Ji Liuli was very pleased with Cui Yu’s resolve. “Make sure you show me whatever you got from your family first. Also, try and collect as many varieties of elixirs as possible. Each type influences your Dao Foundation in different ways, and the differences in terms of combination can be massive as well. In fact, it may directly influence your future path. Thus, you must be careful.”

Cui Yu gave her a serious nod.

After she was done with Cui Yu, Ji Liuli went over to Bao Yun next.

Bao Yun was also cultivating the Jade Toad Full Moon Painting. Her image was only five zhang long and slightly smaller than Cui Yu’s, but her foundation was exceptional, and her fortune was immense. She was still in the middle of expanding her image and nowhere close to the limits of her potential. As if that wasn’t enough, a plethora of extraordinary phenomena were blooming inside her image. It was like a world of gods and devils.

Frankly, Wei Yuan’s progress was terrible compared to Cui Yu and Bao Yun. This discovery greatly displeased Ji Liuli. Thus, she decided to up the ante.

After class was over, Wei Yuan followed Ji Liuli to the Council Hall as usual. The woman had grabbed a bunch of ingredients from Hsu Henshui’s medicinal cabinet and refined them into medicinal powder. After pouring it into the wooden barrel, she gave him a glance and asked, “What are you waiting for? Strip!”

Wei Yuan clenched his teeth and stripped naked as she ordered. Then, he climbed into the barrel that looked like it was brimming with blood.

He began shivering uncontrollably as soon as he entered the blood-like liquid. As it turned out, the medicinal soup was colder than even a sea of ice!

Two hours later, when Wei Yuan’s little face had become positively blue from the cold, the medicinal soup had turned back to clear water.

However, Ji Liuli let out a clear exclamation of surprise when she examined Wei Yuan. She circled around him once and examined him closely again and again. She fell into deep thought and frowned for a very long time before finally, she shook her head in puzzlement. “Strange. Why is your foundation flimsy again? I’m certain I removed much of the impurities last time.”

In the end, she failed to arrive at an answer and ordered, “You can head back now. I need to check the texts.”

“Is it a big problem?” Wei Yuan asked.

When Ji Liuli looked up and saw the serious yet worried expression on his little face, she replied, “Not really. It’s just master-consuming, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry?” He didn’t understand her meaning.

Ji Liuli didn’t clarify what she meant. While bowing her head and concocting a prescription in her mind, she waved him out saying, “This isn’t for you to worry about. Cultivate hard and don’t be lazy!”

Wei Yuan didn’t return home immediately after leaving the Council Hall. Instead, he went to the Broad Reflection Hall. The Broad Reflection Hall was an elongated cluster of palaces where the Palace of Absolute Beginning stored their books and records. Upon entering the main hall, he spotted a couple of reception desks with a disciple behind each of them. He went over to the reception desk designated for introductory manuals and presented his identity jade token, stating, “I would like to borrow the cultivation insights of the Jade Toad Full Moon Painting, please.”

The disciple looked surprised. “That’s a universal cultivation method. Didn’t your master teach you about it?”

It was just a remark. He didn’t mean to interfere with Wei Yuan’s cultivation. After grabbing the jade identity token, he rushed off into the back hall and returned a few moments later with two pieces of jade paper in his hands. He explained, “This one contains the cultivation insight of the True Lord Tun Yue[2], inventor of the Jade Toad Full Moon Painting, and this one contains the cultivation insights of the highest-achieving disciples who cultivated this method. I believe they would be useful for you.

“You may borrow them for seven days. You can copy them, but you’re not allowed to pass them to an outsider. The rental fee is seven taels. I’ve already put it on your tab, so don’t worry about it.”

Wei Yuan accepted the two pieces of jade paper while internally lamenting how expensive everything was. The good news was that he didn’t need to worry about eating and drinking for the first month of his study. The bad news was that he was going to run out of Qi-drinking Pills starting the next month. Although the pocket money Trueman Fen Hai had given him seemed generous at first glance, it likely wouldn’t last long given the prices at the Palace of Absolute Beginning,

It was at this moment he recalled another matter and asked, “Do you have information about the Heart Cleansing Pill, Senior Brother?”

The disciple in question immediately gave him a strange look. “The Heart Cleansing Pill? Why? That’s not something you should or could think about at this stage of your cultivation!”

Wei Yuan replied, “I happened to hear about it while my seniors were chatting with each other. They mentioned that the Heart Cleansing Pills were exceptionally valuable, and I couldn’t help but feel a little curious. How much immortal silver does it cost per pill?”

“Immortal silver? The gall of you! Who ever heard of a Heart Cleansing Pill that could be bought with immortal silver?!

