Chapter 261 - 171: Acquiring the Qi Refining Technique, Taking Stock of the Harvest

Chapter 261: Chapter 171: Acquiring the Qi Refining Technique, Taking Stock of the Harvest

Feng Jiuchen, however, shook his head with a smile. "It’s not that it’s realistic—it’s that everything happening here is real. You’ve fallen into a common misconception."

Wan Ze looked over.

Feng Jiuchen explained, "This is the Huangliang Realm. While ordinary people speak of the ’Dream of Huangliang,’ for Cultivators like us, everything that happens here is real. If you get injured here, you’ll be injured in the real world, too..."

"So you’re saying... what ordinary people see as a dreamscape is a real world for us."

"Exactly!"

Wan Ze took a deep breath. "Understood."

"Come on, I’ll show you the Tomb and go over some things to watch out for..."

The two quickly departed, their figures soon vanishing into the gloomy mountain forest.

The Red Moon still hung high in the sky, looking down upon this mysterious land.

The mountain wind howled as it passed through the woods.

Meanwhile, dozens of miles away, deep in the forest, a Soul Lamp in a hidden, dark chamber quietly went out.

The one watching over the lamps was a white-haired old man. He glanced at the extinguished Soul Lamp, frowned, and made a note on a bamboo slip...

"Puppet Yin Sect Outer Disciple, Liu Yuan. Deceased. Cause of death unknown, location unknown."

He closed the bamboo slip and sighed.

Another one dead this month.

’What a troubled time.’

...

...

Meanwhile, in the distant real world, Sun Beixi was in his study, flipping through a thick stack of materials, his eyes growing brighter and brighter.

A nearby notebook was crammed with densely written abstracts from papers on magnetrons and microwave technology.

A thought occurred to him, and he picked up his communicator to check the time.

8:03 PM.

Sun Beixi hesitated for a moment before dialing a number. "Hey, Old Zhang, it’s me. How’s the investigation on your end going?"

A middle-aged man’s voice, tinged with sleepiness, came from the other end of the line. "President Sun, you’re calling this late at night... Alright, well, I looked into it. There are several main types of magnetrons on the market. The ones for home use are mostly continuous-wave magnetrons with a frequency of 2450 megahertz, and power ranging from 700 to 1500 watts. The cathode material is indeed primarily tungsten-based, but as for the radiation leakage problem you mentioned... there are no shielding solutions at the moment."

"If there are no solutions, then we’ll use experimental data to figure it out ourselves." As Sun Beixi spoke, his voice carried a certainty that even he hadn’t noticed. "Also, help me schedule a meeting with Professor Zhao from the materials institute. I want to see him the day after tomorrow, after I get back to the country."

"The day after tomorrow? Didn’t you say you weren’t coming back until next month?"

"Plans have changed." Sun Beixi glanced at the calendar on his desk, his gaze firm. "Some things can’t wait that long."

After hanging up, he flipped through a few more pages of documents. Suddenly, he remembered something, picked up his phone, and scrolled to Wan Ze’s number. He stared at it for a moment, then put it down.

’Never mind. The master is probably busy right now.’

’I’ll report all this to him when he gets back.’

Outside the window, the night breeze blew gently, and a sea of lights twinkled from countless homes.

...

...

「Ten minutes later.」

「The real world.」

Inside the room, Wan Ze slowly opened his eyes.

The old-fashioned ceiling light came into view, and in the corner of the room were several boxes of miscellaneous items, still unpacked from his move.

Moonlight from outside filtered in through the half-drawn curtains.

Everything was quiet, so quiet it was as if nothing had happened at all.

Wan Ze looked down at the black communicator in his hand. It had a solid, real texture. If he hadn’t just slain a Qi Refiner with his own hands, he would have thought the whole experience was a hallucination.

In silence, Wan Ze turned the communicator over, muttering to himself, "Qi Refiners... Huangliang... Five Elders Association..."

He silently mulled things over, reorganizing the information he had gathered tonight in his mind.

The path of a Loose Cultivator was a difficult one.

Although Feng Jiuchen hadn’t said it outright, the meaning between his words was crystal clear.

Without a sect, there was no lineage. Without a lineage, there were no resources. And without resources, one could only end up like that man, Qing Yi, hiding in the deep mountains and forests, surviving by robbing and killing.

And what he cultivated was the Taiyin Breathing Technique.

He had obtained this Breathing Technique from Tao Zhixi. At the time, he had only felt that the way his breath circulated was unusual. It was only after practicing for some time that he discovered this Cultivation Technique absorbed Moonlight.

The kind of stuff you could only feel in the Huangliang Realm when the Red Moon was in the sky.

He still couldn’t be sure what power or faction was behind this woman.

Then there was the Female Sword Immortal, whose identity was also a mystery.

Wan Ze had no answers.

He only knew one thing: that Swordsmanship felt completely natural to him.

As for Miss Ling...

Wan Ze thought of the woman he had met once in the secret room—or more accurately, her second personality.

"Tao Zhixi, who’s connected to Miss Ling, was a bona fide Qi Refiner," Wan Ze muttered to himself. "Logically, the Tail Society wouldn’t—and wouldn’t dare—kill her."

The Tail Society serves as the attack dogs for the Five Elders Association in the real world, responsible for cleaning up ordinary people who shouldn’t have appeared in Huangliang.

But Tao Zhixi was no ordinary person.

She was a Qi Refiner, an existence within the Five Elders Association’s system of rules. The Tail Society would not move against a Qi Refiner. Feng Jiuchen had said so himself.

So her death...

"A cultivators’ feud?"

Wan Ze himself had just slain a Qi Refiner, to say nothing of the life-and-death battles someone of Tao Zhixi’s level must have faced.

He had witnessed the cruelty of that world firsthand tonight. Qing Yi had tried to kill him without a second thought, not even hesitating when Feng Jiuchen dropped a familiar name. In the end, they still had to resort to blades.

Tao Zhixi’s death was perhaps far simpler than he imagined—just another Qi Refiner whose sword was faster than hers.

’If I can’t figure it out, I’ll stop thinking about it...’

Wan Ze shook his head, banishing the chaotic thoughts from his mind.

He knew very well what he had to do.

Cultivate.