Chapter 50 - Act 8. Daemudo’s Main Mountain (1)

Time passed quickly as everyone at the training compound devoted themselves to cultivation. The fallen leaves rotted away, and biting winds began to blow. Contrary to Park Gangseo’s claim that they would move before winter, the order to leave for the main mountain only arrived after winter had set in.

It was the day after the first snowfall, which had come earlier than usual. Before the dawn mist had lifted, novice disciples began gathering one by one in the clearing near the training compound’s main gate, their belongings packed. This was their last morning on Azure Mountain.

Many of the novice disciples were already there when Yise arrived. All eyes turned toward him, and a face he had not seen in some time greeted him warmly.

“Yise! Long time no see.”

Hae Unchan put a hand on Yise’s shoulder, evidently pleased to see him. They checked each other’s realms as though it were part of the greeting. Hae Unchan had reached the fifth star, having only just crossed the minor threshold. That Heavenly Root Constitution really did seem to make for swift cultivation. Of course, the gu parasite had kept Yise stuck at his own minor threshold far longer than necessary.

“You slipped away again. I thought I’d caught up this time. Still, it’s only one step. I’ll catch you soon.”

Hae Unchan himself merely grumbled, sounding disappointed. In any case, having someone close on his heels was not a bad feeling. It would make him push himself harder. Taking that positive view, Yise looked around at the other disciples in his cohort.

Seol Ryeong and Hong Wonseo had reached the fourth star. Including Jo Jeongjin, a dual-attribute spiritual root bearer who was a regular at Dine Before You Depart, that made three in all. Most of the others were at the second star, with the occasional third-star disciple among them.

As for Yise, he had crossed into the seventh star that very morning. That was why he had nearly been late on this important day. To those at lower realms, he apparently still looked like a sixth-star Cultivator, but he saw no need to correct them.

The Foundation Establishment Cultivator in charge of escorting them arrived shortly afterward, accompanied by several Qi Refining Cultivators, including Park Gangseo.

“My name is Han Jae.”

After that brief introduction, he checked their numbers.

“Of the original fifty-nine, five died and two were expelled. Fifty-two. Everyone is here.”

A brief silence fell. Yise turned his head and asked,

“Some of us were expelled?”

“Yes. Apparently they were caught hunting spirit beasts.”

“They had some nerve.”

It was all too easy to imagine what had happened to them after their expulsion. All he could do was pray that they rested in peace.

“Your survival rate is every bit as impressive as I’ve heard. Last year, so many died that it caused an uproar. This year, there will be an uproar over how many survived. In a good way, I mean. Your cultivation is excellent overall, too. Daemudo’s future looks bright.”

After surveying the Cultivators, he took a strange ritual implement resembling a magnifying glass from his storage pouch. He then held it over the crown of each novice disciple’s head in turn. Yise alone could guess the reason for this procedure.

“None. Begin.”

Fortunately, there seemed to be no other victims besides him.

At Han Jae’s order, the formal disciples hurried forward, checked the novices’ names, and stamped the backs of their hands. Daemudo’s emblem and name briefly appeared before fading away. With all the preparations complete, the journey to the main mountain finally began.

As Yise had suspected, the main mountain was on the Hangsan Peninsula. But rather than the central part of the continent he had visited, it lay much farther west, in a region called the Heungryeong Mountains near the wilderness. Cultivators naturally climbed more mountains than they cared to count, but the Heungryeong Mountains were in a class of their own.

Peaks soared dizzyingly high, with daunting fault scarps and precipices. The valleys were deep, the cliffs rugged. Time and again, they passed terrain where a single misplaced step seemed likely to leave even a Cultivator seriously injured.

Their eventual destination was a peak called Eumpyeong Bird Pass. Its name described a pass that even flying birds struggled to cross. Looking up at its summit strained the neck.

“Remember the location of this sign. This is the entrance to Daemudo.”

Han Jae pointed to a wooden sign reading ‘Eumpyeong Bird Pass.’

There was no Daoist monastery in sight. When Yise looked puzzled, Park Gangseo smirked beside him and said, “Don’t be too surprised,” with an air of knowing superiority. No sooner had he spoken than Han Jae vanished into thin air.

