Chen Yang dragged his aching body back to the courtyard, which had fallen into a sudden, hollow stillness.
The loft stood as it always had.
The herb plot remained.
Yet without those two laughing figures, the very air seemed saturated with an empty, echoing silence.
He went straight up to the second floor, sat cross-legged on the meditation cushion, and without a moment's hesitation drew a Minor Vitality Cultivation Pill from his Storage Bag and placed it in his mouth.
The pill dissolved the instant it touched his tongue, releasing a surge of pure, gentle yet powerfully vital medicinal energy that spread like a warm current through every inch of his body.
His chest — where Yang Tianming's palm strike had left a hairline fracture — received the most concentrated nourishment and repair.
Lin Yang's Minor Vitality Cultivation Pill was truly exceptional in potency, far surpassing what Senior Sister Zhuxiu and Shen Hongmei had given him.
Moreover, Chen Yang's injuries were primarily from blunt impact and hairline fractures; his meridians had not been fundamentally damaged.
Under the sustained power of the medicine, combined with the abundant vitality granted by his own Yimu Immortality Art, a single night of regulated breathing was all it took. By the time pale light crept through the window, the dull ache in his chest had faded by more than half. His breathing had returned to a long, steady rhythm, and his injuries were nearly eighty percent healed.
Perhaps misfortune and fortune truly do walk hand in hand, and extremity gives way to renewal.
Whether it was the exceptional purity of the Minor Vitality Cultivation Pill — which, beyond healing, had greatly replenished his spiritual energy — or whether it was the turbulent battles and shifting state of mind that had finally brought his cultivation to a natural tipping point, he could not say.
When full daylight arrived and Chen Yang slowly opened his eyes from deep meditation, he sensed it immediately.
The spiritual energy within him surged without cease, noticeably denser than before.
His dantian's qi sea had expanded as well.
The barrier that had stalled his cultivation during his recovery had quietly, imperceptibly, crumbled away!
The seventh level of the Qi Refinement Realm!
He had broken through.
On any other day, a breakthrough — especially crossing the threshold into the Late Qi Refining Stage — would have sent Chen Yang into a frenzy of joy.
He clearly remembered that day in the Cultivation Technique Pavilion, when the White-Robed Youth had mentioned that every breakthrough, especially crossing a major realm, meant an increase in lifespan.
Longevity — it had been a deep longing of his ever since he set foot on the path of cultivation.
Yet today, not a trace of joy from the breakthrough showed on Chen Yang's face.
He slowly rose, walked to the window, and stared down at the empty courtyard below with hollow eyes, his brow tightly furrowed.
Yesterday's brief clash with Yang Tianming replayed in his mind like a nightmare, over and over again.
Fast!
Too fast!
So fast his eyes couldn't even track it!
Strong!
Too strong!
The force behind that single palm strike carried a near-crushing dominance, filling him with a helpless sense of insignificance.
"The ninth level of the Qi Refinement Realm… how can someone be that strong?"
Chen Yang murmured to himself, his voice low and bewildered.
He carefully recalled the sensation of that instant, and a chilling realization gradually crystallized in his mind.
Before Yang Tianming, he was no different from when he had first been at the first level of the Qi Refinement Realm — a confused laborer who had just stepped through the gates of an immortal sect!
Still just an ant that could be swatted away with a casual flick!
That realization was like a bucket of ice water, dousing whatever warmth his fresh breakthrough had kindled.
He instinctively began to calculate: even if he somehow managed to reach the ninth level of the Qi Refinement Realm himself, would he truly be a match for Yang Tianming?
The answer seemed to be no.
A wave of indescribable dejection washed over him.
"Is it because my aptitude isn't good enough? Or is there some other reason?"
Chen Yang muttered under his breath, a trace of bitterness crossing his face.
He had a clear-eyed understanding of himself.
Unlike those disciples with truly exceptional talent, whatever cultivation he, Chen Yang, had achieved today was not the product of remarkable comprehension or outstanding natural gifts.
It relied far more on that mysterious clay bowl!
By consuming massive quantities of duplicated pills, even recklessly swallowing demon cores from demon beasts…
He had piled his cultivation up through what amounted to brute, "dumb" methods!
"Lin Yang was right… Perhaps I really can only surpass someone like Li Yan — an inner disciple with some talent, but still relatively 'ordinary.' As for someone like Yang Tianming, with truly outstanding aptitude and deep foundations…"
Chen Yang shook his head and said no more.
But the sense of helplessness in those unspoken words had already spread through the air.
He thought again of Lin Yang's unfinished words from yesterday…
"Wait — three months from now, it will be…"
Three months?
What would happen in three months?
A sect tournament?
Or some specific opportunity?
Was Lin Yang trying to tell him that in three months there would be a chance to face Yang Tianming again?