After insulting Wei Yuan a little but realizing that the boy wasn’t joking, the disciple explained, “The Heart Cleansing Pill possessed the ability to eliminate the mental maze entrapping one’s primordial spirit. Not only could it improve one’s foundation, it could enhance one’s power of comprehension as well. Without exaggeration, it is the panacea to improve one’s foundation for all younger disciples. One Heart Cleansing Pill is enough to potentially improve a Human-tier Dao Foundation to Earth-tier, and I heard that three Heart Cleansing Pills could improve an upper-grade Earth-tier Dao Foundation to Heaven-tier.

“As a general rule of thumb, the higher the tier and grade of a Dao Foundation, the less effective a medicine will become. Yet, the Heart Cleansing Pill could improve even a Heaven-tier Dao Foundation. Do you still think that it’s something that can be bought with immortal silver?”

The senior brother took a moment to breathe after saying all these words in one breath. Then, he rolled his eyes at Wei Yuan and continued, “The Mother Nature Monastery only created several furnaces of Heart Cleansing Pills every three years, and there are only a little over a hundred of them in total. That is why the Palace made it so that one could only exchange them using merits and only merits. If we measured its worth in terms of immortal silver, then even hundreds of thousands is on the lower end of things!

“On that note, if the Heart Cleansing Pill could be exchanged using immortal silver or treasures, do you think that ordinary disciples like us could ever obtain it? The Palace made this rule because they want to give everyone a fair chance at aiming for the heavens!”

Wei Yuan had known from the start that the Heart Cleansing Pill would be incredibly valuable, but it wasn’t until now that he realized that he still vastly underestimated its value. After all, Zhang Sheng had not revealed a hint of it. He had briefly shown him the pills, told him their name, and ordered him to consume them like they were just your commonplace pills.

Wei Yuan couldn’t help but feel a terrible weight in his chest when he mulled over this. He could not even begin to imagine how he could possibly return this favor.

The disciple immediately delved into the cultivation insights as soon as he returned to his abode. Having lived with his master for three years, he knew very well what the scholar desired—to be number one in anything and everything. Anything less was considered a terrible brand of shame. Apart from being overly concerned about his face[1], boastfulness, and an eternally slim purse, Zhang Sheng had few other flaws. Perhaps there were more, but he hadn’t discovered them yet.

Wei Yuan had entered the Palace of Absolute Beginning as the top scorer of the unified exam. On top of that,he had also obtained the Founder’s boon. Naturally, he couldn’t help but feel a little arrogant. However, as if to punish him for being full of himself, life whacked him in the back of his head from the very start of his cultivation journey. His image seemed like it would never stop expanding, and his extraordinary phenomenon was nowhere to be found. Half a month passed by in the blink of an eye, but forget surpassing his peers in cultivation method, Cui Yu and Bao Yun, many other students had surpassed him as well.

The Palace of Absolute Beginning was the king of the immortal sects and the place where countless geniuses were gathered. Everyone possessed the ability to spin miracles out of the most mundane of cultivation methods, and nearly everyone boasted a Dao Foundation with an extraordinary phenomenon. While most other sects competed to see whose Dao Foundation possessed an extraordinary phenomenon, the Palace’s cultivators competed to see whose extraordinary phenomenon was better.

On top of that, the Palace boasted six universal cultivation methods. Anyone cultivating these cultivation methods but only came up with the most basic type of Dao Foundation would unquestionably place at the bottom of the ranking and even be looked down upon for their “lack of” aptitude and natural talent.

Take Wei Yuan’s jade toad for example. Even if it grew a lotus flower on its head right now—which it hadn’t—it would still rank among the bottom half of the class. On the other hand, Cui Yu’s jade toad had turned greenish black from head to toe and grew a sword flower on its face. It was also carrying an immortal sword between its mouth. Bao Yun’s image was even more ridiculous. Her jade toad was practically drowning in a sea of gods and devils!

By now, Wei Yuan had figured out what determined who was better in the Palace of Absolute Beginning: the quality of their extraordinary phenomenon!

Feeling an immense amount of pressure on his shoulders, Wei Yuan dared not skimp on his studies even though he wanted to. That was why he had run off to the Broad Reflection Hall to borrow references. Although the Jade Toad Full Moon Painting was a universal cultivation method, and both Zhang Sheng and Ji Liuli were more than capable teachers, he had realized at this point that his problem was, from his limited perspective at least, not your conventional problem with a conventional solution. He had a higher chance of solving it if he read more books.

A long time ago, Zhang Sheng taught him that another mountain’s stone could be used to polish jade. His fellow cultivators were no match for him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t learn from their experiences.

On a related note, his master hadn’t shown up even once after the meeting with Trueman Fen Hai. It felt like he didn’t want to see him for some reason.

Wei Yuan didn’t sleep a wink that night. He spent it on studying the two cultivation insights carefully and was rewarded for his efforts.

1. This is a sentence with double meaning, if you can’t tell. Zhang Sheng is concerned about his face and his face. ☜ 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

2. Meaning Moon Swallowing. ☜