After a few minutes of silence, the Mingshui Province Featherwood Guard branch finally sprung back to life.
âWhere is the branch master going?â
âI donât know, but it looks like something big happened!â
âI canât figure it out, but⊠heâs really awesome!â
âNo shit, if you can get to Foundation Establishment some day, you can be awesome, too!â
An hour later, the Windflame Wheels descended in Beijingâs Seat of Government at the side of a court-styled building. The chariot quietly landed at the Forbidden Cityâs side, however, the surrounding people seemed as if they couldnât see this place at all. A stretch of land no less than several thousand square meters appeared like it had disappeared from this world. Regardless of the symbolic iron fencing, the sword-and-shield crest in the center, the endless greenery at the rear which carried neatly cultivated and seemingly leveled white thickets of chrysanthemums, or majestic western court building, no mortal turned an eye towards this place.
âTo compress the Earth into an inchâŠâ Thousandedge inhaled heavily. Glancing deeply at the scenery with a fiery and admiring gaze, he pulled on his coat and quickened in step towards the interior section. [1]
âWhy?! Itâs clearly his doing! Are you guys betraying his innocence now?!â
On the endless white stone pavement, there were four men with the appearances of youths citing phrases like âMuddle-headed official!â, âWhere is the natural of order things?!â, âItâs still my law of the land!â, and other lines with over a dozen suited cultivators, their eyes reddened as they argued.
Although the youth had a human appearance, his face already had hair growing out, and some emerging wisps of black qi , unknown to whether it was due to his excessive rancor. His loud voice resonated through the region.
âIt was a middle-stage Qi Condensation human! Come on over to my cityâs law enforcement; we Song Clan of the demons have stayed there for over thirty years! Weâve always observed and followed the law! We pay taxes on time! He relied on his high cultivation to rob our ancestral treasure and run! Does the Cultivation Court not care?!â
âWe told the city, but we didnât get a response! We told the province, but we didnât get a response! Now that weâve come to the highest court, you guys still wonât let us in! Is there no law of land?! You canât even explain the law!â
âRight now, if youâre still saying the greatest fist is king, Iâll fucking turn around and leave! Iâll go back and unleash a massacre! Fuck! If you guys arenât going to be reasonable, donât blame us for being unreasonable, too!â
A flock of chickensâŠ
Thousandedgeâs gaze indifferently brushed past, his footsteps not ceasing as he advanced forwards. Perhaps because the aura on his person was too powerful, when he was still a few tens of meters away from them, all of them agreed by chance to stop quarreling. With uncertain expressions, they calmly stood at the side and lowered their heads, not uttering a single word.
âGreetings, senior!â As Thousandedge passed through, everyone collectively softened their voices and bowed to the ground. In an instant, the previously clamoring pathway had become silent. All that remained was the sound of Thousandedgeâs leather shoes as he treaded past neither slowly nor swiftly. He didnât even spare them a glance.
âSenior, do you have business to attend to?â A few suited cultivators made meaningful glances, and one of them immediately gently followed up. His voice was low, yet he asked with incomparable respect. Even as he questioned, he was behind Thousandedge, his body involuntarily bent low, as well.
âPosthaste, take me to the interim imperial residence to see Daomaster Skybearerâs avatar. I have to report an important matter.â Thousandedge didnât relent in his footsteps and said heavily.
âYour ExcellencyâŠâ The cultivatorâs face behind revealed a difficult expression: âSir Presidentâs avatar⊠isnât in courtâŠâ
Thousandedge suddenly turned his head to look at the other, and the cultivator skipped in fright, falling back a few good paces. The cultivator then said cautiously: âIf needed, this humble one can make an appointment for Your Excellency⊠however, Iâm afraid the soonest will be three months from nowâŠâ
âI will wait. Iâll wait here!â Thousandedgeâs face was chilly, and he said coldly: âPrepare me a cultivation room. Meanwhile, go make an appointment at once!â
âYes.â
And so, two and a half months slowly past by. Regarding all of this, Xu Yangyi was simply none the wiser. The current him was enthralled in cultivating the Eternal Alchemy Canon. An incessantly fluctuating semi-gelatinous object bobbed up and down in the cauldron before him. A ribbon of qi drew a Pentascent Seed by the side, yet he didnât cast it in.
For over half a month, he had been focused on this final practice. Although he ultimately didnât succeed, he knew that his distance from completion was growing closer and closer even now. In front of himself, he placed a white sheet of paper and a fountain pen. As to when he was going to put in ingredients, he didnât know. Like so⊠he would stack up minute upon minute!
