There are two spiritual roots in this body.
What is going on? Does Yongyu have some hidden setting? No. He’s just a small fry who appears briefly in the beginning and is never mentioned again after that, isn’t he?
After thinking for a moment, I was able to identify the two spiritual roots inside me.
One was the spiritual root Yongyu possessed.
The other was the spiritual root of my previous life—in other words, the spiritual root Kang Yeongjun possessed.
‘I had a spiritual root?’
I was surprised to learn that Kang Yeongjun’s body had possessed a spiritual root, and even more surprised that the root had followed my soul and moved into this possessed body.
Startled, I examined the spiritual root and sensed five kinds of energy within it. Fire, water, wood, metal, and earth—the five elements.
‘It’s a five-element spiritual root.’
I was a little disappointed.
No, wait. I hadn’t even been living in a xianxia world, so isn’t it amazing that I had a spiritual root at all?
For now, I decided to call these two roots the Yong Spiritual Root and the Kang Spiritual Root. Yongyu’s spiritual root and Kang Yeongjun’s spiritual root.
Compared to the Kang Spiritual Root, which was a five-element root—in other words, a mixed spiritual root—the Yong Spiritual Root, containing only the three energies of fire, water, and wood, felt quite pure and high-quality.
‘Honestly, I was worried about putting aside the basic cultivation method I’ve been steadily practicing and learning this Five Aggregates Bright Engraving Art in a rush… But if things are like this, should I leave the Yong Spiritual Root as it is with the Deep Roots Flourishing Branches Art, and cultivate the Five Aggregates Bright Engraving Art with the Kang Spiritual Root?’
The Deep Roots Flourishing Branches Art was the Gocheon Sect’s basic cultivation method.
As its name implied, “when the roots are deep, the branches flourish.” It had the function of removing the five elemental energies from spiritual energy and gathering pure, attribute-less spiritual energy.
By accumulating pure spiritual energy through the Deep Roots Flourishing Branches Art, then later learning a cultivation method suited to oneself, one could convert all the pure spiritual energy one had accumulated into the spiritual energy of the newly learned method in one stroke, rapidly increasing one’s cultivation.
It was a method that allowed one to put down deep roots of pure spiritual energy, so that any branch could bloom as desired.
‘Even the protagonist makes pretty good use of it until the later parts.’
The spiritual energy gathered through the Deep Roots Flourishing Branches Art couldn’t be converted into merit power or karmic power, but instead, he used that spiritual energy to hide his merit power and karmic power from others.
‘Good.’
After briefly moving the spiritual energy in the Yong Spiritual Root over to the Kang Spiritual Root, I nodded in satisfaction.
It seemed I could convert all the spiritual energy I had gathered—roughly at the third layer of Qi Refining—into the spiritual energy of the Five Aggregates Bright Engraving Art.
Normally, once spiritual energy was converted like this, the new cultivation method would take root, making it impossible to use the Deep Roots Flourishing Branches Art anymore… But with these two spiritual roots, I could learn the Five Aggregates Bright Engraving Art while still leaving the Deep Roots Flourishing Branches Art intact.
Later on, wouldn’t it be possible to learn one cultivation method per spiritual root and use two methods together?
‘Well… If I don’t want to get into needless trouble with cultivators in the mortal world, it’d be better to build up some strength.’
With that thought, I began cultivating according to the Five Aggregates Bright Engraving Art while simultaneously moving the spiritual energy of the Yong Spiritual Root into the Kang Spiritual Root.
During the transfer, the attribute-less spiritual energy was rapidly converted into the spiritual energy of the Five Aggregates Bright Engraving Art.
Originally, spiritual energy accumulated through a Buddhist cultivation method should contain an auspicious power that repelled evil, so it took a long time to gather and was not very efficient.
‘Looks like more than half the spiritual energy I’m moving is being wasted. More is being lost than I expected. Is it because the Kang Spiritual Root has poor aptitude?’
Still, if I kept gathering spiritual energy through the Deep Roots Flourishing Branches Art and transferred it to the Five Aggregates Bright Engraving Art, I should be able to gather spiritual energy much faster than if I cultivated the Five Aggregates Bright Engraving Art alone.
