Chapter 176: Discovered in the Oasis
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Translated by Frog in the Well
Read more at Nineheavens.org
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One year later.
Jin So-myeong, who was cultivating in the center of the lightning storm, flashed his eyes open.
‘It is done!’
It had been about a year since he focused solely on cultivation all day long.
Burning away the insects that popped out persistently to the point of being sickening with thunderbolts, he finally reached it.
【Jin So-myeong】
【Lifespan】: 93 / 1963
【Realm】: Nascent Soul Stage 4th Layer
【Supreme Great Ability】: 17.52 Million / 40 Million
【Divine Abilities】: ,
From the 2nd layer to the 3rd layer of the Nascent Soul stage, and without stopping there, he cleanly broke through even the minor realm and reached the mid-stage.
Forty million.
Looking at the exponentially increased Supreme Great Ability, a smile emerged naturally.
It was a growth so refreshing that it was gratifying.
On top of this, another thing,
as he had broken through the minor realm, his Divine Sense also grew twice as strong.
He had become able to grasp a vast range with a radius of sixty kilometers while sitting in his place.
Usually, the Divine Sense possessed by a normal late Nascent Soul stage is forty kilometers.
Yet, since he who was only at the mid Nascent Soul stage came to possess a far more outstanding Divine Sense…
if anyone had known, they would have been lost for words.
Spiritual power?
Naturally, he achieved a tremendous growth.
Compared to the time of the 2nd layer of the Nascent Soul stage, it became nearly three times stronger.
Focusing on his meridians, a vast spiritual power was felt.
If his past spiritual power was a trickling stream, it had now developed to the point that it could be called a river.
As he was savoring the majestically flowing spiritual power, a curiosity suddenly arose.
Since his realm rose, it was certain that he had grown stronger, but if so, how much stronger had he become?
Using the Dragon Elephant Demonic Palace’s Supreme Elder, who was the strongest person he had fought until now, as a standard, he fought a virtual battle in his mind.
The result was…
extremely clear.
He was confident that he could overwhelm him without using extreme measures like the Blood Wings.
Frankly, if he did not care about the consequences and went all out, he felt he would win even if he fought two Supreme Elders at the same time.
‘Good. Since I have also achieved the mid Nascent Soul stage, let’s head out slowly.’
He did not particularly feel regret.
The spiritual Qi of the Spiritual Power Pass had decreased a lot while cultivating over the past year.
Since the cultivation efficiency had also lowered, there was no need to cling to it.
It was still a guess, but the Defeated Sage Dojo seemed to be a training ground established by a high-grade cultivator for juniors.
There should be many other fortuitous opportunities besides the Spiritual Power Pass.
‘Though it doesn’t seem to be in a normal state, though.’
Anyway, since he had made up his mind to leave, he examined the text written on the wall once more.
[Only the one who has completely emptied can move forward.]
‘…Should I first empty my dantian?’
Although consuming all of his spiritual power was a dangerous action, it was not a particularly difficult task.
If he wished to do so, he could do it easily.
To also warm up his body, he went around stirring up the entire room and swung the Starlight Afterimage Sword.
Chwak!
With a single sword strike, dozens of illusions arose and hacked in all directions.
As he sliced the tedious insects while pouring in spiritual power as if wasting it, his spiritual power was depleted in just thirty minutes.
In the feeling of exhaustion from his dantian being emptied,
Thud!
He waited while bursting the flying insects solely with his physical strength tempered by body tempering, but nothing happened even after a long time passed.
‘Indeed. Emptying the dantian is too easy to be called a trial.’
If so, did it mean to consume all the spiritual Qi in the room?
Gauging the spiritual Qi of the Spiritual Power Pass, roughly half of it remained.
If he could use the spiritual Qi in the air as it was, it would be convenient, but that was impossible.
To handle spiritual Qi, a process of processing it into spiritual power was required.
Unless it was a special case like the Secret Realm of the Mind, where spiritual Qi perfectly suited to him welled up inside his body.
It meant he had to cultivate for another year…
He did not want that.
What would he do if others swept away all the fortuitous opportunities while he was cultivating leisurely?
He rummaged through his sub-space.
He looked for objects that could rapidly consume the spiritual Qi in the room.
‘Should I set up a formation?’
It was not a bad method, but the formations he knew were mostly at the Rank 3 level.
There were only a few Rank 4 formation spirit treasures, so it was far from enough to consume the spiritual Qi.
‘If I had known it would be like this, I should have set up a few formations in advance.’
Tapping the scabbard and contemplating this and that method, his thoughts reached even the spiritual herb field of the Secret Realm of the Mind.
