He seemed to have passed out again. Once more, all the sand in the hourglass had run out.

The third time, he did not lose consciousness. Instead, his awareness kept fading and sharpening again.

'Without a Foundation Establishment Pill, I'd have to do this with my mind fully alert...?'

A mistake in controlling his spiritual energy could cause irreparable damage, crippling him in an instant. Other parts of the body could be restored by various means even after some time had passed, but not the brain.

If he lay crippled for too long before anyone discovered him... his life as a Cultivator would be over. Perhaps even his life as an ordinary person.

Aware that his consciousness was gradually slipping away, Yise struggled to sharpen his focus again.

* * *

Someone is calling me.

Yise, Yise.

I slowly open my eyes to see a meal laid out before me, and Mother's face.

"Yise, Yise!"

"...?"

"Why are you staring into space like that? Are you feeling ill?"

I could not answer. This must be...

My childhood.

The time when I first knew happiness.

And the unhappiest memory of that time.

"You don't have a fever."

"No, ... I'm all right."

I shook my head, trying to clear the haze. Turning, I see Father eating in silence, and my two unruly younger siblings.

"Hey, I want an egg too!"

"Give me an egg!"

"Oh, just eat what you have. You have to take turns. Why are you making such a fuss?"

"An! Egg!"

There was no reasoning with them. Was it because we had grown up with so little, never having enough to eat? Even a single side dish turned the table into a battlefield.

"Yise, you're their big brother. Why don't you let them have it this time? I'll be sure to save you some next time."

With an awkward smile, Mother places all the egg on my siblings' rice.

I'm only a year or two older.

And this isn't even the first time.

I've always been the one to give things up just because I'm their older brother, Mother.

At last, I say the words I never should have spoken.

"Are you... treating me differently because I'm not your real child?"

I had never seen that look on Mother's face before.

Shock. No, grief.

Even as I drove that sharpened dagger into the hearts of the adoptive parents who had raised me as their own, I never imagined that those would be my last words to the people to whom I owed so much.

"Aaaah!"

"No!"

Father, who readily took up a farm tool and charged the Demon to protect his family, was the first to have his head torn off.

My siblings tried to flee, only to become the Demon's prey together.

Mother was eaten last. Meeting my eyes as I hid inside the wardrobe, she mouthed these words.

'Don't come out.'

I want to go out.

I have to go out, defeat the Demon, and protect my family.

But my body will not move.

My stomach churned.

There was something important I felt I was forgetting...

Why is my head so hot?

I stared blankly as my family's heads were eaten.

What was I doing?

What am I doing here now?

Why am I just watching my family being eaten?

That's only a Level Nine Demon.

A sprinkling of salt would send it writhing in agony.

But where did I learn that?

I opened the wardrobe door.

Then I stare at the Demon before me. I roll across the floor to evade its reaching hand and shove a precious handful of salt from the kitchen into the Wadu-Scholar's mouth.

With hands that have somehow become so small, I seize the farm tool still clutched in my headless father's hand.

I charge the Wadu-Scholar.

Swinging the tool in a wide arc, I bring it down with all my might on the writhing Demon's head.

The instant the weight of the tool bursts the Wadu's head—

Yise drew in a breath.

Familiar darkness. Inside the secluded abode, he realized that he had nearly succumbed to an inner demon.

'That leaves a filthy taste in my mouth.'

He had expected to experience that illusion. After all, it was the only memory that could leave him vulnerable to an inner demon.

'But the enemy was far too weak.'

Had it been one of the stone puppets from the secret realm, that might have been another matter. After seeing those things, a Wadu-Scholar looked like nothing more than a pitiful neighborhood slug with arms and legs.

Yise focused on Foundation Establishment again.

But then he felt a strange sensation. Though his eyes were firmly shut, his field of vision gradually brightened until he could see inside the secluded abode. More than that, he could even see behind him, beyond his normal field of view, as though he had eyes in the back of his head.

'... So this is how one sees at Foundation Establishment.'

As though its work were done, the energy of the Foundation Establishment Pill slowly left his body through his pores.

But he was not finished yet. One final stage remained: the molting of his Demon core.

Molting the Demon core was not difficult. He merely had to break the compressed core and remake it under greater compression than before. All he had to endure was the shock that breaking it would send through his body.

Yise drew spiritual energy from his Dharma-Transformed Dantian to envelop the Demon core, then stirred his dormant Demonic Energy and shattered the core.

The Demonic Energy began to rampage, followed by excruciating pain. It felt as though his entire body were being torn apart, but he had experienced such pain countless times and grown accustomed to it. It was well within his endurance. His firmly established Dharma-Transformed Dantian also protected him.

As the Demonic Energy gradually settled, he began compressing it, just as he had when first forming his core. He gathered the Demonic Energy flowing through his body into his lower dantian, beneath the Dharma-Transformed Dantian, and set it spinning.

He spun it under intense pressure, compressing it again and again. Since he had done this once before, this process was not particularly difficult either. Soon, a Demon core slightly larger than the original had formed, its Demonic Energy compressed to a high concentration.

'Demons must have an easy time breaking through to Foundation Establishment.'

