Chapter 79
Chapter 79: Eliminating the Right Answer
As Rong Shu walked along, snatches of gossip drifted past her ears: “Have you seen that demoness?” “Did you hear? In this secret realm training a demoness appeared, ugly and crude, who specializes in robbing male cultivators with a decent face of their heaven-and-earth treasures, and at the slightest disagreement she even strips them.” “Too terrifying, why has the Outer Sect never heard of such a person?” “Some disciples have already reported it to the Elders, I bet the Elders will catch her soon.” “A scourge like that must be punished severely, best to lock her on the Cliff of Reflection for a few years.” “…”
The chubby youth beside her patted his chest and declared: “I ran into her too, good thing I had plenty of life-preserving tricks.”
He turned to ask, curious: “Rong Shu, did you see her as well?”
Rong Shu blinked, and just as she was about to say she had not, the chubby youth continued breezily: “Even if you did, it is fine, that demoness seems to target male cultivators’ heaven-and-earth treasures and basically leaves female cultivators alone.”
At that, Rong Shu scratched her head. [There is no helping it.] Cultivators rarely look plain to begin with; when Rong Shu thought of making the pretty big sisters cry, she could not bear it. As for male cultivators, Rong Shu had no particular concept of them.
Just then, a booming voice carried from afar: “All disciples, attention. There is an urgent notice: all Qi Refining Stage disciples are to retest their spiritual-root aptitude.”
Rong Shu’s eyes flickered. [This has to be aimed at the demoness, right?] After all, a mysterious Qi Refining Stage cultivator whose personal information had never been exposed had stirred up storms inside the secret realm, and anyone in the sect would want that checked.
While acting as the demoness, Rong Shu had used only wind and metal spiritual roots, and the arts she revealed before Heaven’s Evolution Sect disciples were either basic or common techniques most disciples could obtain. She did use twin blades without concern, but outwardly Rong Shu was a half-baked sword cultivator. In the secret realm, once the wristguard’s duration ended it became scrap iron, and Rong Shu dug a hole and buried it.
She had also spent several days in the secret realm studying the newly obtained Han Chuan Cosmos Pearl and had grasped a few ways to use it. First, the Han Chuan Cosmos Pearl has a built?in concealment trait; outwardly it is an ordinary glass bead and can be placed casually in a storage pouch or housed within the dantian. Second, the Han Chuan Cosmos Pearl has seven layers of space and can hold living things; at present Rong Shu can use the first two layers, allowing her to separate items so they do not interfere with one another. The first layer of the Han Chuan Cosmos Pearl holds Immortal Jade Nectar, a Divine Beast egg, and three Spirit Tribulation Fruits. As for the freshly refined pills, the pile of heaven-and-earth treasures she acquired, two sabers, a Pill Furnace, and other items that should not appear under the identity of “Rong Shu,” she stored all of those in the second layer of the Han Chuan Cosmos Pearl. Now the storage pouch on her person holds only trivial odds and ends, so even if the sect searches her storage pouch she need not worry. As for whether the Han Chuan Cosmos Pearl placed in her dantian would be discovered, Rong Shu could only think: [Will they notice it?]
When the secret realm ended and the demoness identity came under suspicion, everyone was made to retest their spiritual roots, and Rong Shu went to be tested with the rest.
The examiner called out crisply: “Rong Shu, mid?grade Wind?Fire Dual Spiritual Roots, cultivation at Qi Refining Second Layer.”
Rong Shu heard her verdict without any surprise. It was a good thing she had not rushed to take the Wind Spirit Tribulation Fruit inside the secret realm, or her spiritual?root aptitude might have been altered by now.
Watching from the side as Rong Shu’s qualifications remained mediocre, Yu Ruan Ruan let out a small breath of relief. Then her eyes turned and she suddenly raised her voice to say: “Junior Sister, how are you still at Qi Refining Second Layer after two months of training…”
Mid?sentence, as if realizing she had said too much, Yu Ruan Ruan hastily covered her mouth and looked at Rong Shu with an apologetic expression, adding softly: “Junior Sister, do not mind it, I only…”
Rong Shu cut her off with a small, sincere face and said: “I understand, I understand you, Senior Sister Yu.”
Yu Ruan Ruan was stunned. [Understand what? Understand that I want to steal your fortune and kill you?]
Rong Shu nodded solemnly: “You are just worried about me, I know. I had some insights during this secret realm training, and once I get back I will go into seclusion for one month, and if I do not reach Qi Refining Third Layer I absolutely will not come out.”
