Cultivation: I Can Solidify Equipment Attributes

Inside the stone house, the flames in two Pill Furnaces burned through the night.

Li Yuan sat cross-legged between the two furnaces, his eyes gently closed. Five Divine Sense Lines were steadily spread out in his mind, each performing its own task.

Cultivation and Alchemy progressed simultaneously.

This mode of operation had become routine for Li Yuan ever since his Concentrating Soul-Invoking Skill reached Great Success and integrated with Soul Essence Convergence. He could now maintain five Divine Sense Lines, each processing a completely different stream of information, while Soul Essence Convergence reduced the mental drain to a negligible degree.

An hour later, the bronze Pill Furnace on the right rumbled softly, and six Healing Pills flew out, landing in a jade bottle.

The power of his Divine Soul immediately tossed in a new batch of ingredients, seamlessly starting the second batch of Healing Pills.

Half an hour after that, the dark red Pill Furnace on the left shook violently. Li Yuan diverted a strand of Spiritual Power from his main Divine Sense Line to knock open the lid, and three Gathering Essence Pills, warm and fragrant, fell into his palm. Their halos were restrained—a sign of superior quality.

Without pause, new medicinal ingredients were thrown into the furnace.

In a corner of the stone house, the pile of jade bottles of all colors grew higher and higher.

In the afternoon, a series of urgent knocks on the door broke his alchemical rhythm.

Li Yuan extinguished the Spiritual Power flames beneath the Pill Furnaces and rose to open the door.

Outside stood a profusely sweating Spirit Farmer, an old hand from the core area of the Spirit Fields who rarely came to see him.

"Pavilion Master Li, there’s a problem in the newly reclaimed area," the Spirit Farmer said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

"The newly planted Vascular Grass seedlings in the eastern plot have been chewed up by insects."

"What kind of insects?"

"A type of Spirit Insect called a Spiritual Silkworm." The Spirit Farmer gestured with his hands. "They’re about the size of a fingernail, completely transparent, and they only eat the Spiritual Qi in the soil. The seedling roots have been gnawed white. If we don’t deal with it, the whole plot will be ruined."

Li Yuan frowned.

Spirit Insects fed on Spiritual Qi. They weren’t aggressive, but they reproduced extremely quickly. If left unchecked, they could suck a whole Spirit Field dry of its Spiritual Qi in just a few days, and the Spirit Medicines would naturally die.

"Lead the way."

The two left the marketplace and walked quickly along the ridges between the fields to the eastern edge of the newly reclaimed area.

This area had only recently been tilled, and the Spirit-Introducing Canal had just been connected, so the spirituality in the soil wasn’t yet stable. Li Yuan crouched down, pushed aside the leaves of a Vascular Grass plant, and sure enough, saw several small, translucent insects clinging to the base of the stem. A faint Spiritual Light could be seen flowing inside their bodies—a clear sign they were full of Spiritual Qi.

There were even more buried in the surrounding soil.

Li Yuan didn’t use Magic to kill them one by one; that would be time-consuming and could easily damage the seedlings.

He pressed his palm to the ground and activated the Soil Cultivation Skill.

At the Expert Level, his Soil Cultivation Skill allowed for extremely fine control over the density of Spiritual Qi in the soil. His Spiritual Power seeped three feet into the ground and began to disperse the Spiritual Qi in this area outward.

He wasn’t removing it, just lowering its density.

Within a few breaths, the concentration of Spiritual Qi in the soil dropped by seventy percent.

The Spirit Insects that fed on Spiritual Qi immediately sensed the change. Having lost the environment they depended on, they squirmed frantically in the soil, instinctively fleeing toward the outer areas where the Spiritual Qi concentration was higher.

A huge, dense swarm of translucent insects burst from the soil and poured out toward the ridges.

Li Yuan drew several Insect-Repelling Talismans from his sleeve with his right hand. With a surge of Spiritual Power, the Talismans transformed into several pale green curtains of light that enveloped all the fleeing Spirit Insects. Wherever the light passed, the Spirit Insects curled up as if burned, and a moment later, they dissipated into wisps of green smoke.

In less than a quarter of an hour, the pest infestation in the area was completely cleaned up.

Li Yuan stood up, retracted the Spiritual Power of his Soil Cultivation Skill, and allowed the concentration of Spiritual Qi in the soil to slowly return to normal.

He looked at the newly reclaimed area before him.

’The pest problem itself wasn’t hard to deal with, but the real issue is that incidents like this will only become more frequent in the future.’

