Cultivation begins with separation.

Chapter 27 Machinery
Purple Mountain.

Inside the Purple Mountain College where no one takes it seriously.

A young man is giving a lecture.

Most of the children sitting down were farmers from the vicinity of Purple Gold Mountain, and most of them were mortal descendants of the Yi family.

The young man always has a gentle smile on his face, and he will not change his expression even if a child is distracted or even falls asleep in class.

If a child is distracted, I will gently remind him/her. If a child is asleep, I will gently wake him/her up depending on his/her condition or let him/her continue to sleep if I see that he/she is tired.

When the young man was teaching, his voice was always very gentle and he looked very patient.

As the class ended, the children bid farewell to the young man one by one.

The young man put away his textbook.

Leave the classroom quickly.

Walking in the empty academy.

The young man couldn't help but sigh.

When he came to this academy, the place was filled with the roar of magical instruments and people coming and going.

But the glory was short-lived. After just three or two years, the college went into decline.

At that time, Shi Aqiu was still young. He only heard others say that the college was illegal. Some people said that the dean, whom he had only seen from a distance a few times, had been arrested and the college could no longer continue.

At that time, some official people asked him whether he would return to his hometown.

However, Shi Aqiu learned a lot of knowledge in the academy and was very reluctant to return to his original small village.

It’s not that the original small village is bad, but because mortals rarely have the opportunity to travel far, especially the people in his small village, who have lived not far from their birthplaces all their lives, and the most interactions they have have are with nearby villages.

Shi Aqiu didn't want to live this kind of life, so he stayed resolutely, regardless of others' advice.

Fortunately, his best friend Shi Alu also stayed.

Although the college no longer distributes daily necessities, the tax-free land is still enough for those who stay to live.

Although the college has declined, many things have been left behind.

For example, there are many discarded large instruments, old clothes and other daily necessities left behind by many students.

Especially in the library, most of the books have not been moved away.

Those books made Shi Aqiu feel that life in college was not boring at all.

Shi Aqiu did not return to his residence directly.

Instead, he walked towards an abandoned factory.

Soon, he saw more than a dozen young men fiddling with a machine that was made of countless steel-like objects, similar to a square box, and was three or four meters high.

One of the sturdy young men saw Shi Aqiu coming and greeted him.

Soon, Shi Aqiu joined them.

With Shi Aqiu joining in, the actions of a dozen people began to become orderly. Obviously, under Shi Aqiu's guidance, several people quickly assembled the machine.

With the machine assembly complete.

Several young men carried buckets of water and poured them into a huge container in the machine.

Another young man filled the machine with the grass and wood fuel piled around.

After ignition, as the fire became stronger, wisps of steam appeared, and then the machine began to run with a rumbling sound.

"Great, it's moving."

"We succeeded."

"We have made a magical tool that can be powered without using spirit stones."

Every young person was cheering.

As the cheers spread, many people gathered around.

These people all live in the college, and some of them are even married and have children.

At this time, the people who gathered around, regardless of whether they were men or women, all widened their eyes and looked at the operating magic weapon in disbelief.

The smoking machine broke their cognition.

Many mortals know that there is a kind of spiritual firearm in the fairyland. As long as you have a gun license, you can legally purchase this kind of firearm. With a spiritual firearm, most cultivators will become friendly in front of you.

However, this kind of spiritual firearm also requires spiritual stones to drive it.

Now this magical weapon that does not need to be driven by spirit stones made them a little dazed for a moment.

Some people even thought that if mortals could also refine magical instruments, the distance between mortals and cultivators would be even closer.

As Shi Aqiu and others created magical instruments that did not require spirit stones, the news quickly spread.

The people who manage Purple Mountain College even reported the matter specifically.

As the matter was reported.

Shi Aqiu and others can only wait for news.

Late at night, Shi Aqiu and his group gathered in an empty classroom and bought a lot of food and sake.

Everyone is celebrating success.

Many of them did not want to gain anything from Zijin Mountain through this magic weapon, but wanted to prove the value of Zijin Mountain College.

Because, a long time ago, there were rumors that Purple Mountain College was going to be demolished.

Without Purple Mountain College, they would have lost their place to stay.

The fairyland is not fair after all.

Just like when a noble family buys spiritual veins and fields, they cannot hire casual cultivators to plant the spiritual fields. The rent for hiring ordinary people to plant the fields must comply with the laws of the fairyland. However, the noble family does not have to pay taxes to the fairyland.

As for independent cultivators, even if they buy spiritual fields nourished by the city’s spiritual veins, they still need to pay taxes.

The same is true for fields purchased or reclaimed by ordinary people.

Shi Aqiu and others planted ten acres of land in the college. Zijin Mountain did not collect taxes from them. They could harvest as much as they planted. This kind of benefit was not available anywhere else.

A few people like Shi Aqiu were not interested in the income from the land, because most of them had not married and had not even finished cultivating ten acres of land.

They just do it because there are many books in the college that are rarely seen in the outside world.

After leaving one by one.

A dark and strong young man called out to Shi Aqiu, and the two walked back to their residence together.

"Aqiu, are you really planning to stay in the academy?

To be honest, I don’t think that our magic weapons will make the cultivators in Zijin Mountain agree to our request.

