Chapter Text
Xihuan Nuren was panicking. She was leaking the innate qi she painstakingly accumulated over the years like a sieve. Another two hours and she'd be back to being a mortal.
“Alright. Let's think about it calmly.” Zhuzhu spoke. “Is there a cure?”
“Uhh, the Xuantian Heart Refinement Sutra.” She said immediately. It was a largely useless mnemonic device that could be bought from any scripture shop for a single spirit stone. It wasn't even listed among their products, because anyone could ask a passerby for a copy, and five in ten passersby would give you one free of charge.
“Okay. Recite it to me please.” Her companion said. “I may be a carrier as well.”
“Right.” She did so, and began frantically circulating her remaining qi in an attempt to purge the disease.
A day passed before she noticed that her decline in cultivation finally stopped. She remained firmly at the zeroth stage of Qi Refinement. Or in other words, a mortal. Examining her condition, Xihuan Nuren sighed in dismay. Forget about reaching the Great Perfection of Qi Refinement. She had to survive the wilderness somehow, to reach Yaoti town alive.
“It looks like the disease has been purged from my body. Fellow daoist, what about you?” She finally asked, when she saw her companion quietly meditating by her side like she did so many times in the courtyard.
“I wouldn't know. Everything seems fine to me.” Zhuzhu confessed. “I will recite the sutra for one more day to be absolutely sure.”
That was a good idea. Xihuan Nuren could stomach two days of non-stop meditation if it meant never having to deal with the Immortal-Mortal Miasma again. From now on, if she found out that a grotto haven had mortals in it, she resolved to never delve into it.
Half a day later, Xihuan Nuren broke. She couldn't keep reciting the same sutra over and over again. It was unbearable!
Her eyes darted to Zhuzhu, bathed in golden buddhist light, still seated in a lotus pose. Her concentration was unshakable. It was something Xihuan Nuren admired greatly.
Then her thoughts drifted to the Realm Splitting Whale. Despite rivaling the strength of Beast Kings or Adepts, it was a usually docile creature. The only things it could not tolerate… were mortals.
They were raised this way by the upper sects. Many demonic path techniques allowed a mortal to rival the strength of cultivators. Then, there was the body refining path. It technically did not count as cultivation, as it didn't elevate one’s lifespan. Mortals using either the demonic path or body refinement paths could break through the first five layers of the Mortal Severing Array, and then pass the sixth layer using flying enchanted artifacts powered by spirit stones.
The Realm Splitting Whales were the last line of defense, the secret seventh layer of the array. Using their keen senses, they were trained to detect mortals. Even if a mortal could somehow fake being a cultivator, they could sniff them out. So what would that mean for daoist Zhiren?
Outwardly, she was a buddhist nun. But she knew nothing of the cultivation world. None of its customs, etiquette or common knowledge. But she was somehow familiar with the wooden token the king and queen of the Lian World held, given to them by a mysterious organization.
However, she saw with her own two eyes how Zhuzhu used immaculate spellcraft in her battle. No mortal could cast fifty qi bursts in such quick succession. In fact, no Qi Refinement cultivator could do that either. Then, there was her cultivation realm that Xihuan Nuren couldn't see through. And her confidence when she promised to find them an Initiate backer…
So was Zhuzhu a mortal, or was she an Initiate disguised as a Qi Refinement cultivator?
“Fellow Daoist…” She began, but her voice trailed off before she could ask the question eating away at her mind.
“Fellow Daoist. How many spirit roots do you have?” Zhuzhu’s question came out of nowhere.
“Uhh, three? Metal, water and fire.” She lied. She had a dual spirit root of metal and fire. But she couldn't tell her that. There was no such thing as a dual spirit root rogue cultivator.
“Uh hum. How many years did it take you to reach the eighth stage of Qi Refinement?”
“Six years. But I had access to a top tier spirit vein up until sixth stage. From then on, it took me four years to advance two stages.”
“Uh hum. So would you say that getting your cultivation realm back to its previous peak would take you… much longer than six years?” Zhuzhu hummed with a deep frown.
“It could take me anywhere from six to twelve years, yes. Then another twelve years to reach the Great Perfection of Qi Refinement. But if we succeed in selling off the Geng Metal, we could rent a top grade first tier spirit vein. Then… it could take me less than a decade to do so.” She mused.
“That is simply by getting a better spirit vein?” Xihuan Nuren nodded at that. “Then, if you also supplemented your cultivation with the best pills, and stayed in a top tier Qi Gathering Array, how long would it take you to reach the Great Perfection of Qi Refinement?”
