The two principles

Size...

It was no different from the other formation beads. It seemed a little larger, but the difference was minute.

Color...

Waste pills were usually grayish white, while the beads from this discarded Formation Disk were ivory white.

But there was something indescribable about this one. If he had to name a difference...

The white of this bead was purer.

Weight and texture...

Song Yan held a formation bead in his left hand and the "strange bead" in his right, alternately hefting them and rubbing their surfaces carefully.

The strange bead seemed lighter and felt somewhat rougher, rather like unpolished jade.

A probe with his Divine Sense revealed no fluctuations of spiritual power within the strange bead.

A discarded Law Artifact?

The strange stone bead looked perfectly intact, without any damage. Perhaps something had gone wrong inside.

He knew absolutely nothing about refining Law Artifacts.

He casually tossed it into his Storage Bag.

"I'll take it down the mountain for Xiao He to play with. She loves round things like these."

After searching the area, he found six formation beads in total.

The Little Spirit Gathering Formation could be deployed with five beads, though a few extras were generally refined as spares.

In any case, he had enough for the formation to function normally.

He just did not know whether his repairs, made by copying the pattern like a formation novice tracing a gourd from another gourd, could get the Formation Disk working.

"I'll know once I try."

His mind made up, he walked out of the dump.

There were not many formalities. Once the Spirit Stones had been paid, he could leave whenever he wished without disturbing the steward's secluded cultivation.

Song Yan left on his own without saying goodbye to Steward Xu.

The Dongyuan Sect's outer sect.

Greenleaf Peak.

Numbered Xuan Thirty-Nine, it was merely an ordinary outer disciple's cave abode.

Song Yan sat cross-legged on the stone bed, examining a formation stone similar in size to the Formation Disk's inscribed stone as he manipulated it with spiritual power.

With minute flows of spiritual power, he shaved away one part of the stone bit by bit.

"Whew..."

A short while later, he let out a long breath.

"That should be about right."

Little spiritual power remained in his body, but he still gathered a strand and sent it flowing little by little along the lines on the Formation Disk.

At the center of the Formation Disk, the lines lit up inch by inch until they covered the entire disk.

"Good, good! It really works!"

Song Yan was delighted. His efforts had not been wasted after all.

It was something he had scavenged from the Fireworker Stockade, trash to begin with. Getting it to work normally with a simple repair was sheer good fortune.

In over half a year of scavenging, he could count such occasions on one hand.

His study of formations had barely scratched the most basic surface.

Perhaps because he had transmigrated and lived two lives, his Divine Sense was a little stronger than an ordinary person's.

That slight advantage alone could determine a great deal.

He had found that he learned quickly. Neither refining Qi-Nourishing Pills nor gaining a rudimentary understanding of formations had taken him very long.

Of course, the relative simplicity of both had also played a part.

He knew very well that, with his aptitude and talent, truly delving into either the Dao of Alchemy or formations would send his already meager cultivation speed plummeting.

Thus, when it came to alchemy, he studied and refined only the simplest Qi-Nourishing Pills to supplement his Cultivation Resources.

As for formations, he had learned only a few basics, enough to roughly understand how they worked.

He spent all his remaining time cultivating.

Having finished everything, Song Yan did not immediately attempt a breakthrough.

Refining pills and testing the formation today had left both his spiritual power and his mind somewhat exhausted. Cultivating to break through now would be no different from seeking his own death.

Taking a Spirit Stone in his left hand, he slowly restored his spiritual power.

For some inexplicable reason, his gaze fell on the strange bead...

The bead lay quietly in his palm, without the slightest fluctuation of spiritual power.

What exactly is this thing?

He sent his Divine Sense inside. Apart from an ownerless spiritual restriction, there was nothing.

By the look of it, this should be a Law Artifact... or part of one.

The ownerless spiritual restriction meant that the artifact's original owner had died or voluntarily severed their connection to it.

Sweeping over it carefully with his Divine Sense, he found that the spiritual power contained in the restriction was incomplete and was currently recovering in tiny, slow increments.

"Looks like someone already broke through the restriction before, but threw it away in the end."

Song Yan was not disappointed. Nine out of ten things scavenged from the Fireworker Stockade's rubbish heaps were useless. That was perfectly normal.

Still, he had already brought it back.

Breaking the restriction would take little effort. He might as well see what this thing was. If it really was useless, he could give it to Xiao He when he went down the mountain.

About two hours later, most of his spiritual power had recovered.

Crack.

He watched with a pang as the Spirit Stone in his hand lost its luster, turned dull gray, and began crumbling at the edges.

"That leaves... sixteen Spirit Stones."

Of the forty-two Spirit Stones he had earned selling pills today, he needed to set aside thirty for next month's alchemy ingredients and other expenses.

Adding the four he had left before, that left sixteen Spirit Stones.

He had saved every one of them, earning them pill by pill.

"A thousand gold pieces spent will return again... return again..."

Comforting himself, he took out the strange stone bead.

Gathering his spiritual power, he began breaking the restriction.

It was the most basic kind of restriction. Judging by its complexity, an ordinary first-level Qi Refining cultivator could open it.

Which artifact-refining apprentice's failed creation is this?

Puzzling over it, Song Yan broke the restriction.

"..."

But the spiritual power he tentatively poured in sank like a stone into the sea, without a ripple.

"..."

Nothing happened.

A sweep of his Divine Sense inside likewise revealed nothing.

"Ah..."

What a waste of time.

Mocking himself, he prepared to put the stone bead away.

Just then, he suddenly felt an immense suction. Something was tearing at his Divine Sense!

Pain bored into his heart and gouged his bones, as though a wound were splitting open in the very depths of his soul.

