WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
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◈ Cultivating Underground ◈
Chapter 13
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One year later.
Three hundred li southeast of Cheongnyu County Seat in Imgang Province, Untaek Kingdom, stood a gently sloping mountain without even a name.
It had no spirit vein and produced neither common medicinal herbs nor minerals. Even fruit trees were rare, so few wild animals lived there.
Woodcutters, herb gatherers, and hunters were seldom seen on its slopes. It was an unremarkable mountain ignored not only by cultivators but even by the ordinary villagers nearby.
Rustle...
Something moved swiftly through the grass halfway up the mountain.
At first, it looked like a snake passing beneath the grass. A closer look, however, would have revealed a person in brown clothes moving while lying flat on the ground.
It was Yi Hyeon.
Without moving his arms or legs, he used a combination of the Soil Turning Art and the Earth Escape Art to slide his entire body over the ground.
Swish...
He parted the grass feet first, with his head trailing behind. Yet he moved faster than a snake, and the grass and twigs barely stirred even after he passed.
Yi Hyeon had named this strange method of travel the Reclining Escape Art (臥遁術). Strictly speaking, it should have been the Reclining Earth Escape Art, but he was the only person using it, so he had named it however he pleased.
He had his reasons for moving in such a bizarre way.
If anyone noticed him regularly coming and going, pointless rumors might spread that this mountain held some secret.
On the other hand, entering the earth far away every time and traveling underground with the Earth Escape Art would consume too much spiritual power.
Since the Reclining Escape Art carried him along the surface rather than burying his entire body in the soil, it used less than a tenth as much spiritual power as the Earth Escape Art.
Following the grass from the foot of the mountain also made him difficult to spot from a distance. Even someone nearby would probably assume that an animal was passing through the grass.
The strange figure sliding along on his back reached a broad rock halfway up the mountain, then smoothly sank into the soil beneath it.
Swish...
The movement was so natural that even someone watching Yi Hyeon a moment earlier would have struggled to tell exactly when he disappeared.
...
About ten li, roughly four kilometers, beneath the surface.
Whoosh!
Yi Hyeon dropped from the dark ceiling.
Tap.
Back in Tunnel No. 1, he headed straight for the storeroom.
A thick stone slab stood across its entrance like a door. When he pushed it aside, wooden shelves and jars of various sizes came into view.
Yi Hyeon took six heavy bundles from his storage pouch and set them on the floor.
Thump. Rattle...
He untied the bundles, spilling out large walnuts, pine nuts, hazelnuts, peeled and dried chestnuts, roasted ginkgo nuts, pitted dried jujubes, and lotus seeds with their bitter cores removed. He had bought all of them in Cheongnyu County Seat.
He sorted the food into separate jars. Before closing each lid, he added a piece of charcoal wrapped in thin paper to absorb moisture.
Strictly speaking, keeping everything in his storage pouch would have been best. But he would eat it all before it spoiled anyway, so it hardly mattered.
Finally, he picked up a walnut and squeezed it between his fingers.
Crack!
The hard shell split with ridiculous ease. He put the kernel in his mouth and left the storeroom.
When he stopped before the narrow passage beside it, the soil beneath his feet rippled like water and swallowed him.
A short while later, he emerged in another passage several dozen zhang away.
A rough wooden sign stood before him.
「Spirit Field No. 1-1」
It meant the first spirit field in Tunnel No. 1.
Several lines of smaller writing were carved beneath it.
- Date cleared.
- Varieties sown.
- Date of last Spirit Rain Art application.
- Spirit insect sightings.
He had modeled it on the spirit field records he had seen at Cheongha Valley.
Yi Hyeon opened the stone door and went inside.
Spirit Field No. 1-1 was a long, narrow space two zhang wide and sixteen zhang long. Its area was a little over half a mu (畝).
The ceiling was about one zhang high. He had left the solid rock along both sides of the passage in place as pillars, then set thick logs close together between them to reduce the risk of collapse.
He had created this space with the Soil Turning Art and the Earthspade Sword. The excavated soil and stone had gone toward reinforcing passages or filling empty spaces.
Earth Vein Flowers formed long rows along the edges of the field. They gradually drew the sparse spiritual energy in the surrounding geological layers into this space.
Inside those rows, Purple Poison Orchids with drooping violet leaves formed a wall. Ivory Bone-Rotting Flowers and dark blue Yin Soul Grass grew in the central furrows.