Having just finished his own test, the chubby youth came running over. Hearing this, he immediately looked at her with worshipful eyes and said: “Wow, Rong Shu, you are really diligent.”
Rong Shu smiled bashfully and waved it off: “Not at all. I cannot compare with Senior Sister Yu. With her talent, even if she did not cultivate day after day, she could still crush an ordinary person like me.”
Yu Ruan Ruan: …
At this time, the newly tested spiritual?root information of all Qi Refining Stage disciples had been placed before more than a dozen Elders. After they finished reading everything through, the Elders’ faces showed only disappointment. A relatively young Elder could not help speaking first: “Disciples with both wind and metal roots number ninety?five, of whom forty?eight are female; we compared faces, ages, and builds, and not one matches.”
Another Elder sighed lightly and said: “At this point we can only see whether interrogation yields anything.”
Besides the retesting, Heaven’s Evolution Sect had also arranged a round of questioning. When Rong Shu’s turn came, no sooner had she stepped into the room than the male Elder in charge released the pressure of a Golden Core Stage cultivator. Beside him, a female Elder stared at Rong Shu with hawk?bright eyes.
The male Elder asked coolly: “What did you do inside the secret realm?”
Enduring the pressure, Rong Shu answered one word at a time: “I picked spirit herbs. When I went in, I happened to discover a spot where many spirit herbs grew. It was well hidden and had no dangerous beasts, so I stayed there.”
“Did you not want to look around in other parts of the secret realm?”
“With low cultivation, this disciple did not dare run about.”
Hearing this, the questioning Elder did not find it suspicious. Disciples with low cultivation who picked a spot to hide right after entering were not rare; a fair number of them did exactly that. After a dozen more questions, they let Rong Shu go.
Once Rong Shu had left, the female Elder who had not questioned her and had only been recording spoke up: “According to the information we gathered, this Rong Shu could not even afford a Spirit Sword, which she got from someone else as a gift, and the Library Pavilion has no record of her purchasing sword techniques.”
“What?” The male Elder was momentarily at a loss. For a sword cultivator to have to rely on someone else to buy her sword?
“She is poor,” the female Elder said with a sigh. “Before she accepted a certain special mission, the Spirit Stones and contribution points on this youngster’s record were pitiful.”
“What special mission?”
“The forbidden?valley one.”
At that, the male Elder started and then seemed to think of something. He asked quickly: “Is there any chance she switched to the saber halfway?”
The female Elder shook her head slightly: “I paid attention to Rong Shu’s palms just now. Only her right hand carries the marks left by sword practice; the left is quite smooth. This youngster’s aptitude is lacking, but she is diligent. She used to take back?mountain tasks one after another, tending spirit herbs while practicing sword on the side, and the steward of the Hundred Herb Garden ran into her several times.”
The male Elder’s hope deflated at once. It figured. Even if age and appearance could be disguised, Rong Shu did not match in cultivation base or spiritual roots. “Remove Rong Shu from the suspect list.”
“Mm.”
After two days of investigation with no results, the sect’s upper echelon could only release the Qi Refining Stage disciples.
During this period, the enthusiastic chubby youth wanted to bind aura signatures with Rong Shu so that they could contact each other with their identity tokens later. Thinking of this person’s identity as a deep?pocketed local tycoon, Rong Shu felt that hesitating even a second would be disrespectful to Spirit Stones, so she agreed. Afterward she learned the chubby youth’s name: Fu Yong Kang. When she heard it, Rong Shu’s whole body gave a jolt. [What a badass name.]
After that, Rong Shu sought out Cheng Bu Fan, told him she was going into seclusion, and verbally encouraged him to hurry up and raise his cultivation as well.
Then she went straight to the Training Pavilion on Spirit Nurturing Peak and rented a training chamber for one month. She had said she would seclude for one month, so she would seclude for one month. She, Rong Shu, must not betray Senior Sister Yu’s “expectations.”
After Rong Shu entered the chamber, the sect, which had originally sent people to shadow her just in case, wanted to confirm one last time whether she was tied to the demoness. Seeing her slip into a training chamber, they could do nothing for the moment. Sneaking into the interior of a training chamber was possible, but it was a serious taboo. Rong Shu was not a key suspect, and she was the personal disciple of Immortal Venerable Ze Yu, so there was no need to push it that far. If they accidentally caused her to suffer qi deviation, the consequences would be grave. In the end the watchers were withdrawn, and only the Training Pavilion’s internal staff were told to keep an eye out. If she emerged from seclusion, they were to report at once.