“Heh. In a perfect world like that, I could reach the top of Qi Refinement in two years.” She sighed wistfully.
“Then, I think you can do it.” Zhuzhu smiled enthusiastically.
I felt guilty for letting Daoist Nuren contract the disease. Now that her cultivation plummeted from the eighth stage to nothing, she had no hopes of recovering it quickly.
I could help her out if I became just a bit more stronger. She had invested in me heavily, even letting me keep the two wisps of Formless Wind, and she was willing to split the earnings from selling Geng Metal with me evenly. I couldn't let her kindness remain unrepaid. And that meant that I needed to become stronger.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, I had a method. The Soul Refining Path was a cultivation technique recorded in the wooden token given to me at the buddhist temple by that shady man. I had used the same trick on it to peer into its contents using my bugs. But it seemed like it had too much information within it. Simply filtering out the contents I've already seen through a spider’s mind had melted the spider before it could reach halfway through the token.
But that was enough for now. The main cultivation method was recorded near the beginning, and later “pages” only contained techniques suited for the Soul Refining path.
One could cultivate soul energy in place of qi within their upper dantian. However, by using soul energy, one couldn't perform daoist spells. Thus, a Soul Refining Path cultivator needed spells of their own. Spells related to the Spiritual Sense.
I could make do without those for now. Soul Subjugation, a first tier Soul Art recorded at the very beginning of the wooden token, was enough for the current me. After all, to use Spiritual Sense, one needed to be at the Foundation Establishment realm first.
Soul Subjugation was easy enough. By circulating Baleful Yin Qi within one’s eyes in a specific pattern, a Soul Refiner could bewitch whoever looked them in the eyes. By applying more Baleful Yin Qi, one could even pull their victim’s soul out of their body, and trap them within the Soul Refiner’s Upper Dantian. There, the Baleful Yin Qi would slowly corrode the victim’s soul until only raw, unprocessed soul power remained.
Of course, a remnant of the victim’s memories and psyche would linger as well, and prevent the Soul Refiner from repeating the process too frequently. First, they needed to refine their current victim until no remnant psyche remained. In the process, the Soul Refiner’s psyche would experience a bleed-over from their victim, and with each victim, their mind would become more and more erratic and muddled. Unless, of course, their victim is a mindless two months old spider.
I tried the technique out using a single spider. Directing it to the tip of my finger, I made it look me in the eyes. At the same time, I sent a wisp of Baleful Yin Qi into my eyes. The spider froze, and this time, not because of my Powers. I sent more Baleful Yin Qi into my eyes, so much so that it escaped my pupils and latched onto the tiny body of my experimental victim. I watched the spider fall limp as its soul was torn off of its body and pulled into the space just above my nasal bridge. My Upper Dantian.
There, it was shredded by the Baledul Yin Qi. And in a matter of minutes, pure soul energy floated peacefully in my dantian. No stray thoughts ever crossed my mind, as the only memories this spider had were made by myself.
The only kink in the process was the moment I made it experience extreme hatred and bitterness toward me, so I could also gain a wisp of Baleful Yin Qi out of it. Waste not, want not, after all. And the odd sense of disconnect disappeared after a minute of meditation, so it was fine. It was fine.
“Are you alright, fellow daoist?” Xihuan Nuren’s voice brought me back to reality. I turned to her with a questioning gaze. “You were gnashing your teeth and breathing heavily. Are you sure you purged all the Immortal-Mortal Miasma from your body?”
“Err, yes. It's just a minor cultivation mishap.” I waved her off with a chuckle. We had set up camp in the forest when night fell. With daoist Nuren’s cultivation dissipating, and her having expended several drops of her heart blood, our return trip would take us twice as long as our hike from Yaoti town to the Howling Wind Grotto Haven. Mostly because now I had to carry us both on her sword, and thus expend twice as much qi.
“Be careful. Do not overdo it. Remember, we must have also gotten Fiend Wind in our bones. Beside its corrosive properties, it is most famous for shaking the cultivator’s psyche.” She warned sternly.
That was right. I should rein the Formless Wind in. In fact…
“Fellow daoist, would you let me examine your condition?” I asked her, taking a step closer. Getting an affirmative nod from her, I placed two fingers on her wrist and activated the two wisps of Formless Wind. They began revolving hungrily, and sure enough, tiny strands of Fiend Wind seeped out of Daoist Nuren’s body and entered my middle dantian. “You seem to be fine.” I said, letting go of her hand.
