Chapter 33

Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way 33: Traitor

Suihan’s Spiritual Sense suddenly flowed out and filled up the entire meditation room. Gu Suihan picked up the pieces on the floor and filled them with energy.

His Spiritual Sense was still recuperating, so it was only as good as the Spiritual Sense of an Origin Core cultivator. But the difference was in the quality. For instance, you could have a kilogram of cotton and a kilogram of steel. They shared the same weight, but if you threw the former at someone, it would just feel like a tickle. If you threw the latter at someone, that person would die.

He already knew what he wanted to engrave on this weapon, so it only took him a little more than two days to carve rows and rows of mysterious and incomprehensible runes with the help of Suihan’s Spiritual Sense.

Once he put the parts together again, the saber that was once lifeless and silent started to hum quietly. The runes came to life and began to glow brightly, and the entire room was engulfed in a sinister and terrifying aura of sheer violence.

The last step was to give the weapon a soul. This was the biggest difference between a magic weapon and a spiritual weapon.

A spiritual weapon, like its name suggested, was a weapon that had a spirit of its own, sentient to a certain extent. A magic weapon was merely made from better material and was a weapon that was able to unleash magic power based on the runes inscribed on it.

The former was able to move in sync with the owner’s mind, so it was easier for the owner to learn how to use it well. It could also eventually gain intelligence and be able to cultivate as well.

The latter, on the other hand, wasn’t as advanced. It still needed the owner to fill it with magic energy that would activate the runes inscribed on it and unleash an attack. So, unless one tied a magic weapon to himself, drenched it in his blood, and used blood to refine it for many days, there was no way it would reach the same level as a spiritual weapon.

Gu Suihan bit his tongue hard enough for it to bleed. As he sprayed blood out of his mouth, his hands moved swiftly to form several hand seals in a row. The saber buzzed and trembled as his blood transformed into one symbol that gave off a menacing air.

His eyes lit up as he chanted, “Mark of Blood, Soul of Heaven and Earth!”

The symbol caused the air around it to warp and ripple, and Gu Suihan sent it into his new saber with a concentrated amount of ruthlessness.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The quiet room echoed with the sound of the blade hitting the walls. It resonated loudly and carried a dense amount of Murderous Qi.

Gu Suihan watched as his saber flew about and breathed a small sigh of relief. He was glad it worked.

The blood he sprayed out of his mouth earlier had included the murderous and violent energies within him that had almost solidified into an actual block.

Gu Suihan did not only want to create a spiritual weapon but a spiritual weapon that had Murderous Qi.

Then again, if it failed, then so be it. It was just a spiritual weapon, so it wasn’t a big deal to him.

But Gu Suihan wasn’t leaping for joy either. Back on Earth, many materials needed for such weapons were hard to find or even impossible to find. Without the right raw materials, even the most highly skilled weapon refiner in the world wouldn’t be able to make anything.

On the contrary, he was now in a world where the world of cultivators was well and alive. In fact, the world of cultivators was doing very well and was even growing still. Besides, he had to buy the weapon base from the Weapon Refinery Court since he couldn’t make one himself, and he had to use Suihan’s Spiritual Sense to carve runes on this weapon too.

So, being able to refine a spiritual weapon wasn’t anything to shout about.

Focusing all his energies on doing this for two days straight was already tough enough, and it didn’t help that using Suihan’s Spiritual Sense consumed a lot more energy than usual. He was thoroughly exhausted, but he forced himself to stay awake in order to seal Suihan’s soul before finally lying on the floor to get a good night’s rest.

…

The sun shone brightly and there were no clouds in the sky.

It was less than three days to the secret realm expedition.

The mission to check out a secret realm had been put up on the sect missions board and it had already been taken.

All the disciples knew that this mission had been jointly taken by the three factions, and had already been warned not to interfere, so all they did was curse the factions in their hearts, sigh sadly, and go their own way.

On this day, Li Rong finally asked his father for an iron jiangshi that was at the Foundation Establishment stage. Feng Ran had spent a huge number of Contribution Points to repair his tattered Ghost Controlling Flag.

Wang Xianxian looked at the item in his hand and snickered sinisterly.

They had all gotten themselves ready, thirsty for revenge.

The three leaders were also smiling when they heard the news. Their trap was working.

The smell of scheming was in the air.

Gu Suihan quietly adjusted his breathing and did his best to keep the surging magic energy in his body within his dantian. After that, he exhaled deeply. He opened his eyes and two beams of light shot out from his eyes, illuminating the entire meditation room.