And so, over the course of a week, I moved all the spiritual energy from the Yong Spiritual Root to the Kang Spiritual Root.
“……Phew.”
I had concentrated so intensely that a week passed in the blink of an eye.
‘An entire week went by… but it feels like only an hour passed. Is this the sense of a cultivator?’
Realizing anew that I had transcended ordinary humanity, I checked my body here and there, then tried to get something to eat.
“……There’s nothing to eat?”
There were spirit grains and spirit herbs growing in the field, but those were for brewing alcohol… Surely there isn’t nothing here but alcohol?
With a sigh, I left the cave abode to buy food for my training period.
As I went out, I wondered if there was any way to speed up my cultivation a bit more.
‘It’s not like that bastard Yongyu never thought of other methods.’
Cultivators didn’t train solely on the basis of aptitude. They obtained fortuitous encounters, and sometimes relied on external objects.
Representative examples were pills that rapidly increased one’s cultivation just by eating them, and formations that concentrated the spiritual energy spread throughout the surroundings into one place to create an ideal cultivation site.
The various skills of making pills and installing formations were called arts, and since there were a hundred arts cultivators could learn, they were collectively called the Hundred Arts of Cultivation.
Among them, the four most representative arts were alchemy, artifact refinement, talisman crafting, and formation arrangement.
Alchemy, which created pills.
Artifact refinement, which created magical artifacts.
Talisman crafting, which created talismans.
Formation arrangement, which installed formations.
Unfortunately, these Hundred Arts of Cultivation also could not be learned without aptitude suited to them.
And Yongyu had little aptitude for the four great arts. He had at least gotten through the basics of alchemy, but even then, he was only a half-baked amateur who couldn’t make a single proper pill.
Instead, he had aptitude in spirit farming and spirit wine.
Spirit farming was the technique of creating fields atop spirit veins where spiritual energy flowed. In these special fields, one could grow special grains full of spiritual energy and medicinal herbs with special powers, called spirit grains and spirit herbs.
Yongyu used the spirit grains and spirit herbs grown through spirit farming to make spirit wine, then offered it to the sect in place of doing missions, allowing him to focus solely on cultivation without needing to carry out sect duties.
‘Spirit wine… does have effects similar to pills.’
When one drank spirit wine, the spiritual energy entered the body and deepened one’s cultivation. However, its effects were weaker than pills.
A single pill could produce an effect equivalent to cultivating for several years at the shortest, and several decades at the longest. Spirit wine, on the other hand, only produced the effect of a few hours at the shortest, or a few days at the longest.
Instead… since pills had such strong effects, they burdened the body and accumulated something called pill poison, and one could not take another pill before resolving it. Spirit wine had no such issue, so its advantage was that one could keep drinking it endlessly.
But the human stomach had limits. If you tried to replace pills by guzzling spirit wine, your stomach would burst and you’d die.
Minor advantages like that were meaningless before the benefits of pills.
Still, it seemed Yongyu couldn’t give up, and had trained while drinking so much spirit wine that the smell of alcohol had seeped into his body.
‘I’ll have to do the same.’
I wasn’t a cultivator, nor was I good at fighting. If someone like me wanted to protect my arm against the protagonist, the best method was to blindly accumulate as much spiritual energy as possible.
‘When the protagonist fought Yongyu, he had accumulated karmic power at the fourth layer of Qi Refining. Considering karmic power is stronger than ordinary spiritual energy, I need to be at least around the fifth layer of Qi Refining.’
Yongyu had taken twenty years to rise by two layers, and now I had to rise by two layers in ten months using an inefficient Buddhist cultivation method? Was this a joke?
‘Damn it. I still have to do it.’
I found the market run by the sect, bought a month’s worth of food, then looked for books related to brewing techniques.
The only alcohol I knew how to make was cocktails, mixing already-made liquor this way and that. If I wanted to make better spirit wine and increase its cultivation effect, I had to study.
After returning to the cave abode, I filled my stomach and immediately opened a book to read.
