WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
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◈ Cultivating Underground ◈
Chapter 98
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A moment later, heat surged up from his stomach.
The fierce medicinal strength was on an entirely different level from the Origin-Nurturing Dao Pills he had taken until now. As the tightly packed energy spread, it roughly pushed aside the true essence filling every part of his body.
Yi Hyeon frowned.
‘I have to take seventy-five more of these?’
For a moment, the thought frightened him.
Within a few breaths, however, that fear turned into an entirely different kind of bewilderment.
As he followed the incantation of the Primordial Unity Single-Qi Art and activated the method of Embracing Unity and Returning to the Core, his entire body began to churn at once, swallowing the medicinal strength from head to toe.
Crrrack!
An ordinary cultivator would have needed all their concentration to control that tidal wave of medicinal strength. Yet once it spread throughout his body, a vessel fifty times larger than his lower dantian alone, it vanished like a bucket of water poured onto a drought-stricken desert.
The true essence throughout his body had only grown a little denser. Not a single part showed even the slightest sign of condensing.
‘Overflowing was the last thing I needed to worry about.’
Keeping his energy circulating, Yi Hyeon peeled the Spirit-Sealing Talisman from the next jade case.
The second pill, the third, the fifth... Only after he swallowed several alchemical pills in succession did the true essence filling his body begin to change.
The true essence that had seeped into his fingertips, toes, muscles, bones, and internal organs began trying to gather into separate masses.
Yi Hyeon let out a long breath as he suppressed the energy trying to solidify wherever it pleased and bound it into a single flow.
The key to Embracing Unity and Returning to the Core was to shape his entire body into one core. No single part could be allowed to harden first.
He also had to evenly control the medicinal strength, which differed slightly depending on the demonic core it came from.
The number of empty jade cases scattered across the floor quickly passed twenty, then thirty. Large beads of sweat ran down Yi Hyeon’s forehead.
Around the time he swallowed his fiftieth Gold-Condensing Pill, his entire body grew as heavy as lead, and a thin, invisible boundary began forming just beneath his skin.
It repeatedly seemed about to enclose his entire body, only to fall apart again. It felt like a sign that his core shell was about to form. Suppressing his excitement, Yi Hyeon distributed the medicinal strength evenly.
The moment it spread throughout his body, something happened.
Vmmmm!
Everything resonated at once, from beneath his fingernails and the soles of his feet to the inside of his skull and the end of his spine.
The liquid true essence flowing separately throughout his body was finally trying to take shape as a single, enormous whole.
Red heat rose like mist from every pore. Whenever medicinal strength joined his true essence, demonic markings originating from the demonic cores surfaced beneath his skin. Spread along the true essence throughout his body, those markings released a strange surge of demonic energy all at once.
Crackle! Crack!
The inscriptions of the Spirit-Concealing Formation carved into the chamber floor blazed wildly. The spirit stones fitted into its formation stations burst one after another.
Just as Yi Hyeon hurriedly tried to extend his spiritual sense, something enormous stirred beyond the thick basalt ceiling.
Rrrrrumble!
A heavy shock pressed deep into the earth, sending stone dust raining from the chamber ceiling.
Yi Hyeon’s eyes flew open.
‘I thought it might happen, but...!’
Heaven had reacted to his attempt to shape his entire body into a single, enormous golden core.
The sea around the volcanic island fell as quiet as the calm before a storm. The rolling waves stilled as one, while brilliant streams of five-colored light gathered high in the sky, forming a vast band of iridescent clouds.
Above them, pitch-black storm clouds piled up like mountain ranges, flashing with dark blue lightning.
...
One thousand li from the island, over the sea.
A small, elderly figure in neat silk scholar’s robes stood motionless in the air. Behind thin green jade spectacles perched on their nose, amber eyes flashed, their long, vertical pupils unlike those of any ordinary human.
Pointed fox ears covered in white fur twitched among neatly combed white hair.
The elder, Master Ho, pushed up their jade spectacles and frowned at the tribulation clouds gathering in the distance.
They had originally come to these waters because of reports that Tier 3 demonic beasts had recently been disappearing from the southeastern outskirts of the Vast Verdant Forest Sea.
