The Fake Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill
Human beings die when their bodies are shattered.
It followed, then, that a wooden puppet would also stop moving once its body was broken.
So what would happen to Seop Myeong-gyeol if the slate housing her soul inside that wooden puppet were to break?
Until now, I had assumed that if the slate broke, the soul trapped within it would simply be broken as well. Even Seop Myeong-gyeol, whose knowledge of cultivation far surpassed mine, had spoken only moments earlier as though she were about to meet her death.
But when I saw her true body suddenly trying to withdraw from a fight she had already all but won, I had no choice but to consider another possibility.
That the breaking of a soul-bound slate did not necessarily mean the soul within it would be destroyed as well.
So I shouted once more toward Seop Myeong-gyeol’s true body.
“If you still want to talk to me about dual cultivation later, then come properly as a guest! I won’t forget the Lotus Milk Ball I promised you!”
For a moment, her true body seemed to glare at me, then she abruptly turned her head and simply left.
If the soul division she had grown close to me had not influenced her, such a thing would have been unthinkable.
As I had suspected, the soul division that had inhabited the wooden puppet had returned to the original body and was now affecting it.
Thanks to that, I had managed to defeat a formidable enemy in a way I had never expected, but the true face of a Nascent Soul cultivator—one who had far exceeded all my predictions—left me feeling strangely hollow.
I had realized just how many strong experts in this world could still seize my fate and toy with it as they pleased.
In the end, all I could do now was grow stronger still.
Of course, as Seop Myeong-gyeol’s true body had said, the Heavenly Demon Heaven-Shattering Sword I had mastered truly was a weapon of such power that even a Nascent Soul cultivator would be shaken by it.
The problem was that I had never even had the chance to unleash such an attack against her true body. I had not been able to get near her in the first place.
That left me with much to think about. As a martial artist who had relied solely on becoming stronger by himself, I could clearly feel the limits of that path when facing high-level cultivators who used astonishingly unconventional methods.
Alchemy, artifact refinement, formations, body refinement, puppetry…
I would have to begin building up each and every branch of cultivation I had neglected until now, one by one.
Besides, strictly speaking, I possessed only the spiritual energy of the Golden Core level; I did not even have a proper cultivation method to amplify it.
The Hongyeon Beomhon Gyeong I had learned was, after all, merely a Qi Refining cultivation manual for Qi Refining cultivators.
But if I returned to Hyeondo Sect right away in order to learn yet another branch of cultivation, I would be leaving my elder brother and sister-in-law behind at the Cheon family estate, and that worried me.
Even if I taught my elder brother martial arts, a few years would only barely be enough for him to contend with a peak martial artist from Yeontaemun.
With a small sigh, I glanced around at the withered trees that had dried to brittleness all around me, and saw spiritual herbs glowing faintly between them.
They were the ones that had survived after being bathed in the immense spiritual energy spilling from the rift I had created.
Individually, they were nothing that deserved to be called more than ordinary spiritual herbs, yet for me now, after deciding to learn more cultivation arts, every such resource was precious.
So I immediately began gathering the spiritual herbs around me without missing a single one. Once I had collected every herb in sight, I also carefully gathered up the remains of the wooden puppet that had held Seop Myeong-gyeol’s soul division, keeping them as though they were memories of her.
As a result, one jeolmudae was full again, but fortunately I had another spare. Not the one belonging to the rogue cultivator Jin Myeong that I usually used, but the one taken from the Qi Refining cultivator he had killed.
While absentmindedly touching it, I noticed embroidery I had always passed over without much interest. The luxurious gold-thread stitching looked as though it depicted a dragon, but on closer inspection it was not a picture at all, but a single character formed in the shape of a picture.
Heaven.
The dragon’s head and horns formed one stroke, and beneath them the dragon’s body, legs, and the clouds wrapped around it completed the complex embroidery.
Considering that the place Jin Myeong had visited when he killed the Qi Refining cultivator who had owned this jeolmudae was a shop in Yeongju City called Cheonmulhoe, it was not difficult to infer that the owner of this bag had been a cultivator from the Cheon family.
The great Cheon family, whose wealth far exceeded that of even a mere Qi Refining cultivator, and even surpassed that of Sansu, who had been struggling to challenge the construction of the spiritual foundation.
In fact, when I first sensed Seop Myeong-gyeol’s true body approaching, I had assumed that her body was a cultivator sent by the Cheon family.
I thought there could be no other reason a Nascent Soul cultivator would suddenly appear and bare such killing intent in this direction.
But looking back now, the idea that a Nascent Soul cultivator would intervene in something as trivial as Yeontaemun had been far too great a leap. Seop Myeong-gyeol’s true body had come in the first place to retrieve her soul division.
Still, even if the Cheon family had not sent that Nascent Soul cultivator, there was no doubt they were still irritating, being the force backing Yeontaemun.
I tightened my grip on the jeolmudae embroidered with the character for Heaven.
And at that very moment, something inside the bag surged out.
Thud!
I had experienced this before, but a jeolmudae was more imperfect than one might think. Once one thing came out, anything else could spill out as well.
So I watched carefully, prepared for what might follow, but fortunately nothing else burst out after it.
Relieving myself with a small breath, I picked up the familiar object that had fallen from the bag.
