Foundation Establishment! Foundation Establishment!

Moonlight flowed like water; the silent night was soundless.

Xu Yuan appeared atop the tallest unnamed peak behind Small Creek Village.

He had stopped here countless times before, gathering herbs and gazing into the distance.

Tonight, he would complete his final transformation here.

Without alerting anyone, the mountain wind brushed over Xu Yuan's coarse linen clothes, washed pale with wear, and over the calm gaze that had settled within him over two years.

Sitting cross-legged on a flat slab of bluestone, Xu Yuan faced east and looked down at Small Creek Village, which was no more than an outline beneath the night.

There were roofs he had mended, herb gardens he had cultivated, and people whose wounds and illnesses he had treated.

At that moment, a strange sense of peace and fulfillment slowly rose from the depths of his heart.

Xu Yuan did not immediately begin circulating his cultivation. He simply sat quietly, just as he had on every ordinary night over the past year.

At midnight, all sounds fell still.

Xu Yuan slowly closed his eyes.

No further guidance was needed. The Yin Wood spiritual power within him, long since perfected and flawless, began its most fundamental transformation of its own accord.

His consciousness sank into the inner realm of the Dao, into the core of those nine crystal-clear spiritual veins.

There, the vast and pure Yin Wood spiritual power was undergoing an unimaginable change.

It was no longer formless vapor, nor was it merely mist.

Driven by a primal will beyond the Qi Refinement realm, it began its most extreme collapse—inward, toward that single central point!

As though the universe had just opened, and the starry sky was drawing inward.

Every insight into heaven, earth, and nature; every understanding of life's essence; every awareness of his own existence—even