Once Hui Dan agreed, Yise took out a private soul-binding contract.

Protect the children. Do not harm or mistreat them. When Giwon reaches fourteen, recommend him and secure his admission to the West Lake Guild.

He included no gruesome penalties such as death for breaching the agreement, lest she lose her nerve and back out. Even without those, a private soul-binding contract carried a degree of compulsion for Cultivators.

Even a verbal promise between Cultivators held force. For an orthodox Cultivator, each spoken promise became a line engraved upon the soul; breaking it inevitably cracked the Cultivator’s Dao heart.

Still, just in case, Yise added one more safeguard.

“I’ll come back to check in five or ten years.”

“... Yes.”

“Now, shall we get down to business?”

Yise moved straight to his next request.

“I need information on sightings of first-rank demonic beasts or tenth-star demonic practitioners, ways to obtain a Foundation Establishment Pill, and precautions for taking one.”

“A Foundation Establishment Pill? No amount of spirit stones can buy information on obtaining one.”

“I know. General methods are fine. Becoming a direct disciple of the Pill Refining Sect, for instance. I just want to know the possibilities.”

“Ah,” Hui Dan breathed, almost sighing.

A Foundation Establishment Pill. The elixir pill of every Great Attainment of Qi Refining Cultivator’s dreams. Hoping for a safe breakthrough to Foundation Establishment, they waited and waited for a fortuitous encounter that might someday come.

“I can put together the general information for you. Just don’t get your hopes too high. Most people never get their hands on one in their entire lives.”

“All right.”

Yise nodded lightly. His request for information on obtaining one had only been a cover for acquiring the instructions without revealing that he already possessed the pill.

“For the demonic beasts, would information on the Thousand-Demon Mountains do?”

Yise blinked. The Thousand-Demon Mountains lay to the north, outside the Jeong Empire’s territory.

“Demonic beasts have practically been wiped out south of the Ten-Thousand-Mile Great Wall—in the empire proper, I mean. You won’t find anything as powerful as a first-rank demonic beast here. For that, you have to cross the wall into the Thousand-Demon Mountains. But it’s so dangerous there that going in as a lone independent Cultivator is a bit...”

“Is it far?”

“About two hundred li north.”

“That’s fine. Give me the information for that area.”

“Which would you like information on: the Ink-Scaled Blood Python, the Witch-Tree Great Python, or the Vajra Yaksha?”

“The Witch-Tree Great Python.”

Yise answered without the slightest hesitation.

“You do know Witch-Tree Great Pythons live in male-female pairs?”

He did. That was precisely why he had chosen them. Two at once—wasn’t that twice the gain for the same effort?

A short while later, Hui Dan returned with a thin booklet and two sheets of parchment.

“That will be one hundred and twenty-five spirit stones in total.”

“Here.”

“Thank you, Senior. Please come again!”

Having paid for all the information, Yise left the External Affairs Pavilion.

* * *

‘Magnificent.’

Seen from atop the Ten-Thousand-Mile Great Wall, the Thousand-Demon Mountains truly embodied the grandeur of nature.

The Jeong Empire’s feat of building a wall nearly ten thousand li long was impressive, but just look at that immense mountain range stretching endlessly beyond it. Dense forests reportedly extended for millions of li. Could anyone cross them on foot even if they walked their entire life?

He had heard that Demons were everywhere, with Foundation Establishment and even Core Formation Demons appearing frequently. This was, quite literally, Demon territory—a natural barrier that no one below Core Formation could even dream of crossing.

Beyond it lay the Northern Continent.

He suddenly thought of Cheong Un of the Tyrant Sword Sect, whom he had met in the secret realm. They might never meet again, but the man had left quite an impression.

Yise leaped down over the wall. Following the directions and distances marked on the map from the External Affairs Pavilion, he searched for traces of the Witch-Tree Great Pythons.

‘Not far.’

The deeper one ventured into the Thousand-Demon Mountains, the stronger the Demons became. Most Qi Refining Demons had thus been pushed into habitats near the Ten-Thousand-Mile Great Wall.

Before long, signs of enormous serpents began appearing one after another. The information was accurate. Finding the Witch-Tree Great Pythons’ precise location was not difficult. They were simply too big to miss.

‘Ginseng and snake soup is next on the menu.’

Snake had long been prized as a nourishing food. Suppressing his watering mouth, Yise watched the two snakes undulating toward him.

The female breathed fire, the male lightning. Kill one, and the survivor would grow stronger as though driven berserk. They prioritized protecting each other above all else, making them particularly troublesome opponents.

They had no particular weaknesses, either. Their scales were like black iron, and even their eyes and the insides of their mouths were not especially vulnerable.

Yet having no weaknesses also meant having no outstanding strengths. They were exceptionally tough, but had few threatening attacks.

A direct assault was the answer. Like a craftsman tanning a hide, he simply had to keep attacking until their hard scales broke and they fell.

Thunder burst overhead. At the same time, a stream of fire shot through the mist from the side.

Yise raised a slanting earthen wall to deflect the flames and shifted one step sideways to avoid a direct hit from the lightning. The bolt struck the spot where he had just stood, sending soil erupting like a fountain.

After locating the Demon cores with his spirit sight, Yise cast Gushing Torrent from his hand, targeting the female first.

The scales directly over the Demon core. Strike them hundreds of times, and they would give way eventually.

* * *

“One mid-grade Qi-Condensing Pill. Fourth grade.”

“One fourth-grade Qi-Condensing Pill will be one thousand spirit stones.”

“...?”