One month later, inside the training chamber, Rong Shu looked at the rows of porcelain bottles packed full of pills before her, and a quiet sense of achievement rose in her chest: “I finally finished refining every spirit herb from the secret realm that could be turned into pills.” After admiring them twice around, she put all the pills away into the Han Chuan Cosmos Pearl.
Besides refining spirit herbs, over these two months Rong Shu had not stopped sitting in meditation, and she repeatedly summarized the experience and lessons from the secret realm.
At present, Rong Shu’s true cultivation across all attributes was as follows. Her primary, wind: Qi Refining Ninth Layer. Her second, dark: Qi Refining Sixth Layer. Her third, fire and wood: Qi Refining Fifth Layer. Her fourth, water and metal: Qi Refining Third Layer. Her fifth, earth: Qi Refining Second Layer. In all, seven systems that Rong Shu had cultivated to differing degrees.
Along with that, she discovered a problem. As each system’s cultivation rose, the total spiritual energy she could absorb kept increasing, yet the efficiency of her meridians in transporting spiritual energy was no longer as high as before. Put simply, there was too much spiritual energy of different attributes, causing a traffic?jam phenomenon in her meridians.
There were only two ways to resolve this. One, stop multi?attribute cultivation and specialize in one or two attributes. Two, expand the meridians so they could accommodate more spiritual energy. Choosing the first method might remove her troubles in the short term. But aside from the dark attribute, that little gremlin that refused to be controlled, the other attributes could only be suppressed for a while; once they reached a certain point they would still break through. Moreover, giving up the tactical flexibility of multiple attributes just to conform to the single?attribute tactics felt like cutting off one’s own arm. In truth, only the second method lay open before Rong Shu. If she chose the second method, then in the short term she could not allow the primary wind attribute to break through. In the cultivation world, when advancing from Qi Refining to Foundation Establishment, one usually begins expanding the meridians at Qi Refining Tenth Layer; the greater the expansion, the more benefits it brings to Foundation Establishment and beyond. Multi?root cultivators can also expand meridians using different attribute energies, but multi?attribute cultivation is too slow and time?consuming, so most ultimately give it up. These drawbacks, however, did not exist for Rong Shu.
Rong Shu rose from the meditation mat and did a quick calculation: [By the days, Senior Brother Lin Dao should be back, right?]
She had chosen to spend Spirit Stones on a training chamber rather than seclude in the little courtyard on Limitless Peak in order to guard against the sect sending people to shadow her after failing to find the culprit. She took the highest?tier chamber, one that could withstand the probing of a Nascent Soul Stage cultivator. At the same time, she placed herself in full view, using the training chamber openly to dispel the last traces of suspicion in the sect’s upper ranks. With a month gone by, the waves she had kicked up inside the secret realm should have settled considerably.
Rong Shu cast a cleansing art on herself, tidied up, and after making sure she had Senior Brother Lin Dao’s identity token on her person, she left the training chamber and departed Spirit Nurturing Peak.
A short while later, at the square before the mountain gate, Rong Shu swung down from the back of a Red?crowned Cinnabar Crane. Many disciples were coming and going, and snatches of their conversation drifted into her ears: “Have you heard? A while ago the sect’s elites moved in secret and wiped out several heretical and demonic strongholds in one sweep.” “Wow, really? There was no hint at all, that was so sudden.” “Operations like that must be confidential, but I heard the chief merit went to Elder Xie of Spirit Nurturing Peak’s Enforcement Hall.” “Because Elder Xie provided crucial intelligence ahead of time, the sect could set a countertrap and net the demonic cultivators all at once.”
Hearing the words heretical and demonic, Rong Shu could not help recalling the Soul Severing Sect demonic cultivators she had met in Tranquil Harmony Town. Elder Xie. [Is that the one who went to Tranquil Harmony Town?] She had handed those last two demonic cultivators over to Elder Xie; it was very likely he had extracted something useful from them and reported it to the sect. The thought brushed her heart and then she set it aside.
At the mountain gate, dedicated staff were checking the identities of those coming and going, and Rong Shu handed over her identity token. Very soon, she passed through the gate without incident. Once outside, she took out her little flying boat and flew toward the place she had arranged to meet Senior Brother Lin Dao.