After he completed the final round, he scratched out ten minutes, sixty seconds in a minute. Altogether, it required accomplishing six hundred experimentations, so he could prove that the second for ingredient placement opportunity laid within the following ten minutes. Xu Yangyi had attempted going past ten minutes. A semi-gelatinous substance mixed with three kinds of heavenly treasures would blacken, but ultimately turn into a coke-like object. Moreover, it lacked the sliver of a spiritual force vibration. This demonstrated that the time for throwing in the Pentascent Seed was within these ten minutes.
Already on the surface of his paper, there were over a hundred written corrections. A dayâs time was finite, and he could at most refine ten-odd times in a single day. Presently, he had already done over five hundred attempts. It seemed to have become his daily routine.
Five hundred eighty-three⊠Five hundred eighty-fourâŠ
In his heart, Xu Yangyi softly counted and suddenly opened his eyes: âNow.â Over the course of this month of targeted training, his mind had long since been empty of sorrow and devoid of joy. His hand waved lightly, and the final heavenly treasure suddenly flew out, instantly merging into the insides of the cauldron.
CrackleâŠ
In the wake of a familiar sound, the Pentascent Seed swiftly morphed into a black liquid. He inhaled deeply, looking at everything in the cauldron with rapt attention. In the past, it had exploded each time here, however⊠this timeâhis gaze rapidly shrunk backâthis time, the black liquid didnât disperse like it had previously. Instead, it appeared to gain life all of a sudden. It closely meshed together with the gelatin formed from the Violet Yang Flower, Imperial Heaven Wood, and Cinnabar Fruit!
Xu Yangyiâs gaze trembled, looking in disbelief at the change that had suddenly occurred before his eyes.
Success?!
It was the five hundred eighty-four attempt! His gaze quickly twinkled. This figure sparked without warning at the bottom of his heart! It was by all right expected that success would come about so suddenly. As the same things became habit, it brought insensitivity. Nonetheless, such numbness wasnât to say that he wasnât excited at all. On the contrary, it was an apathy in failure, an accustomization to defeat. Xu Yangyi had already deeply suppressed the thirst for success at the bottom of his heart.
At this instant, it was like he had returned to the time when he had just entered the cultivation room several months prior. The emotion of longing for success was akin to a spring time seedling. Without the slightest omen, it had suddenly sprouted up at his heartâs bottom!
Such a feeling had come so abruptly, fiercely, and unreasonably. Xu Yangyi could even hear the beating sound of his heart at the side of his ear. It was a month of endless and consecutive defeats, re-engagements in battle despite dogged setbacks. At this moment, he hadnât even realized that he had surprisingly begun to stand.
Boom!
The instant he started to get up, the inside of his mind was illuminated by lightning. The world seemed to be wiped away down to the midnight second. In this second, in this world, only he existed. Unexpectedly, all the qi in his qi sea came to a complete boil, as if it had suffered some pulling! Even his spiritual sense was immobilized!
Lacking a shred of discomfort, Xu Yangyi hesitated for three seconds and fiercely gritted his teeth: âInnersight!â
Swoosh!
His internal viscera became a brightly lit expanse. To his shock, he discovered the surging qi fundamentally wouldnât accept control. Instead⊠it was beginning to construct something within his body!
An immeasurable amount of qi weaved and twisted together, climbing as it followed his meridians, similar to a fast-forwarded movie of a treeâs growth. As for the inside of his body, some kind of mysterious pattern had been astonishingly outlined based on his meridians. Less than a minute later, his qi sea had been drawn empty. At this time, his eyes immediately flashed.
âThis is!â Hidden beneath the surface of the qi, there was something⊠moving? Xu Yangyi was simply granted no time to react. In the next second, all of his bodyâs qi awesomely weaved out a final pattern. Prompt, he suddenly felt a violently bubbling qi swelling his body beneath his skin!
Xu Yangyiâs gaze twinkled, yet he wasnât panicked by any measure or pace. This was because such swelling didnât cause him to feel pain, suffering, or the explosion of his mortal coil. Instead⊠it was a kind of strange and comfortable sensation. Within his body, all the qi charged in his meridians, some of them which he had never utilized and those which he had. The energy built a device⊠A pill furnace as big as a human body!
BoomâŠ
Even now, inside his vacuous qi sea which was barren of a single entity, a speck of red light quietly shimmered, seemingly the dawn that ruptured the black night. In this twinkling, the âpill furnaceâ within Xu Yangyiâs body appeared to obey an order. Finally, it began to slowly, but surely, operate in silence. His body hadnât cycled any magik art, yet it started to automatically absorb qi with a supremely slow speed!
