Reading the Progress Bars

Under their contract, one-fiftieth of the spiritual power Pan Yun cultivated each time went to the Spirit Realm. During this time, she had cultivated diligently without rest, day and night, yet after consuming all that spiritual power, the Spirit Realm had not changed in the slightest.

Unexpectedly, today it suddenly undid part of its seal. Not only did it unlock seven techniques from the Thirteen Techniques of Daoist True Qi and the Beginner's Talisman Manual, but the other space that could store physical objects had also grown somewhat larger.

Merit... saving people? Pan Yun fell into thought.

The Spirit Being looked at her eagerly as well. Seeing her come back to herself, it immediately tested the waters. "Perhaps we should cultivate merit instead?"

Pan Yun asked, "Do you have a cultivation technique for it?"

The Spirit Being fell silent.

Pan Yun sneered.

The Spirit Being said, "Do more good deeds..."

Its voice grew quieter. "It should always be useful."

Pan Yun said, "I can't wait, and neither can my father and brother."

The Spirit Being still wanted to persuade her, but Pan Yun said impatiently, "Why can't I have both? Does cultivation keep me from doing good deeds, or do good deeds keep me from cultivating?"

The Spirit Being: ...Fine. Its thinking simply was not broad-minded enough.

Pan Yun's thinking could grow even broader. "Besides, aren't you here? When I don't have time, you can go do them. The merit you gain from good deeds will fall directly onto you. Wouldn't that be better than me getting it first and then sharing it with you?"

Pan Yun narrowed her eyes slightly. "Come to think of it, the merit I gain from saving people isn't within the scope of spiritual power. Why can the Spirit Realm absorb it directly?"

The Spirit Being said, "...I don't know."

Pan Yun stared quietly at it.

The Spirit Being shouted, "I really don't know! If I did, would the Golden Light of Merit Prince Zhou gave you still be floating around as clouds?"

Pan Yun looked at the tiny golden cloud in her Mud Pill Palace and fell into thought. "Let's study it."

The Spirit Being could not have wished for more. After being sealed, it had lost many memories. It might understand itself even less than Pan Yun understood it.

The Spirit Being had stayed in Pan Yun's Mud Pill Palace for eight years and was exceedingly familiar with the place. The Spirit Realm was also its spiritual body, so it moved through it like a fish in water.

Though the Mud Pill Palace was her own, Pan Yun had not been able to look inward for long. Maintaining her divine sense within it also consumed energy.

She and the Spirit Being split up, searching bit by bit through the Spirit Realm. Just as she was about to be unable to sustain her divine sense, she suddenly remembered that the academy had once placed an array on the Spirit Realm, specifically to tally the spiritual power invested into it and the progress bar of its unsealing.

After all, corruption and embezzlement existed everywhere.

The Spirit Realm was like a bottomless pit. No matter how many resources were fed into it, it rarely changed.

Without statistics for spiritual power and progress bars, no one would have the confidence to keep investing indefinitely.

Otherwise, before the Spirit Realm's seal was undone, the people at the research institute would first tear themselves apart in internal strife from mutual suspicion.

With this array in place, it was not only convenient for researchers to calculate the relationship between spiritual power and unsealing progress, but also for inspectors to conduct oversight.

The public also trusted the concrete figures displayed by the array more.

Otherwise, if you had a piece of jade containing immense energy, could you simply claim that you had fed it to the Spirit Realm and expect people to believe you?

The Spirit Realm could not speak. Who knew whether what you said was true or false?

Pan Yun's divine sense suddenly appeared above the Three Jade Spirit Realm. The little figure manifested from her divine sense formed hand seals, drawing the spiritual power from her body into her Mud Pill Palace. It coursed around her fingertips, and once she finished the seal, a streak of light flew into the Spirit Realm.

Light flowed over the Spirit Realm's entire body. Slowly, two bars appeared above it, one red and one blue.

The Senior Brother who had designed this array back then had proudly said, "It's just like playing an ancient online game. Now when you feed the Spirit Realm, doesn't it feel like feeding a teammate?"

