Soul Refining Cauldron
But he behaved as though he were determined to prove my guess wrong.
“Take this. This was the magic vessel my master passed down to me when I first attained a dharma soul.”
A murky black cauldron, engraved with characters and patterns I couldn’t make sense of at a glance, was what he meant to give me.
It was plainly no ordinary object.
Yet what interested me more than the mysterious cauldron before me was the way he had produced it a moment ago.
For from the small silk pouch hanging at his waist, he had drawn out a cauldron several times larger than the pouch itself.
Perhaps sensing my gaze, my master went on.
“You’ve never seen a spatial pouch before, have you? Every one of these pouches has a different interior size; some are so useful that they can hold an entire castle. Unfortunately, mine isn’t a very fine one, so it can only fit about a cart’s worth of things. If I ever obtain a better one later, I’ll pass this pouch down to you then. But the Soul Refining Cauldron I’m giving you now is also a very useful magic vessel, no less valuable than a spatial pouch. Strictly speaking, an inferior object compared to a magic treasure is called a magic vessel, but a cauldron is something you only need to be good at refining elixirs. Besides, this Soul Refining Cauldron increases the effects of any spiritual pill placed within it when infused with your dharma soul, so it’s especially suited to someone like you who has already reached the realm of a dharma soul.”
After hearing his explanation, I had to admit that the cauldron before me was indeed something remarkable.
It was an object that could enhance the effects of already-made elixirs.
If something like that appeared in the martial world I knew, there would surely have been a bloodbath over it.
Suppressing my disappointment, I quickly replied, “To give me such a precious treasure! Thank you, Master.”
Perhaps because of the treasure he had just given me, my rigid demeanor had already softened somewhat.
He could hardly have failed to notice the change in me.
With a pleased smile, he said, “It’s only what a master should do. Come to think of it, I still haven’t assigned you a place to stay, have I? Come with me upstairs.”
Then he strode off at once, and for an instant it seemed as though an opening might have appeared in him.
But that opening vanished almost before it could exist.
Even with his back fully exposed to me, I, still lacking the necessary cultivation, couldn’t find the slightest chance to ambush him.
So I suppressed my disappointment and followed him slowly.
Soon, the second floor came into view, as plain and modest as the first.
“From now on, you’ll live here. The jar over there contains the fasting pills you’ll be eating. This Nine Palaces Tower has been strengthened by a formation, so it’s fine for you to cultivate freely here. But there is one thing you must never do: don’t go up to the third floor. There are spiritual medicines I’m refining there, and even the slightest disturbance in the flow will weaken their effects.”
My master’s words about the third floor were suspicious beyond measure, but for the moment I had no intention of going up there anyway. What I wanted was to get out of here, not meddle with his refining elixirs.
So I answered in a sincere voice, “I understand, Master.”
He stroked his handsome beard once with a satisfied look and nodded.
Then he went up to the third floor, saying he needed to focus on the refinement, and at last I was left entirely to my own devices.
Taking advantage of the moment, I wandered around the second floor as though inspecting it, then drifted over to the window set in the wall.
I tried to open it carefully and search for a route of escape, but by then the outside of the Nine Palaces Tower had already been swallowed by a thick white mist, making it impossible to see a hand in front of my face. It seemed I would have a hard time leaving this place today.
In the end, I postponed my escape until tomorrow and sat down in a lotus position in a suitable spot.
I still hadn’t properly examined what exactly this dharma soul I had formed really was.
Unlike when I had tried before atop the Spirit Heart Panhe Formation, this time even simply observing my inner self was difficult.
I had repeatedly turned inward in the past to comprehend the ultimate truth of martial arts, but the process of plunging into myself and confronting the dharma soul directly was unfamiliar.
Still, I had already experienced it once, so after some time spent sinking inward again, I began to see the body made of light.
Then, the moment I thought I was approaching that mass of light, a tremendous force of repulsion surged forth and drove my consciousness back.
It rejected me as though to say I was not yet ready.