These immortal cultivators from aristocratic families are all extremely arrogant. "

“Aru, the Yi family is different, at least not now.

Our dean, who is also the master of the mountain, has no descendants for the time being.

The Yi family members on the mountain do not have a very close relationship with the dean, so these cultivators of the Yi family cannot act recklessly in Zijin Mountain.

We have also been to the county town and visited the colleges there, but the libraries in those colleges are not even a fraction as good as those here.

Not to mention Xia County, perhaps in the entire Qingzhou, there is no other academy that has collected so many mortal books like Zijinshan Academy.

Because basically no immortal cultivator would collect books specifically for mortals.

If it weren’t for Purple Mountain College, we would never have been able to access a lot of knowledge in our lifetime.”

“I don’t understand why you are so obsessed with knowledge?

Our lives are short. What's the point of learning so much useless knowledge?"

"Aru, you also know that no matter how busy I am, I will never miss my daily classes, right?"

"Um?

Don’t you like being a teacher and enjoy the feeling of teaching and educating people?”

“You’re wrong, that’s what I’m learning.

Our lives are short, but there will be students who will inherit my knowledge and pass it on from generation to generation.”

“Is it necessary to go through so much trouble?
You write books and have immortal cultivators preserve the texts in jade slips so that they can be passed down for thousands of years."

"You don't understand. The knowledge I pass on is not just the knowledge recorded in words, but also my thoughts and ideas."

"I really don't understand. Please explain it to me."

"You will understand later."

After half a month.

Shi Aqiu followed a cultivator from the Yi family, riding a huge blue ox that ran as fast as the wind, to the top of the Purple Gold Mountain. Here, he met an unexpected person.

"Eastern teacher?"

Compared to the dean who has been missing for many years.

Dongfanghong, who was in charge of most of the affairs of the academy at that time, is actually familiar to the students of the academy.

Dongfanghong looked at Shi Aqiu and found that he had no impression of him, so he stopped worrying about it.

She looked at Shi Aqiu and said:
"Your name is Shi Aqiu.

I have seen your so-called magic weapon.

You may not know that ninety thousand years ago, magical instruments like yours that were not powered by spirit stones were called steam machines by the Taoist temple.

However, this type of machine was soon eliminated by the Taoist temple.

Do you know why? "

Shi Aqiu thought for a moment and said:
“Is it because of motivation?”

Dongfanghong nodded.
"That's right. Steam power has its limits, especially the steam power generated by the combustion of ordinary materials. If spiritual materials are used as fuel, it can provide more power. But what's the difference between this and using spiritual stones to provide spiritual energy?
Moreover, the storage of steam power is not as convenient as that of spirit stones."

Seeing Shi Aqiu's thoughtful look, Dongfanghong continued:

“Not only steam, the Immortal Kingdom began using electricity 70,000 years ago.

Electricity is easier to store than steam energy, and many electric machines have been developed.

Many power stations have even been built in rivers and even in the sea, as well as many wind power stations. However, with the development of the times, it has been found that in order to maintain the long-term operation of the power stations, the manufactured machines also need to be durable, so it is necessary to add spiritual materials such as spiritual iron.

Perhaps because it consumes too much energy, or perhaps because electricity is not as stable and efficient as spiritual stones, electric machinery has gradually been abandoned. "

Generally speaking, immortal cultivators are reluctant to use spiritual materials on mortals.

Shi Adong said:
"This is because electricity is of little use to immortal cultivators, so they give it up. What if mortals use it?"

"You want to build an electric machine?"

"Indeed interested."

"Very good, next, I will help you collect some information in this regard.

Don't be confused. I just encountered some difficulties in energy transformation. Perhaps your research can be of some help to me.

I won’t blame you if it doesn’t help.”

Dongfanghong, a natural spiritual root of gold.

As she came to Zijin Mountain, she soon discovered the supernatural power of Taichu Zixing.

At the beginning, she said she would help Yi Dong guard the mountain for twenty years, but now, even if Yi Dong drove her away, she was unwilling to leave.

If Yi Dong hadn't made the Taichu Purple Apricot his natal object, Dongfanghong might have come up with some other ideas.

By studying Yi Dong's various experimental records, although most of those records were deleted by Yi Dong, there is not much core content.

However, Dongfanghong still discovered that Yi Dong had gained huge benefits from refining the Taichu Zixing into a life-saving object.

As a result, she naturally came up with ideas.

It is difficult to find a gold treasure similar to Taichu Zixing.

However, the Dongfang family left behind a thunder-related treasure.

In this world, treasures of the five elements are generally extremely precious and rare, because only the five elements have natural spiritual roots, while the other elements of ice, wind and thunder are all hybrid and mutated spiritual roots, which are almost the same as the second spiritual roots.

Nowadays, cultivators generally have natural spiritual roots, so you can imagine how rare treasures with the five elements are.

Dongfanghong naturally would not refine ordinary things into his life-saving objects. As for the fact that the life-saving object with thunder attribute was incompatible with the attributes of his spiritual roots, Dongfanghong did not care.

She didn't know when Yi Dong would come back. If he drove her away from Zijin Mountain, without the blessing of Taichu Zixing's purple energy, it would be much more difficult for her to modify her skills.

So she needed to seize the time, and she would not let go of even the small help from mortals like Shi Aqiu.

(End of this chapter)