Xing Yi exited the Paragon Emporium with sixty-four less spirit stones than when he entered. Walking down the stone steps of the emporium, he tightly carried a large wooden drawer by his side in one arm.

As the box slid down the side of him again and again, threatening to fall down, he would have to constantly lift it back up with a pull of his arm and shoulder. Although anyone could fit their fingers around the circumference of his arm, they were not weak and easily held the large object in place.

Upon the front and back of it were several gold metal latches that withheld drawers from sliding out and onto the ground. Created by a mortal grandmaster; a servant of the Paragon Emporium, this drawer was created out of a wood that could keep spiritual herbs fresh for years.

The spiritual herbs for the ingredients required for five Lotus Explosion Pills and the other five grade-one Qi Gathering Pill had cost him sixty spiritual stones, while the wooden drawer for storage cost him four.

In the first place, he didn’t have a spatial storage pouch, but even if he did he wouldn’t be able to store them in there as it would result in their immediate destruction and instead had to be stored in a special container like the one he was currently carrying.

It was a good deal for what it was and he didn’t have any qualms about it. He still had thirty-six spirit stones in the bank and would be very conservative with what he would spend it on in the future.

Soon, Xing trekked up the hill and forgot all about the Paragon Emporium and thought upon how he was going to refine these pills and what he was going to do now. Teleporting through the formation,

he appeared atop a jade platform in a grand hall.

Nearby, upon a lone, tall wooden beam several metres high in horse position was a grey-bearded old man. Sensing that the formation went off, he opened his left eye for a brief moment before closing it and returning to his own cultivation.

Xing Yi bowed to Elder Wang, the man who was responsible for the defence of the Bloody Path Sect and oversaw all teleportation into the sect. If enemies were to casually teleport into this hall-where all outside teleporting was received- they would be immediately sent back in the blink of an eye by Elder Wang. There were countless other security measures in case but he wasn’t important enough to know about them.

But the thing was that this place wasn’t actually inside the sect. It was in a nearby area not disclosed to the public. No one could actually directly teleport into the sect without going through here.

Thus, with a single wave of his hand, the cryptic red engravings on the jade platform lit up in a red light and he was once again whisked away. Then, he actually arrived into the sect and was greeted by the sight of another elderly man.

He wasn’t an elder though and was merely at foundation establishment. He too, gave him the same treatment as the elderly man and with a single look, he too closed them and resumed his sitting cultivation.

Exiting the room and following down the hallway, he found himself inside the lobby of the Void Hall. To his right, with his legs kicked up on the desk, a black-haired young man with shaggy hair read a small, palm-sized book. He didn’t even notice Xing Yi’s entrance and continued to read.

However, Xing Yi knew that he noticed him as once one reached foundation establishment, a cultivator’s senses would become so keen to the point where they could smell blood from kilometres away, see the individual hairs on an ant’s legs several metres away, and hear people whispering from across a bustling street if they so wished.

Yet, with his status, he had no option but to respectfully bow to his seniors, even if they didn’t notice his existence. As he did so and proceeded to leave, he hoped that once he grew stronger, that they would finally acknowledge his existence and not so nonchalantly ignore him.

From time to time, he imagined himself as a cool cultivator that everyone wanted to talk to and was so strong that everyone respected him. And that he would shock everyone with his talents and he would be taken in by a core-formation elder. That he would eventually become a nascent-soul level cultivator in terms of earthly cultivation and save a village from an abrupt landslide.

He had many fantasies that he constantly thought about and all of them involved becoming stronger. Over the course of his time in the Bloody Path Sect, he noticed that his wants had quickly shifted from making use of the opportunity that his grandfather gave him and making his family proud, to becoming a powerful immortal capable of splitting the ocean and creating ravines with a single move of his hand.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He had read the myths, felt their strength, and been enlightened by their vast wisdom many times in the past. He wanted all of that too.

So, as he came to his house, he became determined to succeed.

Without wasting any time, he waded through the jade slip and consumed its knowledge. Two days later, he had completed sorting through it and within his mind temple was a book named ‘Earthly Convergence’.

In it, he learned that earthly pill refining did not differ greatly from heavenly pill refining. They merely used different energies.

Pill refining was one of the very few practices that heavenly and earthly cultivation shared in common. It is one of the pillars of the foundation that the world of cultivation was built upon. If it were to become shaky-say all pill refining Grandmasters were to suddenly die overnight- chaos would ensue.

In the few myths and legends that covered the lost art of earthly cultivation, they would often consume the corpses of spirit beasts and their cores to improve their cultivation. But over time their bodies would grow resistant to this energy and they would seek other ways to increase it.

This led to them also discovering and learning the art of pill refining. It also proved to be very useful as they would be able to use pre-prepared pills to recover their diminished qi just like the heavenly cultivators did at the time.

But, while heavenly cultivation is a gentle spirit and easy to control, earthly cultivation is fierce and dangerous, like trying to control a wild beast. And when a refiner is unable to control this rabid energy, it results in the explosion of all the energy they were currently controlling.

Fortunately, they are earthly cultivators and don’t have to worry about getting injured and can simply carry on without worry. Just so long as they aren’t trying to refine high-grade pills far above their own cultivation level. It didn’t usually happen but when and if it did, they could very well maim or even kill themselves.

And when Xing Yi found himself reading this, he couldn’t help but sigh. Everything related to earthly cultivation just had to be extremely difficult.

Didn’t it?

No wonder Elder Yang gave this slip to him. He was basically throwing out the trash!

And if a heavenly cultivator were to try to use this technique themselves- Xing Yi couldn’t help but chuckle to himself, feeling as if he had gotten ripped off- their cultivation would begin to dissipate!

That stingy old man! Acting all wise and benevolent just to scam him in the end.

Regardless, the old man was centuries ahead of him. Literally.

Sitting up from his mat, he walked out into the hallway and came to a particular door. Opening it up, he was greeted with the sight of fire-wood fully stacked inside a small closet.

Putting his small hands on his chin, he stood in place, feeling lost as to how he should proceed. He stared all around himself as he walked around, leaned on the wall and stared through a window at the end of the hallway.

“If only my brother was here…” Xing Yi mused.

A few minutes later, after a lot of blank moments of thinking and standing, he finally hauled all the firewood out of the closet and into a pile near the house, right next to the fire pit.

Heaving the black cauldron from out of the closet, he carried it across the house, trying his best not to scratch the floor as he noticed that his earlier efforts had caused white scratches to appear on the wooden flooring.

Bringing it out into the courtyard beside the house, he once again stood in place, unsure of his decision.

“Surely they wouldn’t notice. Right?”

He was facing a dilemma. Either to be secretive and make sure no one finds out or to refine out in the open. He had already made up his decision but couldn’t help but feel apprehensive about it.

There was no way he could really hide that he was pill refining from the cultivators of the sect with their powerful and far-seeing spiritual sense.

But what made him less worried was that he lived in an isolated part of the sect, right in the middle of the valley with the least ambient spiritual qi in the entire sect. So much so, that the only reason that the valley he dwelled in was included within the sect-wide protection formation was because to the east of it was a tall mountain that could be used as high-ground.

So, after much delegation and self-assurance, he finally began the arduous journey of pill refinement.