Chương 61: Chapter 60 – That Burning Sensation

"AAArrrGGhhh!!" Ren howled through clenched teeth. Three months after he had begun, the pain of body cultivation hadn't reduced one bit. His body steamed as small droplets of impurities pearled on his skin before evaporating. To anyone watching, he would appear red as a lobster in a pot, his muscles writhing beneath the skin. He slumped to the side, breathing heavily. Every evening Ren would sit before his yin flame and channel a tiny ember through the complex cycle of the Balanced Yin Body Refining art.

Once it completed a circuit around his body, the ember would rejoin with the flame before him. The trail of carnage it left in its wake as the yin qi in his body combusted was precisely the effect the body refining art sought. By repeatedly eliminating impurities and healing his damaged body, it would be reforged into something strong. Ren couldn't deny its effectiveness. His bodily strength had greatly increased, and he could turn rocks into powder using his bare hands.

He could lift large boulders over his head, and his skin was more resilient to external injuries. Yes, it was effective, but did it have to be such a huge drain on his resources?! Recovering from each session required a medicinal bath. The bath required a few expensive herbs to prepare, and its effectiveness only lasted a few uses before he needed to brew a fresh batch. If he didn't use the medicinal bath, relying on mere recovery pills took him many days.

Ren had adamantly refused to consider healing naturally, as that meant dealing with the discomfort for weeks, and that defeated the point of rapidly cultivating his body with this method. That's right, it was out of practicality and certainly not because he was avoiding pain! The medicinal bath was one of the few lessons he had managed to apply from attending the lecture on alchemy two months ago. It made him sad to think about even now. He had long aspired to become an alchemist.

Ever since he started growing herbs, he had hoped to advance to the next step of using those herbs to make pills. He had tried his hand at forming pills without a cauldron all those days ago during the beast tides. But they were just healing herbs mashed together with the simplest recipe and not true alchemy. Acquiring a spiritual flame had even amplified those desires to the point he had even bought a pill cauldron at the Intersect market.

Ren had spent many nights of study on the properties of spirit plants and herbs. It was to prepare to use them as ingredients when he could finally begin practicing as an alchemist. All those dreams were given the rudest awakening. While it was possible he may have a talent for alchemy, he just didn't have the time or resources to spare to truly dedicate himself. Alchemy was an elite profession that drained many cultivators of every last bit of their wealth in the initial stages.

It definitely wasn't something to start as a hobby or on a whim. Ren's current goals clashed with the dream of alchemy, and he was forced to choose. Ultimately he had settled on body cultivation because it would allow him access to a proper foundation realm trial. The chain of events had already been set in motion, and to interrupt it now would ruin all ventures.

Despite it all, Ren was intensely reluctant to give up on the dream of alchemy, so even though most of the proceeds from his herb-growing business went into buying medicine, he still found a way to include alchemy. He had already begun cultivating a patch of land for a garden, and now that land was filled with sets of medicinal herbs. Many of his customers still gave multiple seeds for each attempt, and when he managed to grow more than one successfully, he would either keep them or sell them for additional funds.

Using a recipe he had bought with those funds, he had reduced his expenses on medicines by growing the herbs and making the medicinal baths himself. It had reduced his costs by a lot, and he, in turn, spent them on more batches of herbs. Then he used his little cauldron and burned many sets until he mastered that one recipe. That feeling of triumph when he formed the first successful pill in his pill cauldron was unforgettable. That one pill represented such an intense struggle and stubborn refusal to give up.

It had been half as effective as his usual batches of medicine, but that night, Ren still remembered how he felt like floating despite the aches and pains as he recovered from the body refining session. In the 2 weeks since then, Ren had managed to improve on his efforts and started to draw near the effectiveness of the medicine he used to purchase initially. Ren didn't mind because he was confident that he would soon overcome this hurdle. Ren was an alchemist now. So what if he only knew one recipe?!

He would master that one recipe until it was twice as effective as externally purchased medicine. Another reason for his confidence was Ren hadn't yet used the spirit flame in his attempts. That would be adding a level of complexity beyond the means of a novice like him. But the option remained available to him. His Ossiferous Yin Flame was also a comparatively gentle spiritual flame compared to others he had read about. Quite suitable for a novitiate alchemist.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Ren dragged himself from his position in front of the flame and towards the tub filled with water he had prepared in advance. With hands trembling from pain and exhaustion, he dropped in one of the medicinal pills into the tub and watched as the water changed to a shimmering green. He collapsed in and immediately let out a groan of relief. The healing properties seeped into his ravaged flesh and slowly started to patch them together.

