Volume 1, Chapter 56: Mo Yuqing Achieves the Golden Core Stage

Gu Mingxi had a rare moment of leisure today. Cradling little Bai in her arms, she went to the bamboo grove to pick bamboo leaves for refining tea.

Well, to be honest, it was not that Gu Mingxi did not want to cultivate, but rather that Yuchen felt she was cultivating inside her room every single day to the point of almost suffocating. He insisted that she go out, find something to do, and relax her mind.

What could Gu Mingxi do?

She had no choice but to follow her Master's kind intentions. Besides, she would not be able to break through to anything substantial for a while anyway, so she might as well just take a break and relax.

Just as Gu Mingxi and little Bai were leisurely picking bamboo leaves, a deafening explosion suddenly echoed from somewhere within the sect.

Rumble, rumble!

Gu Mingxi looked up and discovered that a vast expanse of dark clouds had gathered over a certain area of the sect, with lightning and thunder flashing wildly within them.

Huh? Given this sight, someone must be undergoing a tribulation!

"Hehe!" Gu Mingxi looked at the bamboo leaves in her hand and chuckled.

This wasn't her wanting to abandon her leisurely time and eagerly rushing off to cultivate; rather, the timing was just too coincidental.

She had been worrying about where to find heavenly thunder and had no idea where to look, yet here came someone undergoing a heavenly tribulation. It was like getting a pillow just as you felt sleepy—everything was falling right into place.

In high spirits, Gu Mingxi put away the bamboo leaves in her hand, channeled her spiritual energy, and employed her movement technique to head toward the location of the heavenly thunder.

When Gu Mingxi arrived at the tribulation site, she realized it was the Sword Peak.

Gu Mingxi could not help but raise an eyebrow. Having just returned from the Purple Cloud Mystic Realm a mere two days ago, a disciple was already undergoing a heavenly tribulation, and this disciple belonged to the Sword Peak.

This naturally led Gu Mingxi to guess that the person undergoing the tribulation was none other than Mo Yuqing.

By the time Gu Mingxi arrived, quite a few disciples had already gathered around to watch the tribulation.

Gu Mingxi pushed through the crowd and walked to the front, finding that, as she had expected, the person undergoing the tribulation was indeed Mo Yuqing.

At this moment, Mo Yuqing was dressed in a tender yellow magical robe, holding a silver sword in her hand, standing all alone beneath the dark clouds, waiting for the lightning tribulation to arrive.

Such a posture and such temperament could not help but draw exclamations of admiration from the surrounding disciples. As expected of a sword cultivator!

Indeed, when sword cultivators underwent tribulations, they typically relied solely on the sword in their hands.

She had heard that in the past, a certain sword cultivator undergoing a tribulation had directly shattered the heavenly thunder with a single sword strike.

This filled Gu Mingxi with yearning. She was a sword cultivator as well, and she wondered when she too would be able to reach that level.

However, the main reason sword cultivators relied solely on the sword in their hands to undergo tribulations was not because they wanted to temper themselves, but rather because they were broke.

A saying had always circulated across the continent: poor sword cultivators, sword cultivators are poor!

This was enough to show that the fact of sword cultivators being poor was a matter of common knowledge.

Actually, sword cultivators were not necessarily that poor, but all the money they earned was entirely poured into upgrading their natal swords. In the eyes of sword cultivators, their natal swords were equivalent to their wives.

To put it bluntly, relying solely on the sword in their hand to endure a tribulation was simply because they had no money left to buy defensive magical artifacts.

However, poor as sword cultivators might be, their combat prowess was undeniably the highest among their peers.

The hardships they endured were not in vain; once a sword cultivator's swordsmanship reached mastery, they would undoubtedly become nearly invincible among those of the same cultivation level.

That said, while ordinary sword cultivators were poor, Mo Yuqing, as a sword cultivator, was not poor at all.

As the female protagonist of this novel, Mo Yuqing was bound to dabble in at least one of the Four Arts of Cultivation and master it completely.

Among the Four Arts of Cultivation, Mo Yuqing chose alchemy.

Haha, alchemy—a notoriously money-burning profession.

Well, actually, none of the Four Arts of Cultivation could be considered anything other than money-burning.

For her current study of the Four Arts of Cultivation, Gu Mingxi relied on the support of her family, whereas Mo Yuqing, she presumed, relied on the support of Daddy Heavenly Dao.

After all, Gu Mingxi came from the Gu family, one of the top four great immortal-cultivating families of the Azure Cloud Continent, while Mo Yuqing came merely from the mortal realm.

As the female protagonist, she would naturally encounter numerous opportunities bestowed by Daddy Heavenly Dao in the early stages. This was entirely understandable, after all, it was to help His daughter grow up and work for Him!

Come to think of it, Gu Mingxi vaguely remembered that Mo Yuqing already had a divine beast phoenix by her side at this point.

As for when they formed the contract, Gu Mingxi could not quite remember; after all, it had been a long time, and she had forgotten some of the less important plot details from the original book.

This divine beast phoenix had helped Mo Yuqing immensely. Not to mention fighting evil cultivators in the later stages, even right now, the phoenix's natal flame, the True Phoenix Flame, provided an astronomical boost to Mo Yuqing's alchemy.

The True Phoenix Flame was capable of eradicating evil, sharing similarities with the Sun True Fire. However, while the Sun True Fire was a divine fire, the True Phoenix Flame was merely the natal flame of the divine beast phoenix, making it slightly inferior.

