Chapter 2: Yin Yang
Its size… was identical to the other formation beads, perhaps slightly larger, but the difference was negligible.
Its color…
Failed pills were typically grayish-white. The formation beads from this set of discarded formation disks were a crescent moon white.
But this bead had an indescribable quality about it. If forced to distinguish…
This bead’s whiteness was more pure.
Its weight and texture…
Song Yan held a formation bead in his left hand and the “strange bead” in his right, hefting them up and down, running his fingers over them carefully.
The strange bead seemed lighter, and its surface felt rougher, more like unpolished jade.
When he probed it with his divine sense, there was no fluctuation of spiritual energy within the strange bead.
A discarded magical artifact?
The bizarre stone bead appeared intact, undamaged. Perhaps something had gone wrong internally.
He knew nothing of magical artifact refinement.
He tossed it casually into his Cosmos Bag.
“I’ll bring it down the mountain for Xiao He to play with. She loves these round little things.”
After searching around, he found a total of six formation beads.
The Minor Spirit Gathering Formation required only five beads to activate, but it was common to refine a few extra as backup.
In any case, it was more than enough for the formation to operate normally.
He just didn’t know whether his repairs—done by rote copying as a layman in formation arts—would allow this formation disk to function.
“No way to know but to try.”
Having made up his mind, he walked out of the refuse heap.
There was no need for excessive formality. Pay the spirit stones and leave at any time, without disturbing the steward’s cultivation.
Song Yan did not greet Steward Xu and departed on his own.
…
Dongyuan Sect, outer sect.
Green Leaf Peak.
Number Xuan-39, an ordinary outer disciple cave dwelling.
Song Yan sat cross-legged on his stone bed, using spiritual energy to manipulate a formation stone of similar size to the formation disk’s spirit stone, examining it carefully.
With a faint flow of spiritual energy, a portion of the formation stone was slowly carved away.
“Hah…”
After a moment, he exhaled a long breath.
“That should be about right.”
At this point, the remaining spiritual energy in his body was meager, yet he still condensed a wisp and guided it along the patterns on the formation disk, drop by drop.
The patterns on the formation disk lit up inch by inch from the center outward, until the entire disk was covered.
“Good, good—it actually works!”
Song Yan was overjoyed. His efforts hadn’t been in vain after all.
These were items salvaged from Fireworks Settlement’s refuse. They were already discarded goods. If a simple repair could make them usable again, that was sheer luck.
In over half a year of scavenging through trash, such a thing had happened fewer times than he could count on one hand.
His knowledge of formation arts was merely the most basic surface level.
Perhaps because he had transmigrated with two lifetimes of experience, his divine sense was slightly stronger than that of ordinary people.
This slight advantage was already enough to determine many things.
He found that he learned things quickly. Whether it was the refining of Qi Nourishing Pills or the rudimentary basics of formation arts, neither had taken him too long.
Of course, there was also the factor that both were relatively simple.
He understood clearly that with his aptitude and talent, once he truly delved into either alchemy or formations, his already modest cultivation speed would plummet even further.
Thus, for the dao of alchemy, he only studied and refined the simplest Qi Nourishing Pills, using them to supplement his cultivation resources.
For the dao of formations, he only learned the basic principles, enough to roughly understand how they operated.
All remaining time was devoted to cultivation.
After completing everything, Song Yan did not immediately attempt his breakthrough.
Today’s pill refining and formation testing had left both his spiritual energy and mental focus somewhat fatigued. Attempting a breakthrough now would be courting death.
He took a spirit stone in his left hand and slowly recovered his spiritual energy.
As if guided by some unconscious impulse, his gaze fell upon that strange stone bead…
The bead lay quietly in his palm, without the slightest fluctuation of spiritual energy.
What exactly was this thing?
He probed it with his divine sense. Apart from a masterless spiritual restriction, there was nothing.
It appeared to be a magical artifact… or perhaps a component of one.
A masterless spiritual restriction meant that the artifact’s original owner had either died or voluntarily severed their connection to it.
His divine sense swept carefully over it, discovering that the spiritual energy contained within the restriction was incomplete, currently recovering in minute, gradual increments.
“So someone has already broken the restriction before, but in the end they discarded it.”
Song Yan felt no disappointment. Nine out of ten items scavenged from Fireworks Settlement’s refuse pile were useless. This was entirely normal.
But he had already brought it back.
Breaking the restriction was a trivial matter. She would see what this thing actually was. If it truly proved useless, he could give it to Xiao He when she went down the mountain.
After approximately one hour, most of his spiritual energy had recovered.
Crack.
He watched with a pained expression as the spirit stone in his hand lost its luster, turning entirely gray, then cracking from the edges.
“Remaining… sixteen spirit stones.”
Of the forty-two spirit stones earned from selling pills today, he needed to reserve thirty for next month’s pill-refining materials and other expenses.
Adding the four he originally had, he was left with sixteen spirit stones.
Every single one had been saved coin by coin, refined pill by pill.
“A thousand gold scattered will return, will return…”
He comforted himself and retrieved the strange stone bead.
Condensing his spiritual energy, he began to break the restriction.
This was the most basic restriction. Judging by its complexity, an ordinary cultivator at the first level of Qi Refining could open it.
“Which apprentice refiner’s failed work is this?”
Song Yan wondered silently as he broke the restriction.
“…”
He channeled his probing spiritual energy into it, but it was like a stone cast into the sea—not a single ripple.
“…”
Nothing happened.
He swept it with his divine sense, finding nothing as well.
“Sigh…”
What a complete waste of time.
He mocked himself and prepared to stow the stone bead away.
At that very moment, he suddenly felt a tremendous pulling force. His divine sense was being torn by something!