Of course, I knew full well that I was still only at the level of having just entered the path of cultivation.
But since a dharma soul was, quite literally, no different from my own soul, I felt stubborn at being pushed away by it.
So I entered contemplation again, and the moment I pushed toward the dharma soul more forcefully than before, it shoved me back with even greater force. It wasn’t merely stronger; the repulsion was several times greater than before.
Thanks to that, my consciousness wasn’t simply pushed away from the dharma soul—it was hurled clear out of my inner world altogether.
“Cough!”
The shock was even worse than I’d expected.
No sooner had I opened my eyes than I vomited up a mouthful of blood. I had suffered internal injuries I hadn’t seen coming. It was the price of arrogance—trying to force my head into a realm I hadn’t even touched yet.
Wiping the blood from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand, I managed a bitter smile just as I happened to notice the Soul Refining Cauldron I’d set nearby before entering contemplation glowing faintly.
It wasn’t a night pearl or anything of the sort, yet it was shining on its own, which struck me as strange. I picked it up, and inside the faint light of the Soul Refining Cauldron I discovered a little of the blood I’d spat out moments earlier.
Apparently the reason the cauldron was glowing was the blood inside it.
Why would a cauldron for refining elixirs react to my blood?
Was there some secret hidden within the Soul Refining Cauldron that I didn’t know about?
Or… was my blood itself some kind of miraculous medicine potent enough to stir this wondrous cauldron?
When I brought to mind the two things I remembered most clearly—the master who had tried to take me as a disciple without even asking, and the greedy look in his eyes the moment I formed my dharma soul—the answer became quite obvious.
That man calling himself my master was definitely after me.
And then, at that very moment, I sensed the master descending from the third floor.
I immediately kicked the bloodstained Soul Refining Cauldron under the wooden bed.
Thud.
As the cauldron struck something under the bed and toppled over, my master appeared. He looked at me with a peculiar expression and asked, “Could it be that you tried to cultivate on your own, before I’d even taught you a cultivation method?”
“I was only curious about the dharma soul I formed earlier, so I tried to examine it more closely. But even approaching it caused a tremendous shock.”
I had no intention of feeding him clumsy lies and arousing suspicion for no reason.
Only when he was completely off guard would my path to survival open up.
Fortunately, he seemed to see that I wasn’t lying. His expression relaxed, and he continued, “If a child who can barely walk tries to run, of course they’ll fall. Uniting with a dharma soul is something that can only be achieved in the latter stages of Qi Refining, so don’t be in such a hurry. I’ll give you the cultivation method you’ll be learning from now on right here, right now. I had planned to give it to you tomorrow, but since you seem eager to train, I’m giving it to you early.”
Then he took something out of his spatial pouch and handed it to me.
It was a jade slip, and at a glance it was clearly no ordinary object.
“This Chaos Heaven Secret Law is a cultivation method whose meaning is to mix the murky heavens and earth and give rise to precious truth. Among the cultivation methods you can learn in Qi Refining, there probably isn’t one that can raise your realm faster than this. Of course, that also means it will become harder to advance in Foundation Establishment later.”
It was much like the explanation of the inner force art I had learned, the Yin Moon Vibration Classic.
The Yin Moon Vibration Classic was likewise one of the most exceptional arts among the many divine cult techniques when it came to gathering internal energy, but unfortunately, its limits were fixed quite clearly.
And yet I had still been using it to build my inner power at an accelerated pace because I possessed another divine art capable of refining that power afterward.
Of course, once this Chaos Heaven Secret Law showed its limits, I would simply learn another cultivation method to compensate. At any rate, what mattered now was not some future rise in status as a cultivator, but escaping his grasp as quickly as possible.
“Thank you, Master!”
I didn’t forget to offer my gratitude, along with a sharp, grateful gaze meant to make him lower his guard again, and he smiled with obvious satisfaction as he waved a hand.
Then a yellow talisman fluttered up from his robes like a butterfly and burst apart in midair with a soft pop.
While I was raising my guard at this meaningless phenomenon, a faint fragrance began to spread, like the scent of pine.