When feeding it treasures, the red bar would shoot forward with a whoosh, while the blue bar would not move at all. Sometimes, after being fed a great deal, the red bar would fill and reset several times, yet the blue bar would only inch forward slowly.

It was precisely this situation that made some at the academy oppose further investment in the Spirit Realm. They believed its seal consumed too much, and the input was not proportionate to the output.

Another group, however, became even more determined to continue investing. Just imagine: undoing its seal alone required so many treasures and so much spiritual qi. That showed just how powerful the Spirit Realm's functions had to be.

The greatest pain point in the modern world was the loss and fragmentation of inheritances. If they could store so much knowledge within the Spirit Realm for retrieval, then might people of the past have done the same?

If they undid the seal, they might obtain the treasures left behind by past civilizations and reconnect the severed civilization of cultivation.

At the very thought, they felt every sacrifice was worthwhile.

Pan Yun's teacher belonged neither to the first faction nor the second. He formed a faction of his own, commonly known as the third faction.

He chose the technical route: break the array and undo the seal.

Pan Yun was one of his most prized disciples, so naturally she supported her teacher.

Thus, on some year, some month, some day, while Pan Yun's teacher was researching how to break the array, he touched something unknown, and the laboratory exploded in a massive blast...

So, the technical route was not so easy to walk either.

Pan Yun stood in midair before the progress bars, her emotions tangled beyond measure.

The Spirit Being emerged as well and looked at the array with equal complexity. "You found it?"

Pan Yun said, "My Senior Brother earned his doctoral degree with this array. Now it seems his work was not perfect enough. People cannot alter it, but the Spirit Being can."

Somewhat embarrassed, the Spirit Being explained, "I didn't alter it. I merely blocked you from it. It has still been working all these years. It troubled me greatly. Several times, I wanted to destroy it, but I could find no way."

Pan Yun asked, "Are you telling me that you've also spent these past eight years in constant unease?"

The Spirit Being said nothing.

Pan Yun circulated her cultivation technique, guiding more spiritual power into her Mud Pill Palace and feeding it to the Spirit Realm. The red bar crawled forward a little, but the blue bar did not move at all.

Pan Yun raised a hand toward the golden cloud. It curled around her fingertips. With a point toward the Spirit Realm, the Golden Light of Merit flew into it. The red bar did not move, but the blue bar leapt forward by a segment. The Spirit Being grew wildly excited. "I felt it! One of the seal nodes has loosened!"

Pan Yun looked at the remaining golden cloud, thoughtful. "It really is this useful."

The Spirit Being nodded repeatedly. "Very useful, very useful."

Just as Pan Yun was about to speak, movement came from outside the door. Her divine sense sank, and she opened her eyes.

The Spirit Being also flew out from between her brows and entered the black cat's body, its breathing shallow and faint. Person and cat looked toward the door at the same time.

The next moment, someone knocked.

Pan Yun said, "Come in."

Tao Ji pushed the door open. Seeing that her money was still laid out on the table, he frowned slightly. "Why haven't you packed up yet? Prince Zhou's funeral procession will set out soon. Aren't you going along?"

Pan Yun asked without revealing anything, "Are you going?"

"We'll go see him off. Early tomorrow morning, we'll set out to return to Mount Sanqing," Tao Ji said. "We've been away too long."

Pan Yun nodded. "All right."

Seeing how obedient she was, Tao Ji could not help looking back at her again and again as he left.

Pan Yun closed the door and put all the money she had received these past days into the Spirit Realm Space. Then she went to see Prince Zhou off.

Prince Zhou had been considered caring toward the people of Zhou territory. Compared with his uncles and brothers, who loved eating people's brains and livers, abducting women and men by force, and tying commoners up to use as punching bags, his displayed hobbies were writing and staging variety plays.

His father, the late Prince Zhou, had left him a great deal of medical assets, such as medicinal estates, pharmacies, and doctors.

As a member of the imperial clan, he could not conduct business or compete with the people for profit. The pharmacies were handed over to the authorities as semi-public institutions, while the doctors under his name were dispatched wherever large outbreaks of illness arose.

