Chapter 102: A Turn of Events
After bidding farewell to Lin Qing, Song Yan returned to Green Leaf Peak. Since he now had news, there was no need to remain anxious.
Over the next half month, he followed his routine, cultivating daily to increase his spiritual energy and refine his sword qi.
His cultivation at the sixth level of Qi Refining progressed steadily, gradually approaching the bottleneck of the seventh level.
He had previously worried whether the sudden surge in cultivation he had experienced at North Watch Mountain was unstable and might affect his foundation.
But after these days of practice, he discovered that the cultivation converted from the senior’s bequeathed sword qi was even more pure than his own.
That put his mind at ease.
Besides the essential spiritual energy cultivation, he also devoted some of his leisure time to practicing the Five Star Pulse Seeking Art.
The benefits of a powerful divine sense, Song Yan knew better than anyone.
Although progress was slow now, getting a little stronger was still worthwhile.
An ordinary cultivator at the mid-stage of Qi Refining had a divine sense range of roughly eight to twelve zhang.
This number varied depending on individual soul strength and talent.
But Song Yan, now at the sixth level of Qi Refining, already had a divine sense range of approximately twenty zhang.
Previously, after severing his spiritual root and establishing the sword garden, he had obtained the complete Five Star Pulse Seeking Art from the Two-Yi Pearl.
Unfortunately, it required the Foundation Establishment Stage to formally cultivate.
In terms of swordsmanship, Song Yan also practiced diligently without rest.
He had already mastered Cloud Sword to perfection. He planned that once he advanced to the late stage of Qi Refining, he would select another sword art to study.
After the night incident at Cold Flower Valley, having witnessed Senior Yuzhen’s seemingly ordinary yet instantly lethal strike that slew the demonic cultivator, he truly understood what it meant for a single sword to break ten thousand techniques.
Cloud Sword was versatile and could handle any situation, but it was too conspicuous and lacked any outstanding specialty.
“When the time comes, I need to choose a sword art that can work with my sword dao true essence to silently and instantly kill opponents.”
He had temporarily set aside the Pure Sky Great Illumination Art.
At the very least, he would need to reach the ninth level of Qi Refining before attempting it again.
During these days, the sword case had been nurturing the flying sword daily. Song Yan vaguely felt that his connection with “Lianli” seemed to draw closer.
More importantly…
He sensed that Lianli’s aura had undergone subtle changes.
He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but the sword’s might appeared to be slowly increasing.
Yet the other sword in the case, Buxizhou, did not enjoy the same treatment.
After much thought, he could only attribute it to the fact that this sword case had originally been forged for Lianli’s predecessors, the twin flying swords Qingmei and Zhuma.
It could not nurture other sword artifacts.
Or rather, its nurturing effect on other flying swords was so weak that even he, its master, could not detect it.
It seemed that in the future, he really would need to switch to a more versatile sword case.
One day, Song Yan left Green Leaf Peak and headed toward Spirit Source Marsh.
He had used up a considerable number of cultivation pills and planned to visit the market to purchase some supplies.
Passing by Granny Qin’s general store, she noticed the wooden door was ajar.
“Hm?”
Song Yan stepped forward and knocked gently on the door.
“Come in.”
Qin Xijun was holding that jade seal she had been toying with for ages, stamping small marks onto the coating of various pills.
“My dear disciple has arrived.”
“Granny, what… what are you doing?”
Looking closely, he saw quite a variety of pills—Yellow Sprout Pills, Baopu Pills, Spirit Condensation Pills… even the lowest-grade Qi Nourishing Pills were there.
“In another three or five years, you’ll be breaking through to the seventh level of Qi Refining. Granny has been eating, drinking, and playing all these years, and all my spirit stones have been squandered.”
“Don’t I need to increase income and reduce expenses to save up some spiritual resources for you? Otherwise, when you need something later and Granny has nothing, how embarrassing would that be for a master?”
“Oh…”
“I didn’t know you could refine pills too, Granny.”
Qin Xijun was taken aback: “I can’t.”
Song Yan realized: “Ah? Then… this…”
“Oh, these are… ahem, anyway, I got them cheap.”
Qin Xijun raised her hand and showed Song Yan the jade seal: “Here, this is the Eastern Abyss Sect pill workshop jade seal.” “One stamp here, and these become spirit pills of the Eastern Abyss Sect.”
“I’ll take them to Lingxi Market for auction.”
“…”
Song Yan was dumbstruck, unable to say a word for a long while.
“Do you have business? If not, go do whatever you need to do. Don’t disturb Granny Qin’s great pill dao enterprise…”
“Ah…”
Only then did he snap back to reality and ask: “Granny, I wanted to ask if you know anything about Breakthrough Pills.”
“Breakthrough Pill?”
Qin Xijun finally looked up at her future disciple.
With a sweep of her divine sense, a look of surprise appeared on her face.
“…How has your cultivation advanced so quickly? Granny remembers you only broke through to the sixth level of Qi Refining a few months ago.”
She grabbed young Song Yan, prying open his eyes one moment and feeling his pulse the next.
“Have you been cultivating some demonic art?”
Regarding this, Song Yan only gave a brief explanation, saying he had an encounter at North Watch Mountain.
Qin Xijun nodded, muttering: “You brat really are lucky…”
“A Breakthrough Pill… Granny truly doesn’t have one. But I have heard some rumors.”
“Oh?”
Song Yan’s eyes lit up.
Could there be a lead?
“Next month, the auction at Lingxi Market will be selling a ‘Awakening Awareness Pill.'”
Lingxi Market?
He had thought it would be at the Spirit Source Marsh night market.
Seeming to perceive her future disciple’s confusion, Qin Xijun explained:
“Apart from some trash that uses Breakthrough Pill as a label while selling counterfeit goods, the genuine pills that can actually help break through bottlenecks are almost exclusively produced by sect pill workshops.”
“Under normal circumstances, these pills do not appear at the Spirit Source Marsh market.”
“The reasons behind this are complicated. You’ll understand in time.”
“This time, Lingxi Market will be auctioning many fine items, among which is one Awakening Awareness Pill, apparently from Hanging Sword Mountain.”
“If you believe you have enough spirit stones, you can try your luck.”
Qin Xijun spread her hands: “Anyway, Granny doesn’t have that many spirit stones.”
Song Yan pondered.
Since the birth of the cultivation world, countless years had passed.
For any pill, there were countless predecessors who, for various reasons or motivations, had modified formulas, optimized spiritual herb ratios, and thereby created new pills.
Some pills required spiritual herbs that were rare, prohibitively expensive, or had already gone extinct.
They had no choice but to substitute with materials of similar properties, resulting in slightly diminished effects.
Among the pills used to break through bottlenecks at the Qi Refining Stage, the Awakening Awareness Pill was the type that had been optimized by senior alchemists into something fairly balanced across the board.
This pill contained considerable spiritual energy, and its medicinal properties were not too harsh.
When consumed during a bottleneck breakthrough, it increased the chances of success by roughly thirty percent.
“Thirty percent…”
With the current state of his sword dao seed, breaking through with spiritual energy alone without external aid gave him only about a thirty to forty percent chance.
It was practically doomed to fail.
With the Awakening Awareness Pill’s boost, his confidence would rise to about seventy percent.
If he further supplemented with a Spirit Condensation Pill during the breakthrough…
He would have roughly an eighty percent chance.
That was a very high probability.