Chapter 133: Three Years of Peaceful Life in the Heavenly Pit

'Root of Eternal Growth, Great Seed of the White Tliv, six petals of Viscous Trailing Myema... and Millennium Moon Mushroom.' Tossing the pink mushroom in with the rest of the plants inside the Qi Cauldron, An began the Blending technique.

'If only I hadn't lost that second spatial ring, the one packed with all those third-rank plants, seeds, and fruits... Ugh, just thinking about it makes my chest hurt all over again.'

The further along he got in refining the pill, the more residue drifted off into the world around him, and the small creatures living nearby started emerging from their homes, creeping closer and closer to the shore where An sat.

This kind of behavior had already become a tradition over the two years he'd spent inside the walls of this heavenly pit.

Woosh!

A thick fog, rich with Wood Qi, spread out in every direction and began settling onto the ground around An.

The whole area turned a soft white and pink, shimmering in gentle shades, all from the two main ingredients, the pink Millennium Moon Mushroom and the Great Seed of the White Tliv.

The beasts, as if hypnotized, rushed to gather up the residue off the ground and eat it. Among the frenzied creatures, a fat, round bird could be seen too, shoving everyone else aside with its own body, trying to lick up as much as it could off the ground.

'Heh, I finally managed to refine a pill with two veins and a single concentrated Wood element inside.' Holding a quail-egg-sized pill in his hand, white and pink with two green veins.

'Even with third-rank ingredients, I still can't push past the threshold into third-rank pills... This is my best result so far… a perfect second-rank pill with two veins of Wood Qi.'

Studying the Qi flows coming off the pill, An pulled a small box out of his ring.

Opening it, he found ten compartments across two tiers. Lifting the top tier, An placed the pill into one of the empty spaces and, wrapping his finger in Qi, began writing the pill's name along the edge above it. 'Second Step of Qi... a fitting name.'

Looking at the three other names already written along the edges of the closed compartments, each already holding a pill: Second Step of the Body, Purity of Mind, Baldi’s Pill. An shook his head, disappointed in his own limited imagination for names.

Second Step of Qi was a pill that boosted the rate at which Qi particles were drawn in during cultivation.

Second Step of the Body was a pill that let a cultivator channel more Qi into their body. In other words, temporarily raising the body's own limit, so its development and cultivation would speed up.

Purity of Mind was a second-rank pill, an improved version of the first-rank Qi Enlightenment pill, whose function was simple: accelerating the thinking process.

'The next step is to combine the Second Step of Qi and Second Step of the Body pills.'

'Ugh, but for that I'll need to track down the right spirit plants... Even though I know exactly which ones would work, thanks to the sect's books, the problem is I've never actually seen them, and I have no idea what their unique Qi signature even looks like...' Closing off the now four pills with an empty tier on top, he shut the box and put it back in his ring.

"Bawk... Cluck..." Swaying from side to side, eyes barely staying open, the rooster stumbled over to An and collapsed on the ground beside him, immediately starting to snore.

Looking at the bird and confirming he was fine after eating the pill's residue, An pulled his own handmade book out of his ring, along with a bowl holding a few pieces of fruit.

The still-hungry spirit beasts, the ones who hadn't managed to flee yet, caught the scent and power radiating from the bowl, specifically, from what lay inside it, and shamelessly crept closer and closer.

An wrapped three third-rank fruits in Qi and, dividing everything into small, equal portions so there'd be enough for every little beast, sent a piece flying straight into each of their paws.

The moment they got their share, they all bolted at once, trying to get back to their homes as fast as possible.

Lowering his head over the bowl, An watched Baldi's trembling wing try to snatch a piece of fruit from it, still lying flat on his back, trying not to choke on his own drool and tongue.

"You're really going to burst one of these days..." Picking up a piece of fruit and tossing it to the bird, An opened his book and flipped to a blank page.

….

Flipping through the pages, each one covered in runes he'd come across before. On formations, on artifacts, on altars, in laboratories, everything he'd managed to hold onto in his memory over the years had been transferred onto the pages of this book.

In the end, An had filled a full nine pages, densely listing out every rune.

The following two pages laid out the relationships and results of his random trial-and-error combinations.

'Hm, looks like I'm going to have to redo this list of runes, split them into their own subgroups... Same as with alchemy, runes have their own ingredients and catalysts... except I'll just call them primary and auxiliary.'

Through dozens of experiments, An had realized not every rune has its own purpose. And after two years of testing, he'd come to understand that runes had their own subgroups.

Having no prior knowledge of this craft, he decided to name the two subgroups himself: primary runes and auxiliary runes.

