The Long Road to Immortality

True Person Fen Hai hummed a little tune all the way back to his residence. He went straight to his study and rummaged through the shelves, taking down the most precious treasures, pills, and rare materials displayed at the center. He carefully packed them into boxes, then meticulously labeled each one with its purpose, material, and price. When he was done, he searched the entire room again, finally finding a jade toad in a corner of the storeroom.

By the standards of a True Person, the jade toad was mediocre in quality and workmanship. Aside from slightly improving the feng shui and bringing a little good luck, it was useless. But what place could have better feng shui than Empty Valley Hanging Green?

Yet True Person Fen Hai solemnly placed the jade toad—which was so unnecessary that it wasn't even worth using as a decoration—in the center of the treasure stand, then carefully wiped it a few times.

Three tiny immortal swords had originally occupied that spot. He had moved them to the side.

The news that Wei Yuan had successfully manifested his Visualization Diagram caused a small stir among his classmates, then quickly faded away. True Monarch Xuan Yue had personally sealed off Wei Yuan's Visualization Diagram. No one below the level of a True Monarch could spy on it, so his classmates naturally had no way of learning the truth.

His classmates were curious, but soon put the matter out of their minds.

According to the historical records, the Jade Toad Gazing at the Moon Diagram had a limit of twelve zhang, with a middling manifestation. Bao Yun's Visualization Diagram reached eleven zhang. Though a little smaller, it came with a supreme manifestation, which meant it had already surpassed all the sages of the past. Cui Yu's Visualization Diagram was only six zhang, but its manifestation was close to supreme. And since the blessing he had received was a strand of immortal sword qi, his overall combat strength was no small matter. With the Cui family backing him, he could rise even higher. He could already be considered a shoo-in for the Heaven Tier.

Wei Yuan had taken longer than anyone before him to expand his Visualization Diagram. It was clear that he lacked talent and comprehension, which was why his cultivation was so slow. Wei Yuan's foundational talent—his Root Bone—was seven chi and nine cun. Outside the palace, that would make him an unrivaled genius, but among the disciples of Taichu Palace, it was only average. He also came from a poor family and had no secret method to awaken his wisdom or temper his Root Bone. So his classmates had come to assume that Wei Yuan was rather slow-witted at present and would need a few more years for his mind to fully mature.

With Root Bone and comprehension both taken into account, if his cultivation method was unsuitable as well, it wouldn't be unheard of for him to spend a whole year just manifesting his Visualization Diagram.

Outside Taichu Palace, plenty of mediocre people spent decades cultivating the Jade Toad Gazing at the Moon Diagram without ever forging a Dao Foundation.

His classmates assumed this was a sore subject for Wei Yuan, so they tacitly agreed not to bring it up again. It wasn't as if they hadn't seen similar cases before; even those who hadn't had heard plenty of stories. Countless disciples from poor backgrounds had made a dazzling entrance upon joining the palace, only to be gradually caught up to, or even surpassed, by scions of powerful clans over the long years of cultivation. Quite a few had even lost their Daoist resolve as a result. There weren't many who had truly risen from humble beginnings to become True Lords.

The class was calm on the surface, but tense underneath. All the students had begun Body Forging, each throwing themselves into a mad sprint along the path of cultivation, afraid of falling behind the others.

The students had always been proud and ambitious, and Ji Liuli fanned the flames every day, constantly comparing them to Zhi Gu Sect. In every class, she would tell them which disciple from Zhi Gu Sect had made another breakthrough, or which one had received some treasure from their family, driving everyone to cultivate as if their lives depended on it. They had heard the phrase "Those people from Zhi Gu Sect are..." so often that their ears had grown calluses.

After True Monarch Xuan Yue sealed off the fortune beyond the heavens, Wei Yuan finally set foot on the path of Body Forging.

On the day they returned from Azure Hall, Zhang Sheng explained in detail all the things Wei Yuan needed to pay attention to during Body Forging. The first step was to temper the muscles and flesh, gradually transforming the body into the raw material of an immortal embryo. This was the beginning of the transition from mortal to immortal. The body would undergo obvious changes: strength and speed would increase greatly, and it would become more resistant to blows.

Wei Yuan had experienced this firsthand during the fight the other day. His classmates had all begun Body Forging, and their strength had surged. Even Wei Yuan, who had been naturally strong since childhood, couldn't withstand it.

After explaining the precautions, Zhang Sheng left three bottles of Peiyuan Pills for Wei Yuan to cultivate on his own, then hurried away.

These three bottles of Peiyuan Pills weren't meant to last three months, but ten days. From now on, his allowance was changing from one pill every three days to three pills every day.

