Vessel of Worlds

After the Xia surnamed youth led Andy into Red Forest Market, he excused himself, saying he needed to visit a particular shop for some purchases. Andy appreciated the gesture. Cultivators were intensely private people—no one wanted someone watching over their shoulder while they dug through a storage pouch and went shopping. It raised his opinion of the wide-eyed youth another notch.

Red Forest Market was built entirely from bowl-thick green bamboo set over the tidal flats—streets, pavilions, everything. Andy took in the sweep of green and felt his spirits lift. The market was clearly aimed at Qi Condensation cultivators. The vast majority of the cultivators he saw were below the twelfth layer, and only two or three Foundation Establishment cultivators were present—all at the early stage, most likely guards responsible for maintaining order.

With his Concealment Technique, only a cultivator whose spiritual sense and cultivation far exceeded his own could see through his disguise. These early-stage Foundation Establishment guards certainly couldn't. They took him for an ordinary Qi Condensation rogue cultivator.

Andy walked slowly along the bamboo streets, considering how best to gather information about the Three Immortal Islands of the Eastern Sea or the Azure Sea Sect.

The ideal approach would be to find relevant texts, buy them, and read what he needed. Failing that, he could locate shops or cultivators connected to either and gather intelligence indirectly. The worst option was asking outright—that would be unlikely to yield useful information and would only attract unwanted attention and suspicion.

If even a Qi Condensation cultivator like the Xia surnamed youth knew something about these topics, they couldn't be all that secret. Or so Andy reasoned.

Spotting a reasonably sized text shop called the Lingering Fragrance Pavilion, Andy stepped inside.

A fair-skinned young woman with a few faint freckles, dressed as a shop attendant, came forward briskly. "What sort of texts is the fellow cultivator looking for? Xiao Huan can help you find what you need."

"I've been cultivating in isolation and am new to this area. I'd like to look at a few texts introducing the basics of the local cultivation scene—when in a new land, follow its customs and all that. I'd rather not stumble into any taboos," Andy said after a moment's thought.

The girl smiled warmly. "You're too cautious, fellow cultivator. There aren't any unusual rules around here. Let me go fetch a few jade slips. Please wait just a moment." She gave a slight curtsy and retreated to the tall bookcases, where she began searching.

"At her current cultivation level, those freckles are unavoidable. Once she reaches Foundation Establishment, she could easily use spiritual power to refine her skin and make them disappear entirely," Andy thought idly, watching her slender figure.

Since entering the Foundation Establishment stage, he had come to appreciate firsthand the extraordinary changes the realm brought. The saying that only Foundation Establishment cultivators and above were true cultivators had taken on far deeper meaning.

Beyond achieving bigu—sustaining oneself entirely on ambient spiritual energy without any mortal food—Foundation Establishment cultivators could alter their appearance at will, making themselves unrecognizable to mortals and low-level cultivators. Their aging slowed dramatically compared to the Qi Condensation stage, and their lifespans exceeded two hundred years. After prolonged washing and refinement by spiritual power, blemishes like freckles, scars, and moles could be effortlessly eliminated. This was why the vast majority of female Foundation Establishment cultivators appeared radiant and otherworldly. Those who were naturally beautiful and practiced certain specialized techniques were even more devastatingly alluring—every gesture exuding a staggering charm that could, in a single glance, ensnare any male cultivator whose concentration wavered, reducing him to a puppet under their control.

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The thought made Andy shudder. He had learned all this from jade slips, and if he ever truly encountered such a Foundation Establishment female cultivator, he wasn't at all certain he could escape unscathed.

Many of the Moon-Gathering Sect women he had encountered in Dragon Descent Valley had been exactly this type, but at the time their techniques were still immature, so their allure had posed no real threat.

Beyond physical transformation, the gap between Foundation Establishment and Qi Condensation in techniques and secret arts was even more staggering. Not only did spiritual power and spiritual sense increase by orders of magnitude, but many secret arts could only be learned and mastered after achieving Foundation Establishment. Innate True Fire, for instance, was something a cultivator gained naturally upon breaking through—something no Qi Condensation cultivator could ever obtain, no matter how hard they tried. The disparity in combat power between the two realms was therefore immense, beyond all comparison. Without some heaven-defying treasure, a Qi Condensation disciple was utterly helpless before a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

If he were to encounter another freak like the Cheng surnamed youth from Dragon Descent Valley now—a peak Qi Condensation cultivator loaded with treasures—the Yuchang Sword alone would be more than enough to cut him down with ease.

Just as this thought crossed his mind, the girl named Xiao Huan returned carrying seven or eight jade slips, which she set before him.

Andy picked them up one by one without ceremony, pressing each to his forehead and scanning its contents with his spiritual sense.

The girl studied his face, trying to read from his expression whether there was any chance of making a sale. Unfortunately, the composed young man before her maintained the same impassive look through every jade slip, revealing nothing at all.

But when he finished the last one, he said something that delighted her: "These two, and those three over there—five jade slips in all. I'll take them. Please make copies."

The girl contained her excitement. "Please wait a moment, fellow cultivator. It won't take long." She deftly copied all five slips and placed them on the counter before him. "Each text is five low-grade spirit stones—twenty-five in total."

Andy produced a pile of low-grade spirit stones and handed them to her, then swept his sleeve lightly across the counter. The five jade slips vanished.

"Thank you for your patronage. Is there anything else the fellow cultivator needs?" the girl asked hopefully. That single transaction had earned her a commission of two or three low-grade spirit stones—a considerable sum for someone at the fifth layer of Qi Condensation.

Andy had already obtained what he needed. He couldn't expect a text shop catering to Qi Condensation cultivators to carry Foundation Establishment techniques or advanced crafting manuals. "That will be all," he said flatly, and left. The freckled girl followed him all the way to the door, calling out, "Thank you for your patronage! Please come again!"

The Five Powders Hall was a tiny pill shop in Red Forest Market, occupying a single room barely a zhang long—not much larger than the temporary stalls lining the street. The shop mainly sold low- and mid-tier Qi Condensation pills like Qi-Gathering Powder and Spirit-Clearing Pills. Occasionally it stocked higher-grade items like Marrow-Cleansing Pills or Tendon-Transforming Pills, though those were always snapped up immediately.

Whenever the market was open, the Five Powders Hall was manned by a single proprietress at around the ninth layer of Qi Condensation. The young woman appeared to be no more than twenty-four or twenty-five—delicate brows, bewitching phoenix eyes, a high and slender nose, a perfect rosebud mouth, and curves in all the right places. She was, by any measure, a striking beauty with a thoroughly mature allure, and in Red Forest Market, where female cultivators were scarce, she was something of a local attraction.

A woman this captivating naturally drew her share of unwanted attention. But she had let it be known that her husband was a mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator, and after that, no one dared pursue her seriously. Still, cultivators looking for excuses to get close regularly visited the shop under the pretense of buying pills, giving the Five Powders Hall slightly better business than the market's other apothecaries.

After leaving the Lingering Fragrance Pavilion, Andy was passing the Five Powders Hall when a casual glance inside stopped him dead in his tracks. Behind the counter, a young woman was pitching pills to a white-robed man in his late twenties. Andy stared at her, rooted to the spot.

The proprietress, in the middle of explaining the benefits of Marrow-Cleansing Pills to her customer, suddenly felt someone's gaze locked onto her from the doorway. A faint blush rose to her cheeks, and she was about to fix the ill-mannered stranger with a withering look—but the moment she raised her head and saw his face, her expression changed entirely.

"Andy..." she murmured.