Dozens of Tier 3 demonic beasts, each a match for a human Golden Core cultivator, had vanished within a short time. That could be a sign that humans were preparing to invade the Vast Verdant Forest Sea.
Yet what Master Ho found was not an invasion by outside enemies, but a disturbance of heaven and earth on an unimaginable scale.
“That’s... a Transformation Lightning Tribulation?”
In the lower realm, a Transformation Lightning Tribulation was almost the only event that could cause such an extraordinary change in the weather.
When demonkin broke through to a certain realm, they gained the ability to change their bodies into human form. The heavenly tribulation that descended during that process was called the Transformation Lightning Tribulation.
When it happened depended on their bloodline. Some faced the tribulation as early as their breakthrough to Tier 3. Others experienced it only after reaching a much higher realm. In the lower realm, however, it most commonly occurred during the breakthrough to the fourth-tier realm, which corresponded to Nascent Soul.
As the tribulation clouds slowly took shape, Master Ho rode their escape light toward the volcanic island.
The fluctuations bursting from deep within the rocky mountain resonated fiercely with the five-colored clouds above.
Rrrrumble!
The five-colored radiance within the clouds converged on a single point. In the next moment, a dark blue lightning bolt plunged toward the ground.
Kraaaboom!
The rock at the volcano’s summit split, and enormous cracks spread down its slopes.
Among the boulders hurled upward by the blast, six blue-green shield plates and streams of yellow sword light worked together with precision, deflecting the lightning at an angle.
Crack!
But the lightning’s power was savage.
Two shield plates shattered. Stray lightning melted the walls of the underground chamber into glass.
As the thick dust settled, a young man sitting cross-legged appeared at the bottom of the enormous crater blasted into the island.
Master Ho’s amber eyes widened.
‘A human? The lightning tribulation has only just begun, yet he’s already completed his transformation?’
Without a single horn or scale, he looked entirely human.
Yet beneath the young man’s skin, strange demonic markings shimmered with a metallic sheen. The fluctuations rising from his entire body overlapped with those of the tribulation clouds. Even Master Ho could not judge the true extent of his demonic power.
‘What bloodline could he possibly belong to? Was there a genius near the Vast Verdant Forest Sea that even I knew nothing about?’
Just then, Yi Hyeon raised his head from the bottom of the crater. The moment their eyes met, cold sweat ran down his back.
‘Nascent Soul...!’
The elder had revealed only a trace of their presence. Yet Yi Hyeon, who had slaughtered Eom Mu-jin and numerous other powerful Golden Core cultivators, recognized it at once.
The oppressive presence of a higher life-form.
That brief disturbance sent his true essence surging, and the energy in his right arm began trying to condense ahead of the rest.
As Yi Hyeon clenched his teeth and suppressed the flow, the elder’s gentle intent sounded beside his ears.
[I startled you. Pay me no mind. Focus on your tribulation.]
There was no hostility in the voice, but he had no way to know whether he could trust it. Still, Yi Hyeon had no other choice.
He withdrew his gaze and tipped another Gold-Condensing Pill into his mouth. Master Ho’s lips curved with interest.
‘He even prepared alchemical pills and magical implements. He’s made good use of what humans have to offer. Whichever family this junior belongs to, I like how well prepared he is.’
The second and third lightning bolts struck in succession, branching into dozens of forks.
Two yellow flying swords barring their path melted like molten iron. The remaining plates of the Six-Leaf Shield shattered one after another.
But Master Ho’s gaze was fixed on the young man’s body, not the broken magical implements.
Whenever lightning struck, golden waves rose simultaneously from his head to his toes. His energy was not centered in any one place. His entire body seemed to have become a single whole.
“‘Once the core is formed, neither ghost nor spirit can abide it’... So this is what that warning in Green Forest Pavilion’s transformation records from the ancient age meant!”
Once the core was formed, even ghosts and spirits could not tolerate it!
Master Ho had thought it described an ordinary Transformation Lightning Tribulation. Yet the scene before them seemed far closer to that warning.
Then something happened.
Sensing something, Master Ho’s expression briefly hardened. They flicked a finger toward the sea, sending a strand of demonic power beneath the surface.
Having unleashed three lightning strikes, the tribulation clouds rumbled and began gathering the spiritual qi of heaven and earth once more.
...
