Chapter 158: Ascended Person

Chapter 158: The Ascended

In the evening, Shang Yunduo asked Pei Jie what the Dao was.

Pei Jie thought for a moment: "I don't know. Everyone's Dao is different, yet the same."

Shang Yunduo: "Three thousand great Daos, but all methods return to one?"

Pei Jie: "Mm, something like that."

"What about you?" Shang Yunduo turned to look at Pei Jie's profile. "Senior, what is your Dao?"

Pei Jie was silent for a while, then admitted, "I don't know."

Shang Yunduo: "Huh? Doesn't following your heart count?"

Pei Jie: "No, that's still just a technique."

Shang Yunduo pondered for a moment. Using spiritual energy to cultivate arithmetic was understandable; as the stele inscriptions said, it was just one path of cultivation, and because it was the fastest, it became mainstream. The Carefree Sect generally disapproved of it because cultivating too quickly could make one forget the original intention, leading to impatience and focusing only on cultivation level, neglecting the path itself.

He asked Pei Jie: "If one doesn't forget the original intention, isn't using spiritual energy to cultivate still walking the Dao?"

Pei Jie: "Of course, technique and Dao aren't contradictory; otherwise, there wouldn't be so many spirit cultivators who successfully ascended. The cultivation world also has a saying: later cultivators find it hard to ascend not only because of the gradual depletion of spiritual energy but also because of impure Dao hearts."

Shang Yunduo perked up: "Impure Dao heart? What counts as impure cultivation? Doing evil?"

Pei Jie: "What counts as evil?"

Shang Yunduo: "Stealing, robbing, killing, of course..."

Pei Jie shook his head: "If killing is evil, is killing to save people still evil? Demonic beasts have always used devouring as their main cultivation method; all ascended demonic beasts have killed plenty, so why can they ascend? Good and evil are opposites; without good, there's no evil, and without evil, no good. There is no absolute good or evil in the world, and naturally no absolute good or bad people. Good and evil themselves are results of teaching; they are related to the Dao heart but not absolutely equivalent."

Shang Yunduo made a thoughtful sound, seeming even more confused.

Pei Jie also turned to look at Shang Yunduo, then simply shifted sideways to lie face to face with him: "Although I sometimes don't agree with your soft-heartedness, I don't think kindness is wrong. Whatever your Dao is, as long as you don't go against your heart and keep doing what you think is right, there's no problem."

Shang Yunduo was overjoyed. He struggled to contain his excitement, then blurted out: "Being kind is tough, you know. If I ever faced the trolley problem, I wouldn't know what to do."

Pei Jie: "What's the trolley problem?"

Shang Yunduo: "It's a problem where a cart has two tracks ahead; if you don't change course, it'll crush many people, but if you change, it'll crush a few. Should you change tracks? Both sides are innocent. Should the minority or the majority be protected?"

Pei Jie frowned, puzzled: "Isn't the problem the cart? Just fix the cart?"

Shang Yunduo: "Huh?"

He explained: "No, it can't stop. I can't fix the cart; I can only choose one."

Pei Jie: "Then I'll help you fix the cart."

Shang Yunduo laughed, without explaining that the scenario was fixed. He leaned over and kissed Pei Jie: "Okay."

The kiss was deepening, their breaths growing heavy, when suddenly Lou Dengge started knocking on the door.

"Senior Pei, Senior Pei, are you asleep? I figured it out—that character is Filth!"

"Indeed, it is Filth." Pei Jie immediately broke off the kiss, shoving Shang Yunduo aside, got up, grabbed his luminous pearl, and headed straight to the next room.

Shang Yunduo: "..."

Which 'hui'?!

The 'hui' that means 'to meet' and knows the timing, or the 'hui' that means 'unlucky'?!

What happened to helping him fix the cart?

Shang Yunduo punched the bed. It was all this Lou Dengge's fault—didn't he get why Shang Yunduo had gone out of his way to cut trees and make a door?!

No wonder others wanted to hunt him down; Shang Yunduo wanted to beat Lou Dengge up too.

Shang Yunduo flopped back onto the bed in frustration, then shot back up to put on his shoes. No, he had to see what Pei Jie was so excited about!

When Shang Yunduo ran over, Pei Jie and Lou Dengge were both huddled around the table he had built a few days earlier. Shang Yunduo thought, luckily the table was big enough to squeeze him in too.

Lou Dengge was still excited: "Frost Filth, it really is Frost Filth!"

