10. Anyway, the Point Is Pajeok Gate Is Gonna Move
The next morning arrived.
Walking out into the field, Cho-young confirmed that the boundary ward was operating without a hitch. She had inscribed warding talismans and buried them at the four corners of the plot. Given that she had reproduced the exact barrier techniques used by her Heavenly Spiritual Root avatar back in the game Biseungdo—perfecting the brushwork through several rounds of trial and error—no cultivator below Qi Condensation Layer 3 would be able to breach it. It was that well-crafted.
Her proficiency in talismans was only natural. Having immersed herself in the game for years, she was a seasoned veteran who had mastered every single mechanic outside of player killing.
Today’s agenda was planting the Pain-Relieving Grass. She would eventually need it to concoct Black Moon Pills, and having a reserve on hand would prove invaluable should anyone suffer an injury. Retrieving the stalks from her spatial storage pouch, Cho-young stepped into the protected plot and started her broadcast.
Prepared to spend the morning cheerfully rambling to an empty void as usual, she adjusted the drone cam. Then the counter flickered.
The viewer count exploded in the blink of an eye, and the chat box began tearing down the screen at breakneck speed.
Cho-young stood completely flustered before the deluge of comments inquiring about alchemy and herbs. It seemed the promotional shoutout she had entrusted to Hye-yeon had been an overwhelming success.
“A-Ah, hello everyone.”
“Um, last time I planted Black Moon Ginseng, so today I was thinking of planting some Pain-Relieving Grass.”
“I-If I don’t turn the camera, you won’t be able to see me planting the herbs, right?”
“Uh, everyone, please stop talking about my chest….”
“……From now on, anyone talking about my chest gets banned.”
“A-Ah, fine. Then I’ll only ban blatant obscenities.”
“Let’s plant the Pain-Relieving Grass now,” Cho-young said, shifting the topic back to the soil. “Unlike Black Moon Ginseng, you can plant this one straight into ordinary ground.”
“Whoever said auntie gets banned.”
“Right, let’s get down to planting. Let me explain the key precautions to keep in mind.”
“You dig a shallow trench like this, set the Pain-Relieving Grass into the furrow, and then….”
“And then you simply pour over water infused with spiritual qi, and you’re all finished.”
By the time Cho-young had planted her second stalk of Pain-Relieving Grass, the viewer count had already climbed past 780. For a nascent channel with practically no broadcast history, it was an astronomical figure.
“Ah, GhostCatchingShaman? You all came over from her channel! Hello and welcome.”
“Ah, as for a collab, I’ll speak with GhostCatchingShaman first and figure things out.”
“…Banned.”
“Thank you so much for the one hundred Low-grade Chrome Stones, Amgwihyeoltu! Yes, of course I’d love to sell them to you. But I don’t currently have any pills in stock.”
“Um… First, the Black Moon Ginseng needs time to grow. In roughly half a month?”
“Hmm. I think one Mid-grade Chrome Stone should be sufficient.”
“No, let’s stick to one for now,” Cho-young explained gently, shaking her head. “Black Moon Pills have tiers, you see. If I only combine Black Moon Ginseng and Pain-Relieving Grass, it will produce a Low-grade Black Moon Pill at best.”
“From now on, anyone calling me a ‘pill dispenser’ is getting banned,” Cho-young warned, a grim shadow passing over her face. “I have… very bad memories associated with that phrase.”
After bedding down the rest of the Pain-Relieving Grass, Cho-young made sure to pour qi-infused water over the Black Moon Ginseng as well. She transitioned into a brief Just Chatting segment to shoot the breeze with the viewers before cleanly concluding the broadcast.
Streamer GhostCatchingShaman, Shin Hye-yeon, had fulfilled her promise to promote Cho-young and subsequently shut down her stream early after a short chat session. There were multiple reasons: she hadn’t gone out on an abandoned building exploration that day, and Cho-young had gone live around the same hour, siphoning off almost her entire audience. But above all, Hye-yeon had concluded the stream early to buy herself the quiet time needed for the spirit pill to fully dissolve within her core.
That’s it. By now, it should be absorbed quite thoroughly.
