Late Qi Refinement, Great Perfection
“To think I’d follow a fellow with no fixed end in sight… I’m pathetic too, aren’t I?”
The faint smile tugging at the corners of her lips as her words trailed off made me feel unexpectedly pleased.
So I, too, let a small smile touch my mouth as I continued, “Once I reach the late stage of Qi Refining, there’s somewhere I’d like to go with you, Martial Aunt.”
Even with just Seop Myeong-gyeol and me, we had not been able to unravel all the secrets hidden within the Nine Palaces Tower.
But if it was my senior martial aunt, a wandering saesu who had seen much of the world and gathered a wealth of experience, then perhaps she might find the first clue needed to unlock its mysteries.
Yet the destination she named was entirely different from what I had expected.
“You want to go to your home? Well, of course. You’ve only just become a cultivator, so you probably can’t let go of worldly ties so easily.”
Home… In truth, I had missed the Wang family estate, but I had not yet resolved to return there.
And yet, the moment I heard her say it, I suddenly wanted to go. I wanted to see my stubborn father, who was surely still lingering at first-rate martial rank, and my eldest brother, who would be holding the estate together just as steadfastly as always.
I wanted to see every last person and thing I had left behind there, too—the servant Wang Wi who had always stayed by my side, and even the snacks he used to bring me.
Besides, if I thought about it carefully, it was possible that no one in the Wang family even knew I had become a cultivator of this Hyeondo Sect.
No—more than possible, it was certain. I had not left home after announcing that I would become a cultivator in the first place, and I had never once sent word since.
When I considered the people at Wang family estate who might still be worrying over my safety, it seemed right to stop by at least once.
“Will you go?”
“If that’s what you want…. Didn’t I already promise you? I said I’d grant any request of yours. If your request is that we go together to Peach Blossom Grotto and then to your home, then of course I should do so.”
It was an amusing thing to hear. Hunting demon beasts together in Peach Blossom Grotto and going together to my home were plainly two entirely different matters, yet she spoke as though they were one and the same request.
In the end, I smiled a little more deeply at the words that held all her feeling within them, and murmured softly, just as she had on horseback, “I have indeed received the heart of the wandering moon….”
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“Grrrrrr….”
The howl of a demon wolf with rough gray fur.
But I was not looking at the wolf itself. I was looking past it, at the pack’s leader, who stood behind it with an arrogant expression and was staring this way.
“I already knew you’d been circling this area for several days.”
As if answering my words, the beast bared its teeth.
“Grrr….”
Of course, its threat would not work on me. Even if it were a great demon beast with the power of Core Formation that towered over me.
“Martial Aunt! This time I’ll handle all of them myself!”
I shouted to the senior martial aunt, who was hiding her presence and waiting for the beasts to approach on their own, then rushed forward. As though they had been waiting for my move, the demon wolves also hurled themselves at me.
In truth, since they bore the name of demon beasts, they were beings of an entirely different order from ordinary animals, so the attacks of those lesser beasts were by no means trivial.
The gray wolf that lunged at me first seemed to be of the wood attribute; its body shifted like an old tree covered in moss as it snapped straight for my throat.
I answered by pouring fire-attributed spiritual energy, forged through the Hongryeon Beomhong Gyeong, into my sword and striking its body with the flat of the blade. I did not use any grand martial art, nor did I simply cut it down with the edge—I struck its torso with the sword face, plain and simple.
CRACK!
With a heavy impact, the beast was sent flying after being slammed by dense fire attribute energy, but then another wolf demon, blue with the faint aura of water attribute qi winding over its fur, bared its teeth at me.
It could not compare to the coordinated formation assaults used by martial artists, but in its own way, it too had a systematic method of hunting through rotating attacks.
Of course, I was not someone who would be overwhelmed by mere beasts working together.
Swish.
With a light step of Bulyeong Bibeop, my body naturally shifted to the beast’s flank, and once again my sword swung out to strike its torso.
Thud!
The sound of the impact was different, perhaps because its attribute was different, but the result was the same: the creature that had been hit by my sword was sent tumbling away.
“Kyeh-kyeh! Keeing… keeing….”
Seeing the beast groaning and bleeding from the nose as though injured internally, the pack’s leader finally stepped forward.
“Awooooo….”
With a long howl, flames engulfed its entire body. The beast burned as if born from fire itself, and the heat radiating from it was strong enough that I could feel it even from this distance.
It really was a great demon beast.
But the reason I had only knocked the wolves down instead of killing them until now was to make sure that beast did not flee in fear. Even if it possessed the power of Core Formation, it was still nothing more than prey to me.
Swish… wooong….
I set my stance and let a resonant sword cry ring out, but the beast charged at me without the slightest hesitation. No—it shot forward. Like an arrow loosed from a bow drawn to full tension, the wolf-shaped mass of fire flew through the air and came at me.
I thrust my sword, still singing with sword cry, straight into that blazing mass.
Fwoooosh!!
The second form of the Eighteen Plum Blossom Sword Art created a hidden force. Struck by that concentrated attack, the wolf-shaped fireball suffered a far greater wound around the area than where the sword had pierced through.
The flames around the point of impact burst apart as if they had collided with a violent storm, then scattered helplessly.
But when that fireball was swept away, what reappeared was only another wolf-shaped blaze, not the great wolf demon’s true body. The beast had simply hurled the flames it had layered over itself, like a cultivator releasing fire pellets.
Then the real body was…?
Whoosh!
At the slicing sound of the wind, my sword drew petals through the void.
Eighteen Plum Blossom Sword Art, Third Form! Flower petals dancing in the wind become illusion.
