One year later.
Three hundred li (about 120 km) southeast of Qingliu County Seat, Linjiang Circuit, Yunze Kingdom.
There stood a gently sloping mountain that did not even have a name.
It had no spirit vein, nor did it produce even common herbs or minerals. Fruit-bearing trees were scarce as well, so hardly any wild animals lived there.
Even woodcutters, herb gatherers, and hunters were rarely seen in this place. It was an utterly unremarkable mountain shunned even by villagers of the mundane world, let alone cultivators.
Rustle, rustle―
Something moved swiftly through the undergrowth halfway up the mountain.
At first, it looked as though a snake were slithering beneath the grass. But on closer inspection, it was a person dressed in brown, lying flat against the ground as he moved.
It was Lee Hyun.
Without moving his arms or legs, he was using the Soil-Turning Art together with the Earth Escape Art to slide his entire prone body across the surface of the ground.
Sliiide―
He cut through the undergrowth feet first with his head trailing behind, yet he moved faster than a snake, and the grass and branches barely stirred even after his body had passed.
Lee Hyun had named this peculiar movement technique the Reclining Escape Art. Strictly speaking, it should have been called the Reclining Earth Escape Art, but since he was the only one who used this escape art anyway, he had named it however he pleased.
There was a reason he was moving around in such a bizarre fashion.
If someone noticed Lee Hyun regularly coming and going, pointless rumors might spread that there was some secret hidden on this mountain.
But entering the ground from far away and traveling with the Earth Escape Art every single time consumed far too much spiritual power.
The Reclining Escape Art, on the other hand, merely skimmed along the surface instead of burying his entire body in the soil, so it consumed less than a tenth as much spiritual power as the Earth Escape Art.
If he followed the undergrowth from the foot of the mountain, he was also difficult to spot from a distance. Even if someone happened to be nearby, they would most likely assume that an animal was passing through the grass.
The strange figure gliding along on his back reached a broad, flat rock halfway up the mountain, then smoothly sank into the soil beneath it.
Slip―
Even if someone had been watching Lee Hyun until that very moment, the movement was so natural that they would have had difficulty telling exactly when he disappeared.
...
About ten li, roughly 4 km, beneath the surface.
Whoosh!
Lee Hyun dropped from the dark ceiling.
Thud.
After returning to Tunnel No. 1, Lee Hyun headed for the storeroom first.
A thick stone slab stood at the storeroom entrance like a door. When he pushed it aside, wooden shelves and jars of various sizes came into view.
Lee Hyun took six heavy bundles from his storage pouch and set them on the floor.
Thud, rustle―
When he opened the bundles, large walnuts, pine nuts, hazelnuts, peeled and dried chestnuts, roasted ginkgo nuts, pitted dried jujubes, and lotus seeds with their bitter hearts removed spilled out. He had bought all of them in Qingliu County Seat.
Lee Hyun divided the food by type among the jars. Before sealing each lid, he also placed inside a piece of charcoal wrapped in thin paper to absorb moisture.
Strictly speaking, storing everything inside the storage pouch would have been best, but Lee Hyun would eat it all before it spoiled anyway, so it hardly mattered.
Finally, he picked up a walnut and pressed it between his fingers.
Crack!
The hard shell split far too easily. Lee Hyun popped the kernel into his mouth and left the storeroom.
When he stopped in front of the narrow passage beside the storeroom, the soil beneath his feet rippled like water and swallowed his body.
A short while later, he emerged again in another passage several dozen zhang (roughly a hundred meters) away.
A crude wooden placard had been planted before him.
「Spirit Field No. 1-1」
It meant the first spirit field of Tunnel No. 1.
Several lines of smaller writing had been carved beneath it.
- Reclamation date.
- Sowing variety.
- Date of last Spirit Rain Art use.
- Spirit insect discovery record.
He had modeled it after the spirit field ledgers he had seen in Qinghe Valley.
Lee Hyun opened the stone door and went inside.
Spirit Field No. 1-1 was a long, narrow chamber measuring two zhang wide and sixteen zhang long. Its area was a little over half a mu (about 350 m²).
The ceiling was around one zhang high, and he had left the solid bedrock along both sides of the passage intact to serve as supports. Thick logs had been set closely together between them to further reduce the risk of collapse.
Lee Hyun had created this space using the Soil-Turning Art and the Earth Shovel Sword. The soil and stone he excavated had been used to reinforce the passages or fill empty spaces.
Long rows of Earth Vein Flowers lined the edges of the spirit field. They slowly drew the sparse spiritual qi from the surrounding geological strata into this place.
Inside them, Purple Poison Orchids with drooping violet leaves had been planted like a wall. Ivory-colored Bone-Rot Flowers and dark blue-black Yin Soul Grass grew in the central furrows.
The toxic qi emitted by the Bone-Rot Flowers and Purple Poison Orchids formed a faint purple mist within the spirit field.
