"Correct. This is the genuine Withered Wood Green Vine. And this is your Foundation Establishment Pill."
Su Min nodded curtly as she inspected the spiritually vibrant, well preserved herb laid before her. Satisfied, she retrieved several small porcelain vials from her sleeve and handed them to the cloaked figure standing opposite her.
"One Foundation Establishment Pill, one Qi Gathering Pill, and two Qi Inducing Pills. The agreed price."
"Indeed."
The black robed man carefully uncorked each vial, his concealed face undoubtedly scrutinizing the quality. A moment later, he exhaled a soft, barely audible sigh of relief. The legendary Danxian had not tried to deceive him; the pills were flawless.
"The materials for the Thunder Attracting Talisman are finally complete," Su Min thought, storing the precious vine away. "This will be my key divine tool when facing the heavenly tribulation."
As she secured the materials, a sudden, sharp fluctuation in the ambient spiritual energy made her pause. The black robed man had crushed a dark, obsidian jade pendant in his hand. In the blink of an eye, a spatial distortion swallowed him, and he vanished from the room.
Whoosh!
At the same instant, a figure burst into the room from behind. It was one of Prince Yong Mansion's resident Foundation Establishment experts, his sword drawn, clearly intending to prevent the imperial spy from escaping.
"Senior, where is he?" the man demanded, his eyes darting around the now empty room before settling on Su Min, who remained seated with an air of unshakable calm.
"Summoned back by a pre arranged secret technique. There is no point in chasing him now."
Su Min shook her head slightly. The escape had been instantaneous, a teleportation triggered too fast even for her to react. The spy had clearly known that even if she, Danxian, honored the trade, Prince Yong Mansion would never let a royal agent leave alive with such intelligence. He had come prepared.
"This…"
The Foundation Establishment expert's face darkened with frustration and chagrin. He did not dare voice any blame toward Su Min, but the failure to capture or kill the spy stung his pride and his duty.
"Update the notice. Remove the Withered Wood Green Vine from the list."
Su Min tossed the revised bounty list to the bewildered man before turning to leave, her business concluded. Over the next six months, the Jianghu descended into absolute madness. As the rare materials were gathered one by one, the competition for the remaining items grew even more brutal and desperate. The sheer scale of the conflicts, the sects willing to burn for a chance at a pill, shocked even the seasoned Prince Yong and the cynical Emperor Wei. Neither of them had ever commanded such fervent, desperate obedience from the martial world.
Su Min herself eventually grew uneasy with the escalating bloodshed and issued another, smaller batch of pills to calm the frenzy. Thanks to the extensive materials Xie Yingying had left her, she had found enough surplus to refine another cauldron of Foundation Establishment Pills. These extra pills ensured she had some room for error in her own preparations, but their release only intensified the competition, as it proved the bounty was real.
Finally, after another full year, the last of the materials Su Min needed was delivered. Her own cultivation had also grown more stable and profound during this period of intense alchemy and gathering. A few minor secret realms had emerged during this time, but Su Min had dismissed them with a glance, especially after her system dispassionately rated them as "One Star" or "Trash Tier." They were useless distractions to her.
Then, on this decisive day—
"This time, I take my leave. I will be entering seclusion to attempt my breakthrough."
With the final, crucial materials in hand, Su Min had no more reason to delay. Originally, she had estimated this process would take thirty years, but thanks to Xie Yingying's unexpected patronage, the timeline had accelerated dramatically. There was no point in waiting any longer. The sooner she reached the Golden Core stage, the sooner she could fulfill her vengeance and enter deep stasis, peacefully awaiting the opening of the Golden Core Avenue. As for the petty grudges and power struggles of Weiwu Prefecture, she no longer had any wish to be involved.
"How long will the seclusion take?" Prince Yong asked, unable to hide his burning curiosity and concern.
"If all goes perfectly, four to five years. If there are complications... perhaps a dozen. But I will return before the Demon Queen recovers her full strength. Without your faction to restrain her movements, she would pose too much trouble for my plans."
With that final, pragmatic warning, Su Min turned and left without ceremony. She did not bother explaining the intricacies of a Golden Core tribulation. Even with her supreme foundation and preparations, facing the heaven's judgment was not something any sane cultivator dared take lightly.
Beyond the familiar lands of Weiwu Prefecture lay the vast, untamed expanse of the ocean. Even in future eras when the world would be more interconnected, these waters would still be considered a remote and desolate corner. Su Min searched for a solitary island, one completely uninhabited, far from any shipping lanes or coastlines. Even the most daring fishermen would not dare venture this far out.