A pain like a blade drilling into his heart and gouging his bones, as if the wound was splitting open from the depths of his very soul.
“This?!”
He tried to withdraw his divine sense, but it was already too late. Before he could react, he was swept up by the pull. His consciousness remained clear, yet he felt as though he was falling into an abyss, sinking ever deeper.
The sensation of suffocation made him want to grab hold of something, but his consciousness grew hazy until, at some point, he sank into the “water.”
Boom!
Though he had sunk into water, it felt as though two worlds had inverted.
Song Yan “floated” up from the “ground”!
He knelt on an ink-dark surface, gasping for breath.
“What is this place…”
He steadied himself and looked up.
He stood within an ink-black void.
The void was empty and boundless, its edges unseen. Only black and white intertwined, chaos churning.
Occasionally, archaic characters of black and white emerged from somewhere unknown, dissipated, and cycled in an endless loop.
“?”
Song Yan looked down at himself. He still wore the robe of an outer disciple of Dongyuan Sect.
But it was blurry, indistinct. When he touched it lightly, it was nothing but an illusion.
“Has my Primordial Spirit left my body…”
The thought arose, and he couldn’t help but laugh at himself.
Ascension in a single night?
Daydreaming.
Song Yan surmised that this was merely the manifestation of his divine sense within this space.
He stopped questioning why an “ant” like himself could “leave his body” and instead looked around, beginning to explore this space.
“This doesn’t seem to be for storage…”
He had never seen a storage space this vast. Moreover, he had tried from outside—nothing could be placed in it.
Since he couldn’t leave either way, he began walking forward.
Soon he was surprised to discover that he seemed to be able to shrink the ground into inches, moving at astonishing speed.
“Hm?”
He tried floating as well.
“I actually can?”
Within this space, he seemed capable of anything he wished…
But this space was too monotonous.
After trying to fly for a while, the lack of any real sensation quickly dampened his interest, and he descended back to the ink-pool-like ground.
He reached out to touch those birth-and-death black and white characters, but could grasp nothing.
“How do I get out…”
At that moment, within the void, the space before Song Yan began to manifest the dual-colored ancient characters faster and faster, more and more densely, until in a single instant, they condensed into a black stone stele.
He crossed several yards in a single step and stood before the black stone stele.
On its ink-black surface, pure white, flawless ancient characters were carved.
The first few small characters appeared to be a title or annotation of the stele text, but they were blurry and indistinct, so he paid them no attention.
Reading through the entire stele text, Song Yan’s heart jolted.
This appeared to be some kind of secret technique or incantation specifically for cultivating divine sense.
The stele text was not long—three hundred and eighty-odd characters in total, each one a gem. After reading it silently for a moment, he had it memorized.
Hummmm—
Just as Song Yan was still immersed in this nameless incantation, on the white sky above, points of black began to coalesce. In no time, they had formed into a massive black stele, hurtling down toward his location.
“?!”
His heart lurched. He instinctively tried to resist, but within this space there was not a shred of spiritual energy to command—only divine sense could be projected outward.
Before he could think, the massive black stele crashed straight down. He subconsciously projected his divine sense to meet it.
Pfft.
To his surprise, the moment his divine sense emerged, it transformed into a sharp edge, splitting the black stele in two. It collapsed into ink-wash and dissipated throughout the space.
“Hm? This…”
Song Yan cried out in astonishment, but before he could ponder why his divine sense possessed this ability, a second massive black stele was already forming, plummeting down with a thunderous crash.
No time to hesitate. His divine sense condensed once more, and another sharp edge cleaved the stele apart.
At this point, his divine sense was nearly exhausted.
Transforming divine sense into a blade consumed considerable energy.
The black stele seemed tireless, coalescing above his head once again.
“Again?!”
Song Yan instinctively tried to dodge. At the very last moment, when it was nearly upon him, he finally saw just how massive the stele truly was.
“…”
In that instant of facing death head-on, he felt his movements, his reactions, grow impossibly slow. All sound receded from his ears like the tide.
BOOM!!!
The dead silence in his ears transformed in an instant into a deafening roar.
The space, the stele, the ancient characters…
Like bursting foam, they shattered in a single instant. The images in his vision retreated like the tide.
…
“Hss…”
Pain.
Song Yan awoke on his stone bed, his head splitting.
Having his entire divine sense obliterated by that massive black stele had left his mind utterly drained. The moment his divine sense faced annihilation remained vivid before his eyes.
His brow furrowed deeply as he gazed at the stone bead still clutched in his hand.
The cave dwelling fell into dead silence.
“…”
“This thing… must not be known to outsiders.”
At this point, how could he not know this was a treasure?
Setting everything else aside, this technique for cultivating divine sense alone was certainly rare. At the very least, he—Song Yan—had never heard of such a thing.
On this merit alone, the stone bead could be called a treasure.
But why, despite having been probed multiple times before, was it still abandoned in Fireworks Settlement, on the verge of being dumped into the Blazing Furnace?
“Hss…”
There were far too many questions about this stone bead that he wanted answered.
But at this moment, he lacked the mental energy to think. The pain of his soul being torn had left his mind completely blank.
Song Yan attempted to refine it with spiritual energy, but as before, the energy flowed in and was swallowed like a cow dropped into mud. He could only stow it away in his Cosmos Bag.
Only after completing everything and allowing his mind to relax did endless fatigue and drowsiness wash over him.
He did not resist and collapsed into sleep.
No one paid attention to an ordinary person.
Especially someone like Song Yan, an outer disciple struggling on the very edge of survival in the cultivation world.
Unknown to him, something significant had recently occurred at Dongyuan Sect.
(End of Chapter)