Not for the first time, Ren complained that the path of body cultivation must have been designed by maniacs. To subject oneself to torture repeatedly for the sake of strength, Ren felt almost ashamed to be counted amongst their numbers. But after each healing session, the palpable increase in strength would silence his complaints. Such rapid growth would in most cases be considered heretical, but body cultivation through such methods had long been classified as orthodox.

The pain being offered in exchange for strength was the cultivator's own and not the pain or suffering of others. Not to mention that body cultivation had been the earliest form of cultivation when men would bathe in the blood of beasts to absorb a fraction of their vitality. Fortunately the path had been refined greatly over the ages. Once Ren had soaked for long enough, he tiredly clambered out. His feet dragged against the ground as exhaustion lulled him to sleep.

It was one of the benefits during this whole ordeal that he could once again sleep beneath the stars. Despite sleep pulling on him, he sat down and cultivated. Cycling qi through his meridians also helped pull the healing effects deeper into his body. As he had for most nights since the lecture on formations, he considered what to do about those two unknown karmic strands. That night at the party, Ren thought he had for the most part restrained himself and not lost his senses entirely.

But when he next cultivated, he realized that two of the karmic strand constructs he had formed in preparation had been used to reinforce connections! He had panicked at that grave error because he didn't know under what drunken circumstances he had formed the seeds of intent behind those connections. Even worse was the fact that he had been subjected to a number of small mishaps, from frequently stubbing his toes to tripping at inopportune moments during combat.

It had taken him a while to associate the problems with one of the two mystery connections. He had tried to seek them out, but his cultivation wasn't at the level that he could trace every connection. Nor could anybody point out two random faces, especially given how his cultivation couldn't be revealed. All he could do was monitor the connections regularly. Because if he suspected right, then for the first time, Ren had formed a poor connection for his cultivation.

One of those two had a level of karmic sin that his cultivation was absorbing. It must not have been very high if that sin had only caused minor issues. When Ren had started forming these karmic connections, he had resolved himself, thinking a few bad links were inevitable. Even those symptoms had been alleviated eventually. At first relieved, thinking whoever that unknown senior was, they must have settled their karmic debt and resumed walking a righteous path. But gradually Ren began to doubt his conclusion.

With his increasing success in growing herbs and body cultivation, the growth in merit was disproportionate. It had only struck him a week ago when he had idly been designing a challenge formation. He smacked his forehead and cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. Like before, his challenges in the outer sect must be doing a lot of good and earning him great merit, even covering the sin from that connection. To realize such a thing after months, Ren nearly couldn't forgive himself.

The only reason he could was because this was the very first such occurrence. Ever since that night, he had intensely studied the shining filament emerging from his Fire of Life in his dantian. It had been growing quickly with the increased number of karmic strands he had reinforced connections with. And now some connections that hadn't even been reinforced would flicker in and out of view.

If it weren't for the fact that he was at the threshold layer of the middle layers of the foundation realm, he suspected he would have broken through by now. The dilemma within him was not simple to resolve. With the first such negative connection, a part of him wanted to sever it immediately and forget all about it. The more cautious side of him wanted to monitor and study it so he could prevent or at least be better prepared for the next such connection.

Another point to consider, each time he broke through, there was a mysterious occurrence when something flowed out of his Fire of Will and traveled along the reinforced connections. The Causality of Karma had failed to explain it. But through his research in the inner sect reserves about karma and foundation establishment realm cultivation, he had started to develop a theory as to what it might be. This time, if he broke through while possessing a negative connection, he might finally confirm his theory.

But that confirmation might come with a great cost, and that too was something he was struggling to weigh. With how strenuous his body cultivation had been, Ren had been mostly restricted to managing his mountain. The formations, herb growing, and the occasional hunt exhausted him enough to prevent much travel. But now Ren had finally come to a split in the road he couldn't decide between. To help him make his decision, he wanted to go see what had become of the trials in the outer sect.

He already knew the trials had earned him merit, but hopefully the experiments he had included in them would also give him guidance on how to proceed. Despite the momentous decision ahead of him, he couldn't help but get excited about how many people had managed to beat his trials. The more he thought about it as he lay beneath the stars, the more he wanted to examine all of his challenges, not just the most recent one. With his improved flying sword, it wouldn't really be a problem.

When he finally fell asleep, a little black snake that curled above his chest noticed the corners of his mouth curl upward unconsciously.