“Thank you.” She said faintly. A weight seemed to have been lifted off her shoulders. A tension she didn't know existed, had been dissolved.
I kept watch for the first half of the night, and Daoist Nuren kept watch for the second half. Such a sleep schedule was unsustainable in a day to day life. But here in the wilderness, we couldn't afford to both sleep at the same time.
We continued like that for almost a week before finally, Yaoti town was within sight!
“Fellow daoists, you're back!” Putong Ren greeted us. “Let us treat you to a feast at the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion while you tell us of your adventure! Come, come come!”
And he ushered us to the spirit dish restaurant before we could fit a word into the conversation. We both were far too tired to say no, and thus Old First, Old Second, Wang Ruogang and her husband Wang Yange shared a table of spirit dishes with us. They even thoughtfully ordered a serving of spirit fruits for me to nibble on. Although, I didn't have it in me to tell them that I still couldn't eat those.
Instead, I stealthily made my spiders siphon out the qi from within the fruits before I took a bite out of them. What remained was a stale puree within a wrinkly fruit skin. But alas. I had to keep up appearances, so I ate it anyway.
They would rue the day I get my hands on an Origin Returning Pill. I had looked up its price, and it was fated to remain unobtainable to me for a long, long time. Fifteen thousand spirit stones was its market price. However, nobody sold it at market price. Only on rare occasions would it be put up for an auction, and there, its final bid could reach fifty thousand spirit stones. Fifty thousand! Not only was it crazy expensive, but only late stage Initiates and higher could bid for it.
I could only bide my time and slowly cultivate my spiders. Now that I had a clear picture of where I stood in the world, I could slowly farm my octapedal babies until they reached Great Perfection of Qi Refinement, before sucking their souls out for my own personal growth.
A human cultivator reached the first stage of Qi Refinement at around three hundred qi units. That's what I inferred from Daoist Nuren’s claims and how long it took her to recover her qi, and now, observing all the cultivators in Yaoti town. With every stage, the qi within the cultivator doubled. That put Daoist Nuren with her fifty thousand qi units at the cusp of breaking through to the ninth stage of Qi Refinement.
My spiders, however, weren't human. To reach the peak of the first stage of Qi Refinement, a spider needed only a hundred and twenty qi units. That seemed to be the greatest bottleneck for my current generation. My thousand remaining spiders. It took them a full day to break through to the next stage, and they now sat at a hundred and twenty one qi units.
My new batch of Qi Sensitive spiders numbered five million. Courtesy of my three hundred li hike with Daoist Nuren. And every single one of them would undergo the baptism of non-stop cultivation.
At the same time, I myself also began practicing the Divine Breaker of Malevolence. I had Baleful Yin Qi as a substitute for qi to circulate the acupoint revealing method, and my spiders would expend their innate qi to perform micrometer perfect acupuncture on me.
The process was agonizing. So much so that my neighbors began asking me questions. Even Daoist Nuren now held a concerned expression most days. I had brushed them off, telling them that I'm practicing a very painful Buddhist Vajra Physique Refinement technique. They took it at face value and offered words of support.
By the end of one month, I had gone out a total of six times, bringing in five more million spiders. And out of the total ten million spiders, only two million and hundred thousand remained. But now, all of them were at the peak of their first stage.
Cultivating them simultaneously had put a major strain on the Qi Gathering formations of Yaoti town. Clearly, a town that used to only house a thousand or so cultivators couldn't handle ten million heads. But now that I had enough spiders to experiment, I began making them practice the Soul Refining Path.
One in a hundred spiders would learn the Soul Subjugation art, then use it on ninety nine other spiders to suck their souls in, then refine them thoroughly. The resulting Super Spider would then immediately break through to the second stage of Qi Refinement. But I couldn't afford to feed them the remaining nine hundred spiders for their breakthrough. That seemed like rushing it too much, and using low stage souls resulted in a pitifully mild power up.
That was too big of an expenditure for my current population. Instead, I set these spiders to breed. In two weeks’ time, a new generation of spiders would hatch, around thirty to fifty spiders per pair. And at the same time, my current twenty thousand spiders would reach the peak of second stage Qi Refinement, at a solid 360 qi units.
That's right. Their rate of qi absorption per their cultivation technique revolution had doubled! Clearly, the effect of Soul Refining was wondrous, and only its ethical hangups prevented everyone from doing this.