"What?!"

He tried to withdraw his Divine Sense, but it was already too late. Before he could react at all, the suction swept him inside.

His consciousness remained clear, yet he felt as though he had fallen into an abyss and was sinking endlessly.

The suffocating sensation made him want to grab something, but his consciousness began to blur until, at some point, he sank into "water."

Thump!

He had clearly sunk into water, yet it was as though two worlds had inverted.

Song Yan "floated" out of the "ground"!

He fell to his knees on the ink-black surface, gasping for breath.

"What the hell is this place..."

Steadying himself, he looked up.

He stood in an ink-black illusory realm.

The realm was empty, its boundaries nowhere in sight. Only black and white intertwined as chaos churned.

From time to time, archaic characters in black and white appeared from nowhere and faded away, repeating in an endless cycle.

"?"

Song Yan looked down at himself. He was still wearing the Daoist robes of a Dongyuan Sect outer disciple.

But they were blurry and indistinct. A light touch revealed them to be mere phantoms.

Could my Primordial Spirit have left my body...?

The thought made even him laugh.

Ascension overnight?

Dream on.

Song Yan guessed that this was merely a semblance assumed by his Divine Sense within this space.

He stopped dwelling on how an "ant" like him could leave its body and looked around, beginning to explore the space.

"Doesn't seem to be meant for storage..."

He had never seen such a large storage space. Besides, he had tried while outside and had been unable to put anything inside.

Since he could not get out anyway, he started walking forward.

Soon, to his surprise, he discovered that he seemed able to shrink the earth into inches, moving extraordinarily fast.

"Huh?"

He tried floating in the air as well.

"I really can?"

Within this space, he seemed able to do whatever he wished...

But the space was too monotonous.

After trying to fly for a while, he soon lost interest because none of it felt real, and landed back on the ink-pool-like ground.

He reached out to touch the black-and-white characters appearing and vanishing, but could grasp nothing.

"How do I get out..."

Just then, at a spot before Song Yan within the illusory realm, the two-colored ancient characters began appearing faster and faster, gathering ever more densely until, in one instant, they condensed into a black stone stele.

Covering several yards in a single step, he came before the black stele.

Pure, flawless white archaic characters were engraved upon its ink-black surface.

The few small characters at the beginning seemed to be a heading for the inscription, but they were blurry and illegible, so he paid them no further attention.

After reading through the inscription, Song Yan was startled.

This should be a mnemonic for some secret technique specifically used to cultivate Divine Sense.

The inscription was short, just over three hundred and eighty characters, each a pearl of wisdom. After reading it silently for a while, he soon committed it to memory.

Hum-

Just as Song Yan remained absorbed in this nameless mnemonic, specks of black gathered across the white canopy above. Within moments, they condensed into a gigantic black stele that hurtled down toward him.

"?!"

Startled, he hastily tried to defend himself, but there was not the slightest trace of spiritual power in this space for him to command. He could only project his Divine Sense.

Without giving him time to think, the gigantic black stele plunged straight down. Instinctively, he projected his Divine Sense to meet it.

Shhk.

Unexpectedly, as soon as his Divine Sense emerged, it transformed into a cutting edge and split the gigantic black stele in two, scattering it like ink wash throughout the space.

"Huh? This..."

Song Yan exclaimed in surprise and bewilderment, but before he could consider why his Divine Sense had such an effect, a second gigantic black stele formed and came crashing down.

With no time to hesitate, he gathered his Divine Sense again, and another cutting edge cleaved the stele apart.

By now, his Divine Sense could barely sustain itself.

Turning Divine Sense into a blade seemed to consume quite a lot.

As though tireless, the gigantic black stele formed above his head once more.

"Again?!"

Song Yan instinctively tried to dodge. Only with it so close did he clearly see just how enormous the stele was.

"..."

In that instant of facing death, he felt his movements and reactions grow very, very slow. All sound receded from his ears like the tide.

Boom!!!

The deathly silence in his ears abruptly became a thunderous roar.

The space, the steles, the ancient characters...

Like bursting bubbles, they shattered in an instant, and the scene before his eyes ebbed away like the tide.

"Hiss..."

It hurts.

His head threatening to split with pain, Song Yan awoke on the stone bed.

The black monolith had shattered all his Divine Sense, leaving his mind utterly exhausted. The instant his Divine Sense had faced death remained vivid before his eyes.

His brows tightly knitted, he gazed deeply at the stone bead still clasped in his hand.

The cave abode fell into deathly silence.

"..."

This thing... I probably shouldn't let outsiders know about it...

At this point, how could he fail to recognize it as a treasure?

Leaving everything else aside, Cultivation Methods devoted exclusively to Divine Sense were certainly rare. At least, he, Song Yan, had never heard of one.

That alone was enough to qualify this stone bead as a treasure.

But why, despite the traces of others having examined it several times before, had it still been abandoned in Fireworker Stockade, and even been about to be dumped into the Borderflame Furnace?

"Hiss..."

There were far, far too many questions about this stone bead that he wanted to resolve.

Yet at this moment, he no longer had the mental strength to think. The pain of his soul being torn apart left his mind utterly blank.

Song Yan tried refining it with spiritual power, but just as before, the spiritual power that entered it vanished like a clay ox sinking into the sea. He could only tuck it away in his Storage Bag.

Only now, once everything was done and he relaxed, did endless waves of exhaustion and drowsiness wash over him.

He did not resist, but lay down and fell asleep.

No one would pay attention to an ordinary person.

Especially an outer sect disciple like Song Yan, struggling on the subsistence line of cultivation.

Unbeknownst to him, something major had recently happened in the Dongyuan Sect outside.