‘Ah!’
Come to think of it, a fellow that had the potential to absorb spiritual Qi like a monster was sleeping in the spiritual herb field.
‘Dan-il. Dig up the Nine Heavens Jade-Core Grass in the spiritual herb field and put it in the sub-space.’
Simultaneously with the feeling as if hearing an auditory hallucination of understanding, before long the Rank 5 spiritual herb, the Nine Heavens Jade-Core Grass, appeared in the sub-space.
It was an act possible because both the clone and the main body shared a single sub-space.
The moment he took out the Nine Heavens Jade-Core Grass, which was sleeping with only a half-severed root left,
the Nine Heavens Jade-Core Grass floated into the air on its own and caused an unusual fluctuation.
Hwiiiiiiing…
The spiral whirlwind that started from a slow breeze grew larger and larger.
In an instant, it grew harsh enough to be called a gale and began to absorb all the spiritual Qi that filled the Spiritual Power Pass.
‘Did it wake up from its sleep because the surrounding spiritual Qi became dense?’
It sucked in the spiritual Qi crazily like a person who had starved for three days and nights coveting food.
He had thought it might turn out like this, but a reaction far more noisy than expected erupted.
Was it okay to leave it alone?
He frowned at the instinctive anxiety about the unknown phenomenon, but left it alone for now.
He focused while unfolding the Lightning Insight Spell-Breaking Eye divine ability.
If there was even a sign of trouble, he intended to throw it into his sub-space immediately.
Two hours later.
The moment the Nine Heavens Jade-Core Grass sucked in all the spiritual Qi like a black hole, the entire Spiritual Power Pass vibrated, and spiritual Qi poured in from all directions.
He had emptied it with effort, only for it to fill up again.
Did it mean that spiritual Qi must not be consumed in this manner?
At that moment when he was pondering what to do,
Hwiiiiing!
The suction force emitted by the Nine Heavens Jade-Core Grass grew several times stronger, and the rapidly rising spiritual Qi was drained in an instant.
One side filling, the other side absorbing.
In the equilibrium maintained exquisitely, the root of the Nine Heavens Jade-Core Grass took on vitality as time flowed.
Was it recovering its wound by absorbing spiritual Qi as pure as the heaven and earth spiritual Qi?
The root, which originally was only half, was restored close to seventy percent.
The joy of the unexpected harvest was also brief.
Kugugugung!
The Spiritual Power Pass vibrated as if it would collapse at any moment.
A clear abnormal phenomenon.
Jin So-myeong, who had not let go of the string of tension, reached out his hand.
He grabbed the Nine Heavens Jade-Core Grass floating in the air and greedily absorbing spiritual Qi, and threw it into his sub-space.
Simultaneously with that,
Bam!
Along with a roaring sound like a bomb exploding, the ceiling collapsed.
Dazzling light poured in through the ceiling cracks split in a spider web pattern.
A familiar feeling was felt from the light that wrapped around his entire body before he even had time to dodge.
It was trying to teleport him somewhere.
What should he do?
After a moment of deliberation, he did not resist.
He entrusted his body to the sensation of being sucked in, and
Pat!
the surrounding scenery changed completely just by blinking once.
Very dry and slightly muggy, it was like…
‘A desert?’
At that moment when he roughly scanned the ground filled with sesame-sized grains like sand,
Swish—!
He reflexively tilted his head back at the faint sound of tearing through the air.
A poison needle glistening with light green liquid brushed right past his eyes.
Instantly, the sky grew dark.
Thousands—no, at least hundreds of thousands of insects flew up all at once and surrounded the vicinity.
Just how many there were, the earth shook solely from the buzzing sound of their wingbeats.
The moment the posteriors of the hornet-like insects swelled up like balloons,
Hwihwihwihwik!
The sky, which was already dark, was dyed completely pitch black.
The purpose of the poison needles pouring down like rain was only one: to take his life.
“Ha.”
Was it not a truly harsh welcome greeting?
One corner of his mouth naturally curled up.
Seureureung!
Simultaneously with tapping the center of the gently drawn blade with his finger,
the pouring poison needles came to a sudden halt as if they had touched a transparent barrier, and then exploded just as they were.
Woooong—!
The clear sword cry spread beyond ten li, and hundreds of thousands of insects were shattered to pieces to the point that their shapes could not even be recognized.
A single strike.
The acoustic wave possessing practical lethality, generated as the Shattering Resonance Metal—one of the Starlight Afterimage Sword’s materials—vibrated, swept away the insects in one go.