But even with three months, what could he do?
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Keep using the clay bowl to frantically duplicate pills and force his way to a higher realm?
Setting aside whether he had enough resources, that kind of forced, hothouse approach would leave his foundation hollow. Against an opponent like Yang Tianming — whose foundation was clearly rock-solid and whose methods were unfathomable — he would likely lose faster and more miserably than before.
Chen Yang stood at the second-floor window, leaning against the frame, gazing down at the courtyard that felt especially vast and empty now that Liu Yiyi and the other had left.
Sunlight fell across the bluestone slabs, reflecting a glare that stung the eyes, yet it could not drive away the bone-deep chill of loneliness.
Alone, it really was a little… lonely.
The feeling was as if he had suddenly been transported back to his days at the foot of the mountain — a solitary courtyard, no one to care, nothing but endless toil and a hazy uncertainty about the future.
No. It was still different.
Chen Yang let out a soft breath.
He was no longer that country boy who only knew how to bury his head in the fields, clueless about what lay ahead.
He was a Cultivator, an inner disciple of the Verdant Wood Sect. He had witnessed the freedom of aerial flight, survived battles on the razor's edge of life and death, and the spiritual energy flowing through him could split stone and shatter boulders.
It was just that this path seemed even harder than he had imagined, even more…
Disheartening.
Perhaps because last night's torrential rain had scrubbed the sky clean, today's sun shone with exceptional brilliance — almost…
Blinding!
The scorching light poured through the window and fell across Chen Yang's face, making him squint slightly, a vague irritation rising in his chest for no clear reason.
This sunlight was too bright — bright enough to leave him nowhere to hide, bright enough to make him feel his own weakness and confusion all the more acutely.
He shook his head, trying to cast off the negative emotions, and began to think about what to do today.
"Should I go to the market?"
He murmured to himself.
He was well aware of the current situation there. Because of Crimson Glow Peak's restrictions, pill prices remained stubbornly high.
On the other hand, more and more disciples were heading to the back mountains to hunt demon beasts, hoping to use demon cores as a substitute for cultivation, which had flooded the market with demon cores. Demand was still there, but the rate of price increases had clearly slowed, competition had intensified, and profit margins had been squeezed considerably.
"The kinds of pills I have on hand… there are still too few varieties."
Chen Yang patted his Storage Bag. Inside, beyond the remaining Pure Origin Pills, Spirit Origin Pills, and Minor Vitality Cultivation Pills, there was a pile of first- and second-rank demon cores meant for sale.
"If I could find other types of pills and duplicate them with the clay bowl, my cultivation speed might improve a bit more."
He pondered.
After all.
It was common knowledge that consuming too much of the same pill would cause the body to build a tolerance, gradually diminishing its effects.
He began to carefully take stock of the pills he had consumed:
"Pure Origin Pills — all told, I've probably eaten seventy or eighty of them. The effect is already much weaker than before."
"Spirit Origin Pills — the gourd Senior Shen Hongmei gave me had over a hundred. I've taken about twenty, and the potency still seems quite strong, with no obvious decline."
He thought it over. The rate at which Spirit Origin Pills lost their effectiveness seemed far slower than Pure Origin Pills.
"Does it take over a hundred before the decline becomes noticeable? That's roughly the same as the number in the gourd Senior Shen Hongmei gave me… It seems that when she gifted those pills, she had already accounted for tolerance — the quantity she gave was precisely within the window of optimal efficacy."
Thinking of Shen Hongmei, a faint stir moved through Chen Yang's heart.
"As for the demon cores… a mixed bag — Shadow Wolves, Blazing Flame Tigers, Iron Claw Bears… I've consumed a great pile of those too, several hundred. They can rapidly boost cultivation, but the impurities are too great and the long-term risks are significant. They can't be a regular method."
"The one I've been consuming most lately is actually the Minor Vitality Cultivation Pill."
He glanced at the now-empty jade vial and gave a wry smile.
After the demon beast rampage, he had relied on it to heal.
After Yang Tianming's palm sent him flying yesterday, he had relied on it to heal again.
"If only there were some pill that, no matter how much you took, never lost its potency…"
Chen Yang instinctively raised his head and gazed out the window at the blazing sun hanging high in the sky, radiating boundless light and heat.
His eyes went a little unfocused — lost in thought, or perhaps simply drifting.
As he stared, he suddenly felt that the fierce sun overhead, round and radiant, glowing with light and heat…
In shape and color, it somehow resembled…
An immeasurably enormous, burning pill?
The moment that thought surfaced, Chen Yang himself froze, then broke into a self-deprecating laugh, shook his head, and muttered under his breath:
"What nonsense am I thinking… How could the sun be a pill? I must have taken such a beating yesterday that my head still isn't right."