Standing upon jagged, sea battered rocks, gazing out across the boundless, grey blue sea, Su Min nodded to herself in grim satisfaction. This was the place. With a flick of her slender fingers, a small, intricately carved wooden boat, no larger than her palm, materialized.
[Ebony Spirit Boat (Low Yellow Grade): Can be powered by spiritual energy. Suitable for sea travel.]
Tossing it into the choppy water, the boat instantly expanded with a soft glow to over twenty meters in length, bobbing gently on the waves. Su Min stepped aboard gracefully and pressed her palm against its dark hull. A steady stream of spiritual energy flowed from her, and the vessel began gliding smoothly and swiftly into the open sea, leaving no wake.
Crossing such a treacherous ocean was perilous, even for early Golden Core cultivators. Without resting points to recover spiritual energy, one could easily exhaust their core and die adrift, a skeleton on a ghost ship. Naturally, Su Min had come prepared. She had refined several such spirit boats for this journey. Wind sails were unnecessary, a mere trickle of her immense energy could keep the boat moving several hundred kilometers per day. That was more than enough speed to ensure her tribulation would not be noticed from the distant mainland.
"This should be far enough. But I must go further still. I cannot afford any witnesses."
Three days later, after navigating through fog banks and sudden squalls, Su Min found it, an ideal island.
It was not too small, with sheer, forbidding cliffs surrounding its perimeter like a natural fortress and a flat, barren basin in the center. The sea here was fickle and violent, stormy and loud. Even if some lost soul caught a distant glimpse of the heavenly tribulation, they would mistake the blinding lights and earth shaking booms for a natural electrical storm and wisely steer far away.
Perfect terrain. Perfect concealment.
With a light step, Su Min soared into the air, leaving the spirit boat behind. With a tug of her hand through the air, the vessel shrank and flew back into her palm. In a flash, she descended into the island's central valley, her new temporary home.
"Let's begin."
She took a moment to take stock of the treasures now laid out before her.
"One Golden Spirit Pill. One Thunder Attracting Talisman. One Thunderbreaker Sword."
The Golden Spirit Pill was the cornerstone. It would allow her to rapidly accumulate a critical mass of energy and forcefully draw down the heavenly lightning, initiating the tribulation on her terms. Even after summoning the judgment, its residual potency would circulate within her, helping to protect her meridians and assist in surviving the devastating thunderbolts.
A single, high quality pill could increase a cultivator's chances of surviving the tribulation by ten percent, a monumental advantage.
As for the talisman and sword, they were legendary among tribulation preparation tools, artifacts forged with a single, sacred purpose. With these three treasures in her possession, Su Min felt a surge of concrete confidence, even if the legendary, soul smiting ninefold heavenly tribulation were to descend upon her.
Especially when she still carried the elusive, invisible blessing of merit on her side, a mysterious karmic force not easily quantified, but one she knew was substantial after resolving the corpse demon calamity.
"Only the Golden Spirit Pill was truly difficult to craft. The other two are just high grade Yellow artifacts. For my current skill, they posed no significant challenge."
After a short pause to center herself, Su Min closed her eyes and began the final crafting process. Instantly, the entire valley was engulfed in a visible wave of scorching heat. Alchemy demanded precision, delicate control, and spiritual balance. Artifact forging, however, was a art of brute force and searing temperatures, necessary to melt and temper the rare, refractory metals. The two arts called for completely different skills and mindsets.
Almost all high level cultivators knew some rudimentary smithing. But without a true heaven grade flame like hers, even they could only craft weapons slightly inferior to their personal cultivation level. Steam hissed from the damp valley floor. The hardy mosses and stubborn grasses below withered and blackened at a visible rate. Even now, Su Min could not craft Earth Grade artifacts, she lacked the supreme materials, and her cultivation was still insufficient to imbue that level of power. Time passed in a haze of focused exertion. Slowly, painstakingly, she forged the sacred tribulation tools.
Three months later.
"Phew… this poor island has suffered greatly."
Su Min opened her eyes, the intense light of the Nanming Lihuo fading from them, and glanced around at the now completely barren and glassified valley floor. She let out a dry, humorless laugh. The forging process had demanded the constant, roaring release of her heavenly flame. She herself was protected, clad in enchanted armor, but the land had no such blessing. Every leaf, every last stalk of grass had been incinerated, the very rock fused in places. Still, she now held her prizes, a talisman humming with concentrated thunder essence and a longsword that shimmered with arcs of captive lightning.