âPill elixir fireâŠâ Xu Yangyiâs gaze faintly flickered. In his heart, expectation, excitement, and nervousness, simultaneously churned forth. Concerning the Eternal Alchemy Canonâs effect, even if the past him had made adequate preparation, this present situation was still entirely against his anticipations! He understood that the body was to be used as a cauldron, and the heavens and earth severed as the furnace, yet he absolutely hadnât expected a pill furnace would be built inside his person!
More importantly, he was able to clearly sense⊠the qi inside his body, in the instant the pill elixir fire ignited, quaked violently all of a sudden! It was comparable to experiencing some hammering and smelting! It was like⊠there existed a fire in his body that was burning away the impurities in his spiritual force!
âRefine the essense to transform the qi. A hundred suns to establish the foundation. Cultivate the immortal pill. Refine the qi to transform the spirit. Refine the spirit to beget the void. Refine the void to be one with the Dao⊠Qi Condensation is the period of refining the essence to transform the qi. Afterwards, itâs the achievement of Foundation Establishment in a hundred days. Well, thatâs what I once heard Heavens Law say. Before a hundred days to establish the foundation, qi must be purifiedâŠâ [2]
Qi was related to a divine abilityâs strength. The purer the qi, the greater the executed divine abilityâs might. Foundation Establishment cultivators completely purified their own qi, merely it nothing more than a consideration of the amount purified. If 50% of oneâs qi was purified, one held the qualifications to assail Foundation Establishment. In the same vein, this was the reason Foundation Establishment cultivators were weak or strong within the same stage and even greater than those of the Qi Condensation realm.
As for now⊠Xu Yangyi still hadnât attained the base line of the late stage of Qi Condensation for purifying qi. Nonetheless, the Eternal Alchemy Canon was already purifying his spiritual force for him unprompted!
âIf I achieve the late stage one day, then Iâll have to understand the relevant knowledge for Foundation Establishment.â He mumbled to himself and pondered, his gaze complex as he looked at his hand. Afterwards, he tightly clenched it: âNo, not if⊠I will.â
The palace hall of initially treading into the Eternal Alchemy Canon, the purification of qi, was merely a minor matter.
âMy qi sea has shiftedâŠâ He sucked in deeply, looking towards his qi sea. In a split second, three kinds of emotions: expectation, nervousness, and excitement, pervaded the air. His expectation stemmed from being the last pill master in the End of Days. His excitement found origin in the almighty secret art passed down for several millenniums. His nervousness⊠came from the path he was to walk and anyone who disagreed!
He had never heard of such a situation. In his qi sea, there was no longer qi. On the contrary, it autonomously cycled through his meridians within his body. For this human-body pill furnace, pill elixir fire seemed to offer an unlimited energy source. In other words...
A cultivator regarded the qi sea as life, even if it had been broken. But to him, it was essentially insignificant! Apart from pulverizing his entire body, his cultivation was invulnerable.
Spoiler Title
Chapter 117: Qi Sea Displacement
[1] âTo compress the Earth into an inchâ. So this is really one meaning, but there are to ways to say it. I chose to go with the more literal way, since from what I read, this term is used in science fiction as well. This term refers to the establishment of an âalternate spaceâ / âother dimensionâ.
[2] So most of these lines here âRefine the essence to transform the qiâ are from actual Daoist thought. All of it is pretty self explanatory, but I want to share one thing from my research, and that is the line âCultivate the immortal pillâ. I had originally translated this as âNurture the sacred pillâ. So whatâs so interesting about this? In the original script, the word âpillâ is the word âbodyâ, or meant to be interpreted as such. The interesting here is that the author uses the word âpillâ instead. One thing about the word for pill in chinese is context related as well. Since these are all âancientâ sayings, I couldâve translated pill as perhaps âcauldronâ or âalchemyâ. However, if youâve been paying attention, the Eternal Alchemy Canon is to use oneâs own body to refine pills. To practice alchemy is to cultivate. So in a sense, itâs kinda of a play on understanding. Refining the pill is to refine the body. In addition, âA hundred suns to construct the foundationâ. You may remember early on in the novel it is mentioned that it took ancient cultivators a 100 days to reach Foundation Establishment. Itâs just a saying, not something Xu Yangyi has to do. On average, it takes modern cultivators 70 years to achieve Foundation Establishment.
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