One of Xing Yi’s favourite writers was Tang Zongsan. In one of his less-known books on the ever changing nature of existence, he writes, “Great change is beset by great action.”

Unfortunately, Xing Yi was a foolish follower of Tang Zongsan and did as such. Saying goodbye to Ya Jing and her family, he left the Servant Hall for his officially designated place of residence that he had supposed to have been living at this entire time. He needed to move. He needed a new environment to focus. To truly dedicate himself to the pursuit of immortality.

Focus was his goal.

This was something that he knew very well after becoming someone experienced in meditation. He may only be thirteen, but he had become a monk crazy for meditation just a couple months ago. Xing Yi found him giggling to himself like a monkey when he remembered how serious he was during those times and how impossible it would’ve been to start a conversation with him. Recalling those times now, Xing Yi couldn’t help but feel bad for Ya Jing. All she wanted was a playing partner but instead she got a mediation maniac!

He needed a sanctuary. His very own palace of meditation where no one else could disturb him in his train of thought.

This wasn’t something revolutionary but something very common amongst cultivators.

They lived upon the peaks of cloudy, mystical mountains all by themselves. To prevent qi deviation during critical breakthroughs and to have time to ponder upon the dao without being disturbed. It allowed them to become one hundred percent focused. All Core Formation Masters in the Bloody Path Sect lived like this. So did the Nascent Soul

Ancestor of the sect. Xing Yi was simply replicating an ancient strategy created by cultivators from primordial times. Just like everyone else already was.

Xing Yi stumbled upon the long house after teleporting, followed by a brief hike through the wilderness. In the sect, nature was left unkempt and wild. This was done so young cultivators would quickly learn how to fly. Otherwise, every time they made the journey from their small huts to the Training Hall, they would show up with dirty robes with the scent of leaves still lingering on them.

His place of residence was abandoned. It was a horizontally long wooden house with multiple three entrances on the front and back. There were twelve bedrooms and a large, combined kitchen and living room at the right-end of the house. It was much too big for a young child-now teenager- like him, but it would work. He would need time to properly clean this place and build this into his very own immortal cave. It wasn’t a cave upon a mighty mountain, but it would do the trick.

And so he begun. In a few days, dusty floors were dusted and wet down, scrubbed and left squeaky clean. Cobwebs were swept away and new furniture was moved in with the help of Ya Jing’s father.

In the end, one room was his mediation room, populated by only a single mat and an incense burner. In another was his dedicated sleeping room with a simple cloth bed along the floor. Another was his dedicated study room, with empty bookshelves on all sides and a wooden desk. This was where he was going to be copying books.

As for where he would refine pills, he would simply do that in the stone-paved back courtyard. If he did it in the house, he would risk burning the whole house down. He may be invisible in the sect, but a burning house would attract attention and he didn’t like his odds that he wouldn’t be punished. Pill Refining wasn’t something to mess around while doing. If one wasn’t careful, they could easily kill themselves. Xing Yi didn’t plan to end up like one of these people.

It was a couple days after his initial residence that Xing Yi decided he was adequately prepared to begin pill refining. He had a couple months of study under his belt. He knew the medicinal ingredients, how to add them into the cauldron, how the fire should look like, the timing, and loads of other things. All of this was wandering around in his head and he had to see if he was right. Actual practice is what he needed before he delved into creating pills.

And what he needed most was a cauldron.

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Cauldrons were very common and easy to acquire. But a cauldron made for pill refining? Exceedingly rare and very expensive. With another problem like this involving money, everything seemed to be against him. Pill Cauldrons, as they were called, weren’t something that could be created by anyone.

No, pill cauldrons were only created by certain individuals. They were-amongst many other spiritual treasures- created through secret methods and techniques that weren’t divulged to the public. In addition, pill cauldrons were of the rarest sort and seldom made by but a few clans, sects, and individuals. To get his hands on one would be almost impossible at his cultivation. Least to say, something as rare as a pill cauldron was not something he could easily afford by simply selling books.

From what he has read, a cauldron suitable for refining grade one pills would cost him at least thirty low-grade spirit stones.

To procure thirty spirit stones would take over a year to make at the rate he was copying books. To copy an entire, moderately-sized three-hundred page book with decent handwriting, he would be doing so for a few hours everyday for a month until it was completely finished.

In hindsight, he could technically become a maniac like he had done with meditation to increase the rate at which he was copying books to drastically reduce the amount of time required to get on. The only drawback was that he had a limited audience and his sales heavily depended on who was there on the day of the auction. Even if he had three books with valuable information, there may not be anyone in the crowd that day that needed that sort of information.

Xing Yi was stuck at a roadblock. He had to admit that he had highly underestimated the task of pill refining. It made sense though. He had no master, no internal cultivation, was as poor as a bum, and no ingredients or cauldron which to refine pills with.

It was with these burdening thoughts that Xing Yi woke up one day and made his morning walk to a river that ran through the low valley of the Long Tang Mountain Range. It was during this time that Xing Yi’s mind was roused and he awoke to the world, of which he carefully observed the natural wildlife with keen interest and strong appreciation of its beauty.

After a brief fifteen-minute walk, he found himself in front of a river, its sky blue water gracefully flowing past him. In the distance to the right, the river expanded into a lake that hugged the bottom of colossal mountains rich with greenery.

It was a breathtaking view.

Casually stretching his neck, Xing Yi took off his robes and laid them on a nearby rock and slowly waded into the water, its coldness briefly shocking his muscles. Quickly, he was submerged into the water, all for except his head.

Right now, he intended for himself to complete a full cycle of his internal cultivation art. This would’ve taken him thirty minutes to complete. However, for some peculiar reason, Xing Yi decided to duck his head underwater. Which he did.

Opening his eyes underwater wasn’t painful at all. When he was a kid, he could remember dipping down into a small river to the west of the village with his friend Hou Li. Every time he tried to open his eyes underwater, the water would fiercely infiltrate his eyes, causing him to immediately shut them close before he swiftly returned to the surface to dry the water out of them.

But now he didn’t even feel a thing. Xing Yi guessed this to be a strange but relatively unknown benefit of cleansing your first meridian.

Xing Yi danced around underwater, letting his limbs freely explore wherever they wished. His eyes took in the rich blue hue of the water, taking mind of the bubbling water around himself and green plants on each sides of the river edging down into the water. He glanced downwards and took hold of the many grey boulders and rocks that occupied the space down below.

His mind was thoughtless up until he spotted a large, pitch-black object down below. It was something that looked strangely familiar. Something that he had been thinking a lot about recently.

It was a cauldron. But what was one doing down here at the bottom of a river?

Xing Yi just had to find out.