WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Episode 13: Foundation Establishment Breakthrough (6)
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Just as Ise was about to enter a spirit-artifact shop, an unfamiliar scent brushed past his nose.
‘The smell of food?’
There was usually almost no smell of food in a cultivators’ market street.
Cultivators above a certain realm had no need to eat, while cultivators of lower realms simply ate in the mortals’ districts.
Since they also gave off almost no turbid qi, cultivators’ market streets had a strange lack of scent.
At most, one might occasionally catch the fragrance of a cup of spiritual-herb tea brewed for customers at a shop.
Yet this was the smell of food. And it was so rich.
As if bewitched, Ise followed the scent.
A small restaurant stood at one corner of an alley.
Beside the door, neat regular script read, West Lake Immortal Cuisine Restaurant. Beneath it was a line added with obvious pride.
The Only Immortal Cuisine Restaurant in West Lake Market.
Ise pushed open the door. The rich scent hit his nose even more strongly.
“Welcome!”
The owner showed him to a seat, and Ise checked the menu. The prices ranged from three to ten Spiritual Stones.
‘Cheap.’
“One red-braised pork, one Dongpo pork, and one bowl of Yangchun noodles.”
“Yes, sir.”
The owner immediately vanished into the kitchen.
Soon, the sound of oil heating, water boiling for noodles, and a knife striking a cutting board came pouring out all at once.
The dishes were set on the table one after another.
Ise reached for the red-braised pork first.
Thick chunks of pork shone beneath a reddish-brown sauce. Each piece was as large as two finger joints, with a strip of finely chopped scallion laid over it.
The meat separated softly the moment his chopsticks touched it.
‘Pass.’
In his mind, Ise handed the cook a placard of approval.
If the cook’s realm had not been so low for their age, Ise would have wanted to bring them straight to the Great Exorcist Order and make them its chef.
There was a reason the food was cheap, though.
This immortal cuisine had simply been cleansed of turbid qi. In other words, it was a treat for a change of pace that offered no help to cultivation.
By that standard, even this price was not especially cheap.
Ise was a little disappointed, but he still scraped every last bite from the bowls.
He might not feel hunger, but his sense of taste remained.
Whenever a beautiful flavor traveled from his tongue to his brain, Ise felt alive.
“That was good.”
He gladly paid the bill and left the immortal cuisine restaurant.
After watching a nearby troupe perform face-changing and puppet plays, he headed for the spirit-artifact shops.
He needed to obtain a flying spirit artifact as soon as possible.
Along the way, he changed direction and stopped at a mortals’ jewelry shop to buy a jade ring that he thought would suit his master.
He also spotted a spiritual herb that had somehow been mixed in with the wares at a mortals’ apothecary, then placed it in his Spiritual Herb Pouch.
The mortals’ market had yielded more than he expected. After wandering around for quite some time, Ise returned to the spirit-artifact shops.
This time, he began searching them in earnest.
His target was a Foundation Establishment Realm spirit artifact.
Prices started at one thousand Spiritual Stones. Each shop displayed only one or two, and even those varied greatly in quality.
He had to visit five spirit-artifact shops before finding one he liked.
The Clear Shadow Sword.
It was a sword-shaped spirit artifact, priced at fifteen hundred Spiritual Stones.
He had lost the hatchet he had relied on as his main weapon, so he intended to try using a sword as a temporary measure.
A weapon was just something you gripped and swung, wasn’t it?
He would have preferred to buy a spirit artifact shaped like the axe he was used to, but such unpopular weapons had to be custom-made.
Ise could not understand why people disliked them.
He felt a little sorry for cultivators who did not know the satisfying feel of an axe.
As Ise moved from shop to shop, a familiar figure entered the range of his divine sense.
It was Hui-dan, the one-star official from the External Affairs Pavilion. He could also see the orphan boy, Giwon.
A familiar voice reached his ears a moment later.
“Senior!”
Ise turned around.
“There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Hmm? What is it?”
“Ta-da! Look!”
Hui-dan brought Giwon out from behind her back.
The boy had been washed clean and fed well, and his complexion looked much healthier.
“Hello, Elder.”
“Yes. You look well.”
“I wanted to tell you that I’ve been carrying out the commission you gave me. I kept asking at the cave abode management office when you would come out, but you took so long!”
“I did.”
“And not long ago, I found lodging within the West Lake Guild and moved Giwon and the other children there. The place they used to live was too dangerous.”
“Thank you. You’re doing well.”
He had certainly chosen the right person. Pleased with his decision, Ise nodded along.
“Right? Which is why, Senior, have you given any more thought to joining the West Lake Guild? The terms they’ve offered internally are extremely generous, so if you could at least consider it...”
“Sorry. I’ll be leaving for another region soon.”
Hui-dan fell silent, looking dejected.
It seemed his face had become fairly well known here too. The local ruling power had even sent him a recruitment offer through a cultivator who knew him.
“I said I would visit within five to ten years, but I might not come back at all. Still, I’m trusting you with this.”
“Yes...”
Ise encouraged the cultivator whose feelings were plain to see and told her to raise Giwon well.
* * *
Only after searching every spirit-artifact shop in the West Lake Guild did Ise find the flying spirit artifact he wanted.
‘Flying spirit artifacts are quite hard to obtain.’
Ise committed another newly learned fact to memory.
The White Luan Boat.
It was a small boat-shaped flying spirit artifact marked with the image of a white bird.
It could carry up to two people and cost four thousand five hundred Spiritual Stones.
‘It’s expensive, but...’
Considering that the Divine Wind Cloud sold at headquarters had been a one-person spirit artifact that cost three thousand eight hundred, the price was acceptable.
“I don’t really like the color or shape. Don’t you have anything else?”