Shang Yunduo listened, confused: "What's Frost Filth?"

An extinct demon beast? A lost treasure? What exactly?

Pei Jie: "The last one to ascend before the Great Separation."

Shang Yunduo's eyes widened in shock: "Huh?"

Lou Dengge was incoherent: "Really! It's true!"

He carefully picked up the rubbing with Frost Filth's name, skipped a few names, and pointed at the rubbing to show Shang Yunduo: "Dancer—Frost Filth! She came to celebrate the birthday of someone named E, and even danced!"

Shang Yunduo leaned in to look. The rubbing was half missing and hard to read; Lou Dengge and Pei Jie could only decipher about a quarter of it. Who knew it contained such a big shot's name!

Suddenly, he stopped talking, and the three of them huddled over the rubbing to search. Unfortunately, after going through it all, "Frost Filth" appeared only once.

Lou Dengge and Shang Yunduo took turns:

"Geez! Why dance? Why didn't she say a few words?"

"Maybe she did, but the guy recording didn't write it!"

"They really couldn't recognize a big shot!"

"What if another ascended great power is among these names?"

"Let me see, let me see again!"

But apart from Frost Filth, they hadn't heard of any of the other names recorded.

"Ugh..."

"Ugh!"

Pei Jie couldn't help laughing at their antics. He gathered all the stele inscriptions from around that era, and the three of them searched until dawn. They saw no more of Frost Filth's name, nor any records of her deeds.

"At least we know Frost Filth really existed!" Lou Dengge wasn't disappointed; instead, he looked up at the sky with a blissful expression.

Shang Yunduo, meanwhile, was flipping through the historical records Lou Dengge had lent him about this last to ascend. As he flipped, he let out a loud, incredulous "Huh?" and looked up: "Is this written wrong?"

Pei Jie knew what he had seen without looking: "Not long after her ascension, her sect was indeed wiped out."

Shang Yunduo: "Why?!"

He frantically flipped through the pages, but there was nothing more in the book.

Lou Dengge: "Stop flipping. There's nothing. I've also searched many records about this—there's nothing."

It was precisely because he couldn't find anything no matter how hard he tried that he began to doubt whether Hui Shuang actually existed.

Unexpectedly, Pei Jie said, "Because she left two artifacts to her disciple, and her sect was too small."

Shang Yunduo and Lou Dengge both looked at him.

Pei Jie went on, revealing this secret—no longer a secret to any cultivator who had reached the Divine Transformation stage: "Artifacts that can influence Ascension."

Shang Yunduo and Lou Dengge said in unison, "Ascension?!"

Pei Jie nodded. "She intentionally left them for her disciple. It's said that her disciple was her own younger sister, though rumors say it was a daughter or another relative—in any case, it was definitely someone with a blood relation. Unfortunately, the disciple's talent wasn't as good as hers. To help her disciple ascend as well, Hui Shuang specially left behind the two strongest artifacts besides her life-bound one. But those very artifacts brought deadly disaster to her disciple."

Shang Yunduo and Lou Dengge instantly understood.

Shang Yunduo asked, "So her disciple didn't manage to ascend?"

Pei Jie shook his head. "No, she didn't even reach the Divine Transformation stage."

Shang Yunduo was speechless. Lou Dengge was also silent.

Pei Jie: "After her death, the two artifacts changed hands many times. Later, one was lost, and the other fell into the hands of Kong Yu..."

Hearing that name, Lou Dengge and Shang Yunduo both exclaimed, "Chenhai Kongyu?!"

Pei Jie nodded.

Shang Yunduo was stunned. Everyone knew that name—the most notorious demonic cultivator in the past three thousand years, who shook both the human and demon realms and appeared in tales from both sides!

Chenhai Kongyu—"hai" meaning a sea of corpses and blood. Humans said he was a demon, and demons said he was human. Shang Yunduo had once asked Pei Jie if this person was like him, and Pei Jie said no. Kong Yu was a half-breed, not the offspring of a demon and a human, but rather a human cultivator who used a Forbidden Art to consume too many demon cores and became demonized, or a demon cultivator who ate too many human cultivators' Golden Cores and became mutated. So no one knew whether he was human or demon. He might also be the child born from such a cultivator in a mutated state.