Meanwhile, we had sold off a jin of Geng Metal for five thousand spirit stones, and used the money to rent a top tier spirit residence for Daoist Nuren. Four thousand spirit stones for a year, twice the price of an entire mid-tier spirit courtyard. For the remaining spirit stones, I had asked daoist Nuren to lend them to me.
She vehemently refused, saying that I should simply take them. But I stood firm on my decision to return the lump sum after I earned it back. My plan? Alchemy.
Selling pills was the easiest method to earn money quickly. The only thing an aspiring alchemist lacked was money. Money that I now had plenty of. The next thing an alchemist needed was a formula. Now, many alchemical formulas were under lock and key. But if there was one thing I'm truly good at, it was information gathering.
A quick sweep of the town already gave me a clear idea of what formulas I can use, and what I absolutely can not.
The obvious choice for a pill to sell for a beginner alchemist would have been the Qi Condensation Pill. It was the most widely distributed pill, and a very popular one, suited for all physiques and spirit roots. However, its production rights were firmly under the Medicine King Sect’s purview. Any rogue cultivator attempting to replicate their formulas would be hunted down and killed.
Then there was the Jade Dew Pill, a pill sixty percent cheaper than the Qi Condensation Pill. It was uncontested by any major sect, thus nobody would bat an eye if large quantities of Jade Dew Pills flooded the market. But their side effects were massive. If a Jade Dew pill’s quality was anything but Supreme, repeated consumption of the pill could lead to a condition called Jade Body. One’s extremities would gradually petrify to gain a jade-like countenance, until their entire body turned to jade.
Then, there was the Blazing Mercury Pill. It was suitable for those who possessed fire and metal spirit roots, and was even slightly more effective than the Qi Condensation pills. But upon consuming a third Blazing Mercury Pill over one week, the cultivator would fall into a feverish state and their body would heat up uncontrollably for an entire day. Further consumption would lead to complications.
Then there was the Yin-Moon Pill. It was suitable for any spirit root combinations. Its only “downside” was that only women could consume it. And even then, if they consumed more than three Yin-Moon Pills within 48 hours, their meridians would grow sluggish from the cold.
Both Yin-Moon Pills and Blazing Mercury Pills were unregulated by the major sects. But the Blazing Mercury pill recipe belonged solely to a Foundation Establishment Family, the Zhao family.
They did not possess an Initiate within their family. But they used to. And that late Initiate had left them an heirloom Enchanted Treasure that they could use through bloodline spells. If I wanted to sell those pills, I was going to need to drive them out of Yaoti town.
That required a show of force a single cultivator simply could not achieve. But twenty thousand cultivators? Humm. Hum hum.
A hundred and fifty spirit stones went into purchasing my very first alchemy cauldron. The rest were spent on ingredients needed to concoct the Yin-Moon Pills.
Each batch of ingredients cost fifteen spirit stones, and a single batch of Yin-Moon Pills sold for sixty. That seemed to be a pretty damn good profit margin, but one had to account for the simple fact that only one in three batches of pills were successful. And that was the best case scenario. For beginners like me, even a single success out of a hundred batches would be a miracle.
But I had an unfair advantage of having observed several seasoned alchemists concocting pills every day for the past month. I knew when they made mistakes, and what led to them. So I fired the cauldron up using first tier spirit wood, and began concocting.
Yin-Moon Pills were best made at night, capturing the moon’s radiance into the cauldron to set the environment for its ingredients. Frost Lotus petals were the first and main ingredient, one that needed a special processing technique to pull out the maximum of its medicinal properties – qi milling. A sort of a variation to Traction where the alchemist used two opposing forces of qi to grind and mill the lotus petals. It was the cruder method of preprocessing, and eventually, I could attempt moonlit qi rinsing as a better alternative. But for that, one needed Spiritual Sense.
There were five ingredients required to concoct Yin-Moon Pills, and each of them needed to be prepared simultaneously. Usually, it was done by alchemy assistants, but I had a better solution to that. Spiders. They only needed to use traction, after all, and didn't require direct contact with the goods. Nobody would need to know that they were the ones who made the pills.
My first batch was obviously a dud. All I had at the end was a handful of ash. But my fourth attempt proved to be a success. And so it went, three failures, a single success. Three failures, a single success.
I ran out of my entire stock of ingredients within three days. Fifty six batches of ingredients resulted in fourteen bottles of pills. Not even enough to turn a profit. And now it was time to sell them.