“Unfortunately, this is the only one currently available. We have not heard that any other spirit-artifact shops received flying spirit artifacts, so this is the only one in the West Lake Guild at present.”
“I want a spirit artifact shaped like a cloud.”
“You are looking for a flying cloud. Unfortunately, you will likely need to visit another market.”
“Can’t be helped. Can I try it?”
“Of course, Senior.”
The shopkeeper took out the White Luan Boat and set it beneath Ise’s feet.
After stepping on it, Ise asked, “How do I operate it?”
“Pour spiritual energy into it and control it with divine sense.”
Ise placed his foot on the White Luan Boat.
He sent spiritual energy into the spirit artifact.
The White Luan Boat floated gently upward, lifting his feet about a foot from the ground.
“Ooh.”
An exclamation escaped Ise before he could stop it.
He wanted to ride a cloud, but flying on a boat did not seem so bad either.
Ise tried to move the White Luan Boat with his divine sense.
At that moment, the boat flipped upside down in midair and slammed the crown of Ise’s head into the shop floor.
“...”
Ise rose as though nothing had happened.
The shopkeeper’s expression was blank, but their breathing had grown rough and their face was turning red.
They looked as though they were holding back laughter. The corners of their mouth twitched as they desperately tried to control their expression.
“You can laugh. I won’t eat you.”
“Ah, no, Senior. How could I dare...”
“But isn’t this defective?”
Ise grumbled testily. It was not because he was embarrassed and looking for something to complain about. Something really was strange.
“...Th-that cannot be.”
Cold sweat ran down the shopkeeper’s face.
“We are a West Lake Guild direct shop, and this item was shipped directly by the West Lake Guild. This type is inspected twice before being put on sale.”
“How am I supposed to control it with divine sense?”
“I’m only in the Qi Condensation Realm, so I do not even know what divine sense is...”
Ise nudged the White Luan Boat with his foot, turning it upright again.
Then he tried to control it once more and fell flat on the floor.
This really seemed defective.
“Y-you are going to buy it, right? If you are still deciding, please handle it a little more carefully...”
The shopkeeper spoke with anxious eyes, continuously sweating.
* * *
The White Luan Boat cut a white path through the clear sky.
Standing atop the flying boat marked with a white bird, Ise took out a Magnetic Needle and checked his direction.
South, more than ten thousand li and several thousand more. Across the vast territory of the Zheng Empire, to the mountain foothills at its edge where the Great Exorcist Order headquarters stood in the Three Peninsula Kingdoms.
Even without knowing the exact direction, he could reach the Three Peninsula Kingdoms if he headed properly south.
At the very least, he remembered the coastline clearly.
Part of him wanted to visit other regions of the Zheng Empire as well.
Even from the sights he had seen in Hanrim City, he could feel how different the Eastern Continent was from the Three Peninsula Kingdoms. What would the deep interior of the Zheng Empire look like?
More precisely, he still hoped that traveling across the continent might let him find better spirit artifacts.
‘There will be another chance.’
His journey had already gone on far too long.
The binding contract remained intact, so headquarters would know he was alive. Still, if he delayed too long, they might misunderstand.
Ise poured more spiritual energy into the White Luan Boat.
The flying boat, which he had grown used to by now, picked up speed.
Cities of the Zheng Empire, small as models beneath his feet, flashed past. Feather-like clouds played on either side.
Ise enjoyed the wind atop the White Luan Boat.
‘...This is pleasant.’
He vaguely remembered the days when he had run through mountain foothills like a deer or water deer.
Climbing mountains, crossing rivers, traversing ruins. How exhausting it had been to run everywhere.
There had even been times when he thought, ‘What kind of Daoist runs around like a wild animal?’
Now even that would become a distant memory.
Ise gave a brief laugh.
Then it happened.
An immense divine sense touched his own.
The smile on Ise’s lips vanished.
It was an enemy his divine sense could not even detect.
Yet the enemy’s immense divine sense engulfed Ise whole, as though swallowing him.
“Stop.”
The voice did not ring through his ears.
It was a message driven directly into his mind.
Ise immediately poured spiritual energy into the White Luan Boat with all his strength, forcing it to accelerate.
Instinctively, he knew that he could not let himself be caught.
His flight did not last long.
Both Ise and the White Luan Boat stopped in midair.
His body could not move at all, as though he had been struck by paralysis poison.
Soon, an old man with a full head of white hair appeared from somewhere and slowly approached through the air.
“You dare flee after this Old Ancestor speaks?”
The old man looked well past sixty.
His Daoist robes were woven from neat blue-gray silk, and a jade token hung at his waist.
Yet a vicious aura that did not suit his appearance flowed around him.
“Forgive me. I mistook you for a demon beast attack.”
Ise bowed respectfully.
“Who do you belong to?”
“I am an independent cultivator.”
Pop!
Ise’s right eye burst without warning.
There had been no sign at all. His eyeball simply dissolved into dark blood within its socket, leaving only empty darkness behind.
He did not scream. More vivid than the pain was the sense of danger.
The gulf between himself and the old man sent a chill down his spine.
“You are barely past twenty, yet you have reached the Foundation Establishment Realm and ride a flying boat as an independent cultivator. Do not lie. I will overlook your insolence only this once.”
“...Why is an honorable senior cultivator persecuting a junior without cause?”
“A reason is easy enough to make.”
The old man chuckled as he looked in the direction Ise had been heading.
“You are heading south. Are you affiliated with the Great Exorcist Order?”
“...”
“Then you are a spy the Great Exorcist Order sent into the empire. As an elder who protects the Zheng Empire, I cannot let a spy leave alive. How does that reason sound?”
Blood trickled from the place where his eye had burst.
Blood and cold sweat ran down from different directions, then merged together.
‘Can I survive this?’
Footnotes:
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