a familiar scene. A few scattered odds and ends, each one capable of stirring old memories with every step I took, welcomed me exactly as they had been when I left this place behind.
And as I moved forward slowly, I saw Jin Myeong’s corpse greeting me in the same state as in my memories.
The severed head rolling on the floor still seemed to glare at me with bulging eyes, and the body I had hacked to pieces with my sword looked so vivid that it seemed as though blood might spill from it at any moment. Considering how much time had passed since I left the Hyeondo Sect, the sight was almost absurd.
“Seop Myeong-gyeol! Check whether there’s a spiritual vein in this corpse.”
But even after I searched the body of Jin Myeong while waiting for Seop Myeong-gyeol, a fair amount of time passed without the wooden puppet possessing her soul showing itself.
Sensing something strange, I went looking for her at once.
Yet even after I left the tower and reached the place where the wooden horse stood, there was no sign of the wooden puppet I had made anywhere.
She had vanished without a trace.
Nothing good ever came from this kind of unexpected development, so I rested a hand lightly on my sword hilt and spoke again.
“Seop Myeong-gyeol!”
This time, amusingly enough, her voice came back at once.
“I’m coming! The space inside is expanded quite a bit, so it’s taking longer than expected.”
Expanded the space inside? I still couldn’t make sense of her answer, so I stepped back into the tower once more.
What I saw, however, was only the interior space fitting the small pavilion-sized building exactly as it appeared. A place where a staircase leading to the upper floor could be reached after only a few steps.
“Seop Myeong-gyeol! Where are you right now?”
“After hearing you, I’m hurrying across the central courtyard.”
When she mentioned a central courtyard that did not exist, I finally understood for certain. We had entered through the same door, yet we were in entirely different spaces.
“I’m on the first floor too, but there’s no courtyard here.”
Fortunately, as one would expect of an experienced cultivator, Seop Myeong-gyeol adapted to reality quickly as well.
“Oh. So it’s not merely a formation that expands the inner space, but one that layers several different planes on top of one another. In that case, there’s no point going up as I am now; I still wouldn’t be able to meet you. I’ll turn back and come out again.”
“Understood. I’ll wait by the door.”
So I went outside first and waited for her. Before long, she emerged through the very same door I had just opened. As she’d said, she really had entered the pavilion just as I did.
So I said to her, “It seems this really is the Nine Palaces Tower we were looking for.”
“If a place has the power to lay out such an astonishing formation, then it has to be this one. The problem is that even if this is the real Nine Palaces Tower, we still have no way of seeing its true face. We don’t even know how many layers of space are stacked here.”
The small three-story pavilion appeared exactly as it had in the past, the way it looked when Jin Myeong and I had lived here. And then there was the vast space Seop Myeong-gyeol had seen upon entering. Which meant that neither of those two impressions was the tower’s true form; there had to be yet another truth hidden beneath them.
I had a rough idea of what she meant, but I had no idea how such a thing could be possible.
Expanding the interior space alone could be explained by something akin to a storage pouch, but for a building to present a different appearance to every person who stepped inside was something I had never even imagined before.
With a small sigh, I shook my head and then grabbed the one wooden arm of the puppet, continuing on.
“For now, let’s start by checking whether the dead man’s body still has a spiritual vein.”
Then I stepped back into the Nine Palaces Tower, and once again the small pavilion interior familiar to me welcomed me. Fortunately, perhaps because I was holding her hand and guiding her, Seop Myeong-gyeol also entered the same space without any trouble.
“This is a rather plain space. At the very least, I can now be certain this isn’t the true face of the Nine Palaces Tower.”
By now, I had grown accustomed to Seop Myeong-gyeol’s habit of starting with a blunt appraisal of everything around her. In the days since we had come to the tower, I had grown fairly close to her.
“I already know that. Say something I don’t know.”
But there was still one thing I hadn’t quite gotten used to.
“Really? Then aren’t you curious how to choose the right partner for dual cultivation?”
Although the Seop Myeong-gyeol I had seen within the realm of his mental imagery had been distinctly feminine, she kept bringing up dual cultivation every chance she got. But for all that she spoke so confidently about it, she didn’t actually know much; whenever I asked for details, she could never give a proper answer.
“Is there some special method for choosing a partner for dual cultivation? I thought it was enough to find a woman whose heart was in sync with mine.”
“Of course mutual understanding comes first. But you can’t just dual cultivate with anyone whose heart is in sync with yours, can you? The amount of spiritual energy gained from dual cultivation depends on your own cultivation realm, not your partner’s. If your own realm is high, you can gain a great deal even by dual cultivating with someone of a lower realm. But if your own realm is low, then even dual cultivating with a far stronger cultivator won’t yield much at all. That’s why the criterion for choosing a partner has to be something other than cultivation level.”
“And what would that be?”
“Well, that is to say… the balance between yin and yang has to be right, so… And besides, dual cultivation also depends on the mutual atmosphere between the two people. So how am I supposed to explain this…”
In truth, conversations I had with her about dual cultivation were usually like this. They always began grandly, only to end in her evasive mumbling and a trail of vague half-finished words.
With a shake of my head, I looked at Jin Myeong’s corpse and spoke.
“We just need to find where the spiritual vein is in this body.”
But even then, Seop Myeong-gyeol, who had been stumbling along in her explanation of dual cultivation, heard my words and blurted out something entirely off the mark.
“That’s right! You have to find where the spiritual vein feels especially good!”
I sighed and stared at her, and only then did she realize her mistake and clear her throat awkwardly.
“Ahem~ Let’s see now~ Does this fellow really have a spiritual vein? Ah, there it is! It really is here!”
Even if she was absurdly fixated on dual cultivation, her knowledge of spells and a few of her abilities were genuine, so she found the spiritual vein without much trouble.
Without the slightest hesitation, she thrust her one hand into Jin Myeong’s right thigh and pulled out a bluish bead from within.
“You, a spiritual-root cultivator with wood and earth roots, were greedy enough to take a water spiritual vein, so it’s only natural you couldn’t die a proper death. But this water spiritual vein seems to have been sucking up the dead man’s spiritual energy instead. This fellow must also have cultivated a technique meant for livestock.”
Indeed, it was strange enough that the spiritual vein had suddenly come out of his thigh, but the size of the bead was also very different from the wood spiritual vein I had obtained from the fox demon before. This water spiritual vein was at least half again as large as the wood spiritual vein I had gained previously. Naturally, that meant it contained even greater power.
At that point, the problem became how to harmonize the different attributes and sizes of the two spiritual veins, but for now, what mattered was that I had secured two spiritual veins.
“You said that if one takes two spiritual veins, one can walk the path of Heaven Dao Foundation Establishment with the power of the Golden Core realm, didn’t you? And with my Heavenly Spiritual Root, I can hold any attribute?”
The path to Earth-shaking power, the path of Foundation Establishment under the Heaven Dao, capable of rivaling Golden Core strength, lay before me.