It was too long ago—Pei Jie didn't know what Kong Yu looked like, nor could he deduce whether he looked more human or more demon. But every cultivator who knew of Kong Yu knew that he had attempted ascension twice, both times failing, and the second time he even tried to ascend as a Ghost Cultivator. It was a marvel in the history of ascension in the cultivation world—a legendary feat!

Apart from himself, the other thing often talked about was his famous artifact—the Sinking Sea Banner—which disappeared along with him in the thunder of his second failed ascension.

It was said that many ghost cultivators and demonic cultivators were obsessed with refining banners into artifacts, all influenced by this senior cultivator.

Lou Dengge exclaimed, "The Sinking Sea Banner is Hui Shuang's artifact?! Impossible! How could Hui Shuang's artifact be something so vile?!"

Pei Jie shook his head. "One of the two artifacts Hui Shuang left was the Sea-Subduing Flag, and the other was the Kunze Lamp. After Kong Yu seized the Sea-Subduing Flag, he reforged it and turned it into the Sinking Sea Banner."

Shang Yunduo was speechless.

Lou Dengge was speechless.

Just hearing the names told the difference.

Why did it feel like a sacred object had been corrupted into a demonic one?

Shang Yunduo silently swallowed his complaints and asked, "So one of Hui Shuang's artifacts was lost, and the other was destroyed?"

Pei Jie nodded.

Shang Yunduo: "Then what was the point of all that robbery?! They destroyed her sect and killed her disciple—what did they gain?"

Pei Jie smiled wryly.

Although all cultivators in the Late Nascent Soul and Divine Transformation stages had never given up searching for the Kunze Lamp, and they all kept quiet about any news of Hui Shuang's artifacts, Kong Yu had been gone for two or three thousand years. Back when he held the Sea-Subduing Flag, he couldn't find the Kunze Lamp. Now they didn't even know what the Kunze Lamp looked like—what difference did it make if they spoke or not?

Even if they did find it, what use would it be? Chenhai Kongyu was forced to extract his soul and refine it, slaughtering cities and draining blood to re-refine the Sea-Subduing Flag, turning it into an evil artifact—wasn't it all to break the blood lineage restriction placed on it?

Even if they obtained the Kunze Lamp, without Hui Shuang's bloodline, they couldn't use that thing at all.

The three gossiped some more, but Shang Yunduo and Lou Dengge remained silent for a long while.

Such treasures, left behind by an ascended cultivator—one who had truly succeeded in ascending!

And one of them was inextricably linked to Kong Yu, who had failed to ascend...

It was like a mythical story coming to life.

Shang Yunduo thought to himself, "So people really can ascend."

Seeing that it was already dawn outside, Pei Jie declared, "Let's get some sleep."

But Lou Dengge couldn't sleep; he wanted to record what he had translated into jade slips and make another copy.

Shang Yunduo had offered to let him borrow his transcription to copy, but he couldn't wait until everything was translated—what if their destinations ended up being different later? What if they didn't have time to copy everything?

Besides, recording on the same day allowed him to annotate his current thoughts beside the text, so he wouldn't forget later.

Seeing Lou Dengge's silver head bent over his writing, Shang Yunduo felt a pang of guilt for wasting time. He went back, lay down for half an hour, then got up to concoct pills.

The secret realm had many herbs, giving him more opportunities to try. He too needed to seize the opportunity.

Another day of everyone busy with their own tasks. Maybe spurred on by Lou Dengge's example, Shang Yunduo was exceptionally focused today, and he was in such a great state for pill concocting that even he was surprised. He couldn't resist taking out the materials for the Spirit Rhino Horn Pill.

Not counting his previous failed attempts, he still had eight sets of materials.

The Spirit Rhino Shell Pill wasn't that difficult, actually. He had already mastered both refining the herbs and the Spirit Rhino Shell itself.

The only tricky part was the fusion—that's where all his previous failures had gotten stuck.

Shang Yunduo had to admit that while he wasn't bad at controlling spiritual power, he wasn't great either. Compared to a genius like Pei Jie, he really fell short.

He could give it his all to get to ninety-nine, but he could never bridge that last critical gap.

"Sigh..."

Should he give it a shot?

Shang Yunduo glanced at Pei Jie and Lou Dengge, who were still examining the rubbings. Suddenly, he remembered Lou Dengge once saying that there were several different methods and schools for deciphering ancient characters. Relying on just one method wasn't enough; you had to master several so you could switch tactics when you hit a roadblock. If one approach didn't work, try another.

Could the same principle apply to pill refining?