One gak later, two streaks of escape light rushed in from the island’s southeastern sky as though tearing it open.
The first was a gloomy light. The one behind it shone cold and smooth, like mercury beneath the sun.
The escape lights stopped, revealing two human cultivators surrounded by the immense spiritual pressure unique to Nascent Soul.
The middle-aged figure on the left had cheeks sunken like a skull and skin as pale as a corpse. Abnormally long fingers protruded from the sleeves of a green robe, holding a short black jade flute.
The white-haired elder on the right wore gray robes and stood with his hands behind his back. Silver liquid streamed endlessly from beneath his fingernails, swimming through the air as though alive.
Master Ho’s gaze turned cold.
“Human Nascent Soul cultivators.”
The pale, middle-aged cultivator looked between Yi Hyeon in the crater and Master Ho, then curled their lips.
“To think a fourth-tier greater demon from the Vast Verdant Forest Sea would come all the way out here. Have you decided to take in the wild demonic beasts of the outer seas now? Do you intend to plant the Forest Sea’s prohibition markers in these waters too?”
“That is none of your concern.”
Master Ho’s warning was calm.
“If you so much as lay a finger on our junior undergoing his Transformation Lightning Tribulation, you had better be prepared for the consequences.”
The white-haired elder controlling the silver liquid gave a disbelieving chuckle.
“Must the Nammyeong Twelve-Sect Alliance obtain the Forest Sea’s permission to hunt demonic beasts? I am Yeon Baek-su of Flowing Gold Valley. Let’s hear what consequences you mean.”
The pale, middle-aged cultivator stroked the black jade flute and added,
“I am Seop Hyeong-ae, Supreme Elder of the Yin Bird Sect’s Profound Nether Path branch. Five years ago, an elder of our sect was killed in this area. The creature down there might have something to do with it. We’ll have to take him away and find out.”
After Eom Mu-jin’s death, the Yin Bird Sect’s branches had repeatedly investigated the waters west of Gon Kingdom. Reports had also accumulated that the waters where demonic beasts were disappearing were shifting westward.
Seop Hyeong-ae had been checking those reports in person during this patrol. By chance, they had met Yeon Baek-su of Flowing Gold Valley, who was surveying the resources in the nearby waters. While comparing information, they had spotted the extraordinary tribulation clouds rising in the northern sky and flown over together.
Of course, there was no evidence linking that demonkin to Eom Mu-jin’s death. Seop Hyeong-ae only needed an excuse.
If a demonic beast capable of summoning tribulation clouds like these completed its transformation, its corpse would be worth an immense fortune. There was no reason not to hunt it now, while it was tied down by the lightning tribulation.
At the bottom of the crater, Yi Hyeon suppressed his rising nausea as he controlled the aftereffects of the lightning.
‘Just my luck...’
He had chosen an isolated island without a spirit vein or mineral deposits, then cleared out every demonic beast nearby. Yet he had never expected his core formation to cause such an enormous disturbance of heaven and earth, much less draw in one Nascent Soul expert after another.
Above him, Master Ho removed their jade spectacles, slipped them into a sleeve, and smiled.
“If I bite you two to death here, then insist you might have been planning to invade the Vast Verdant Forest Sea, would you find that reasonable?”
At that very moment, the sea below the island swelled enormously.
Rrrrrumble!
The water heaved up and split like a mountain, and a burly man nine chi tall walked out, stepping on the spray. Dense, hexagonal turtle-shell patterns covered the bronze muscles and thick neck exposed above his soaking wet navy clothes. The huge man spoke in a thunderous voice.
“Master, what race does the youngster down there belong to?”
“I don’t know yet, Dam Ak. More importantly, these humans say they’re going to seize the youngster while he undergoes his tribulation.”
Dam Ak twisted his broad, round face into a fierce grin. Thick, sharp fangs like those of a wild beast showed between his lips.
“Then there’s nothing more to discuss!”
He rolled his shoulders once. The sound of his joints locking into place echoed across the sea like thunder. Yeon Baek-su’s eyelids twitched.
“A fourth-tier Dark-Shelled Sea Turtle...!”
Seop Hyeong-ae’s eyes flashed ominously as they raised the black jade flute to their lips.
“Mere beasts! I’ll teach you who truly rules this world!”