The wolf, still charging despite seeing the sword energy shaped like red petals blooming delicately in the air, finally met those petals head-on.
Flick! Flick flick!!
Whether it could not feel the blood lines carving themselves across its body, or whether it knew and still forced itself onward, the beast became drenched in blood in an instant and snapped its jaws at me.
CRUNCH!!
The beast’s white teeth—each longer than my index finger—clashed together with a savage sound, but by then my body had already shifted with footwork to its flank.
It was the same response I had used against the wolf demons that had attacked me before. The only difference this time was that I attacked the body with the edge of my sword instead of its flat side.
Slash slash slash!
I had split the beast’s body with a sword filled to the brim with spiritual energy, yet although its flesh parted, the bones beneath—harder than steel—still endured my attack in the end. Because of that, my plan to cut the beast cleanly in half failed.
It seemed that every great demon beast had a trump card of its own, and this one’s trump card was that sturdy skeleton.
But even those hard bones had merely helped the beast cling to life; they had not prevented it from suffering grievous injury. Already, sickly yellow innards were spilling out from the split flesh.
Just as I prepared another attack to finish off its breathing, the beast also sprang away.
It had become a scarlet fireball and was running through the air to escape. Demon beasts always valued their own lives above all else, and if a situation turned even a little unfavorable, they did not hesitate to flee.
That was why I had not killed the first two beasts….
Of course, a wounded beast could not run forever, so I immediately tried to give chase.
But at that very moment, the wood-attributed wolf I had knocked down earlier apparently recovered enough strength to charge me again.
Not only had its body become as hard as dead wood, it also seemed to possess the regenerative property unique to the wood attribute.
In the end, instead of chasing the fleeing beast, I swung my sword once more at the one lunging toward me.
Crack!!
Its neck was severed in a single stroke, but even as it fell the beast bared its teeth as if it meant to bite me. In the end, all those jaws could snap at was a handful of dirt on the ground.
That did not mean its attack had been meaningless, however. Because it had delayed me even slightly, the great wolf demon acting as their leader had opened up a fair distance.
As I exhaled a small sigh, already anticipating what would follow, a huge green wind blade suddenly appeared before the fleeing beast’s head and pierced straight through it all the way to its tail.
Even if it was a great demon beast, once its body was cut in half, there was no surviving. Its body split apart and rolled across the dirt.
“You did say you’d handle it yourself, but if I hadn’t stepped in, that one would have gotten away.”
At my senior martial aunt’s words as she approached the bisected great wolf demon, I shook my head at once and replied, “Did you not consider that I might be faster than it?”
She refused to back down either. “Isn’t this just a hunt for gathering training materials? So long as we obtain the beast cores, what does it matter who kills them?”
It seemed my senior martial aunt was still uneasy about me, a Qi Refining cultivator, taking on a great demon beast of Core Formation level. After all, although I had faced great demon beasts more than once, it was always she who stepped in to finish things.
“Today’s the last day I’m gathering training materials. That’s why I wanted to see for myself what kind of change I’d reached.”
When I finished speaking, I thrust my sword into the nape of the water-attributed wolf still clinging to life. The beast trembled violently, then slowly went still.
“Even if you’ve hunted demon beasts day after day and taken their beast cores, your progress is still astonishingly fast. You’ve gone from the middle stage of Qi Refining to great perfection in the late stage of Qi Refining in just one year.”
My senior martial aunt dodged my complaint by casually changing the subject, and I answered with a bitter smile.
“It was all thanks to you, Martial Aunt. I obtained several beast cores from great demon beasts said to rival Core Formation cultivators, so it was only natural that my progress would be swift.”
In any case, it was true that she had helped me gather training materials. For a full year, no less.
Of course, in that year there had been no dramatic change—no deepening of my feelings for her to the point that I would carve her into my dao companion or anything of the sort—but it was still true that we had spent a long time together and grown considerably closer.
At the same time, it was also true that her feelings toward me had not changed….
“Now that your promised great perfection in the late stage of Qi Refining has finally arrived, it’s time to keep our next promise and visit your home. Even if our bond wasn’t one arranged by your family, they won’t look down on it.”
Considering the custom in this world, where marriages were normally arranged by the family, she seemed to want to stand before mine as my dao companion, or perhaps my life partner.
That was obviously different from my own thoughts, which had not yet shifted so greatly. So this time I changed the subject instead.
“I haven’t even truly reached great perfection in the late stage of Qi Refining yet. I should take the beast cores from here and raise my cultivation first.”
Then, after collecting the wolves’ beast cores, I tried to put even their carcasses into my storage pouch—only for the pouch, which had previously held so many things without complaint, to suddenly spit one wolf’s corpse back out. It seemed there was no room left, given how many beast carcasses I had stored inside already.
The problem was that once the storage pouch spat out that wolf corpse, it seemed to develop a mind of its own and began ejecting the other corpses as well.
Thud! Thud!
First came the corpse of the insect demon beast, its entire body mangled by Senior Martial Aunt’s wind blade strike, and then the severed corpse of the bamboo demon beast I had encountered most often in this Peach Blossom Grotto also started tumbling out. The seriousness of the problem was becoming clear.
If this kept up, everything inside the storage pouch would spill out—and among those items were two spirit beads containing attribute power.
Spirit beads of attribute power that opened the path to Earth Dao Foundation Establishment and Heaven Dao Foundation Establishment, transcending the existing realm.
No matter how much she had grown close to me, would Senior Martial Aunt really be able to hold back a cultivator’s inherent greed when those priceless treasures lay right before her eyes?