Thus, Prince Zhou had won the hearts of the people.

The moment Prince Zhou's coffin was carried out, the streets filled with commoners who had come to see him off. Local gentry and officials had also set up mourning tents along the roadside.

Those commoners who had once received Prince Zhou's favor followed the funeral procession all the way out of the city. Only after seeing it off a great distance were they persuaded to return by people from Prince Zhou's Mansion.

The edict appointing Zhu Zijin as the next Prince Zhou had not yet arrived, but he was the Heir and still the new master of Prince Zhou's Mansion. Everyone in the mansion felt reassured, and no disorder arose.

Zhu Zijin led Zhu Tongqie, who was dressed entirely in mourning clothes, to see the three of them out. He could not help trying to keep them again. "Must the three Daoist priests really not stay a while longer? My mother is very fond of Daoist Priestess Xuan Miao, my son is close to Daoist Priestess Pan, and Daoist Priest Tao's medical skills are extraordinary. I would very much like to invite the three of you to become retainers."

This was not the first time Zhu Zijin had mentioned it, but all three firmly refused.

Cultivation was so joyful, so free. They had no intention of being shut inside an estate as retainers.

Unlike his father, Zhu Tongqie was not sad at all. He broke free of his father's hand, stepped forward, and took Pan Yun's hand. "Sister, go wait for me at Mount Sanqing. Once I finish mourning, I'll come find you and take you as my master."

Pan Yun said, "Take me as your master?"

Zhu Tongqie looked toward Tao Ji and grinned.

Tao Ji grinned back. Only after Xuan Miao shot him a look did he restrain himself, muttering in a small voice, "This child has my Pill Dao talent..."

Sweat beaded on Zhu Zijin's forehead. At last, he stopped trying to keep the three of them and warmly saw them off.

He held his son's hand tightly and coaxed him, "Learn to read first. When you're older, then you can go play at Mount Sanqing. Otherwise, if you go out and cannot even recognize the roads, what if you cannot find your way home again, like last time?"

The main gates closed behind them. From this day onward, Prince Zhou's Mansion officially observed mourning, and its gates would not easily open.

Pan Yun looked back at the tightly shut gates. Purple qi surged above the entire Prince Zhou's Mansion without breaking. It seemed the next Prince Zhou would, like the current one, receive the nourishment of the people's qi.

Xuan Miao also looked back once before getting into the cart. "Let's go."

Pan Yun hugged the black cat and leapt into the cart.

The Heir of Prince Zhou was generous and gave them a mule cart. He had originally wanted to give them a covered carriage, but Tao Ji refused. A covered carriage could not hold much.

Heading south all the way, Tao Ji bought cheap goods all along the road: medicinal herbs, cloth, spices, shoes and socks, ready-made clothes...

He even stockpiled several wooden basins. Do not ask; if you did, the answer was simply that they were cheaper here.

At first, Pan Yun and the black cat could still recline in the cart, watching the clouds and enjoying the breeze as they settled their minds and studied the progress-bar array in the Spirit Realm.

She wanted to add a merit progress bar to it.

She and Pan Little Black had already discovered why it could directly absorb merit. During the period when the Spirit Being had left its main body, she had nourished it with spiritual power. The Spirit Realm, without its Spirit Being, seemed to have mistaken her for the Spirit Being.

Moreover, it had already been linked to her soul, and they had a contract. Now it was truly one with her. This meant that if she died one day, the Spirit Realm would most likely be destroyed along with her, or else follow her soul into reincarnation.

Unless she died once more, she could not be certain. This experiment could not be completed in this lifetime.

In the end, just as the array's workings had begun to make sense, more and more things piled into the cart. Eventually, she could only sit on it with half a buttock. Forget watching clouds, enjoying the breeze, or studying arrays—she had to work hard merely to avoid being jolted out of the cart.

This chapter's lucky numbers are still those ending in 5. Screenshots as proof. Join the "Sword Going Against the Grain Great Ming" group, find Mo Yan, and collect her wholehearted love.