Gu Mingxi vaguely remembered that possessing the True Phoenix Flame allowed Mo Yuqing to handle alchemy in the early stages as smoothly as a fish in water.

The True Phoenix Flame helped Mo Yuqing eliminate impurities from medicinal herbs, resulting in pills of much higher purity.

This single advantage allowed Mo Yuqing to make a fortune through alchemy in the early stages.

Later on, aided by the True Phoenix Flame, Mo Yuqing achieved tremendous success and became a rare Grade Nine Alchemist on the continent.

A Grade Nine Alchemist?

Gu Mingxi touched her chin and carefully recalled the plot of the original book. She vaguely remembered Mo Yuqing obtaining an alchemist's legacy in some mystic realm, and besides that alchemist's legacy, the realm also held the legacies of weapon refiners, talisman masters, formation masters, and sword cultivators, among others.

While reading the novel, Gu Mingxi had even complained that that particular mystic realm distributed opportunities like wholesale goods.

However, the current Gu Mingxi did not mind having too many opportunities at all. She would have to keep an eye out later to figure out what kind of mystic realm that was, making sure not to miss it.

Come to think of it, Daddy Heavenly Dao really favored Mo Yuqing quite a bit. In the early stages, He gifted her a divine beast phoenix to resolve numerous difficulties, and in the later stages, the divine beast phoenix could also help the female protagonist exterminate evil cultivators. She truly lived up to being Daddy Heavenly Dao's biological daughter!

If anyone else were to overhear Gu Mingxi's lament here, they would undoubtedly mock her for humble-bragging.

She only focused on how many opportunities Daddy Heavenly Dao bestowed upon Mo Yuqing, completely ignoring how many opportunities she possessed herself.

Still, Gu Mingxi's lamentation did not stem from jealousy over Daddy Heavenly Dao's favoritism toward Mo Yuqing, as she fully understood the underlying reasons.

After all, their ultimate boss was the evil cultivators; unless those evil cultivators were completely uprooted, they would never be able to ascend.

Whether for the sake of ascension or to protect their beautiful home, those evil cultivators had to be eradicated.

While Gu Mingxi's mind was wandering, Mo Yuqing's first bolt of lightning tribulation crashed down.

Seeing the heavenly thunder strike, Gu Mingxi instinctively wanted to directly channel her spiritual energy to absorb a bit of it.

She immediately realized, however, that the action she had just considered was utterly foolish.

Even though she possessed both the Thunder Spirit Pearl and the Thunder Spirit physique, she could not simply absorb heavenly thunder directly like that. Wasn't that courting death like an old longevity star hanging himself?

Gu Mingxi stealthily glanced around at the surrounding disciples and noticed that they were all standing quite far away. Given that Gu Mingxi's current spot was extremely close to Mo Yuqing's tribulation site, everyone else was afraid of being caught in the crossfire of the heavenly thunder and naturally stood much further back.

With no one around Gu Mingxi, it became quite convenient for her to carry out some petty maneuvers.

Still, Gu Mingxi could not be too blatant about taking out the Thunder Spirit Pearl. After all, since Mo Yuqing was undergoing her Golden Core tribulation, Sword Peak Master Heming, along with other elders or peak masters, were undoubtedly paying close attention to this tribulation.

Gu Mingxi quietly concealed the Thunder Spirit Pearl in the palm of her hand and, taking advantage of the cover provided by the heavenly thunder, secretly guided a tiny thread of heavenly thunder into the pearl.

Just like that, with every bolt of lightning that struck, Gu Mingxi stole just a tiny bit of it.

The Golden Core tribulation consisted of thirty-six bolts of lightning in total. Aside from the very first bolt, which Gu Mingxi failed to collect, she managed to gather a tiny thread of heavenly thunder from each of the remaining thirty-five bolts.

Therefore, once Mo Yuqing successfully passed her Golden Core tribulation, Gu Mingxi contentedly squeezed the Thunder Spirit Pearl in her palm.

Thirty-five threads of heavenly thunder in total—this would give her plenty of material to play with.

Once the tribulation passed, Heavenly Dao generously poured down a spiritual rain. Gu Mingxi seized this opportunity to absorb some of it as well.

Though her cultivation level did not show an obvious leap, Gu Mingxi could sense that the faint lingering injuries in her meridians—left over from when she contracted the Sun True Fire—were now completely healed.

Gu Mingxi raised an eyebrow slightly. She had not expected that coming to observe a tribulation would yield an unexpected blessing alongside the stolen heavenly thunder.

This meant she now owed Mo Yuqing a favor, which was somewhat troublesome. Oweing a favor to the female protagonist implied that Gu Mingxi and Mo Yuqing now shared some karma.

Sharing karma with the female protagonist was definitely not a good thing.

As one should know, in novels, the people around the female protagonist invariably ended up as cannon fodder. Since Gu Mingxi had no desire to become cannon fodder, she had to find an opportunity to resolve this karma.

Fortunately, this piece of karma was not significant. After all, the minor injuries in Gu Mingxi's meridians could be completely cured with just a drop of Ten-Thousand-Year Earth Milk.

It was just that Gu Mingxi hadn't even realized those injuries were still lingering in her meridians.

Ah, right, she still had the Ten-Thousand-Year Earth Milk!

In the future, if she ever encountered Mo Yuqing injured, she could simply give her a drop of Ten-Thousand-Year Earth Milk as repayment, and the karma would thus be settled.

Mm, excellent, we shall do just that!

Clutching the Thunder Spirit Pearl in her hand, Gu Mingxi returned to Xiaoyao Peak with complete satisfaction.