In the days that followed, Luo Qingci went to the cliff at the back mountain to cultivate before dawn every day, returning for breakfast when the morning bell rang.
She practiced swordplay at the training grounds in the morning, meditated in her quarters in the afternoon, and continued cultivating until midnight.
Her life became a straight line, back and forth between four points: her residence, the training grounds, the dining hall, and the back mountain, with no extra detours in between.
She didn’t chat with anyone, didn’t attend any gatherings, and ignored all invitations.
When someone came looking for her, she would smile and decline.
“I’m preparing for the Grand Competition lately, I really can’t spare the time.”
Her tone was soft, her attitude pleasant, and no one could find fault with her.
After enough times, fewer people came to see her.
Zhao Heng visited twice, and she turned him away both times.
The third time, he stood outside her courtyard gate, glancing at her through the half-closed wooden door.
It seemed he wanted to say something, but in the end, he just shook his head helplessly and left.
Luo Qingci felt his aura fade away and finally breathed a sigh of relief, though she also found it a bit ridiculous.
An Inner Disciple at Foundation Establishment late stage, coming to find her, an Outer Disciple at Qi Refining Peak.
What serious business could he have?
It was just that a pretty girl kept in a courtyard was nice to look at.
Even if he couldn’t pluck her yet, it was good to get an extra glance.
When he found someone easier to pursue, he would naturally change his target.
She had seen too many people like this.
Not just Zhao Heng.
Two years ago, there was one named Zhou Yan.
He was at Early Foundation Establishment, a sword cultivator, handsome and quite popular in the sect.
He pursued her for a full three months, bringing gifts every day—pills, spirit herbs, beautiful hairpins, expensive robes.
When she refused, he just smiled and said no rush, no rush, take your time.
When she pushed him away, he said he’d come again tomorrow.
Luo Qingci had just turned fifteen then and wasn’t as good at handling people as she was now.
She didn’t know what to do with someone like him, so she just avoided him.
After two months of dodging, Zhou Yan finally stopped coming.
Not because she had successfully avoided him, but because his target had shifted to a newly admitted female disciple, who was quite beautiful.
Once, Luo Qingci saw Zhou Yan sitting with that female disciple in the dining hall, chatting and laughing.
Zhou Yan was picking up food for the girl, his gaze as tender as the spring breeze in March.
She glanced over, then looked away and lowered her head to drink her porridge.
She had no feelings for Zhou Yan and had never accepted his goodwill.
She knew clearly in her heart—if she didn’t have this face, would Zhou Yan still have pursued her?
No.
In the years from age seven to fourteen, when she didn’t have this face, no one had ever come after her.
She could understand why they did this.
After all, she really was good-looking now.
The room was dim, lit only by the faint yellow glow of an oil lamp on the table.
She walked over, sat at the desk, and took a small paper packet from her storage pouch.
Opening it, inside were two pieces of Osmanthus Cake.
Breakfast for tomorrow.
She smelled the fragrance of osmanthus, wrapped the packet back up, and placed it by her pillow.
Then she blew out the lamp and went to sleep.
Seven days before the Grand Competition, Luo Qingci stood at the edge of the training grounds, watching two disciples sparring in the field.
This training ground was exclusively for Outer Disciples.
It wasn’t large, and the facilities were crude, the green stone floor already worn with pits and grooves from years of use.
It was busiest in the early morning and at dusk—sometimes for formal sparring, sometimes for casual bouts.
Anyone with an itch to fight would come here for a few rounds.
Today was dusk, and the fight in the field was heating up.
Both sparring disciples were at Qi Refining Late Stage.
One used a sword, the other a blade.
They went back and forth, the clashing of weapons ringing out sharply.
To an outsider, it had some momentum, but in Luo Qingci’s eyes, it was full of flaws.
She watched for less than half a stick of incense before losing interest.
It wasn’t that her standards were too high.
It was that she had improved too much this past year.
At this time last year, she would have found a spar between Qi Refining Late Stage cultivators quite engaging, able to learn a lot from it.
Now, watching a fight at the same level, all she saw were gaps everywhere, each move and style revealing three or four ways to counter it.
This feeling made her a little proud.
‘What the heck, I guess I’m pretty amazing after all.’
‘Once I break through to Foundation Establishment after the Grand Competition, I’ll be even stronger!’
‘A seventeen-year-old Foundation Establishment—I bet there isn’t a genius that young in a hundred miles around!’
‘From now on, I won’t be a Qi Refining ant anymore. I’ll be a Foundation Establishment powerhouse!’