Yeonhondanro.
The item Jin Myeong had given me—the bizarre vessel that infused pills with a law-soul to increase their potency.
It had originally been given to my second brother, but after he suddenly entered seclusion, it had been left alone in the Eastern Hall, so I had taken it back into my care.
Among the items inside the Qi Refining cultivator’s bag, this Yeonhondanro was the largest, so it made sense that it was the first thing to come spilling out as soon as the bag developed a problem.
After roughly understanding the situation, I was about to nonchalantly stuff it back into the bag when the same sensation I had felt while searching for the hidden characters on the bag earlier returned to me.
The carving on the Yeonhondanro felt strangely off.
So I examined it more closely, not just with my eyes but by running my fingers over the carved surface, and finally guessed its true nature.
Nine Palaces Tower!
Without a doubt, the antique-looking carving on one side was a beautified depiction of the exterior of the Nine Palaces Tower. If that was the case, then what about the pattern engraved on the other side…?
Bancheonhyeonbyeok
Yulsuneundo
Myojeongsilhaeng
Junggyeongseonjeok
The top and bottom horizontal lines were raised more prominently than the rest when touched directly.
In addition, the leftmost and rightmost vertical lines were emphasized as well.
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These characters were depicting a particular place. And the two characters in the center of the image were perfectly suited to that purpose as well. Hidden Chamber—that was what they meant.
Then I had to interpret the meaning of the entire inscription.
“The principles of heaven that lead to Bancheon are hidden within the Black Wall; only those who cross beyond that wall will find the path of the Immortal and comprehend the hidden Dao. Those who follow the precepts of law and cultivation shall walk in stillness and reach the chamber by crossing beyond the boundary. There lies a place where heavy and wondrous principles are concealed, and where the path of the Dao remains with the traces left by an Immortal.”
At first glance, it looked like a saying about the method by which an Immortal might ascend to a higher realm, or perhaps a line related to the Dao.
But once I added what I already knew, the meaning changed completely. It looked like the key to entering the real, hidden Nine Palaces Tower.
Why on earth had Jin Myeong given me something like this?
At that moment, I remembered what he had said when he handed it to me.
“This is a magical implement my master passed down to me when I first formed my law-soul.”
Thanks to that, I understood. Jin Myeong’s master might have known this was the key to the real Nine Palaces Tower, but Jin Myeong himself did not. He was the sort of fool who coveted the treasures in another man’s hands while failing to recognize the gold clutched in his own.
Shaking my head at the thought of that pitiful Jin Myeong, I suddenly remembered another secret connected to Yeonhondanro.
Namely, that when my blood had by chance fallen onto the Yeonhondanro, it had reacted as though it were a medicinal pill. And not just any pill, but one of a very high grade.
Then perhaps… if there was a way to rapidly raise my elder brother’s inner energy—my elder brother, who was training his martial arts with desperate diligence under my guidance but still could not yet bring his internal force up as high as he wanted, just as I once had not been able to do…
Perhaps this was it.
He happened to have obtained a great deal of convincing-looking spiritual herbs, and I had also acquired a decent pill-refinement formula, so the source of the medicinal pill itself could be overlooked.
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“It may taste a little fishy, but bear with it and swallow. I made it as soon as I found the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill formula your sister-in-law gave me, so it’s still crude. I had to gather substitute ingredients with similar effects too, so the taste couldn’t be helped.”
Even after seeing the dark crimson pill I held out, thick with the smell of blood, my elder brother did not so much as furrow his brow. Instead, tears of gratitude filled his eyes as he spoke.
“When I think of the trouble you must have gone through to make this, that much is nothing. To me, this single Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill is worth twice as much as the one I gave you before.”
In truth, it had been the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill I had taken as I pleased without anyone’s permission, but it seemed my elder brother had already decided in his heart that he had given it to me.
“Talking more won’t make the pill any more effective, so hurry up and swallow it.”
Using a tone far more familiar than before, like the kind of conversation I often had with Seop Myeong-gyeol’s soul division, I spoke to my elder brother, and he smiled brightly back at me.
“All right. Since it’s something you went through so much trouble to get, I should get stronger quickly too.”
Then he swallowed the dark crimson pill into his mouth, and the blood-heavy stench that had lingered only a moment ago transformed into a refreshing fragrance that spread outward.
It seemed the spiritual energy contained within the pill could not remain within my elder brother’s body, since he lacked spiritual roots, and so it dispersed at once.
But as though I were unable to control the spiritual energy around me, the red mist-like energy that poured from my elder brother’s nose also failed to properly mingle with the surrounding spiritual energy.
Instead, it slowly drifted toward me.
Even I had not anticipated this situation, so I watched the flow of mistlike energy for a moment before cautiously trying to guide it.
Then, as though drawing upon the spiritual energy already within my body, the mist responded to my will with effortless naturalness.
Come to think of it, this was indeed spiritual energy that had belonged to my body in the first place. The vacancy in me had already been filled naturally, but this was an unexpected result born from helping my elder brother’s cultivation rise.
Just as I was controlling the red mistlike energy and drawing it together into one place, my elder brother, seated in lotus position, suddenly began to rise slowly into the air. It was the floating-apart samadhi phenomenon that often occurred when martial artists achieved a breakthrough in their realm.