The moment pale fingers moved over the flute’s holes, every sound in the world vanished as though it had never existed.
Waves still struck the reefs, and rocks continued to tumble. Only their sounds had been erased, leaving an eerie silence.
Black sound inscriptions appeared behind Seop Hyeong-ae and overlapped. Magical power gathered at the flute’s tip, then shot out as an invisible stream of sound, carving a long divide across the sea.
Seawater froze white along its path as Profound Nether Yin Frost Qi swept toward Master Ho’s throat.
Master Ho’s amber pupils narrowed into slits.
Crack!
The neat elderly scholar’s jaws opened wide. Silver fur and sharp teeth sprouted in an instant. The image of a savage white fox overlapped the elder’s face, and four white tails spread behind them as though to cover the sky.
Whooosh!
The pure white true flame Master Ho breathed out opened like the jaws of an enormous beast and bit into the air.
Kraaang!
Only then did the suppressed explosions burst out all at once.
The stream of sound was violently torn apart by white flames that burned primordial spirit and magical power. Sound waves deflected to either side carved deep channels a hundred jang long into the sea and blasted away entire clusters of black reefs around the island’s edge.
“What paltry tricks!”
Master Ho kicked off the air. Their four tails snapped, generating a burst of force. Their small figure vanished without a trace as though using the Ground-Shrinking Art, then appeared above Seop Hyeong-ae’s head, behind their back, and on both sides at once.
Claws wrapped in white flames tore Seop Hyeong-ae’s protective magical light to shreds from every direction.
“Hmph!”
Without taking the flute from their lips, Seop Hyeong-ae formed a hand seal with their left hand.
Three palm-sized jade tablets slipped from their sleeve. Holes through the centers of the flat pieces of jade turned toward Master Ho.
Seop Hyeong-ae took their lips from the flute.
Yet the sound attack did not stop.
The spell-empowered notes they had just played burst from the three jade tablets, each at a different rhythm!
Boom! Crack!
As the white flames bit through the first sound wave, the next wave pierced their interior. Master Ho twisted a tail to block it, only for the sound from the third jade tablet to strike their chest.
Blood ran from the corner of Master Ho’s mouth.
‘Magical treasures that store sound.’
Master Ho spread their four tails. Two knocked aside the sound waves, while white flames extended from the other two and struck at the sides of the jade tablets.
Seop Hyeong-ae immediately scattered the tablets and changed the flute’s tune.
Master Ho lashed a claw at one of the flying tablets. The vibration ringing within it traveled through their claws and into their arm.
As the demonic power in their wrist began to stiffen, Master Ho bared their teeth and wrapped even their own arm in white flames.
White fire and dark blue frost continued to burst across the sky.
...
At the same time, Yeon Baek-su and Dam Ak were clashing over another stretch of sea.
Yeon Baek-su spread both hands. Silver liquid poured from his sleeves like a waterfall and instantly turned into more than a hundred sharp silver flying swords and chains.
The metallic rain of swords filled the sky, crossing paths as it plunged toward Dam Ak.
Dam Ak did not dodge. He drove both feet through the air and stamped hard upon the sea.
Kraaaboom!
An enormous, dark blue Dharma manifestation of a Dark-Shelled Sea Turtle, a hundred jang in size, rose behind him and roared.
The surface waters within a radius of several li gathered beneath his feet. Great streams curled into the air, forming layer upon layer of barriers.
Infused with demonic power, the water became like heavy water. When the hundred-odd liquid-metal flying swords pierced those barriers, they slowed sharply as though caught in a swamp.
Skrrrrrrape!
Silver chains and huge blades broke through the heavy walls of water and struck Dam Ak’s shell and forearms, throwing off sparks.
As his body was pushed back several jang, the silver blades melted into soft liquid. Like spiderwebs, they worked into the gaps around his joints and neck.
“That tickles!”
Laughing savagely, Dam Ak seized the silver liquid wrapped around his arm with his left hand and brought it to his mouth. Black, hardened plates rose on both cheeks as the biting strength of an enormous sea turtle gathered between his teeth.
Crrrunch! Crack!
Demonic power surged along his fangs, chewing through even the restrictions within the liquid metal. When Dam Ak spat the severed molten silver into the sea, Yeon Baek-su’s expression turned icy.