’With three thousand mu of Spirit Fields, the larger the cultivated area, the more trivial problems will arise. Pest infestations, clogged channels, uneven Spiritual Qi distribution, interactions between different Spirit Medicine varieties—each one of these issues needs someone to keep an eye on it.’

’Relying on me alone is unrealistic. My main energy has to be focused on cultivation and my core industries; I can’t be squatting in the fields catching insects every day.’

’The Spirit Farmers can handle daily planting and harvesting, but when it comes to situations like Spirit Insects that require magical intervention, they’re helpless.’

’I can only make a mental note of this problem for now and wait until a suitable candidate appears.’

Li Yuan instructed the Spirit Farmer to keep an eye on other areas for similar situations, then turned and returned to the marketplace.

By the time he returned to the stone house, it was already evening.

Li Yuan sealed the door and windows again and sat cross-legged on a prayer mat.

After night fell, Li Yuan switched his main Divine Sense Line from the Mystic Iron Bone Forging Skill and began circulating the Muddy Evil Skill instead.

His progress with this Tier One Evil Qi Cultivation Technique was extremely fast. The complete immunity to Evil Qi from Evil Essence Unification, the foundation in Evil Qi control from his Master Level Evil Spirit Transformation Skill, and the deep understanding of yin-attribute Spiritual Power accumulated from his Master Level Demon Essence Skill made every node in the Muddy Evil Skill’s circulation path feel effortless.

Spiritual Power reversed its flow within his meridians, transforming into Evil Qi and circulating along the technique’s path.

With each completed Grand Circulation, the technique’s efficiency in condensing and guiding Evil Qi increased.

After Midnight, after continuously circulating for over a hundred cycles, the Muddy Evil Skill completed a critical breakthrough in his meridians. The Evil Qi condensed into an extremely compressed black vortex deep within his Dantian, which then abruptly relaxed and spread throughout his entire meridian network, making every Evil Qi channel wider and smoother.

A panel popped up at the edge of his vision.

[Muddy Evil Skill: Great Success (0/400)]

Li Yuan exhaled a breath of grayish-black turbid air.

A Tier One technique, brought to Great Success.

Only one final step remained before perfection.

He ceased the technique, switched his main Divine Sense Line back to cultivating the Mystic Iron Bone Forging Skill, and maintained his five-line parallel processing state until dawn.

For several days in a row, Li Yuan maintained this high-pressure rhythm, squeezing every last moment out of his time. By day, he practiced Body Refining and performed Alchemy with two furnaces; by night, he cultivated the Muddy Evil Skill and his primary cultivation technique, handling marketplace affairs in the gaps.

But the marketplace’s affairs were becoming more and more numerous.

Another batch of Cultivators from Yunzhou had poured into the Mist Forest Marketplace.

This group was larger than any before, numbering over three hundred people. Most were Low Tier Loose Cultivators at the Qi Refining Stage and their families, along with a few family Cultivators at the Early-stage Foundation Establishment. They had been left with nowhere to go by the Dark Abyss Association, fleeing from southwestern Yunzhou all the way to the Liangzhou border, and had finally found the Mist Forest Marketplace by following the trade routes.

The marketplace’s guest rooms and vacant shops were already full, and even the expansion area had almost no space left.

The desks at the administration office were piled high with registration lists and allocation requests. Chen Yi was so busy he was run off his feet, and had urged Li Yuan to act several times.

Li Yuan sat in the administration office for half an hour, quickly going over the backlog of tasks, and then made a decision.

He went to find Ji Mingyuan.

"You’ve already taken over the daily management of the South District. Now I’m adding another task."

Li Yuan handed him a stack of registration forms for the newly arrived Cultivators.

"You will be responsible for all the new arrivals assigned to the South District and the southwestern sector—registration, housing allocation, and maintaining order. Report any changes to the roster to the administration office every ten days."

"Administrative staff will be paid the average monthly salary."

Ji Mingyuan took the stack of forms, flipped through a few pages, and nodded. "No problem. But I might not have enough manpower. I’d like to bring in a few more people from my family."

Li Yuan nodded and turned to leave.

’Among the eighty-odd members of the Ji family, there are quite a few capable people. Ji Mingyuan has management experience and people under his command. Delegating the grassroots-level administration to him is far more efficient than me handling everything myself.’

In fact, since the Ji family had settled in the South District, the operational efficiency of the southern half of the marketplace had already improved significantly.

Li Yuan was happy to hand off these trivial matters.

After leaving the administration office, Li Yuan went straight back to his stone house.

The door and windows were sealed shut, and the Pill Furnaces were lit once more.

The five Divine Sense Lines spread out again, each returning to its post.