The poison released by the Bone-Rotting Flowers and Purple Poison Orchids formed a thin purple mist over the field.
Even Qi Refining cultivators would struggle to endure this poisonous mist. Ordinary animals and insects could not approach it at all.
Even Yi Hyeon, the field's owner, always used the Spherical Qi Barrier and Breath-Sealing Art before entering. After leaving, he used the Cleansing Art and Poison-Expelling Art.
He walked slowly along the path, inspecting the leaves and stems. Then a tiny white speck near the roots of an Earth Vein Flower caught his eye.
“They've laid more eggs.”
He brushed aside a little soil, revealing several translucent eggs stuck together. A flash appeared at his fingertips, and a thin silver needle pierced the eggs with precision.
Several kinds of spirit insects lived in the nearby earth that he had never seen at Cheongha Valley.
Some had long, wormlike bodies and pincers on their heads. Others were beetles almost impossible to distinguish from clumps of soil.
The insects did not dare touch the highly poisonous Yin Soul Grass, Bone-Rotting Flowers, or Purple Poison Orchids. Instead, they tried to nibble on the Earth Vein Flowers.
Even those were beyond their reach because of the poison spreading through the surroundings. All they occasionally managed to do was lay eggs near the roots.
Even if he left the eggs alone, the larvae would probably be unable to touch the Earth Vein Flowers after hatching. Still, he removed every egg he found, just in case.
“So this counts as my first successful underground spirit field. It seems to have a decent system in place...”
Yi Hyeon looked around the field with satisfaction.
In truth, it was inferior to Cheongha Valley's Withered Yin Field in many ways. The three varieties of spirit plants grew at only a third of their speed in Withered Yin Field. Apart from their growth rate, however, he had solved most of the problems.
Perhaps because the plants grew slowly here, he did not need to use the Spirit Rain Art often. Applying it across the entire field once every ten days was enough.
He currently had 120 Bone-Rotting Flowers, 300 clumps of Yin Soul Grass, and 80 Purple Poison Orchid bulbs planted.
If they continued growing without any major mishaps, he would be able to harvest them in about three hundred years as spirit herbs containing a hundred years' worth of medicinal potency.
...
Yi Hyeon had built his hideout ten li underground for two reasons.
First, the temperature barely rose even at this depth.
According to something he had heard in passing in his previous life, temperatures on Earth increased the farther underground one went. Deep geothermal power, for example, involved drilling from three kilometers to more than five kilometers down to use underground heat ranging from a hundred to over two hundred degrees Celsius.
In this world, however, the temperature barely changed even ten li, or about four kilometers, below the surface.
Curious, Yi Hyeon had once used the Earth Escape Art and the Earthspade Sword to venture deeper. He had discovered that temperatures rose sharply from around twenty-five li, roughly ten kilometers, underground. In some places, a red-hot glow seeped through cracks in the rock.
He guessed that earthfire veins or something like lava flowed below that point. Since then, he had seen no reason to go deeper.
Second, soil and rock interfered with outsiders' spiritual sense.
Spiritual sense spread most easily through air. Its range decreased considerably in water or soil, and layers of rock or metal interfered with it even more.
Yi Hyeon's own tests showed that its detection range shrank by almost ninety percent in soil or water.
In other words, detecting something ten li underground required spiritual sense powerful enough to survey more than a hundred li through open air.
If what he had overheard at Cheongha Valley was accurate, only someone far beyond the Golden Core stage could scan a hundred li with spiritual sense. Perhaps even many Nascent Soul cultivators would be unable to discover a small cavern at this depth through spiritual sense alone.
Of course, even a lower-level cultivator might eventually find his hideout by searching the mountain systematically with the Earth Sensing Art or detection artifacts.
But that possibility was hardly realistic. No passing cultivator would thoroughly search beneath a mountain without even a spirit vein for no reason.
This world was vast. Doing such a thing would quite literally mean throwing time and spiritual power into the dirt.
Few cultivators favored the Earth Escape Art, either.
In terms of speed alone, it was not a particularly good spell. Qi Refining cultivators could run faster aboveground, while anyone at Foundation Establishment or beyond could simply fly through the sky.
Yi Hyeon therefore judged that unless someone already suspected this mountain and came to investigate, the chance of accidentally discovering Tunnel No. 1 ten li underground was extremely low.
One small problem remained: food.