Luo Qingci pulled her gaze away from the training grounds and turned to walk back to her quarters.
On the way, she ran into a few Outer Disciples who waved at her from a distance.
“Junior Sister Luo! Come spar with us!”
“Yeah, yeah! We haven’t seen you here in a while!”
Luo Qingci smiled and waved them off.
“I’ve been regulating my breathing these days, so I won’t be fighting. I’ll save it for the Grand Competition.”
“Then it’s a deal! If I run into you in the competition, go easy on me!”
“You’re the one who should go easy on me.”
After a brief exchange, Luo Qingci left.
Behind her, a female disciple lowered her voice.
“Don’t you think Junior Sister Luo has been getting quieter lately? Last time I talked to her, I felt like she was listening, but also like she wasn’t. It was weird.”
“Really? I think she’s fine. Isn’t she always smiling?”
“That’s exactly why I think it’s weird…”
Their voices faded into the distance.
Luo Qingci’s steps didn’t falter.
Of course, she was smiling.
If she showed any other emotion, someone would inevitably come over to fuss over her.
So she put on a smile.
Smile until everyone thought you were doing well, smile until everyone thought you had no worries, smile until everyone thought you didn’t need any help.
Then they would leave, and she would finally have some peace.
Three nights before the Grand Competition.
Luo Qingci sat cross-legged on her bed, circulating her spiritual energy through thirty-six full cycles.
It gathered at her dantian, forming a tiny vortex.
She could feel the vortex spinning slowly, as if brewing something.
This sensation had been going on for half a month.
She felt she was close to Foundation Establishment.
But she had to hold it back.
She needed to condense her true qi properly before breaking through.
It couldn’t be rushed.
She opened her eyes and let out a long breath.
The spiritual energy in her body calmed down slowly, like the tide receding, leaving behind a quiet stillness.
The room was dark.
The moon outside was covered by clouds; she couldn’t see a thing.
She reached for the paper packet by her pillow, opened it, picked up a piece of Osmanthus Cake, and brought it to her mouth in the darkness, taking a bite.
Soft, sticky, and sweet.
The fragrance of osmanthus spread through her mouth.
As she chewed, a thought suddenly struck her.
The Grand Competition was in three days.
After it was over, she would be an Inner Disciple.
Then she would be an Inner Disciple, with a Golden Core Great Power as her master.
Maybe if she worked hard enough, she could even become a personal disciple!
Luo Qingci swallowed the last bite of Osmanthus Cake and licked the crumbs off her fingertips.
“Foundation Establishment,” she said softly in the darkness.
“Annulment. I have to do both.”
A wind picked up outside the window.
The branches of the Osmanthus Tree tapped lightly against the window lattice, each tap echoing like someone beating a drumbeat for her.
So what if she had become a girl?
Her future… seemed very bright…
She suddenly laughed, a genuine laugh from deep within.
She pulled up the blanket and closed her eyes.
[Name: Luo Qingci]
[Constitution: Taiyin Xuancha Constitution – Awakening Progress: 40%]
[Traits: Supreme Yin Origin – Attainment of maximum affinity with ice and yin-type techniques. Cultivation speed increased tenfold. Immune to all ice-type spell damage from cultivators of the same realm. Innate Perfect Furnace Cauldron – The user is a natural, mobile spirit-gathering array. When others cultivate nearby, their cultivation speed increases by thirty to fifty percent directly. When performing dual cultivation with a cultivator to achieve yin-yang harmony, the user can channel their own pure yin origin into their partner, helping them quickly break through cultivation bottlenecks, stabilize their foundation, and cleanse impurities from their meridians.
It also helps suppress heart demons, extend lifespan and vitality, and even has a chance of inducing enlightenment of the Dao. The higher the user’s cultivation level, the greater the benefits gained by the furnace cauldron’s partner. Cultivation with a built-in shortcut – The user’s cultivation speed far exceeds that of ordinary cultivators. Entry is extremely fast, and bottlenecks are very easily broken through.]
Xiao Han stared at the lines on the system interface, the corners of his mouth twitching.
Not from shock, but from how absurd it was.
Taiyin Xuancha Constitution.
Innate Perfect Furnace Cauldron.
“Are you saying…” he began, pausing.
“Once she fully awakens, with a peerless appearance and the ‘Innate Perfect Furnace Cauldron’ trait, you think she could survive more than three hours with her strength?”
[According to the background setting, she would be captured and imprisoned within the time it takes two incense sticks to burn after awakening her constitution, then used as a dual cultivation tool. In the original story, she wouldn’t even have the chance to return to the sect.]