Circulating one’s qi immediately after swallowing an elixir was far less effective than waiting for the medicine to settle. If the miraculous essence was to infuse every fiber of the flesh, it first had to be completely digested.
Hye-yeon sat down on the floor of her apartment and crossed her legs into the lotus posture. Her four fingers from index to pinky pressed firmly together, resting below her navel, while her thumbs curved inward to form an unbroken circle.
“Inhale… exhale—”
A deep, measured breath drew the ambient energy inward. Then, as she exhaled heavily to purge the accumulated turbid qi clogging her meridians, a quiet resonance answered.
Wuuuung—
Luminous azure spiritual qi began to seep from Hye-yeon’s skin, radiating into the quiet room. Her long dark hair defied gravity, floating gently into the air. Emptying her mind of every stray thought, she focused entirely on the rhythmic expansion and contraction of her lower abdomen with each breath. In this solitary expanse of time, nothing existed except her physical vessel and the pulsing spiritual energy inside her dantian.
Unity of Qi and Body. The flesh is the energy; the energy is the flesh.
Like the unceasing cycle of nature, the current flowed from the highest peaks down to the deepest valleys, then surged from the depths back toward the heights. Blocked meridians were battered open; cleared pathways roared like cascading waterfalls; convoluted channels were gently navigated and untangled.
A single, flawless heavenly circuit.
“…….”
How much time had slipped by? When Hye-yeon finally fluttered her eyelashes open, the sun had long since dipped below the horizon, and the crimson glow of holographic neon signs filtered through the windowpane.
“Phew!”
Only now did the stiffness in her back, waist, and hips register. She groaned, stretching her limbs out with a satisfying pop.
“Urrrgh!!”
Then, she paused, glancing around the living room floor where she had been seated.
“Ugh, the smell.”
Having consumed a spirit pill and completed a full heavenly circuit, her body had forcibly expelled the dense impurities clinging to her marrow. It was only natural that a foul stench hung in the air.
“Since it was my first time, I sat in the living room… Next time, I’m definitely doing this in the bathroom.”
Frowning at the impending chore of scrubbing the floor, Hye-yeon braced her hands on the floor and rose.
“Wait…?”
Something was different. Completely different from before. Standing up required no effort whatsoever—her body felt weightless. Lowering her gaze, Hye-yeon stared at her hands. The faint, fluttering spiritual qi that once trembled inconsistently over her palms was now blazing with unmistakable clarity.
“I broke through…….”
Shin Hye-yeon had spent months stranded as a Qi Condensation Layer 4 Peak cultivator. Throughout that time, she had captured wandering spirits through her haunted house exploration streams to build her spiritual qi, yet her realm had shown no hint of advancing. It had felt like an insurmountable wall. Every time she circulated her inner arts, she managed to expel some turbid qi, yet an invisible barrier continued to block her ascent.
Now, everything had changed. Pure, immaculate, unblemished spiritual qi tore through her body like a majestic river. She had leapt straight over the wall that had seemed impossible to breach!
Hye-yeon reached into the empty air, brushing her fingers against the gossamer threads of ambient energy. Within those thin strands, countless pure currents flowed in clear, harmonious trajectories. The flow of spiritual energy—where before she could only vaguely sense its presence or absence, she had now developed the spiritual sight to perceive its exact pathways.
Foundation Establishment Layer 1!
Coupled with her newfound spiritual vision, a profound and mighty reservoir of power churned within her dantian. This was without question Foundation Establishment Layer 1—the stage where one establishes the bedrock and begins stacking true spiritual foundation. With a bedrock this pristine, there was no telling how much qi she could amass going forward.
Click!
The Tri-Spiritual Root chip slotted into her cybernetic dantian socket had not short-circuited or fried. That meant she wouldn’t have to pay a fortune to replace that exorbitantly expensive spiritual hardware!
“CHEON CHO-YOOUUUUNG!!!”
Shedding every shred of the dignity expected of a Foundation Establishment cultivator, Hye-yeon wailed Cho-young’s name into the ceiling like a complete, unhinged dork.
Word on the street is that if anyone touches Cheon Cho-young, Pajeok Gate will hunt them down and slaughter them, no matter who they are.