The toxic qi was potent enough that even Qi Refining cultivators would have difficulty enduring it, so ordinary animals and insects could not even approach.
Even Lee Hyun, the owner of the spirit field, always entered while using the Qi Sphere Barrier and Breath-Sealing Art, then used the Cleansing Art and Detoxification Art after leaving.
Lee Hyun slowly walked along the passage, examining the condition of the leaves and stems. Then he spotted a tiny white speck near the roots of one Earth Vein Flower.
"Laid eggs here again."
When he brushed aside a little soil, several translucent eggs appeared, clinging together. Lee Hyun's finger flashed, and a slender silver needle pierced the eggs with perfect accuracy.
Several kinds of spirit insects he had never seen in Qinghe Valley lived underground in this area.
Some had long bodies like earthworms with pincers on their heads, while others were beetles almost impossible to distinguish from clumps of soil.
The spirit insects did not even dare touch the highly poisonous Yin Soul Grass, Bone-Rot Flowers, or Purple Poison Orchids. Instead, they tried to gnaw on the Earth Vein Flowers.
However, the toxic qi permeating the surroundings prevented them from damaging the Earth Vein Flowers as well, so at most they occasionally laid eggs near their roots.
Even if he left the eggs alone, the larvae would probably still be unable to harm the Earth Vein Flowers after hatching, but Lee Hyun removed every egg he found just in case.
"I suppose this counts as my first successful underground spirit field. It feels like I've worked out a proper system now..."
Lee Hyun looked around the spirit field with satisfaction.
In truth, this place was inferior to Qinghe Valley's Withering Yin Field in many respects. The three spirit plants grew at only one-third the rate they had in the Withering Yin Field. But aside from their growth speed, he had solved almost every other problem.
Perhaps because growth was slow, he did not need to use the Spirit Rain Art very often here either. Casting it over the entire spirit field once every ten days was sufficient.
At present, he had planted 120 Bone-Rot Flower plants, 300 clumps of Yin Soul Grass, and 80 Purple Poison Orchid bulbs.
If they continued growing without any major accidents, he would be able to harvest them roughly three hundred years later as spirit medicines with a hundred years of medicinal potency apiece.
...
There were two reasons Lee Hyun had built his hideout ten li underground.
The first was that the temperature had barely risen even at this depth.
According to something Lee Hyun had once heard in passing in his previous life, the deeper one went underground on Earth, the higher the temperature became. Deep geothermal power generation, for example, supposedly drilled holes between 3 km and more than 5 km underground to make use of geothermal heat ranging from 100 degrees to over 200 degrees Celsius.
Yet in this world, even ten li underground, around 4 km deep, the temperature barely changed.
Curious, Lee Hyun had once used the Earth Escape Art and Earth Shovel Sword to descend even farther. Around twenty-five li, roughly 10 km underground, however, he discovered that the temperature began rising sharply. In some places, reddish heat even seeped from cracks in the bedrock.
Lee Hyun guessed that something resembling an earth-fire vein or magma flowed below that depth, and afterward he saw no reason to descend any farther.
The second reason was that soil and bedrock interfered with outsiders' divine sense.
Divine sense propagated best through air, while its detection range decreased considerably in water or soil. Layers of bedrock or metal interfered with it even more severely.
When Lee Hyun tested it with his own divine sense, he found that its detection range dropped by nearly ninety percent in soil or water.
In other words, for someone to sense all the way down to ten li underground with divine sense, they would need divine sense powerful enough to scan more than a hundred li through open air.
If what Lee Hyun had overheard in Qinghe Valley was accurate, scanning a hundred li with divine sense was something only cultivators far beyond the Golden Core realm could accomplish. Perhaps even many Nascent Soul cultivators would be unable to discover a small cavern at this depth through divine sense alone.
Of course, even a low-realm cultivator might eventually discover Lee Hyun's hideout if they systematically searched the mountain using the Ground-Sense Art or a detection magic tool.
But that assumption was hardly realistic. There was no reason for a passing cultivator to meticulously search beneath a mountain that did not even possess a spirit vein.
The geographical scale of this world was enormous. Doing such a thing would literally amount to throwing time and spiritual power into the dirt.
Cultivators who frequently used the Earth Escape Art were rare as well.
In truth, judged purely by speed, the Earth Escape Art was not a particularly good technique. A Qi Refining cultivator could move faster by running across the surface, while anyone at Foundation Establishment or above could simply fly through the sky.
Thus, Lee Hyun concluded that unless someone already suspected this mountain and deliberately investigated it, the chances of Tunnel No. 1 being discovered by accident at a depth of ten li were very small.
There was one minor problem: food.
Qinghe Rice did not grow properly in the underground spirit field. Lee Hyun did not know whether it was because there was no sunlight or because the underground environment was unsuitable, but since cultivating it was impossible, he had to obtain food from the mundane world.