A female cultivator with average cultivation, good looks, and a special constitution—special enough to increase the cultivation speed of those around her by thirty to fifty percent, special enough to help someone break through a bottleneck just by dual cultivating with her.
This kind of person in the cultivation world was like a piece of walking Tang Monk meat.
Who wouldn’t want a bite?
Those lofty Golden Core elders and Nascent Soul ancestors, stuck at a bottleneck for decades or centuries—suddenly hearing about a little girl who could help them break through.
What would they do?
Come politely to ask? Negotiate courteously?
No.
They would take her by force.
Take her, lock her away, and use her as a furnace cauldron.
When they were done and their cultivation level had broken through, they’d pass her on to the next generation.
Generation after generation, until every last bit of value was squeezed out.
Xiao Han looked at the words “Not Fully Awakened” on the system interface and suddenly understood a little.
A while back, when he had pulled her out, he’d stopped her from dying.
He’d elbowed her, sure, but he hadn’t let her die.
So if he hadn’t pulled her out, she probably wouldn’t even have made it back to the sect.
A few hours after her constitution awakened, someone would have popped up to kidnap her.
Xiao Han closed the system interface, leaned back against the tree trunk, and looked up at the starry sky above.
The nights in the Cangwu Mountains were very quiet, with only the sound of the river flowing and the occasional chirping of insects.
The moon peeked out from behind a layer of clouds, casting a cold light that made the river shimmer.
‘Damn it… how can I let someone else run off with my own wife?’
Foundation Establishment?
I’ll breakthrough today!
Fire Linfei speed-ran parallel universes in seven days.
Broly speed-ran Goku, Vegeta, and that golden punching bag in two hours.
Duan Muyan beat the Ox-Ke monsters into calling for mommy in four or five days.
Why can’t I?
I’ll speed-run Foundation Establishment Level Nine today!
Xiao Han suddenly stood up from the rock, slamming his right fist into his left palm with a sharp crack.
Good.
The plan was set.
First, break through to Foundation Establishment.
Then, take the pills.
Keep cultivating until he reached Foundation Establishment Level Nine Perfection.
Xiao Han opened the system shop and flipped to the pill section.
Spirit Gathering Pill – A common cultivation pill for Foundation Establishment cultivators.
Speeds up spiritual energy accumulation.
Price: 20 Points/Bottle (10 pills).
Cultivation Pill – A pill that can be directly converted into cultivation progress.
Suitable for Foundation Establishment.
Each pill is equivalent to ten days of bitter training.
Price: 50 Points/Pill.
Foundation Consolidating Pill – A supplementary pill to stabilize the foundation and expand the dantian.
Essential for breakthroughs in Foundation Establishment.
Price: 30 Points/Pill.
Xiao Han looked at his point balance: 15 Points.
He couldn’t even afford the cheapest bottle of Spirit Gathering Pills.
He closed the shop, stood up, walked to the riverbank, bent down, cupped some water in his hands, and splashed it on his face.
He took a moment to clear his head.
Then he sat back down and opened the mission list.
Hunt a second-rank Azure-Eyed Golden Eagle: Reward 200 Points.
Collect a century-year-old Cold Spirit Grass: Reward 80 Points.
Explore the Nameless Cave in the depths of Cangwu Mountain: Reward 150 Points.
He scanned through them and decided to do them all.
A second-rank demon beast was equivalent to a human cultivator at Early Foundation Establishment.
He was at Qi Refining Peak.
His chances of soloing a second-rank demon beast were slim.
But if he added the fifteen percent True Damage from Meteorite Breaking Sky Elbow and the effects of Swift as Fire, his odds went up to seventy percent.
Xiao Han stood up, tightened his outer robe, and decided to break through to Foundation Establishment first.
—
Deep inside a natural cave on the northern slope of the Cangwu Mountains, hidden by vines.
Xiao Han, now at Foundation Establishment, sat cross-legged, drenched in blood, at the very back of the cave.
Several low-grade Moonlight Stones were embedded in the rocky walls around him, casting a pale white glow, barely illuminating this small space.
He had kicked the rubble on the ground flat and spread a layer of dry grass to sit on, making it barely tolerable.
Scattered around him were over a dozen empty porcelain bottles, lying askew on the ground like the aftermath of a small pill storm.
Spirit Gathering Pills, Foundation Consolidating Pills, Root Strengthening Pills, Qi Condensing Powder, Bone Forging Medicine, Vajra Pills, Body Tempering Pills…
Everything.