Renting a stall was easy enough. Every morning, the Yaoti town would open its gates for rogue cultivators to shop at the marketplace until dusk. Every so often, people would set up stalls to sell off their goods. On this day, I had rented a stall for all my remaining spirit stones, and set down my fourteen bottles of pills.
At first, business did not go smoothly. Most cultivators that approached me were men. So even if some were willing to trust a street vendor for their cultivation needs, they couldn't really refine a women-only pill, could they?
It was only when I put down a plaque that read “women-exclusive cultivation pills” did the first customer arrive.
“Fellow Daoist Zhiren! What a surprise!” A familiar voice greeted me.
“Greetings, benefactress.” I bowed in greeting to Feichang Zhongyao, the formation maintenance crew member I first met a month ago. Since then, we have stayed in touch, meeting up at teashops every now and then. Not all of them were spirit teashops. I couldn't mooch off Daoist Nuren so much.
“What's this about women-exclusive cultivation pills?” She asked curiously.
“This is Yin-Moon Pills concocted by a senior who entrusted me to sell them off.” I lied. “They are as effective as Qi Condensation pills. However, it is not advised to consume more than two Yin-Moon pills within 48 hours. But they are forty percent cheaper than Qi Condensation pills, so it's a good tradeoff if you are short on money.”
“Truly?” That seemed to pique her interest. She pulled out sixty spirit stones and handed them to me. “I'll buy one bottle then. It's not like I consume more than three pills a week anyway.”
“Try it out and tell me how you feel about it. I will be back here in three days with a new batch.” I said, completing the transaction by giving her the bottle. That one purchase seemed to open the floodgates, and soon I was left with an empty stall.
Welp. It was time to buy more ingredients.
Two weeks passed like that. I had spent all my earnings on buying the ingredients, so to rent the stall again, I had to go out hunting.
Spirit beast hunting turned out to be a rather effective revenue stream as well. My overwhelming numbers had allowed me to ambush entire packs of first tier spirit wolves. By sneaking in spiders right into their mouths, I was able to dispatch them in moments using simple Qi Bursts. Then, I gathered their bodies using my increasingly sturdy physique and Traction.
Selling the bodies off was also easy. All I had to say was that I was running an errand for a rogue Initiate. The sheer amount of corpses I was carrying had convinced all but the most skeptical among people.
So it was no surprise that I earned enough spirit stones to concoct more batches of Yin-Moon Pills. And soon, I started breaking even. My one in four success rate turned into two in seven, then into a one in three success rate. For every forty five spirit stones I spent, I earned sixty back.
Meanwhile, Feichang Zhongyao and her sister had become my regulars. As it turns out, Yin-Moon Pills were almost as effective as Qi Condensation pills. And their side effect was negligible if you only consumed two pills a day. And besides, it wasn't like the Feichang sisters could afford to buy more than one bottle a week with their salaries.
Their constant patronage had brought the majority of the Formation Maintenance Crew to become my customers as well. As it turned out, most of them were women.
My business was going along greatly. Even my first generation of spiders had hatched, and I was preparing to subject them to Body Refinement from infancy to test if that could improve their cultivation speed in the future. All was going well before a group of cultivators blocked my way on my routine trip out of town. That was my cover up story to convince everyone monitoring me that I was indeed rendezvousing with someone out there.
“Our Deshan gang does not appreciate you encroaching on our pill sales.” One of the burly men said. Deshan gang. “Of the Mountain gang”? Truly, the most creative of names. “Now, we're going to be lenient since you're a nun. But if you don't stop selling Yin-Moon Pills, we'll be forced to be rough with you.”
“Benefactors are also selling those pills?” I asked innocently. They weren't really turning much of a profit off of them. Who would want to buy cultivation pills from a gang? And they had marked up the price to eighty spirit stones. That was basically daylight robbery! Heh, I guess that's why they call themselves a gang.
“Don't play dumb with me, pipsqueak!” One of the men growled. Uhh. I was taller than him, but alright. “Everybody knows the Deshan Shop here in Yaoti Market sells Yin-Moon Pills.”
“Amitabha. The senior I am running errands for was not aware. How about your gang leader schedules a meeting with her?” I asked them timidly. “Does a week from now, at her residence, sound good?”
The man at the lead huffed a plume of steam out of his nose and turned away from me.
“Fine! A week from now, our leader, Jiang Xinya, will find you. And you will lead him to your boss.” Were his parting words.
I bowed shallowly at their departure, my mind swirling with ideas on how to deal with them when the day X comes.