That was why Lee Hyun occasionally visited Qingliu County Seat or other nearby county seats and bought nuts like he had today.
The Blood-Clotting Grass and Green Dew Grass he had planted as an experiment had also failed to grow normally, but neither became more valuable with age, nor could they serve as food like Qinghe Rice, so Lee Hyun stopped paying them any further attention.
...
After finishing today's inspection of the spirit field, Lee Hyun followed the passage back to the cultivation chamber.
The cultivation chamber had been made by reshaping a natural rock cavern he had stumbled upon while constructing the hideout.
Gray granite formed a rounded ceiling, with the highest point reaching three zhang. The floor had been leveled with the Earth Shovel Sword, while a bed and shelves had been carved directly into the rock along one wall.
Neatly arranged on the shelves were wooden tablets inscribed with mnemonic formulas for techniques, jars containing spirit insects captured in the spirit field for research, and small wooden boxes filled with various kinds of soil.
A wooden table and a single chair stood in the center.
There were no windows here, and he was not currently using the Faint Light Art, leaving the chamber pitch-dark. Yet Lee Hyun felt more at ease whenever he entered this darkness.
One side of the cultivation chamber connected to the storeroom, while a curved passage on the opposite side led to the spirit field. Three wrist-thick air shafts had been bored near the ceiling.
The passage leading toward the spirit field had been dug lower than the living area. This was to keep the dense toxic qi from spilling into the cultivation chamber and make it settle on the floor of the spirit field instead.
Lee Hyun crossed the cultivation chamber and headed toward the new passage he had been excavating.
It was where he intended to build Spirit Field No. 1-2.
"Maybe I'll dig just a little farther today."
Lee Hyun took out the Earth Shovel Sword.
Humm―
As he infused it with spiritual power, the patterns engraved on its broad blade glowed yellow.
When he thrust the Earth Shovel Sword into the ground and pushed forward, the solid earth and gravel softened like wet clay. He used the Soil-Turning Art to send the loosened soil behind him.
He had advanced about three zhang when it happened.
Pshk.
The sensation at the tip of the Earth Shovel Sword suddenly changed.
"Hm?"
Ahead stretched a long layer of fine sand mixed with rounded gravel. The soil was strangely damp.
Lee Hyun pinched up a little sand between his fingers.
"Is there water?"
A term he had heard in his previous life surfaced faintly in his mind.
'Wasn't there something called an aquifer...? A layer where water flows underground?'
He knew almost nothing about geology. He had merely heard that layers of sand and gravel underground could hold or channel water, and that digging a well into one would bring the water out.
Lee Hyun cautiously prodded ahead with the Earth Shovel Sword.
Pshhh!
A thin stream of water sprayed from the hole pierced by the sword tip.
Fwoooosh―
The next instant, the opening widened to the size of a fist, and an enormous torrent of water burst through.
"Kgh!"
The cold jet struck Lee Hyun squarely in the face and chest.
Water rapidly began filling the floor of the passage.
'Damn!'
Lee Hyun activated the Soil-Turning Art and pushed the surrounding clay-rich soil into the opening. But the rushing water immediately washed it away.
Lee Hyun dragged over the broad stone slab he had left standing nearby.
Boom!
Using the Earth Shovel Sword's Soil-Softening Art, he softened the bedrock around the opening, then pushed the edge of the slab nearly one chi (about 30 cm) into it.
When he released the Soil-Softening Art, the bedrock hardened again and clamped tightly around the slab. Lee Hyun then packed several layers of clay and gravel over it and compressed them firmly with the Soil-Turning Art.
Water continued seeping through the gaps around the slab for a while, but after he filled even the tiniest cracks with clay, the flow finally stopped.
"Haa...."
Lee Hyun stood ankle-deep in water and swept back his soaked hair.
The stone slab before him trembled faintly. There seemed to be groundwater trapped under considerable pressure on the other side.
"Is this an aquifer...? If I mess with it carelessly, I could ruin all my farming..."
Lee Hyun pulled out the wooden placard he had originally set up.
「Planned Site for Spirit Field No. 1-2」
He carved new words onto the reverse side.
「Aquifer No. 1. Do Not Open Carelessly.」
After thinking for a moment, Lee Hyun carved two more lines beneath it.
「Potential Future Use for Water Storage.」
「Potential for Cultivation of Aquatic Spirit Plants.」
...
After changing his clothes, Lee Hyun returned and sat at the table.
"Spirit Field No. 1-2 needs to be far away from the aquifer... I'll have to dig it in a completely different direction. Anyway, Tunnel No. 1 finally has the bare essentials. It's time to make a cultivation plan."
He took out a blank wooden tablet and began writing down, one by one, the cultivation arts and techniques he needed to learn.
