Cultivation: I Can Solidify Equipment Attributes

The Chamber of Commerce arrived two days earlier than expected.

When Li Yuan received the news, a Golden Core Elder had already arrived at Yunyang Marketplace and was being personally received by an Inner Sect deacon from the Primordial Yang Sect. The Chamber of Commerce’s Foundation Establishment Cultivators and affiliated traveling merchants then set out in batches, spreading out to the various marketplaces on the Liangzhou border.

Mist Forest Marketplace was assigned a Chamber of Commerce manager at Mid-stage Foundation Establishment, along with three Qi Refining Stage assistants and two storage bags full of goods.

Li Yuan met with the manager at the administration office, briefly explained the marketplace’s trading rules, and then left the task of arranging the stalls to a deacon.

He had something more important to discuss with Chen Yi.

"The marketplace needs to be expanded again," Li Yuan said, getting straight to the point.

Chen Yi wasn’t surprised. He simply pulled a document from behind his desk and handed it over.

"The Sect already has a preliminary plan. But this expansion is different from the last one."

Li Yuan took the document and glanced at it.

"Array deployment, management personnel, and guard forces—I have to handle all of it myself?"

"Correct." Chen Yi leaned back in his chair, looking a little tired. "The pressure on the front lines is mounting, and the Sect is pulling deacons and guard teams from the various marketplaces to reinforce the border. Here at Mist Forest Marketplace, the number of administrative deacons might be reduced by two or three, and the patrol team’s roster is also getting cut."

Li Yuan finished reading the document and placed it on the desk.

"And the benefits?"

"The Sect will only take a twenty percent cut of the revenue." Chen Yi held up two fingers. "It used to be thirty percent. Also, you’ll be responsible for paying the management staff’s monthly salaries yourself from now on. They won’t be submitted to the Sect or run through the Sect’s books anymore. You’ll have more autonomy, but also more trivial matters to deal with."

Li Yuan didn’t hesitate.

"Deal."

"Decisive." Chen Yi nodded and pushed a token engraved with the marketplace expansion approval seal toward Li Yuan. "Here’s the authorization. You decide the scope of the expansion, you set up the arrays, and you recruit the people. If you need the Sect to coordinate anything, come directly to me."

Li Yuan put away the token, stood up, and left the administration office.

That afternoon, he went to the Chamber of Commerce’s temporary stall.

The stall was set up in a newly cleared open space in the eastern district of the marketplace. Three long tables were pushed together, laden with all sorts of Spirit Medicines, ores, talisman papers, and Magical Artifacts. The Mid-stage Foundation Establishment manager stood behind the tables, haggling with several Loose Cultivators.

Li Yuan walked up to the manager.

"Do you have any of the good stuff? The kind you don’t display on the tables."

Seeing that the Pavilion Master himself had come, the manager quickly took a jade slip from his robes and offered it.

"This is our Chamber’s complete trade manifest. What’s on the tables is just the standard merchandise. The truly valuable items are all recorded in here."

Li Yuan accepted the jade slip and extended his Divine Sense into it.

The list was extremely long, cataloging hundreds of items by category. It was a dazzling array, ranging from Low Tier Qi Refining Stage pills to High Tier ores only usable by Late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators, and from Tier One Talismans to Tier Two High Grade Magical Artifacts.

Li Yuan skipped the first few dozen pages and went straight to the rare items section at the very end.

His gaze stopped on a line of text.

Teleportation Skill. Spatial Magic. Short-range spatial displacement.

His heart skipped a beat.

’Spatial Magic. One of the puzzle pieces for making the Teleportation Stone’s effect permanent.’

Li Yuan continued down to the price.

Eight hundred Mid-grade Spirit Stones. A considerable price. With all the assets he had accumulated, he could just barely afford it.

Li Yuan turned the page and continued scanning.

At the end of the list were a few miscellaneous items, one of which caught his attention.

Longevity Cultivation Technique. Grade unlisted. Price: One hundred twenty Mid-grade Spirit Stones.

One hundred and twenty stones. Nearly seven times cheaper than the spatial Magic.

Li Yuan looked up at the manager.

"This Longevity Cultivation Technique. Let me take a look at it."

The manager paused for a moment, then rummaged deep in his storage bag and pulled out a yellowed jade slip, handing it to Li Yuan.

"This thing has been sitting with our Chamber of Commerce for a long time. We brought it all the way from Jingzhou and no one’s bought it." The manager shook his head. "There’s nothing wrong with the technique itself, it’s just that the requirements are too strict, it’s too difficult to cultivate, and the actual benefits are minimal. People in the last few marketplaces asked about it, but they all put it down after a glance."

Li Yuan didn’t rush to open the jade slip. Instead, he first placed his finger on its surface.

The panel popped up.

[Detectable Equippable Item]

[Item Trait Level: Blue]

[Note: Item does not belong to user. Cannot be equipped. Detailed information cannot be viewed.]