Picking up a rune he hadn't studied yet, An wrote it out in the air using his Qi and began pairing it against others he'd already identified as auxiliary.

Each time, he connected both runes with a weak thread of Qi, careful not to disrupt the energetic integrity of either one.

After running through roughly a hundred auxiliary runes, he realized the one he was testing probably wasn't primary either. Noting this in his book, An paired this rune, now as the auxiliary one, against a different primary candidate instead.

Pop! Cpop!

Instantly, both runes changed, growing slightly brighter, and the weak stream of energy connecting them began pulsing in time with the dull popping sounds.

Watching the energy around the runes, An wrote down everything he observed in the Qi in a new line.

Something else interesting he'd noticed was the function of primary runes. Their behavior was almost always identical, no matter which auxiliary rune they paired with. Take the popping effect from his last experiment, a primary rune paired with any auxiliary rune always produced nearly identical pops, differing only in frequency and volume.

Running experiments with one primary rune against a whole range of auxiliary ones, An realized a single primary rune only ever worked with one auxiliary rune, no matter how many parallel or sequential connections to other auxiliary runes existed in the chain. Only one was ever chosen, and An still wasn't always sure what determined that final choice.

'After all this time, I still haven't figured out how a rune actually interacts with Qi… how it takes and applies whatever it's been programmed to do... Still, I'm fairly certain runes are some kind of direct interface with Qi itself, but if that's true, then this is still borrowed knowledge, not something that's really mine.' Continuing his study of the runes, he moved on to the next unexamined one.

'Maybe if I can grasp the underlying concept behind runes as a whole, I could change their principles and make this whole system independent… mine, personally, an extension of myself. Who knows...'

.

.

More than five hours later, An had studied eight new runes, two of which turned out to be primary.

Closing the book, he put it back in his ring and, closing his eyes, began cultivating while simultaneously manipulating his Qi.

Ever since arriving here two years ago, he'd started combining his cultivation cycles with Qi manipulation training, all because of a fear that kept resurfacing along with memories of that now-distant battle, where the speed of his Qi manipulation had often been the difference between life and death in a single instant.

Realizing his real advantage wasn't the strength of his body or the density of his Qi, but his mastery of control, he'd focused entirely on that.

At first, combining the training with his cultivation cycle had been extremely difficult, even though he could split his mind across multiple independent thought processes. He'd still needed a lot of time before he could manage both at once, without losing efficiency in either direction.

Drawing Qi into himself and breaking it down, keeping only the Wood Qi and Death Qi, An filtered the energy through the Cycle Symbol and sent it to his dantian.

At the same time, across hundreds of points on his body, clumps of Qi spontaneously formed, each converted into a different element, taking shape as tiny figures, animals, plants, people, before dissolving and reforming at another point on his skin.

Staging a one-man puppet theater, where the actors were hundreds of tiny elemental clumps, An continued cultivating and training his Qi at the same time.

Lying on his back, Baldi lifted his head and watched these little figures, each one acting out its own scene.

One, shaped like a large beast, hunted several smaller ones, darting back and forth between them, trying to decide which to chase.

Another, shaped like an old man, swung a hoe, while his grandson tossed seeds under the hoe's path and his granddaughter followed right behind, watering the spot where the seeds had landed with a watering can.

A third figure knelt on one knee, holding a small box with a ring inside, while a girl in an elaborate dress from some nineteenth-or-twentieth-century style pressed her hands to her cheeks, jumping with joy.

Watching each tiny story unfold, Baldi sometimes grew sad whenever one ended abruptly, dissolving into the air. But the sadness never lasted long, since another story would already be unfolding nearby, and he'd switch his attention to it at once.

.

.

Once he'd finished cultivating, An got to his feet and headed toward the water.

Baldi immediately jumped up, or rather, tried to. Even though more than ten hours had passed while An cultivated, the bird, still bloated from his own overeating, could barely move at all.

"Stay put, I'm going to get dinner." Diving into the lake, An shot through the tunnel and came out the other side, beneath the waterfall.

Looking around, he found several Qi flows belonging to early-stage second-rank spirit creatures. 'Oh! I figured they'd have migrated out of here long ago...'

Recognizing a familiar Qi flow among them, he leapt onto a tree and ran toward the source, jumping from branch to branch.

.

.

Reaching a small clearing surrounded by tall, colorful trees, An looked toward the source of the Qi flows.

At the center of the clearing, in a massive mud puddle, lay an enormous creature, wallowing around, something like a hippo, except without tusks, and with jaws shaped more like a duck's beak.