「Primordial Body, Aura-Concealing Art, Spirit-Concealing Art, Distance-Shrinking Step, Azure Steel Sword Art, Spirit Light Shield, Fireball Art, Sword Control Art, Farsight Art, Keen Hearing Art, Night Vision Art, Scent-Tracking Art, Aura-Reading Art, Ground-Sense Art, ...」
Lee Hyun's expression stiffened as he stared at the writing that filled the entire wooden tablet.
"There's too much to learn. But all of it seems useful..."
Properly mastering a technique required countless repetitions, but practicing was difficult for a Qi Refining Stage 2 cultivator because his spiritual power ran dry so quickly.
"I should cultivate the Primordial Body first. If I have more spiritual power, learning techniques should become easier too."
...
Lee Hyun sat in the lotus position atop the bedrock and, following the cultivation method of the Primordial Body, drew a thread-thin strand of Primordial True Qi from his dantian.
The energy flowed through his meridians, passing through his chest and shoulder before entering his right arm.
Rather than keeping the Primordial True Qi within the meridians of his palm, he slowly allowed it to seep into the surrounding flesh and bone.
Ssshh―
The Primordial True Qi dispersed in an instant.
When he examined it carefully with divine sense, he found it spread in an extremely thin layer throughout his entire palm. It had simply become so faint that he could no longer sense it as distinctly as before.
Lee Hyun drew out another strand of Primordial True Qi.
The second was the same. So was the third.
For one full shichen (two hours), he continuously transferred Primordial True Qi from his dantian, yet he could barely sense any change in his palm.
He recalled what Steward Wang Jin had told him.
- It will feel hopeless, like trying to fill a boundless sea all by yourself.
Lee Hyun looked down at his palm.
"It certainly is daunting. Still, if I keep pouring water into the sea, someday..."
From that day onward, he began cultivating the Primordial Body whenever he had spare time.
***
One hundred years later.
The wooden placard of Spirit Field No. 1-1 had darkened after enduring the passage of countless years.
The Bone-Rot Flowers, Yin Soul Grass, and Purple Poison Orchids had continued producing seeds and bulbs, while the original parent plants had accumulated some thirty years of medicinal potency. Considering the growth rate here, everything was progressing according to plan.
Countless rains and snows had fallen upon the mountain above.
The county magistrate of Qingliu County Seat had changed several times, and the owner of the shop where Lee Hyun had first bought nuts had died long ago.
Every decade or so, Lee Hyun changed the market he frequented. At times, he attached a false beard or smeared dirt over his face to alter his appearance.
Yet his face and body had not aged in the slightest compared to a hundred years ago.
...
At the center of the cultivation chamber in Tunnel No. 1.
Lee Hyun lay there comfortably.
Inside his body, there was no longer any distinct boundary marking the dantian beneath his navel.
Primordial True Qi had seeped throughout his entire body, into his skin and muscles, blood vessels and bones, and even his internal organs.
At first, spreading a single strand of true qi through just one arm had taken an entire day.
After ten years, he could connect his limbs and torso into a single flow.
After thirty years, Primordial True Qi began to reside within his bones.
By the sixtieth year, the Primordial One-Qi Art circulated naturally even while he breathed or walked.
Lee Hyun had initially cultivated while sitting in the lotus position, but as he became increasingly proficient with the Primordial One-Qi Art, he began circulating the cultivation art constantly even while tending the spirit fields, excavating passages, or cracking open nuts.
At some point, he even became capable of refining spiritual qi at maximum efficiency while lying down comfortably.
And today, after a hundred years.
Hummm―
Primordial True Qi spread throughout his entire body from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. The instant it evenly filled the tips of his fingers and toes, even the most minute flesh and tissue beneath his skin...
Thrum!
A faint light spread from Lee Hyun's body, then vanished.
His bones, muscles, and internal organs vibrated simultaneously as the Primordial True Qi scattered throughout his body connected into a single whole!
Lee Hyun opened his eyes.
"Finally, Primordial Body, 2nd Stage...!"
Primordial Body, 2nd Stage meant that his entire body, from head to toe, had been developed to the same level as the dantian of an ordinary Qi Refining Stage 2 cultivator.
In other words, Lee Hyun's entire body had now become one enormous dantian!
Lee Hyun slowly raised his right hand.
Flash!
A slender silver needle appeared at his fingertip.
Pshk!
The silver needle pierced straight through the center of a wooden board on the opposite side of the cultivation chamber.
Lee Hyun immediately cast the Yang Metal Art a second time, then fired a third and fourth silver needle in rapid succession.
Pshk! Pshk! Pshk!
Even after using the Yang Metal Art dozens more times, the Primordial True Qi filling his entire body barely diminished.
Yet Lee Hyun's expression turned strange.
"Huh?"
He had discovered a new secret of the Primordial One-Qi Art and the Primordial Body.