He had exchanged all the points from his missions for pills and then poured them down his throat like they were free.
Ordinary cultivators practiced with a focus on gradual progression.
First, circulate a technique to absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, draw the energy into the meridians, cycle it through the cycles, and converge it in the dantian.
The spiritual power in the dantian accumulates slowly, changing from a gaseous state to a liquid state, from sparse to dense, like filling a wooden bucket with water, little by little, until it’s full.
The size of the bucket was fixed.
Each cultivator’s dantian capacity had a limit at their current realm.
A Qi Refining dantian could only hold Qi Refining spiritual energy.
When full, it was Qi Refining Perfection.
If it couldn’t hold any more, one had to break through to a higher realm and make the “bucket” into a larger “bucket” to continue.
That was the iron law of cultivation.
Expanding the dantian required painstaking effort, accumulated day by day, nurturing and refining it over time.
It couldn’t be rushed, and it couldn’t be fast.
Xiao Han didn’t want to follow this rule.
The pills dissolved in his stomach at the same time, their medicinal power galloping through his body like runaway horses out of control.
Spiritual energy surged from his stomach, flooding his meridians, his dantian, his limbs and bones.
His meridians were stretched and bulging, like a small river being filled with too much water, the water overflowing its banks and flooding the surrounding fields.
Those “fields” were his flesh, blood, sinews, bones, and organs.
The spiritual energy rampaged through those “fields” where it shouldn’t be, stabbing at his flesh like tiny knives.
It hurt.
It hurt like hell.
Xiao Han gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead, sweat streaming down his cheeks, dripping onto the dry grass, leaving behind dark little dots.
The pain had to be endured.
He didn’t have time to expand his dantian slowly.
Who knew when Luo Qingci’s constitution would awaken?
If he followed the normal progression, those old monsters at Golden Core, Nascent Soul, and even higher realms would swarm like sharks smelling blood.
He was just a freshly Foundation Establishment little cultivator.
How could he fight them off?
‘If I transmigrate and still end up a useless husband, then didn’t I transmigrate for nothing?’
He didn’t want gradual power.
He wanted instant, explosive power.
Even if it came at the cost of damaging his foundation.
He was willing to sacrifice long-term growth for short-term gain.
He had the system anyway.
He could find a way to fix his foundation later.
He poured a second Spirit Gathering Pill into his mouth.
Then a third.
Then a fourth.
The medicinal power of the Spirit Gathering Pills layered on top of each other in his body.
Spiritual energy surged through his meridians like a great river, crashing against the walls of his dantian with a dull roar.
The dantian was stretched, growing larger, then larger again, like a balloon being constantly inflated.
But because he had taken a secret medicine from the system, as long as he maintained the spiritual energy cycle, the balloon wouldn’t burst.
But it was too uncomfortable.
This feeling was like taking off thirty times in one day, about to blow the engine and still having to keep going.
Even though he knew it wouldn’t explode, his body was screaming nonstop.
He wanted to stop a bit, but if he stopped, he would really explode.
His body was like a furnace being overused.
The furnace walls were starting to crack.
Dense, web-like cracks spread rapidly.
The violent spiritual energy leaked through the cracks, bringing Xiao Han’s boiling blood with it, staining his clothes red.
When the pain became unbearable, it paradoxically wasn’t as bad anymore.
Xiao Han’s consciousness became hazy and clear at the same time amidst the intense pain, as if being pulled back and forth by an invisible thread.
He could feel his meridians splitting, the spiritual energy seeping into his flesh through those fine cracks, and pulling out more impurities and blockages from the flesh.
It should have hurt more, but his body seemed to have reached its limit and was starting to go numb.
The spiritual energy vortex in his dantian spun wildly, compressed to its limit.
A web of bloody lines appeared on the surface of his skin, spreading from his chest to his arms, from his arms to his neck, like some ancient curse.
“Ding—”
The system notification sounded in his mind.
[Warning: Host’s current body endurance has reached critical limit. Probability of spiritual energy circulation going out of control: 67%. Stop cultivation immediately and enter a resting state.]
Sixty-seven percent?
Xiao Han pulled a twisted smile at the corner of his mouth, blood seeping from the corners, dripping onto the dry grass.
Didn’t that mean there was still a thirty-three percent success rate? That probability was way higher than some game’s gacha pool!
And… stop?
How could he stop?
He was like standing on a bomb about to explode.
Stand up and die, stop and die.
The only way to stay alive was to swallow all the energy of that bomb, swallow it into his stomach, and make it his own.
Either break through, or die.
There was no third way.