He turned away, intending to return to the meditation cushion and sit in proper meditation to consolidate his freshly broken-through seventh level of the Qi Refinement Realm, which still needed stabilizing.
And yet.
He sat down on the meditation cushion, closed his eyes, and tried to calm his mind and guide the spiritual energy within him through a Circulation Cycle.
But for some reason, his thoughts refused to fully settle. The bright sunlight outside seemed to carry some strange magnetism — even through his eyelids, he could still feel its presence.
He couldn't help but open his eyes again, and once more looked out at the glaring sun beyond the window.
This time.
He looked for a long while.
His gaze was fixed and unblinking, as though he could stare straight through it.
When alone, the mind tends to wander freely into strange and fanciful corners.
After a full fifteen minutes, his eyes stinging and watering from the intense light, Chen Yang finally blinked hard and shook his head.
A clearer — yet even more absurd, even more wildly fantastical — thought sprouted like a mischievous seed from the depths of his heart and began to grow with reckless abandon.
"My precious clay bowl… it can duplicate pills, duplicate talismans, duplicate Magical Artifacts… As long as an object contains Spiritual Energy, it seems it can be duplicated by consuming spirit liquid or spirit stones…"
He recalled all the experiments he had conducted since obtaining the clay bowl.
This was a rule he had verified through countless trials:
"And ordinary mundane objects — like when I once tried to duplicate a meditation cushion and failed. I checked afterward and found it was just woven from ordinary rushes, with not a trace of Spiritual Energy inside."
He murmured to himself, sorting through the clay bowl's rules:
"So the key to duplication is 'Spiritual Energy'! It must be something that contains Spiritual Energy!"
Then his gaze, beyond his control, drifted once more to the sun blazing outside the window, radiating endless light and heat.
Sunlight…
Was it not a form of energy?
The idea of absorbing the essence of the sun and moon to cultivate had existed in the Cultivation World since ancient times.
So this sunlight…
Could it be considered an extraordinarily vast, extraordinarily pure form of…
Spiritual Energy?
The moment that thought appeared, even Chen Yang himself felt it was too ridiculous, too fantastical — almost laughable.
The sun?
Duplicate the sun?
How could that possibly work?!
It was the ravings of a madman!
He shook his head vigorously, as if trying to fling the absurd notion out of his skull, and muttered:
"Impossible, absolutely impossible! The sun is a celestial body hanging in the heavens, the primal source that nurtures all living things — how could it be something a bowl can duplicate? I must have cultivated myself stupid…"
He forced himself to turn around, put his back to the window, settled himself properly on the meditation cushion again, and tried once more to enter meditation, eyes inward, mind inward.
And yet.
That absurd notion had taken root in his heart.
It was like a mischievous little hand, endlessly scratching at the walls of his mind, making it impossible to sit still.
He had barely been seated for long — perhaps only a few dozen breaths — when Chen Yang's eyes snapped open again. As though he had made up his mind about something, he turned his head once more toward the brilliantly, almost excessively bright sunlight beyond the window.
He looked for a long time.
His gaze flickered with indecision, filled with struggle and curiosity.
And a faint, barely perceptible longing — one he himself had not yet recognized — to break the rules.
In the end.
He blinked his dry eyes, his throat bobbed, and in a tone of extreme uncertainty and self-mockery, he said quietly to himself:
"Why not… give it a try?"
Once that thought was spoken aloud, it was like a dam bursting — there was no holding it back.
He drew a deep breath, and like someone about to do something shameful, glanced furtively around the room…
There was only him in this courtyard now.
Then.
With careful, almost breathless deliberateness, he reached into his Storage Bag close to his body and withdrew that mysterious clay bowl — plain and unassuming in appearance, yet the object that had changed the course of his fate.
He set the clay bowl on the small table by the window, poured in clear water, adjusted the angle until the mouth of the bowl faced directly toward the blazing sun in the sky outside.
In the water's surface, the image of the sun was clearly reflected —
A brilliant, round patch of light, reduced to a tiny fraction of its true size, yet still burning red.
Chen Yang stared at that small "sun" in the bowl, his heart beginning to race beyond his control, his palms even growing faintly damp with sweat.
He hesitated for a moment, then his eyes hardened with resolve — like a gambler pushing in his last chips — and he began pulling low-grade spirit stones from his Storage Bag, handful after handful.
The gleaming spirit stones clinked and chimed as he dropped them into the bowl without hesitation.
"Anyway… I still have over three thousand spirit stones in my Storage Bag. Wasting a few… it's worth a try…"
He murmured to himself.
Partly as if convincing himself, partly as if performing some ritual that even he found utterly ridiculous.
His gaze remained fixed, unblinking, on the faint, flickering patch of sunlight in the bowl, filled with tension, anticipation, and a peculiar sense of the absurd.