’A blue trait.’

Li Yuan’s expression remained unchanged as he turned the jade slip over to look at the few lines of small text carved into its casing as a brief introduction.

The manager continued speaking beside him.

"The requirements for this Cultivation Technique are extremely high. It requires a cultivator to train in essence, qi, and spirit, and it’s best if all three are balanced. As you know, the vast majority of cultivators specialize. They either have strong Spiritual Power and a weak Divine Sense, or a strong physical body and poor Spiritual Power. To be able to train all three and keep them balanced... you won’t find one in a hundred. Even if someone met the conditions, the cultivation is extremely slow, and the lifespan extension isn’t significant. The cost-performance ratio is just too low."

Li Yuan clutched the jade slip in his hand.

’Cultivating essence, qi, and spirit, all in balance.’

’Perfection in the Nameless Body Refining Technique, Great Success in the Iron Wall Body Refining Skill, proficiency in the Mystic Iron Bone Forging Skill, and proficiency in the Golden Body Skill—the foundation of my physical body is my essence. The Spiritual Power in my Dantian is at Foundation Establishment Perfection, plus a twenty percent boost from consolidating my foundation—my Spiritual Power reserves are my qi. Five Divine Sense Lines plus multiple perception-type traits—my Divine Soul and willpower are my spirit.’

’I have all three, and thanks to long-term, balanced cultivation, the gap between them isn’t large.’

"I’ll buy it."

The manager clearly hadn’t expected such a decisive response and froze for a second before he came to his senses.

"One hundred and twenty Mid-grade Spirit Stones."

Li Yuan took the Spirit Stones from his storage bag, stacking them one by one on the table.

Once the manager finished counting, he erased the ownership seal on the jade slip and officially handed it over.

Li Yuan then selected a batch of basic materials from the list, including supplementary materials for arrays, raw materials for talisman paper, and a few uncommon supplementary herbs for Alchemy. These miscellaneous items cost him a little over thirty Mid-grade Spirit Stones in total, which wasn’t too painful.

As for the eight-hundred-stone spatial Magic, he would have to figure out a way to get it later.

After leaving the Chamber of Commerce’s stall, Li Yuan didn’t hurry back to his stone house. Instead, he took a walk around the marketplace, surveying the terrain of the expansion area and the coverage of the existing arrays.

The new round of expansion would need to extend at least fifty zhang to the south and east to accommodate the continuous influx of cultivators and new shops. The workload for deploying the arrays would be significant, but with the support of the Earth Vein’s spiritual hub, it would be much more efficient than before.

After completing his inspection, Li Yuan returned to his stone house.

He sealed the door and windows and activated the Early Warning Array.

He sat down at his desk and picked up the jade slip for the Longevity Cultivation Technique.

He extended his Divine Sense into it.

The technique was called the Guiyuan Longevity Skill, and its cultivation method was highly unusual. It wasn’t simple Spiritual Power circulation or physical tempering. Instead, it required the cultivator to simultaneously mobilize their essence, qi, and spirit, using an extremely precise ratio to draw upon and nourish one another, ultimately forming a self-sustaining life-force circuit within the body.

Once this circuit was established, it could slow the passage of one’s lifespan to an infinitesimal degree.

Li Yuan read through it once and understood the difficulty the manager had mentioned.

Simultaneously mobilizing essence, qi, and spirit while maintaining a precise ratio was nearly impossible for an ordinary cultivator. Most cultivators could only hope to reach the peak in one of these areas in their entire lifetime. To bring all three to their peak and then balance them with precision—the difficulty was immense.

But for him, his five Divine Sense Lines were the perfect tools for precise control.

Li Yuan closed the jade slip and placed it on the corner of his desk.

’I’ll look at the specific cultivation method and the trait’s detailed information tomorrow.’

He took a Condensing Evil Pill from his storage bag and swallowed it.

[Evil-Condensing Heart Wall (Green) Permanence Condition: Consume one Condensing Evil Pill daily for 15 consecutive days (5/15)]

He then followed the mine tunnel down to the cavern, sat cross-legged on an empty patch of ground beside the Fire Demon Beast’s lair, and began to circulate his cultivation technique.

[Evil-Burning Body Tempering (Green) Permanence Condition: Cultivate continuously in an environment with extremely high concentrations of Fire-Evil Spiritual Qi for 30 consecutive days (4/30)]

The intense heat of the cavern scorched the rock walls as a dim, crimson light flowed all around.

Li Yuan cultivated with his eyes closed, his mind already formulating the next steps of his plan.

’The marketplace expansion, materials for my Lifebound Spiritual Artifact, Core Formation Spirit Medicines, the spatial Magic, the trait from the Longevity Cultivation Technique...’

’Every thread was advancing simultaneously, and every one of them required time and resources.’

’Fortunately, the one thing he didn’t lack was patience.’