"Tuk! Tok! Tuk!"

Clacking its toothless jaws together, the creature was thoroughly enjoying its warm mud bath.

'Its skin's gray, which means it's in the middle of shedding, and its defenses are denser right now... The Earth Bibitok's weak points are its mouth and eyes.' Settling into a more comfortable position on the branch, An began forming a spear out of pure energy.

Once he'd shaped the Qi Spear, he started compressing it, shrinking its radius as much as his control would allow.

As he compressed it, he began hearing the air crackle and hum from the massive pressure building inside the spear, the Qi threatening to slip out of control. From how tightly packed it was, the Qi particles were nearly touching each other, and pulling them any closer risked triggering a chain reaction of chaos and detonating the whole thing.

"HA!" Hurling the spear with everything he had, An leapt down from the tree and gave chase across the ground.

Enjoying the mud, the Bibitok sensed something was wrong, but too late. Lifting its head, all it saw was a bright point right in front of its eyes, which the next instant slammed straight into one of them.

"Gra-!" It only managed a single cry of pain before its brain melted through completely and its massive head dropped into the mud.

Walking up to the creature, An wrapped it in Qi and pulled it out of the mud pool. Using his Qi, he cleaned every trace of mud off the Bibitok's body.

Studying the five-meter carcass, he flipped it over and found a hole right at its left thigh, the spot where his Qi Spear had exited, having punched clean through the massive body. 'Looks like the weak points aren't just the eyes and mouth... but also the spot right by its ass.' Shaking his head, he tucked the creature's body into his storage ring and headed back.

.

.

Darkness had settled over the sky, three moons and countless stars lighting up everything below.

Beneath the layers of stone mountains, inside the heavenly pit, the Pseudo-Solar veins worked to project whatever was happening outside as closely as possible, and dimmed themselves too, mimicking the approach of night.

Over a massive bonfire, on a thick tree trunk serving as a spit, the enormous body of the Bibitok hung and turned, slowly and evenly roasting to a crisp, golden crust.

Holding a large mug, already nearly drained, An took long gulps of his wine.

♫“I met a strange lady, she made me nervous…“♫

♫"Cluck! Cluuuck…"♫ With a large bowl of wine in front of him, Baldi drank along as best he could.

♫“She took me in and made me breakfast…“♫

♫”And she said: Do you come from a land down under…“♫

♫”Bawk-Bawk…“♫

The two of them kept it up, off-key and enthusiastic, trading verses and clucks back and forth.

Across the entire heavenly pit, the sound of singing and crowing echoed.

Over these two years, the small creatures living here had long since gotten used to this sort of thing and stopped paying it any attention.

.

.

A year later. Deep in the dense forest.

"Klo! KloGH!"

Three enormous creatures, resembling cloaked octopuses standing upright on two legs like humans, were discussing something in their own guttural, beastly dialect.

"KloGN! Klo~" One of them suddenly started digging into the ground with its sharp tentacles, trying to reach something buried beneath.

"ROOAR!!" Suddenly, several hundred meters away, a massive leopard with six legs and a camel-like hump on its back burst out and charged straight at them.

"KloG!"

"KloR!"

Abandoning their digging, all three turned to meet the leopard head-on.

….

Several dozen meters away, face pale, An hid among the branches, afraid to so much as move an eyelash. 'Four third-rank creatures, on par with a Golden Core cultivators... just the pressure from their Qi alone is turning my "stomach" inside out.'

Carefully dropping to the ground, An didn't dare activate his Qi yet, afraid they might sense him.

Crawling on all fours, pressing himself close to the earth, Qi Silence at full strength, he hurried toward the spot where the three octopus-like creatures had been digging.

Reaching it, An immediately began digging with his bare hands, no delay at all.

Pouring every bit of his physical strength into it, he dug a hole nearly nine meters deep in just sixteen seconds.

Grabbing hold of a blue root in front of him, he gritted his teeth and yanked at it sharply.

'Gh! Come oooon!!!' Face red, the root finally gave way.

Crack!

Pulling out a nearly three-meter blue root, covered in hundreds of small fruits that looked like cherries, except blue, An immediately tucked it into his ring and, leaping back out of the hole, looked toward the battlefield.

Already several kilometers away, in the spot where a low mountain and dense forest had once stood, the terrain was now completely churned up, a massive crater at its center, chaotic Qi tearing loose from it and destroying everything in its path.

"Time for me to leave too!" Muttering to himself, An leapt onto a tree branch and started running, as fast and as far from the battlefield as he could.