Cheongha Rice did not grow properly in the underground spirit fields. He did not know whether the lack of sunlight or some incompatible energy underground was to blame. But since he could not grow it, he had to obtain food from the mortal world.
That was why he occasionally visited Cheongnyu County Seat or other nearby county seats to buy nuts, as he had today.
The Blood-Clotting Grass and Azure Dew Grass he had planted as an experiment also failed to grow properly. Neither variety increased in value with age, however, nor could they serve as food like Cheongha Rice, so he had lost interest in them.
...
After finishing his inspection of the spirit field, Yi Hyeon followed the passage back to his cultivation room.
He had made it by shaping a natural cavity in the rock that he had happened to discover while building his hideout.
Gray granite formed a rounded ceiling, reaching three zhang at its highest point. He had leveled the floor with the Earthspade Sword and carved a bed and shelves into one wall.
The shelves held neatly arranged wooden tablets bearing spell formulas, jars of spirit insects caught in the field for research, and small wooden boxes containing different kinds of soil.
A wooden table and a single chair stood in the center.
There were no windows. Since he was not using the Glimmer Spell at the moment, the room was pitch-black. Yet entering that darkness always put him at ease.
A passage on one side led to the storeroom, while a curved passage on the opposite side led to the spirit field. Three ventilation holes, each as thick as a wrist, had been bored near the ceiling.
He had dug the passage toward the field lower than his living area so that the heavy poisonous mist would remain near the field's floor rather than drift into his cultivation room.
Yi Hyeon passed through the room and headed toward the new passage he was digging.
This was where he planned to build Underground Spirit Field No. 1-2.
“Maybe I'll dig a little farther today.”
He took out the Earthspade Sword.
Hum...
As he poured spiritual power into it, the patterns carved into its broad blade glowed yellow.
He thrust it into the ground and pushed. Hard earth and gravel softened like wet mud. He used the Soil Turning Art to move the soil behind him.
He had advanced about three zhang when it happened.
Shunk.
The feeling against the sword's tip suddenly changed.
“Hm?”
A layer of fine sand mixed with rounded gravel stretched ahead of him. The soil was strangely wet.
Yi Hyeon picked up a pinch of sand.
“Is there water here?”
A word he had heard in his previous life came faintly to mind.
‘I think there was something called an aquifer... Was that a layer where water flowed underground?’
He knew almost nothing about geology. He had only heard that some underground layers of sand and gravel held water or allowed it to flow through, and that digging a well brought that water out.
He carefully prodded ahead with the Earthspade Sword.
Psh!
A thin jet of water shot from the hole made by the sword tip.
Whoosh!
A moment later, the hole widened to the size of a fist, and an enormous volume of water gushed out.
“Ack!”
The cold stream struck Yi Hyeon squarely in the face and chest.
Water rapidly filled the passage.
‘Damn!’
He used the Soil Turning Art to push the surrounding clay-rich earth into the hole. The current immediately washed it away.
He pulled over a broad stone slab he had left standing nearby.
Thud!
Using the Earthspade Sword's Soil Softening Art, he softened the rock around the hole, then drove the edges of the slab almost a foot into it.
When he withdrew the Soil Softening Art, the rock hardened again, gripping the slab tightly. He packed several layers of clay and gravel over it, then compressed them firmly with the Soil Turning Art.
Water continued seeping around the slab for a while. Only after he filled even the smallest gaps with clay did the flow finally stop.
“Whew...”
Standing in ankle-deep water, Yi Hyeon swept back his wet hair.
The slab before him trembled slightly. Groundwater seemed to be trapped behind it under considerable pressure.
“So this is an aquifer...? One wrong move and I could ruin all my crops...”
He pulled up the wooden sign he had placed there earlier.
「Future Site of Spirit Field No. 1-2」
He carved new words on its reverse side.
「Aquifer No. 1. Do not open carelessly.」
After a moment's thought, he added two more lines.
「Possible future use as a water storage facility.」
「Possible use for cultivating aquatic spirit plants.」
...
After changing his clothes, Yi Hyeon returned and sat at the table.
“I'll have to build Spirit Field No. 1-2 far away from the aquifer... in a completely different direction. Anyway, Tunnel No. 1 has the bare necessities now. It's time to make a cultivation plan.”
He took out a blank wooden board and began listing the cultivation methods and spells he needed to learn.