“I healed your injured body with a Green Wood Talisman, so if you can’t sleep, practice until you’re tired. I won’t be coming down for the next few days because I have important matters to attend to, so in the meantime don’t push yourself too hard and get hurt like you did today.”
Had that talisman just shattered in the air and healed my body?
As he had said, I no longer felt the unpleasant ache of injury.
Truth be told, I found myself thinking that if nothing else, I absolutely wanted to learn talisman arts that could heal injuries in an instant.
Of course, my master had no way of knowing such complicated thoughts, and simply turned away.
But after taking only two steps forward, he suddenly stopped.
Without looking back, he spoke again.
“By the way, disciple, where is the Soul Refining Cauldron I gave you earlier?”
It was a rather troublesome question.
If I took it out now, he would discover the blood still smeared on it.
But I was no novice wandering the rivers and lakes; I answered with complete composure.
“I don’t have a spatial pouch like yours, Master, so I hid the precious Soul Refining Cauldron under my bed.”
At that, he gave a soft laugh and walked on, saying, “This Nine Palaces Tower isn’t a place just anyone can enter and leave. So don’t worry and take it out if you like.”
It seemed the unnatural mist shrouding the outside of the Nine Palaces Tower was also part of the secret power possessed by cultivators. If so, escaping this place would be even harder than I had expected.
While I was wearing a grave expression, my master went back up to the third floor.
With the crisis passed safely, I once again had the place to myself.
Left alone with my thoughts, I considered several possibilities, and then my gaze fell on the jade slip before me. Since the power surrounding this place was clearly that of cultivators, it seemed possible that if I raised my own cultivation, some new path might reveal itself.
So, having settled on that direction, I opened the jade slip—and what appeared before me was nothing more than a bluish shard of jade. Unlike martial manuals or bamboo slips containing techniques, the jade slip had nothing written on it at all.
Could that master really have been trying to mock me?
Or was there truly some other way to use it?
With a faint hope, I began trying to channel internal energy into the jade slip.
But the jade slip merely accepted a small amount of my energy and showed no other reaction whatsoever.
What secret could possibly be hidden in this jade slip that made my master assume I would naturally be able to read it?
No matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t believe he had given me an empty jade slip just to toy with me, so I tried holding it near a candle, then even smeared a little blood from my fingertip onto its surface.
Yet still, the jade slip did not change.
As I grew increasingly frustrated, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
Why had my master given me this jade slip only after I formed a dharma soul?
Since a dharma soul was the foundation of a cultivator’s realm in Qi Refining, perhaps this jade slip was also connected to the dharma soul.
A true master of martial arts was never simply someone who skillfully unleashed the techniques he had learned.
Only those who kept questioning themselves and searching for answers could truly rise as grand experts of the martial world to realms beyond Fluency.
Because of that, this sort of process was very familiar to me.
I hadn’t failed merely because I was ignorant and tried to touch the dharma soul.
It was only by accumulating experience through failure like this that one could move forward.
In the end, I once more slowly plunged into my inner self.
And faced the dharma soul that existed within me.
Then I felt a thread of spiritual energy connected above the dharma soul’s head, just as I normally received the energy of heaven and earth through my upper dantian.
That was enough to confirm it. I was certain that the jade slip in my possession responded not to inner energy, but to that spiritual energy.
So I focused on the flow of that spiritual energy and slowly began to withdraw from my inner world. While drawing my consciousness back from its deepest depths, I set out to find where that thread of energy was connected within my body.
And finally, the moment I opened my eyes again, I could see clearly where that energy resided in my body.
Upper dantian!
That was where spiritual energy dwelled—the place opened by the fragments of energy that had emerged from the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill—and that energy from back then was spiritual energy.
The instant that small realization pierced through my body, I could at last feel both the spiritual energy within me and the spiritual energy in this place, which had seemed as though even the air itself had grown heavy, with perfect clarity.
Of course, the spiritual energy within my body could move according to my will, and—