“A barrier. A combination of an illusion formation and a defensive formation... On an immeasurably vast scale.”

Yise heard Pi Garam mutter behind him. One by one, the novice disciples followed the formal disciples forward. The instant Yise passed through the faint wall of spiritual energy, the emblem on the back of his hand lit up.

The world turned upside down.

What spread out before him was not a mountain. It was a vast plain occupied by an enormous city, at least the size of a walled city. Unlike the hazy mountain mist outside the barrier, the weather within was clear and bright.

Shrubs and ornamental flowers grew everywhere. Parks lay between neatly maintained buildings. Alongside the low, tiled-roof buildings, an imposing stone structure rose high in the center, its stacked shape resembling a spell-bell orb. It was astonishing that a building could stand so tall at all. The novice disciples stood rooted to the spot.

“Another world...”

Yise shared the sentiment someone had murmured. This was nothing like he had imagined.

‘Master, how is this a Daoist monastery...?’

Surely it was more fitting to call it a paradise than a monastery?

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

Park Gangseo sounded proud, though Yise had no idea why he was the one feeling proud. Several young children ran past them, laughing merrily. A sweep with his spirit sight revealed at least several thousand people within the main mountain.

But the truly astonishing sight was something else. The bird gliding leisurely overhead was a spirit beast. Up in a towering, thick-trunked tree, a leopard-like Foundation Establishment spirit beast lay curled at rest. Seeing spirit beasts and Cultivators living side by side felt like a symbol of Daemudo’s very identity.

ROAR!

The resting leopard suddenly let out a thunderous roar. At the deafening sound, the novice disciples all recoiled. Some even reached instinctively for their weapons.

“Hahaha, don’t be frightened. He’s only teasing you. He can speak perfectly well, but he insists on doing that. Senior Black Leopard, these are the youngsters joining us as formal disciples today.”

The leopard stretched its jaws in a long yawn and rumbled.

“Welcome, fledglings.”

Then it lay back down in the tree.

“I feel like I’m dreaming...”

Seol Ryeong sounded dazed. The disciples around her nodded in agreement.

“My duty ends here.”

Han Jae stood before the novices and addressed them one last time.

“Life at Daemudo is free. Whatever you wish to do, you can achieve it if you work for it. Remember these three things: visit the Registry Office to obtain your identity token, complete one mandatory mission each year, and learn Daemudo’s rules and abide by them strictly.”

He paused, then added,

“May the Heavenly Dao guide your path. Congratulations on becoming formal disciples.”

“Thank you for everything, Senior!”

“Those assigned to guide them, do your utmost to help your new juniors settle in, right to the end.”

“Yes!”

At the Cultivators’ resounding reply, Han Jae disappeared with a satisfied expression.

With their escort gone, the disciples stood there blankly until the senior Cultivators approached and began their respective duties. Park Gangseo gathered Yise and four other Cultivators and led them to a map.

“Shall we begin the tour of Daemudo’s main mountain? It’s divided into five districts: east, west, south, north, and central. First, the most important thing. Remember the restricted areas.”

He pointed to the map as he explained.

“The Headwater Pool to the east is where the great Core Formation Cultivators reside. Never enter without permission.”

His finger moved west.

“The Inner Hall district to the west houses Foundation Establishment Cultivators belonging to the Eleven Inner Halls. You should generally stay out of there as well.”

Next came the south.

“The Spirit Beast Forest in the south is a protected area for spirit beasts and spiritual flora. It’s a place where they can rest in nature without human interference, so only the officials responsible for managing it may enter.”

That left only the north and center.

“Qi Refining Cultivators mostly live in the northern and central districts.”

The Inner Hall district was one thing, but only eleven people occupied that vast Headwater Pool area? Hall Master Hae Il seemed to have a separate residence, which effectively made it ten. How much land did each of them have? The difference in treatment according to realm truly was like heaven and earth.

“How many people live on the main mountain?”

“Who knows? More than ten thousand, at least?”

“...”

While Yise asked Park Gangseo one question after another, the other Cultivators merely listened in silence. Apparently, they found it difficult to join the conversation between higher-realm seniors without permission.

“There are only around fifty novice disciples a year at most. How can there be so many people?”

