Chapter 149

Chapter 149: Foundation Establishment Achieved

Half a year later.

Great Celebration City, inside a cave-dwelling.

On a wooden table lay a heaping pile of assorted fruits and melon seeds, and beside it sat a soft, nest-like bed for a hamster.

A tiny paw poked out over the rim, then Little Hamster climbed from the nest, hugged a piece of fruit, and began to gnaw.

After finishing one, it reached for another.

Cheeks bulging as it ate, Little Hamster would now and then lift its head to glance at the girl cultivating not far away.

When it finished another fruit, Little Hamster tossed the pit into a bag. There were already quite a few pits collected inside.

Patting its slightly round little belly, Little Hamster gave the girl one last look, then curled up comfortably back in its nest.

Soon, Little Hamster was fast asleep.

No one noticed that as it slept, the Flame Mark on Little Hamster’s forehead seemed to come alive, vivid as if a tiny flame were truly burning there.

While Little Hamster slept deeply, Rong Shu, on the other side, was also at the final critical juncture of breaking through to the Foundation Establishment Stage.

After half a year of cultivation and tempering, Rong Shu had brought all of her spiritual root attributes, including the underperforming lightning, to the great perfection of Qi Refining, with one exception: ice.

She had tried many times, but after half a year the ice attribute progressed very slowly, and at present was only at the third layer of Qi Refining.

Helpless, Rong Shu had to abandon the plan of raising the ice attribute to the great perfection of Qi Refining as well.

By now, the number of spiritual root attributes she cultivated was terrifying.

Five-element roots: metal, wood, water, fire, earth.

Variant roots: wind, lightning, ice.

Rare root: dark.

Rong Shu arranged a Spirit Gathering Formation around her and lined up bottles of Spirit Gathering Pills neatly on the floor before her, ready to be taken at a moment’s notice.

When all preparations were complete, Rong Shu swallowed a Foundation Establishment Pill and began to assault the Foundation Establishment Stage.

Apart from the ice attribute, the other eight kinds of spiritual qi cycled continuously through the meridians in her body, completing one grand circulation after another.

Once each circulation ended, the qi gathered in her dantian.

Her dantian was like a glutton starved for a long time. No matter how unceasingly the spiritual qi poured into it, there was no sign of feeling full.

Midway, Rong Shu took Spirit Gathering Pills several times.

Day turned to night and back again as time trickled by, yet Rong Shu’s dantian continued greedily absorbing spiritual qi.

The key sign of crossing from the Qi Refining Stage into the Foundation Establishment Stage is this: all spiritual qi within the dantian must be transformed into spiritual liquid.

As soon as all the qi is converted into spiritual liquid, it means Foundation Establishment has succeeded.

[No good… There is too much spiritual qi. Converting it into spiritual liquid is far more difficult now…]

Rong Shu gradually felt the strain.

The reason she could not break through the final barrier of Foundation Establishment was, unexpectedly, that she had drawn too much spiritual qi into her dantian.

Yet the very first step in breaking through from Qi Refining to Foundation Establishment is to cram the entire dantian full of spiritual qi. Without absorbing enough qi, one cannot break through.

Rong Shu, however, had absorbed too much, and that was slowing the conversion.

“Foundation Establishment Pill! Take another,” she said to herself.

Splitting off a wisp of qi, Rong Shu drew out from her Storage Pouch the spare bottle of Foundation Establishment Pills she had prepared.

After swallowing the second Foundation Establishment Pill, Rong Shu immediately refined its medicinal power.

As the medicine took effect, the speed at which the dantian’s qi turned into liquid increased notably.

Within the dantian, a vast fog of spiritual qi was steadily swallowed by a world-shaking surge of waves. The engulfed mist began to liquefy, finally becoming drops of spiritual liquid that poured into the onrushing spirit sea.

Drop by drop formed a pool, pools became rivers, and a hundred rivers converged into a sea.

When the last wisp of spiritual mist was transformed into part of the spirit sea, the surging sea rose in ever higher breakers, pounding again and again at an invisible barrier.

Wave after wave crashed without tiring.

Crack… crack…

The unseen barrier began to fracture.

Countless layered waves gathered and twisted into waterspouts, like a final assault from all directions upon the encircling walls.

Crack.

With a sharp report, the barrier shattered completely.

Foundation Establishment, achieved.

Keeping her mind taut, Rong Shu sensed the unprecedented fluctuation of spiritual power surging through her body and could not contain her delight: [Foundation Establishment succeeded!]

Before this, Rong Shu had been worried that her special circumstances might prevent her from achieving Foundation Establishment. Now, at last, she could breathe easier.

She continued her inner inspection of her dantian and meridians, checking for anything amiss.

“Hm? The spiritual liquid in my dantian has turned transparent?”

Seeing the spiritual liquid formed within her dantian, Rong Shu felt a flicker of doubt.

“By rights, the liquid should share the color of the attribute of the qi that was converted. But now…”

She had expected to see something like black yet bizarrely prismatic, but what she found was clear as glass.

“What attribute is this supposed to be?”

Rong Shu opened her eyes and rose from the Meditation Mat.

She tried techniques of various attributes, and all could be cast normally, but the color of the spiritual qi she produced was uniformly transparent.

[Can it change color? Like this, it is far too conspicuous.]

No sooner had the thought arisen than the orb of qi in her hand was suddenly dyed a cyan hue.

“Wind spiritual qi?”

Rong Shu’s face lit up.

Next she tested metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. All could be converted normally into their corresponding qi colors.

“It is just a pity that for now every attribute’s cultivation is only at early Foundation Establishment, so there is not much difference to see.”

“Wait… there is also ice.”

Rong Shu lifted her hand and gathered a clump of ice qi.

But as the ice qi formed in her palm, Rong Shu was shocked. “Hold on, something is off. The aura of this ice qi… why does it feel like early Foundation Establishment?”

She flicked the ice qi at a stone.

The stone did not freeze solid, nor did the ground around it become glazed with ice as she had hoped. Only a faint layer of white frost formed on the stone’s surface. Crouching, Rong Shu poked it with a finger and easily crumbled it.

“The aura reads as early Foundation Establishment, but the actual power is still at the third layer of Qi Refining.”

Suddenly a light flashed in her mind.

“If the ice attribute can disguise itself as an early Foundation Establishment aura, can the other eight attributes disguise themselves as the third layer of Qi Refining?”

At once, Rong Shu put the idea to the test.

[Whoa!] [It really works!!]

She went through all eight attributes in turn. Without exception, each could masquerade as the aura of Qi Refining third layer.

Back at the Qi Refining Stage, her method of disguising her cultivation had merely prevented others from detecting abnormalities. But whenever she used spiritual qi she had to control the strength of her techniques with great care, fearing that a single misstep would expose her.

Now, however, her method of hiding her spiritual root cultivation seemed to have improved on its own.

She no longer needed to tiptoe around how much qi to release to avoid revealing her true level. Of course, if she truly fought and the manifested power differed from the aura, the discrepancy could still be noticed.

Another idea struck Rong Shu: [Can I precisely control the wind attribute’s power so that it matches the ice attribute’s third-layer Qi Refining level?]

[Test it.]

…

A constant series of booms echoed through the cave-dwelling.

The noise grew so loud that it even woke the soundly sleeping Little Hamster.