Yeon Baek-su twisted a wrist.
The remaining liquid metal pulled taut, becoming two enormous metal rings lined with inward-facing spikes. They closed around Dam Ak’s shell from above and below.
Skrrrape!
The rings rotated in opposite directions, digging between his shell plates as they tightened. While Dam Ak pushed them apart with both arms, the liquid metal remaining outside turned into dozens of serrated discs.
The discs shot past his back toward the uninhabited island where Yi Hyeon sat.
“Not so fast!”
Dam Ak inhaled. Enough seawater to swallow a ship was sucked into his mouth in an instant.
The shell plates on his throat and chest swelled as his torso expanded to its limit. Unable to withstand the pressure, the spiked rings around his shell spread apart and fell away. A barrage of compressed water shells followed.
Boom! Boom-boom-boom!
Each exploding water shell seemed to dent the air. The silver serrated discs crumpled and flew off in every direction.
Stray shock waves shattered the reefs around the island’s edge, making them vanish into clouds of spray.
Even Yeon Baek-su could not face that brutal destructive power head-on. He had to form several liquid-metal shields to deflect the attacks.
Yet there was no alarm in his eyes.
Mixed into the scattering spray, liquid metal divided into particles too small to see was seeping into cracks in the island’s bedrock.
...
While four Nascent Soul-level monsters turned the sea and sky upside down outside the crater, five-colored core lightning poured relentlessly down upon Yi Hyeon’s head.
Boom-boom-boom!
His remaining yellow flying swords burned through their sword qi and perished one after another. Even the three spirit molts of the Three-Molt Silkworm Robe, his last line of defense, burned to ashes as they absorbed the lightning.
He used his treasured Moon-Sinking Sword to deflect a stream of lightning at an angle. But when he saw a fine crack form along the blade, he had to put even that away.
In the end, the robe covering his upper body was torn to shreds, and the lightning’s fierce power poured directly into his bare flesh.
“Urgh...!”
When the lightning first pierced his shoulder, it was not the pain of burning skin that made him cough up blood. It was the true essence inside him rushing toward that spot and trying to harden ahead of the rest.
Yet through the pain, Yi Hyeon recalled the process of refining Origin-Nurturing Dao Pills, which he had struggled with before the pill furnace for more than three hundred and thirty years.
‘Heaven and earth are the pill furnace now, and my body is one enormous alchemical pill!’
Deep within his sea of consciousness, Yi Hyeon quietly lit the mind seal he had forged with the Scripture of Refining Intent into Vows.
The unwavering mind that had lifted a brush tens of thousands of times, painting the same branches and refining each stroke, firmly held the energy threatening to run wild throughout his body.
He bound the true essence in every part of himself tightly, preventing any from leaking out. The lightning descending upon him became a blacksmith’s enormous hammer, beating and tempering his body like heated iron from within and without.
Even as he coughed up blood, Yi Hyeon felt around for the jade cases on the floor with his left hand instead of his numb right and tipped the remaining Gold-Condensing Pills into his mouth one by one. The rate at which their medicinal strength spread, the degree to which his true essence tightened, and the time the lightning took to circulate throughout his body meshed precisely in his mind.
When the sixtieth Gold-Condensing Pill passed down his throat, Yi Hyeon felt that his body had received all the medicinal strength it needed.
‘Time to settle this!’
The long years of his life came to mind.
He had read countless popular novels, and there were still many stories he wanted to read.
He had loved and had children.
The spirit fields he had left in the distant tunnel, the Fuzzbees proudly carrying water, and the Heaven-Origin Divine Tree that had yet to form flower buds passed through his mind.
All the memories of what he had learned and lost over more than three thousand years quietly settled.
Yi Hyeon raised his eyes to the sky.
Facing the lightning tribulation descending upon him, he felt a stubborn urge to defy it.
‘Come on, then!’
As though it had heard his thoughts, the five-colored clouds and storm clouds covering the island rapidly began folding inward from their edges.
They were not clearing. All the spiritual qi of heaven and earth, along with the power of the lightning, was being compressed into a single point.
Master Ho, still fighting outside, sent out an intent.
[Dam Ak! The final lightning strike!]
It happened at that very moment.