Yise washed his entire body with Gushing Torrent. Then he took out the Mind-Calming Mirror and tidied his appearance. Feeling it soothe his mind and body, he was grateful to Seol Ryeong for giving him such a fine ritual implement.

He stepped outside the secluded abode.

"Senior, your allotted use of the secret realm has expired, so there is an additional charge. You appeared to be in the midst of important cultivation, so I did not disturb you."

"How long has it been since I entered the secluded abode?"

"Two months and fifteen days. The additional fee for the forty-five extra days is four hundred and fifty spirit stones."

Another year had turned while he was breaking through to Foundation Establishment.

Yise handed over the spirit stones, thanking the attendant for the consideration.

"Could I get a long-term rental discount?"

"I'll take one stone off for you. Congratulations on crossing a major threshold."

The secluded-abode attendant returned one spirit stone. Yise accepted it with a chuckle and started on his way.

"Oh, Senior. The West Lake Guild has been asking after you. May I tell them that you've come out?"

"Hui Dan?"

"Yes."

"Tell her."

"Understood, Senior."

The attendant bowed deeply.

The 320th year since the sect's founding.

Seven years since he had entered the cultivation world.

At last, he had broken through to Foundation Establishment.

* * *

While Yise was completing his breakthrough to Foundation Establishment in the Jeong Empire, an unexpected commotion had gripped Daemudo's main mountain.

"So you split up inside the inner depths, and you came back out shortly afterward."

"Yes, Chief Administrator. The inner depths were no place for fortuitous encounters. They were a land of death."

Sugyeom, Daemudo's Chief Administrator, had summoned the formal disciple Hae Unchan to question him about events inside the secret realm.

Of the sixteen formal disciples who had entered, nine had died and six had returned. One remained missing.

The missing disciple's oath as a member of Daemudo, overseen by the divine relic, was still valid, yet months had passed without his return. Since message talismans could not reach him, he clearly was not nearby...

'Could he have ended up on another continent?'

From the reports Sugyeom had received, the disciple did not seem the sort to betray his sect. There appeared to be some unavoidable circumstance preventing his return.

The Chief Administrator would not normally concern himself with one or two missing Qi Refining disciples. But matters were different when the missing disciple was a vital talent advancing so rapidly that he was breaking Daemudo's records, attracting the attention of several Hall Masters, and a blood relative of the Lord of Daemudo who shared the same constitution.

Even Sugyeom, who never gave the disciples cause to fault his conduct, had been quietly making small allowances for the boy.

'What should I do?'

Should he dispatch a search party for a Qi Refining Cultivator? Or assign the task to one of the Hall Masters? Or should he simply turn a blind eye, accepting this too as the natural course of things?

Sugyeom wrestled with the question. He could find no answer.

* * *

Leaving the secluded-abode rental office, Yise walked at a leisurely pace, naturally familiarizing himself with his new realm.

First, the Dharma-Transformed Dantian.

Unlike before, when spiritual energy had flowed along his spiritual meridians, it now rested within the vessel of his Dharma-Transformed Dantian. Yet its quantity was strangely difficult to gauge. How much spiritual energy could this vessel hold? What fraction of it was currently full? The same was true of his Foundation Establishment Demon core.

'... So that's why it was hard to distinguish between early-, middle-, and late-stage Foundation Establishment.'

When he saw Foundation Establishment Cultivators, he could tell only that they were in that realm, not their precise stage. Yet they could gauge one another's attainment to some extent. At last, Yise understood why.

'It's the range of their divine sense.'

The moment Foundation Establishment Cultivators' divine senses touched, they could immediately perceive each other's range. It was like ordinary people making eye contact.

Yise realized this when his divine sense brushed against that of a passing Foundation Establishment Cultivator. Though countless people stood between them, each was distinctly aware of the other, as though they were face-to-face.

The other's divine sense extended twice as far as his own. The Cultivator briefly met Yise's eyes, then passed by without a care.

Something suddenly occurred to Yise, and he moved to a secluded spot away from passing pedestrians.

As a Qi Refining Cultivator, he had only been able to operate one spell at a time. It was as natural as a person being unable to read two books at once. That was why ordinary battles between Cultivators involved using disposable ritual implements to fill the gaps between spells.

But Foundation Establishment divine sense allowed him to transcend that limit. Beyond expanding perception, it allowed him to divide his consciousness.

Yise raised a hand and fashioned an Earthen Spear. Drawing out the earth element with his spiritual energy, he raised a pillar of earth beside him, then kept it in place as he formed another Earthen Spear with his other hand.

He could now manifest several spells of the same kind simultaneously. The number would probably increase with repeated cultivation.

'Could I use different spells as well?'

Yise formed an Earthen Spear and a Firebolt at the same time.

But as the two spells manifested, a cracking sound accompanied a stab of pain inside his head. He had overloaded his divine sense.

'... Still, it's not completely impossible.'

He had only just reached Foundation Establishment; he simply lacked cultivation and familiarity. Shaking his head a couple of times to dispel the pain, Yise stepped out of the alley.

He headed straight for the street of permanent shops serving Cultivators. He intended to spend his remaining spirit stones on Foundation Establishment ritual implements.

Whatever else he bought, he absolutely had to acquire a flying ritual implement. Only then could he return quickly to Daemudo's main mountain.