In the leisure created by force,
he stretched his Divine Sense as long as possible in one direction, scanning the entire 360-degree range.
‘Is it a real desert? It’s incredibly wide.’
His current Divine Sense was sixty kilometers.
If stretched as long as possible in one direction, it reached one hundred and eighty kilometers.
It meant he could inspect a vast range that could be described as remote in a single moment, yet even with such a Divine Sense, he did not detect the end of the desert.
All areas touched by his Divine Sense were desert, and the sky was full of insects.
It felt as if insects had occupied the places where mountains, fields, and clouds should be.
Was it because an excessive amount of information was injected in an instant?
Jin So-myeong, who pressed his throbbing forehead, turned his gaze.
He saw structures buried deep in the sand.
All of them were collapsed and shattered as if hit by a bombardment.
‘Miserable.’
It is far more of a mess than I thought.
Would there even be anything left worth obtaining in a place no different from ruins?
Contemplating while crossing his arms, he took a step.
There was no reason to be disappointed beforehand.
First, roaming around the surroundings to grasp the exact situation was the priority.
*
Half a day.
Jin So-myeong, who was traversing the sky covered with insects, frowned.
‘Truly endless.’
Just how good is the reproductive power of these insects?
It was to the point of giving him a nervous breakdown.
Although Jin So-myeong slaughtered the insects cheerfully at first, before long he realized it was a meaningless action.
There were simply far too many insects.
Even if he killed and killed, there was no end.
They kept appearing.
It was best to just make lightning Qi into a protective barrier shape and burn away only those that approached.
‘I thought it was nothing at first, but… they are quite tricky fellows.’
The poison they spread when dying and their overwhelming reproductive power.
As the two combined, the danger level surged.
If his tolerance to poison was low because he had not mastered the Five Viscera Hundred Tempering Art, he would have been in a truly difficult situation by now.
Well, conversely, it also meant that they were not particularly a threat thanks to the Five Viscera Hundred Tempering Art.
Just annoying.
Anyway…
He had roamed here and there in the desert for half a day, and he gradually judged that he could not go on like this.
This desert was too wide to move blindly.
There was a need to establish concrete action guidelines.
At that moment when he stood still and sank deep in thought,
he realized that the distribution density of the insects covering the sky was subtly different.
Northwest from here.
Strangely, the number of insects in that direction was smaller compared to other places.
Not by much, about ten percent?
‘I should head over there.’
No matter what was there, it seemed it would be better than now if only the tedious insects disappeared.
How long had he flown?
The buzzing sound of wings that followed him to a sickening degree gradually weakened.
‘Oh.’
He felt a conviction that there was definitely something in this direction.
Rejoicing at the fact that the number of annoying insects had decreased, after traversing the endlessly spreading desert, he finally discovered a unique terrain.
‘A sea?’
Because of the clear water reflecting light, the coastline, and the lapping waves, he wondered for a moment if it was a sea, but it was not.
It was just large and wide, not a sea, but an oasis in the middle of the desert.
‘There are no insects here. Do they dislike water?’
As the buzzing sound of wings disappeared, his mind felt cleared.
Enjoying the sense of liberation, he extended his Divine Sense.
He scanned the oasis to see if there was anything dangerous…
the eyes of Jin So-myeong, who did not lose his composure unless it was an extraordinary matter, widened greatly.
‘That is…?’
Floating in the center of the oasis, a lotus flower shining like a star was visible.
He had thought until now that heaven and earth spiritual Qi was the purest energy in the world, but it was not.
That thing emitting five-colored brilliance was the true pure white.
The surroundings of the petals were covered in red dust, but the core was clearer and cleaner than anything else.
His five senses, as well as his intuition and instinct polished over a long time, spoke with one voice.
That is the Soul Formation spiritual object.
Even if it is not, it is a treasure that must be taken.
The moment he almost rushed in with all his might unconsciously, Jin So-myeong came to a sudden halt.
‘Phew.’
He closed his eyes tightly.
Suppressing his boiling desire, he regulated his breathing, and only then did the people staring at the lotus with bloodshot eyes come into his view.
Several of the Nascent Soul stage cultivators he had seen at the entrance of the Defeated Sage Dojo were surrounding the lotus while maintaining a distance, and right next to the lotus, there was even a four-legged beast with a strange appearance.
In the exquisite balance, no one dared to move readily.
Only one thing was certain: everyone in this place yearned for that lotus.
‘…’
Jin So-myeong, who finished assessing the situation, contemplated for a moment and nodded briefly.
Changing his appearance with the Thousand Transformations Art, he quietly closed the distance.
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