Yeon Baek-su, who had been waiting for an opening, sent Seop Hyeong-ae a brief voice transmission.
[Hold them for just a moment!]
Seop Hyeong-ae’s eyes bulged. They bit the tip of their tongue and sprayed blood essence onto the black jade flute.
Blue veins rose along their neck. The three jade tablets flew in different directions, and the sound inscriptions carved within them lit up together.
Along with the spell-empowered notes previously played through the flute, the true tones of Profound Nether that had been nurtured for many years were released all at once. As the jade tablets’ light rapidly dimmed, sinister notes of different pitches overlapped.
Kraaaaboom!
The murderous sound waves burrowed directly into flesh and primordial spirit. The Dark-Shelled Sea Turtle’s Dharma manifestation staggered violently, and the white flames rising from Master Ho’s four tails scattered.
In that brief opening, Yeon Baek-su vanished from the air, leaving only a silver afterimage.
The liquid metal that had seeped into the island’s cracked bedrock linked together. Metallic escape light raced along the route prepared in advance, reaching the very edge of the crater.
It was Flowing Gold Valley’s secret escape technique!
“You wretch!”
Dam Ak immediately turned, but a jade tablet in front of him released its remaining true tones. The moment his movement stopped, a shock pierced the inside of his shell.
Swallowing blood, Master Ho blocked the stream of sound with one tail and compressed the remaining white flames at the tips of their claws, firing them toward Yeon Baek-su’s back.
Five streaks of white fire caught up with the silver escape light.
Yeon Baek-su twisted. Three streaks were blocked by liquid-metal armor hastily drawn around his body, but the other two grazed his left shoulder and tore away flesh.
Spraying blood, Yeon Baek-su crossed the crater’s rim without slowing down.
There, however, he paused for a moment.
At that instant, the lightning condensed into a tiny point at the center of the now-clear sky descended onto the crown of Yi Hyeon’s head.
Flash!
───!
A deafening explosion followed a beat later, and Yi Hyeon’s vision turned pure white.
He had no magical implements left to put forward. Under pressure so extreme that even the distinctions between his hands, feet, bones, and internal organs seemed to vanish, the true essence throughout his body, raised by sixty Gold-Condensing Pills, tightened with terrifying force.
He stood on a razor’s edge. Delay even slightly, and the lightning would tear through his organs. Close too soon, and the internal pressure would burst his body apart.
With his entire body, Yi Hyeon held on to the sensation of that final instant before the pill furnace, when he formed the Pill Condensation Seal.
From head to toe, he felt a perfect unity, with nothing left to adjust.
‘Now!’
Vmmmm!
The sound of the Dao rang from deep within Yi Hyeon’s flesh and bones.
The countless golden lights scattered beneath his skin joined seamlessly together, from fingertips to shoulders, from neck to chest and waist, from toes to the crown of his head.
The light did not escape outward. It sank into his skin itself, solidifying into an Unsullied Golden Body more brilliant than any divine iron in the world!
The last traces of lightning flowed down his smooth golden skin and vanished without a trace.
And it was precisely then that Yeon Baek-su lunged.
‘The material is ready!’
Greed flashed in his eyes.
A demonic beast that had just completed its Transformation Lightning Tribulation would have exhausted much of its vitality and demonic power. It would also be unfamiliar with controlling its new body.
This was the best moment to hunt it!
An old Nascent Soul monster, Yeon Baek-su did not let down his guard even at the very end.
He wrapped three layers of liquid metal around his chest and neck to form thick armor. In his left hand, he prepared liquid-metal chains to bind his opponent’s limbs. With his right, he activated a secret art that would seal demonic power and primordial spirit on contact, then reached for Yi Hyeon’s shoulder.
Just before his fingertips touched him, two eyes flashed open amid the blackened ashes.
‘!?’
Booom!
With a thunderous crash, something wrapped in silver escape light shot backward at tremendous speed.
Splaaash!
The figure cut across the sea’s surface and plunged into the water, throwing up spray dozens of jang high.
Dam Ak’s and Seop Hyeong-ae’s eyes widened.
Having landed on the crater’s rim, Master Ho stared down with their mouth hanging open.
On the scorched, cracked bedrock below, the young man was slowly lowering his fist.
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