“There were plenty to begin with. Daemudo was formed by merging all the major cultivation sects of the Three Kingdoms of the Peninsula. We also recruit talented people from outside now and then. And most importantly, Cultivators have children too.”

“... Oh.”

“There’s a Foundation Establishment Cultivator called the Prolific Progenitor who has more than fifty children. Quite the celebrity.”

Unlike ordinary people, they were not even limited to a fixed span of childbearing years. There were probably more children being born here than he had imagined.

“Do all Cultivators’ children become Cultivators?”

“Not necessarily. But their chances of having good spiritual roots are much higher than ordinary people’s.”

Just then, an ordinary person passed in front of them.

“Then with so many ordinary people, managing the impure energy must be difficult.”

Park Gangseo grinned.

“Have you forgotten? Daemudo has the Divine Beast Crane Bird.”

“Oh.”

“We can practically duplicate Cultivators! If there’s a drawback, it’s that most acquired spiritual roots are five-attribute ones.”

Even a five-attribute spiritual root bearer could be counted as fighting strength upon reaching Foundation Establishment, whether through invested resources or working several times harder at the Demon-Exorcizing Arts. In the end, this place was a cradle that mass-produced exorcists.

“Ordinary people who still can’t develop spiritual roots have two choices. They can promise never to leave Daemudo and spend their lives serving the great Core Formation Cultivators as attendants or doing menial work. Or they can have all their memories erased and be adopted into a branch of one of the noble families Daemudo manages in the mortal world. The Hae and Hong families are examples.”

Park Gangseo added that those noble families received enormous compensation whenever they produced a Daemudo disciple, then continued his explanation.

“Those born here with innate spiritual roots call themselves purebloods. They take a separate entrance examination inside the main mountain alongside the ordinary children born here.”

“What happens to the Cultivators who fail?”

“Fail? For people born on the main mountain, the entrance examination is just a natural milestone, like learning to roll over or walk. It’s only there to rank their talents. You can’t imagine how fiercely the Cultivator mothers here push their children.”

He added that the mothers provided such staggering support, from elixir pills to ritual implements, that the leadership was concerned about competition growing far too intense for the difficulty of the examination. Someone rigorously trained from childhood to become a Cultivator failing the examination four times would be an unprecedented disgrace to all of Daemudo.

“So the Azure Mountain training compound is just a supplementary little garden. It hardly matters whether it exists or not.”

Only then did Yise understand why the novice disciples had not been treated particularly kindly. The world he had lived in had been no more than the tip of the iceberg.

“Not quite. However favorable the conditions the main mountain’s Cultivators grow up in, there are only so many of them. How could they compare with the numbers and talents of Cultivators born across the entire Eastern Continent?”

That was true, too. Yise conceded the point.

“The main mountain’s Cultivators are better overall, but the truly extraordinary monsters always come from the training compound. Hall Master U Yuhee, the youngest ever to reach Core Formation, came from there. So did Hae Unchan, the first Heavenly Root Constitution in a hundred years. And you, of course. Still...”

Park Gangseo hesitated before adding,

“Doesn’t the word ‘pureblood’ leave a bad taste in your mouth?”

“It certainly does! What does that make us, mongrels?”

A second-star Qi Refining Cultivator who had been listening quietly ventured into the conversation. Park Gangseo gave him a look that plainly asked how he dared interrupt his seniors. The disciple quietly withdrew again.

“People born in high places strutting about because they’re above everyone else are an ugly sight. You’ll understand soon enough. One of Daemudo’s annual events is an exchange gathering held around this time.”

“An exchange gathering?”

“It’s supposed to let newly appointed formal disciples from the training compound and the main mountain compare their skills and get to know each other. In practice, it’s mostly an occasion for pureblood Cultivators to put the training compound graduates in their place.”

Park Gangseo shuddered as though recalling a terrible memory. Then he grinned. It was such a nasty grin that Yise wondered whether he might be a demonic practitioner. Surely he did not have a gu parasite lodged in his head.

“Though this year will be a little... no, a lot different.”

Adding that he was very much looking forward to it, he clapped a couple of times.

“Come on, let’s keep moving. The main mountain is a big place.”