Having finished hunting the Witch-Tree Great Pythons, Yise had come to buy a Qi-Condensing Pill. For a moment, he doubted his ears.

Finding one in West Lake Market Town’s pill shops was easy enough. The problem was the price.

One thousand? This was outright robbery.

“Why is it so expensive?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Supply is low and demand is high.”

Yise checked other pill shops to make sure, but the price was the same everywhere. It positively reeked of price-fixing.

In the end, he reluctantly handed over ten mid-grade spirit stones and accepted the Qi-Condensing Pill.

His next stop was a secluded-abode rental office, situated at the foot of the mountains on the outskirts of West Lake Market Town.

“A low-grade abode costs five spirit stones per day. We have two available. A mid-grade abode costs ten, and we have one available.”

“No high-grade abodes?”

“No. We only have one, and another Cultivator is already using it.”

“I’ll take the mid-grade one. Thirty days.”

Yise handed over three hundred spirit stones and received a spirit talisman that served as the abode’s key.

The abode’s interior was tidy: a single enclosed chamber, with a bluestone seat in the center for sitting cross-legged and a formation engraved along the walls to further concentrate the flow of spiritual energy.

There was also a small pill furnace in one corner, and even an hourglass to mark the passage of time. Everything needed for cultivation was provided.

He sat cross-legged on the stone seat.

First, he took the mid-grade Qi-Condensing Pill to make up most of his spiritual-energy shortfall. Then he drew from his robes the bamboo slip bearing instructions for taking a Foundation Establishment Pill, which he had brought from the secret realm’s stone chamber.

He read it carefully, character by character.

To achieve Foundation Establishment, one had to destroy the spiritual meridians and create a Dharma-Transformed Dantian. Then came destroying the brain and transforming it into a spiritual brain to open one’s divine sense.

Those were the two stages of breaking through to Foundation Establishment.

A Foundation Establishment Pill guided the entire process on its own, sparing the user the need to perform it. It enabled a safe breakthrough without the risk of destroying the brain or spiritual root through a mistake in controlling spiritual energy.

However, as the pill’s energy burned away all the pill toxins within the body, it released a potent toxic energy. The user therefore had to concentrate on purging that energy.

Daemudo’s Demon-Exorcizing Spirit Arts included no process for purging pill toxins during Qi Refining. Taking a Foundation Establishment Pill could therefore cause toxic energy to block the spiritual meridians or contaminate the dantian.

Naturally, none of this applied to Yise.

The unidentified spiritual herb he had consumed in the secret realm was the reason. Its lingering energy was still steadily expelling pill toxins from his body.

Even now, it was purging the toxins from the mid-grade Qi-Condensing Pill.

That was the normal Foundation Establishment process. Someone with the Heavenly-Demonic Dual-Meridian Constitution also had to undergo molting, breaking apart and reconstructing the Demon core.

The greatest danger was the inner-demon tribulation.

From Core Formation onward, heavenly tribulations brought lightning down from the sky. At Foundation Establishment, however, an inner-demon tribulation came during the transformation of the brain.

In that brief instant when the spiritual brain first opened and divine sense made contact with the outside world, the inner demon sleeping in the Cultivator’s deepest recesses would reveal itself.

Failure to subdue it meant the immediate collapse of the Dao heart and transformation into a demonic practitioner.

Having visualized the Foundation Establishment process from beginning to end, Yise steadied his mind and began circulating his energy.

After doing it once before, the process felt familiar. First, he absorbed as much spiritual energy as possible. Then he slowed the intake to a trickle, as though adding water drop by drop, before finally making minute adjustments as though placing grains of sand onto a balance scale.

Once his internal reserves were perfectly balanced, he held his breath and activated a blocking talisman to isolate them from the ambient energy.

He immediately recited the Tribulation-Crossing Formula—the formula for overcoming tribulation and crossing a major threshold—from the final chapter of the Demon-Exorcizing Spirit Qi Refining Art. His spiritual energy began to whirl.

Yise brought the Foundation Establishment Pill he had set out to his mouth.

An unfamiliar energy cautiously stepped into his body. Neither spiritual energy nor Demonic Energy, this strange power took hold of his internal reserves and guided them.

It swept through his spiritual meridians, gathering every trace of the spiritual energy flowing through them, then began dismantling the meridians one by one.

Meanwhile, the spiritual herb’s energy drove the toxins contained in the Foundation Establishment Pill out of his body.

There was no pain. Spiritual meridians were a spiritual flow rather than a physical part of the body.

Then, as when forming a Demon core, spiritual energy began accumulating layer upon layer, using his body as a vessel. It gathered endlessly, seeming about to overflow yet never spilling, until it gently lapped within him.

The Foundation Establishment Pill’s energy did not stop. Drawing along the spiritual energy held in the Dharma-Transformed Dantian, it headed straight for his Hundred Convergences point.

For an instant, he felt as though his head burst with a crack.

His consciousness vanished, as though a piece of his memory had been cut away. When he came to, he found himself collapsed on the floor.

‘... I suppose losing consciousness is only natural when my brain is being reconstructed.’

The issue was not so much pain as his ability to recover. He had no idea how long his brain had taken to heal. The hourglass he had placed there to keep track of time had long since run out.

Yise turned it over again. The moment he regained consciousness, the waiting energies resumed hammering at his brain.

‘I can’t let my guard down just because I’ve taken a Foundation Establishment Pill.’

Crossing a major threshold was certainly no small matter. He had worked hard to stay centered and avoid succumbing to his inner demon.

He had prepared thoroughly and was certain he would succeed... but even so, he had to proceed with care.

Failure would mean everything he had built crumbling like a castle of sand.