He had finally finished converting all his meridian channels, so he was now ready to move on to Foundation Establishment.

Countless novels and historical records on Earth wrote about how one needed to take a Foundation Establishment Pill in order to have a higher chance of successfully reaching the Foundation Establishment stage.

Gu Suihan scoffed. That wasn’t how it really worked.

The Foundation Establishment stage, as the name itself suggested, merely marked the starting point of a person’s journey as a cultivator. Foundation Establishment Pills were for those cultivators with poor levels of aptitude who weren’t able to stabilize their bodies. These pills were a way for them to forcibly make a breakthrough in their cultivation.

If one’s body were stable and healthy, the chances of failing to move to the next stage were very slim. But of course, it wasn’t fair to compare them with someone with an eighth rank Spiritual Root like Gu Suihan.

For an ordinary person, the process went like this: they had to learn martial arts in order to produce internal energy, pneuma, and all that.

Once he reached the Perfect Physical Realm and successfully activated his Qi, it was time to convert all of these energies into magic energy. The aim was to nourish the meridian channels enough to convert them into Spiritual Meridians.

After that was done, the way to get to the Foundation Establishment stage was to convert this magic energy into spiritual energy that matched one’s Spiritual Root type. This step was very difficult. Just like how one folded a sheet of paper, folding it once or twice was easy, but folding it five times or more got more and more difficult.

That was what the process of converting was like. It was like turning a pot of water into a bowl of soup, then boiling it longer to thicken it, and finally removing any impurities to get the essence.

Once one successfully reached the Foundation Establishment stage, the next step was to absorb Qi to strengthen the concentrated spiritual energy one had. As for the period between Foundation Establishment and Origin Core, it was basically nothing but a time of accumulation. As long as you had enough money to keep eating spiritual fruits and knocking back fancy pills, it wouldn’t really take that long to reach Advanced Foundation establishment.

Gu Suihan slowly executed his Extreme Ra-Asu Breach, pushing the surging magic energy within him into his spine and sending it towards his Spiritual Root.

After he had gone through the difficult process of converting it and compressing it, wisps of spiritual energy would go through all the meridian channels in his body and finally settle down in his dantian.

Gu Suihan carefully controlled the movement of magic energy to his Spiritual Root while leading his spiritual energy to his dantian at the same time, cutting the conversion time by half.

His incredible willpower ensured that his magic energy was converted to the purer spiritual energy without taking a break, filling up his dantian quickly.

This process was finally complete after two days.

Gu Suihan shut his eyes and exhaled deeply. He could feel the difference in the energy inside his body now and that made him smile.

He could finally breathe a big sigh of relief and his tensed body began to relax as well.

The stale and sourish stench coming from his body made him scoff in response. He stood up and did some stretching, his joints and bones cracking with energy as he did so.

As spiritual energy flowed through his body, he trembled slightly and felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. All the filth his body had excreted and his clothing had turned into a fine dust.

The dust floated slowly onto the floor, covering his white cushion in a layer of gray.

He pinched his fingers together and chanted a Dust Removal Spell. A breeze blew through the meditation room, picking up all the dust from within the room and gathering it into a black compact ball that was about the size of a fist.

That secret realm expedition is happening soon, isn’t it, he thought. He wondered if Feng Ran had left any messages for him during this time.

But before that, he had to settle another matter.

He put on a new robe, kept away the broken knife that was sitting lifelessly in a corner of the room into his storage ring, then picked up his new saber, which he had named Red Dust.

A murderous feeling filled his heart as he felt the iciness from the saber.

Gu Suihan sent out his spiritual energy and it pushed the stone door of the meditation room open. “Taohua, Lihua, come here.”

“Young Master’s out!” The two maids were playing with the water at the pond when Gu Suihan called out to them. Taohua hopped to one side, dodging Lihua’s secret attack. She giggled and said, “Sister Lihua, we’d better go over.”

“We should,” Lihua quickly replied. She ran after Taohua and lowered her face slightly to hide the puzzled look in her eyes.

Gu Suihan leaned against his chair and looked at the two slightly unkempt maids silently. Mara was on the table and he tapped his index finger gently against its hilt, making a regular clinking sound.

After a moment of silence, Gu Suihan smiled faintly at the two nervous and fearful-looking girls and said, “Do the two of you want to become cultivators?”

The room was instantly filled with the sound of two people breathing heavily in excitement. They almost squealed as they nodded their heads vigorously.

“Alright. So, tell me. Which one of you gave away information about me?”