In my entire life, the only books I had ever read were textbooks, so I never imagined I’d one day seek out books and read them on my own like this.
It seemed people really did change according to their environment.
‘Looks like Yongyu only learned how to make alcohol quickly and in large quantities. Since high-quality spirit wine takes a long time to make and age, was he planning to solve it with quantity?’
Among spirit wine brewing methods, there were recipes that assumed a hundred years of aging as a matter of course, and some that required a thousand or even ten thousand years of aging.
It was certainly too unreasonable a method for a Qi Refining cultivator with a lifespan of only a hundred and fifty years to choose.
‘Oh, there’s a method like cocktails too. If you mix long-aged wine with freshly made wine, the efficacy of the freshly made wine rises a little?’
I immediately examined Yongyu’s alcohol, and realized the oldest among them had been aged for ten years. It seemed Yongyu had intended to age this for a hundred years, but I would gratefully make use of it.
‘If I mix this with the best spirit wine I can make, increase the volume, and drink it, I should be able to maximize the cultivation effect.’
After that, I spent half of each day cultivating the Deep Roots Flourishing Branches Art and the Five Aggregates Bright Engraving Art, and the remaining half studying brewing techniques, tending the fields, and brewing spirit wine.
As for sleep, I dealt with it by taking brief naps during the spare moments between tending the fields and making spirit wine.
And I drank more alcohol than I ate food, trying to receive even the slightest medicinal effect from the spirit wine.
At the same time, I obtained decent spirit wood and made oak barrels, then tried aging alcohol inside them. I also put various spirit fruits and spirit herbs into soju to make infused liquor.
I drank the spirit wine I made as it was, obtained various ingredients besides alcohol to recreate and drink different cocktails, and just in case, I carefully ate every last fruit and herb I had used as infusion ingredients.
Whether it was because I had more talent for spirit wine than expected, the alcohol I made was easy to drink and had a high absorption rate, so its medicinal effects took well. Thanks to that, I was able to make and drink more alcohol than I had thought.
Whether my efforts had borne fruit, or Yongyu’s long years of diligent cultivation had borne fruit, on the day nine months had passed since I was reincarnated into this world, I saw the wall of the fourth layer of Qi Refining.
‘There’s one month left.’
One month remained.
The fifth layer of Qi Refining I had wanted was nowhere in sight… But still, let’s try. The fourth layer of Qi Refining. Let’s go!
* * *
Munyu blocked the other holes of the rabbit burrow, then threw a pile of burning poisonous herbs into the only remaining exit.
Then he quickly collapsed even the last remaining exit, blocking it so the rabbits inside could not come out, and waited for the smoke from the poisonous herbs to spread and poison the rabbits to death.
From inside came the sound of rabbits thrashing, the sound of their piercing screams, but he squeezed his eyes shut and ignored them.
Each time a rabbit died, sin accumulated in Munyu’s soul, and that sin was transformed by the function of the Two Origins Formula he had learned into a power called karmic power, which seeped into his spiritual root.
Munyu, who originally possessed a five-element spiritual root, had trained his own root into a mutated spiritual root while cultivating the Two Origins Formula over the past nine months.
A completely new spiritual root capable of accumulating merit power and karmic power instead of the five elemental spiritual energies of heaven and earth.
As a result, his spiritual root transformed into a mutated spiritual root on the level of a single spiritual root, and Munyu’s aptitude also rose. Munyu decided to call this mutated root the Divided Spiritual Root.
Having succeeded in killing every rabbit in the enormous burrow, Munyu immediately sat down and began cultivating.
As the sins he had accumulated whirled and were sucked into his spiritual root, transforming into power, Munyu smiled in satisfaction at the sensation.
‘It said there would be side effects if I accumulate too much karmic power… but I don’t have time. One month left. Just one more month of accumulating karmic power… After I smash Yongyu apart, I’ll accumulate merit power.’
Resolving himself so, Munyu continued to build up karmic power.
Before he knew it, his realm had surpassed the third layer of Qi Refining where Yongyu remained, and was reaching the end of the fourth layer.