Before, to avoid distraction, he had never used Illusion Art while refining pills. Since relying on spiritual power alone wasn't cutting it, what if he added Illusion Art?

Shang Yunduo immediately switched to Illusion Art. Instead of jumping straight into the Spirit Rhino Shell Pill, he re-refined every pill he knew from scratch, observing through the lens of Illusion Art what a successful pill should look like.

After a whole day, he was still quite confused. Each pill turned out differently, but compared to the raw herbs, the number of "dots" in the finished pills was always lower.

A finished pill had fewer dots than the liquid, and the liquid had fewer than the herbs. His earlier speculation was correct: these specks were impurities from the perspective of cultivators who trained using spiritual energy. Pill refining, like cultivation, was all about removing impurities.

The higher the grade of the pill, the fewer impurities it contained.

Pill refining could also be simplistically understood as stripping impurities from various materials and fusing what's left.

On the second day, he began such experiments and soon encountered a new problem.

For different pills, what counted as impurities and what did not were actually different.

If he just removed every impurity he could in the early stages, the pill would never form.

Thus, the dots that remained in the final pill were not impurities after all.

Shang Yunduo was getting dizzy from overthinking this.

Figuring out what was an impurity for each pill was torture for a lousy student like him.

For the next ten or so days, Shang Yunduo pondered this issue, and it wasn't until Pei Jie and Lou Dengge had translated all the rubbings and even gone over them again to check for mistakes that he finally had a new idea.

Going only by spiritual power didn't work, and neither did going only by the dots, so he added another factor: medicinal properties.

A good pill should maximize its medicinal effects, but stronger doesn't always mean better—you also have to think about toxicity and side effects. What's the point of taking a pill if it makes you stronger but kills you? That's worse than not taking it at all.

From a pure medicine standpoint, the parts that suppress toxicity and side effects are impurities, but from the angle that a pill has to be non-toxic, some pills that inherently contain a bit of toxicity are themselves impurities.

How the heck do you strike that balance?

He went back through the alchemy pharmacology books, going over the formulas he had memorized by rote—things he only knew the "what" of, not the "why"—and really thought through all the warnings and notes he'd just memorized before.

Fortunately, he had two learned teachers by his side. Although Pei Jie was not an Alchemy Cultivator, his knowledge of cultivation-related topics was extensive. Lou Dengge used to earn spirit stones by gathering herbs, so he knew a lot about herbs and elixir recipes. He also knew many Alchemy Cultivators, and he was quite familiar with the basic questions Shang Yunduo asked and the word-of-mouth tips from other Alchemy Cultivators. He'd also picked up plenty of common tricks and tips from casual conversations among Alchemy Cultivators.

Whenever Shang Yunduo didn't understand, he would ask, and they'd hash it out together. The more they talked, the more he felt he had improved.

Shang Yunduo started scribbling notes like crazy, figuring no wonder Xiaoyao Sect always loved those discussion groups.

Right before they were set to leave the secret realm, Shang Yunduo had barely managed to roughly match up the impurities in pharmacology to the impurities seen through the Illusion Art.

Balance—that was the whole key.

The medicinal properties, the spiritual energy inside, the useful and useless impurities, and how they all clashed and reacted after fusing...

That feeling of his brain itching like it was about to grow a new wrinkle was super intense!

Shang Yunduo, in the middle of sleeping, suddenly sat up straight. "Senior, I think I'm back in business!"

Pei Jie grunted sleepily without opening his eyes, auto-piloting the lines Shang Yunduo had bribed him to say: "Mm, I know. You've always been great at this. You're a genius. Believe in yourself. Keep it up."

Shang Yunduo: "Mm! I'm going to try again!"

Pei Jie shifted his sleeping position and continued, "Mm, go ahead."

Shang Yunduo expertly zipped to his alchemy corner and pulled out the ingredients for one Spirit Rhino Shell Pill.

If he failed again, he would only have five portions left.

He didn't care anymore. If it still didn't work, before leaving, he would turn invisible, find a Spirit Rhino, and steal a couple of Spirit Rhino Shells!

Author's note:

Yunduo: I'm a genius!

Pei Jie: You're a genius.

Yunduo: I'm a genius!!

Pei Jie: Mm, you're a genius.

Yunduo: I'm going to get crazy!! Tremble, Alchemy Cultivators! Tremble, Cultivation World!

Lou Dengge, living next door: ??? What's all this noise in the middle of the night?