[Thunder-Attracting Talisman (High Yellow Grade): Greatly enhances lightning resistance when worn.]
[Thunderbreaker Sword (High Yellow Grade): Deals devastating damage against lightning-based forces and entities.]
These two items were not versatile in general combat. The talisman, against anything other than lightning, was little more than a pretty, glowing charm. The sword, in an ordinary fight, was just a slightly better than average Yellow Grade weapon, outclassed by her own main sword.
But in their intended, singular domain, they rivaled even low Earth Grade artifacts. For the sacred act of transcending tribulation, they were divine tools. With these in hand, Su Min's calculated odds of survival had just soared.
"Now, the final step, the Golden Spirit Pill. Once this is done, I will rest and meditate before formally beginning the breakthrough."
Storing the newly forged artifacts, Su Min summoned her most reliable cauldron and dozens of glittering, potent materials. The gap between a third grade and a fourth grade pill was vast, a chasm of comprehension and power. Since reaching late stage Foundation Establishment, she had been relentlessly pushing her limits toward this moment. Now, she was as ready as she would ever be. If she succeeded, excellent.
If she failed? No matter, she would simply spend another decade or two tempering her spiritual energy through meditation until it could naturally trigger the tribulation. The leap from third grade to fourth grade alchemist was often likened to the gap between Foundation Establishment and Golden Core, a qualitative chasm between the mortal and the immortal realms of craft.
But for Su Min, with the Nanming Lihuo as her soul flame, it was not as daunting. The heavenly flame made the refining process far easier and more intuitive than it was for any other alchemist.
As time passed, the rare materials were consumed one by one, their essences extracted and purified. A week later, when Su Min opened her eyes, her gaze was locked on the cauldron, where only the purified golden demon core and a swirling cluster of condensed herbal essences remained.
"The spiritual consumption is immense," she noted, feeling the drain on her core. "If someone were to ambush me now, it would be the end."
She took a deep, steadying breath. Refining a fourth grade pill demanded absolute, unwavering focus. Now came the most dangerous step, fusing the essences and forming the pill itself. If interrupted here, the result would be catastrophic, a shattered pill and a critically injured, if not dead, alchemist. That was the paramount reason she had chosen this isolated island, thousands of kilometers from any shore. Even if she detonated the entire island, no one on the mainland would notice. And even if a Foundation Establishment expert somehow sensed the spiritual disturbance, reaching this remote location would take them days, if they could even find it.
Su Min severed all external awareness, pouring every shred of her consciousness and power into the final refinement. For an entire week, the concentrated medicinal essence repeatedly washed over the demon core, infusing it with unparalleled potency, forging the Golden Spirit Pill.
Finally—
"Done."
A radiant, golden pill, trailing streams of spiritual light, flew out of the cauldron and landed perfectly in her awaiting palm. It was warm and pulsed with a tremendous, contained power.
Crack.
A sharp, splitting sound echoed through the silent valley. Su Min blinked, then looked down to watch as her trusted, high quality cauldron, which had served her for so long, fractured from top to bottom and shattered into useless pieces.
"Close call. But it was at the end of its lifespan anyway."
She smiled wryly, a touch of nostalgia in her eyes. Even if it had not broken now, she would have needed to replace it after reaching Golden Core. This cauldron had never been meant to withstand the energies required for a true fourth grade pill.
"Everything is ready. After I recover my strength, I can finally face the tribulation."
This past month of intense, non stop alchemy and forging had been a grueling test of her endurance, but it had also profoundly tempered her soul and condensed her spiritual energy. Once she recovered, she would be stronger than ever before. And for the tribulation, she needed to be at her absolute, flawless peak.
The recovery took a full week of deep meditation, drawing upon the rich spiritual energy of the ocean and the isolated island. When Su Min opened her eyes again, they shone with a brilliant, sharp light. A flicker of pure, unadulterated joy passed through them. She had reached the true, ultimate Great Perfection of the Foundation Establishment stage. "There is nothing left to improve. The twenty years spent on my Heavenly Dao Foundation have solidified my foundation completely. It is unshakable."
Without a moment's further hesitation, she tossed the brilliant golden pill into her mouth. It dissolved instantly, releasing a warm, overwhelming, tsunami like power that flooded her meridians and dantian, filling her to bursting with energy begging for release.
And high above her, in the once clear sky—
Thunder rumbled, a deep, portentous growl that seemed to shake the very fabric of the world. Ominous clouds began to swirl into existence from nothingness, converging directly over her isolated position.
The Heavenly Tribulation was coming.