The piercing ache in my spirit-sea from the soul-search technique hadn't fully faded, but over the past two days I'd holed up on the balcony, drawing on the dense spiritual energy of an intermediate spirit-gathering stone. Combined with the Qi-Gathering Pills and Body-Tempering Pills from my system rewards, I broke through the bottleneck at the peak of the eighth layer of Qi Refinement without much trouble. The moment I crossed into the ninth layer, the spiritual energy in my dantian surged like a river reversing course, and the dark-gold runes on the meteorite-iron chopping board blazed so bright they looked like a small sun.

"Phew."

I let out a long breath. The white mist I exhaled swirled into a faint spiritual vortex in the morning light. The cultivation level on my system panel finally flipped to Qi Refinement — Ninth Layer. My physical constitution had reached the peak of the first layer of Foundation Establishment. I'd burned through a full thirty Qi-Gathering Pills, and my stock of Body-Tempering Pills had plummeted from fifty down to thirty-two. The corners of my mouth twitched at the cost.

"Kid, stop eyeing those pills like a miser," the little old man's voice drifted out from the bronze ring. "Running out of pills beats running out of life!"

My gaze drifted to the Wave-Breaker cleaver propped in the corner of the balcony. This fish knife I'd traded off Old Li at the wet market — ever since the ninth-layer spiritual energy had been flowing through it, the rippling water-grain patterns along the blade would occasionally flicker with a faint blue glow, as though answering the Dao-Ancestor sword-intent embedded in the meteorite-iron board. The system had mentioned something about a sword embryo before, but using a fish-gutting knife as one still felt like it was missing the mark.

"Old Zhang and the others should be up by now." I patted the spiritual dust off my clothes and stuffed the meteorite-iron board and the Wave-Breaker into my canvas bag. Jade Lin called from the kitchen, "Don't be too long." Little Chuan came running after me clutching an Ultraman card; I ruffled his hair. "Dad's going downstairs to play chess with Grandpa Zhang. Be good."

At the stone table beneath the old locust tree, Grandpa Zhang and Grandma Wang were locked in a fierce battle of Chinese chess. He was hammering the "Chu River, Han Border" dividing line with his walking stick. As I approached, Grandma Wang suddenly planted a piece: "Check! Young Ethan's here? Broke through again?"

Grandpa Zhang looked up, and a glimmer of sharp light crossed his cloudy eyes. "Ninth layer of Qi Refinement? That cultivation speed is downright monstrous."

The little old man's voice detonated in my mind: "Cultivation is all about resources, and resources are the one thing this system has in abundance."

You really love showing off, I thought with contempt. So can I just take resources without doing quests?

Absolutely not!

Grandpa Zhang nudged the chessboard aside. "Sit down and talk. Any leads on the Hundred-Treasures Pavilion business?"

I picked out the key fragments I'd gleaned from the soul-search and relayed them: "Jin San-jia met with the vice hall-master of the White Tiger Hall. There was also a blurry transaction location in the message talisman — looks like it's at a place called the 'Myriad-Treasure Tower' in the western part of the city."

Grandma Wang looked mildly surprised. "Myriad-Treasure Tower? Isn't that the auction house nominally under the Xuanmen Administration?"

"Nominally?" I pressed.

Grandpa Zhang tapped his walking cane. "The Myriad-Treasure Tower is an auction house on the surface, but in the shadows it's a hub where various factions trade spirit objects. The Xuanmen Administration holds a stake in it — the corrupt pills from Hundred-Treasures Pavilion are probably being laundered through there." He looked at me. "What are you thinking of doing?"

I pulled out the fragment of The Heresy-Breaking Sword Formula. The yellowed pages glowed with a faint golden tracery in the sunlight. "I stumbled onto this sword manual, but I don't have a decent weapon to work with. I can't exactly use the chopping board Old Wang gave me as a sword, can I?" The meteorite-iron board in my bag chose that moment to grow uncomfortably hot, as if in protest.

"Pfft —" Grandma Wang couldn't hold back her laugh. "Young Ethan, I've seen you slap people with that board pretty neatly. Swinging it around like a sword might just spin you dizzy."

"You're not wrong," I said, pulling a long face. "I'm wondering whether the Wave-Breaker can do the job."

I drew out the cleaver. The blade sent rippling reflections dancing in the morning light.

Grandpa Zhang took the knife and ran his fingers along the grain of the blade. Suddenly he made a soft sound of surprise: "This blade is forged from deep-sea black iron? And it carries a water-affinity spirit resonance?"

The old man's voice chimed in at precisely the right moment: "That knife is a relic left behind by an ancient water cultivator. Damaged as it is, it can just barely serve as a low-grade sword embryo for sword-riding. But merging it with a fragment of a ten-thousand-year spirit treasure? That's easier said than done."

"Merge?" My eyes lit up. "The meteorite-iron board is a fragment of an immortal sword. If I smelt the Wave-Breaker into it, could it become a complete sword?"

Grandma Wang shook her head. "Silly child, spirit-treasure fusion isn't as simple as one plus one equals two. Mess it up and both pieces are ruined — you'd lose even the evil-breaking property your board came with."

End of Chapter 41: The Soul-Search's Sting