「Primordial Unity Body, Qi-Concealing Spell, Spirit-Hiding Spell, Ground-Shrinking Steps, Azure Steel Sword Art, Spiritlight Shield, Fireball Art, Sword Control Art, Far Sight Art, Sound-Listening Spell, Night Vision Art, Scent Tracking Art, Qi-Observing Spell, Earth Sensing Art, ...」
His expression stiffened as he looked at the writing covering the board.
“There's too much to learn. But all of it looks useful...”
Mastering a spell required countless repetitions. Practice was difficult for a cultivator at the second layer of Qi Refining, whose spiritual power ran out so quickly.
“I should develop the Primordial Unity Body first. With more spiritual power, learning spells should be easier.”
...
Sitting cross-legged on the rock, Yi Hyeon followed the Primordial Unity Body cultivation method and drew a thread-thin strand of primordial unity true qi from his dantian.
The energy flowed through his meridians, past his chest and shoulder, and into his right arm.
Rather than keeping it within the meridians of his palm, he slowly let it seep into the surrounding flesh and bones.
Swish...
The primordial unity true qi scattered in an instant.
Examining it closely with his spiritual sense, he found that it had spread in a very thin layer throughout his palm. It had merely become too faint to sense as clearly as before.
He drew out another strand of primordial unity true qi.
The second attempt was the same, as was the third.
He spent two hours steadily transferring primordial unity true qi from his dantian, but he could barely feel any change in his palm.
He recalled Steward Wang Jin's words.
- You will feel as helpless as if you were trying to fill an endless ocean all by yourself.
Yi Hyeon looked down at his palm.
“It does feel hopeless. Still, if I keep pouring water into the ocean, someday...”
From that day on, he spent his spare time cultivating the Primordial Unity Body.
* * *
One hundred years later.
The wooden sign for Spirit Field No. 1-1 had blackened with age.
The Bone-Rotting Flowers, Yin Soul Grass, and Purple Poison Orchids had continued producing seeds and bulbs. The original parent plants now held thirty-odd years' worth of medicinal potency. Considering their growth rate here, they were progressing as planned.
Countless rains and snows had fallen on the mountain above.
Cheongnyu County had changed magistrates several times. The owner of the shop where Yi Hyeon had first bought nuts had also passed away long ago.
Every decade or so, Yi Hyeon switched to a different market. Sometimes he put on a false beard or smeared dirt on his face to change his appearance.
Yet his face and body had not aged at all in the past hundred years.
...
In the center of Tunnel No. 1's cultivation room, Yi Hyeon lay comfortably on his back.
There was no longer a distinct boundary around a dantian beneath his navel.
Primordial unity true qi had seeped throughout his body, into his skin, muscles, blood vessels, bones, and internal organs.
At first, spreading a single strand of true qi through one arm had taken him a whole day.
After ten years, he had been able to connect his limbs and torso into a single flow.
After thirty years, primordial unity true qi had begun to remain within his bones.
In the sixtieth year, the Primordial Unity Single-Qi Art had begun circulating naturally even as he breathed or walked.
He had initially cultivated while sitting cross-legged. As he grew more familiar with the Primordial Unity Single-Qi Art, however, he had started circulating it constantly, whether tending his spirit fields, digging passages, or cracking nuts to eat.
At some point, he had become able to refine spiritual energy at maximum efficiency even while lying comfortably on his back.
And today, after a hundred years...
Hummm...
Primordial unity true qi spread throughout his body from head to toe. The moment it evenly filled the tips of his fingers and toes, even the finest tissues beneath his skin...
Boom!
A faint light spread from Yi Hyeon's body, then vanished.
His bones, muscles, and internal organs vibrated together. The primordial unity true qi scattered throughout his body joined into one!
Yi Hyeon opened his eyes.
“At last, the second stage of the Primordial Unity Body...!”
The second stage meant that his entire body, from head to toe, had been developed to the same level as the dantian of an ordinary second-layer Qi Refining cultivator.
In other words, his whole body was now one enormous dantian!
He slowly raised his right hand.
With a flash, a thin silver needle appeared at his fingertips.
Thunk!
It pierced the exact center of a wooden board across the cultivation room.
Yi Hyeon immediately used the Seventh-Stem Metal Art a second time, then fired a third and fourth silver needle in rapid succession.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
He used the Seventh-Stem Metal Art dozens more times, yet the primordial unity true qi filling his body barely decreased.
But his expression was strange.
“Huh?”
He had discovered a new secret of the Primordial Unity Single-Qi Art and the Primordial Unity Body.
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