After Zhang Sheng left, Wei Yuan didn't waste a moment and began cultivating at once. This time, he once again transformed into the Jade Toad, but he felt somewhat unaccustomed to seeing the spotless full moon in the sky. After that, however, came the familiar part: drawing in the moonlight.

The jade toad opened its mouth, and moonlight poured down, filling its gaping maw in an instant, with plenty spilling over. Even with a toad's enormous mouth, swallowing such a mouthful was a struggle. Once it swallowed the moonlight, the jade toad gave a croak and burped.

The abundance of moonlight was naturally thanks to the effects of three Peiyuan Pills. But moonlight alone wasn't enough to release the pills' medicinal power, so a torrential downpour began inside the Visualization Diagram.

The jade toad adjusted its posture, lining up the full moon, its mouth, and its rear end in a straight line. Then it tilted its head back and opened its mouth to catch another brimming mouthful of moonlight. This time, it went down much more easily. The moonlight passed straight through its throat and into its belly, skipping the middle step.

It spent the whole night being force-fed moonlight, and before long, dawn broke.

When Wei Yuan came out of meditation, he felt a faint itch in many parts of his body. His flesh and blood had begun to regrow. There had also been a change in the Visualization Diagram in his sea of consciousness: a small patch of ground had turned from illusory to real. At that rate, however, it would probably take six or seven hundred days for all the ground to become real.

And that was after taking three Peiyuan Pills. The medicinal power had already reached the limit Wei Yuan could withstand. Any more, and the jade toad wouldn't be able to swallow it. But three Peiyuan Pills a day should have been equivalent to several dozen days of hard cultivation. By rights, it shouldn't have been this slow.

Wei Yuan took out the copy he had transcribed of Moon Swallowing True Monarch's cultivation notes and read it over carefully again. At last, he confirmed that something was still going wrong with his cultivation.

Only a small part of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth produced by drawing in moonlight, along with the medicinal power of the Peiyuan Pills, was being used for Body Forging. The rest vanished into thin air, and he had no idea where it went. But Wei Yuan could be sure that all that spiritual energy and medicinal power remained inside him. It wasn't dissipating or leaking away. It was as if something invisible inside his body were absorbing most of it.

Based on how much of his Visualization Diagram had become solid, Wei Yuan's cultivation speed was already far beyond that of ordinary disciples. After all, he was eating Peiyuan Pills like rice. But his Visualization Diagram was simply too absurd; measured proportionally, his progress was frustratingly slow. Ordinary students could usually finish tempering their muscles and flesh in three or four months. Those with good talent and a steady supply of pills could finish in a month.

Wei Yuan could only try not to think about his progress.

From then on, Zhang Sheng no longer came once a month. He came every ten days, bringing three bottles of Peiyuan Pills each time, and talking quite a bit more with Wei Yuan. That was the good news.

The bad news was that Peiyuan Pills tasted truly awful, with a strange aftertaste. Eating them was like eating...

When he'd only taken a few, he hadn't minded much. But now that he was taking three a day, it was different. The taste kept building, and it lingered without end. After only a few days, Wei Yuan could barely swallow them. Just looking at a Peiyuan Pill made him want to throw up. It was worse than drawing in moonlight.

They tasted terrible, but one Peiyuan Pill was equivalent to more than ten days of hard cultivation for Wei Yuan. Three of them sped up his Body Forging progress by forty or fifty times. He had no choice but to take them.

Wei Yuan guessed that plenty of people had complained about the taste of Peiyuan Pills, but Zaohua Temple simply refused to change them.

Wei Yuan maliciously speculated about what those old geezers at Zaohua Temple were thinking. No matter how many Peiyuan Pills they made, people would buy them all. Why bother with the extra work of improving the flavor? Zaohua Temple wasn't a tavern.

Every day, Wei Yuan cursed Zaohua Temple to himself before cultivating, then cursed it again afterward. But curse them as he might, he still had to take the pills and draw in the moonlight. And so the days passed, one after another.

There was one more thing Wei Yuan hadn't expected: his senior sister still had to temper his foundation once every seven days.

Wei Yuan had asked Ji Liuli when the tempering would be finished. To his surprise, the senior sister had changed her tune. She said that the path to purity had no end, and Wei Yuan's foundation was still terribly unstable, so they would just have to keep tempering it.

So, besides taking pills and drawing in moonlight, he still had to be tempered.

Wei Yuan now realized that the path to immortality wasn't just long. It was tedious and repetitive, and he still had to endure all sorts of strange things.

He wondered how the lofty True Lords and True Persons were holding up, mentally.

And so the months passed, one after another. Wei Yuan felt time crawling by more and more slowly, as if every night had gained a few extra hours.