Am I the old man who's always by my apprentices' side?

Chapter 24 Reflections Inspired by a Bear

The following day, Zhang Chengdao asked Chang Ping'an to carry a basket of unhulled wheat grains to Feihu County to sell to Liu Dahu for money, while he continued to wander around the mountains, collecting materials.

Because he reached the fifth level of Qi Refining last night, he also invented a new way of collecting materials.

Instead of painstakingly sawing trees with a saw like before, you can synthesize a stone sword through the [Equipment Workshop], find the right angle, and use your spiritual power to "chop" the tree with the stone sword.

At first, Zhang Chengdao kept breaking the stone sword, but later, after mastering the technique, he was able to easily "cut" the tree in half, which greatly improved his collection efficiency. He was also able to clear out the area within a radius of several hundred meters around the entire courtyard, leaving no bamboo, bushes, or miscellaneous trees untouched.

In just one morning, the clothing workshop, the cured meat rack, and the weapon-refining room were all built. Except for the cured meat rack, which was placed in the original courtyard, Zhang Chengdao had to set up the clothing workshop and the weapon-refining room in separate enclosed areas.

He planned to turn this place into a dedicated area for refining weapons and alchemy. Although he himself had a system panel to synthesize them, his cheap apprentices couldn't do it.

Chang Ping'an can only learn proper weapon crafting and alchemy, and then he will need these tools.

Originally, building the [Refining Room] required 200 units of stone, 300 units of wooden planks, and 20 units of iron ingots.

Since he forgot to ask his apprentice to buy it on the way, Zhang Chengdao had to exchange it at the mall. One peach blossom stone could be exchanged for one iron ingot, and 20 iron ingots would be 20 peach blossom stones, which was painfully expensive.

However, he was particularly lucky with today's member red envelopes, and got a purple-quality manual, "Heavenly Craftsmanship Refining (Part 1)," which is the main reason why he had the idea of ​​setting up a special area for refining weapons and alchemy.

Zhang Chengdao glanced through it. This manual mainly talked about weapon crafting, but since it was the first volume, it contained more basic knowledge, including the identification and application of various strange flames and commonly used materials for weapon crafting, as well as a small part of the crafting of magical treasures, such as Qiankun bags, jade slips, Yin-Yang mirrors and other small gadgets.

Many of these magical items look very familiar; they are some low-quality magical items that Zhang Chengdao drew when he played the game. They are mostly blue and gray, and some are even one-time use items. They also account for a significant portion of the members' red envelopes.

At first, Zhang Chengdao was worried about the so-called "different fire" in the manual. Various kinds of earth core fire, earth vein fire, true fire, etc., could not possibly exist in this martial arts cultivation world.

After building the [Refining Room], it was discovered that the furnace that came with the [Refining Room] contained the Crimson Lotus Earth Vein Fire, one of the low-grade exotic flames!

Although it is a low-grade strange fire, it is sufficient for refining weapons. In fact, according to the explanation in the manual, among the many low-grade strange fires, the Crimson Lotus Earth Vein Fire is the most useful.

As expected of a product made by Golden Finger!

In the afternoon, Zhang Chengdao went into the mountains again, intending to collect some stones.

Just as he happened to pass by a cave, a sudden inspiration struck him—

Although the [Stone Mine Cave] in the game is built on a fixed resource point, the prerequisite for that resource point is a stone cave!
If he finds a cave himself, can he build the [Stone Mine Cave]?
The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. Zhang Chengdao decisively drew out a newly crafted stone sword and carefully walked into the cave.

The cave was rather low, and the entrance was crowded with bushes. The closer you got to the cave, the stronger the indescribable fishy stench became.

Pushing aside the tangled branches blocking the entrance, Zhang Chengdao crouched down and crawled into the hole. He was startled when he finally saw what was inside...

A hibernating bear.

A bear that was hibernating and appears to be gradually waking up has clearly been startled awake.

Zhang Chengdao instinctively swung his sword, spiritual energy surging out along the blade, striking the brown bear's thick fur. Accompanied by several shrill screams, fearing he would become a bear snack, Zhang Chengdao swung his sword several more times. The stone sword hit a hole in the wall, breaking off its blade, before he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Logically speaking, someone at the fifth level of Qi Refining shouldn't be afraid of such an ordinary wild beast. It's just a brown bear! He's seen people kill, so why would he be afraid of a bear?

Knowing you can beat someone is one thing, but actually encountering them is another. I'm not afraid, but I'm still nervous.

After the initial tension came the excitement—this was a wild bear!
Zhang Chengdao couldn't help but touch the fur of the already dead brown bear; it was very hard and prickly.

After giving the bear a couple of good pats, Zhang Chengdao tossed it into his backpack. But the instant he did so, a notification popped up in his field of vision:

[Decompose or not?]

break down?

Zhang Chengdao was a little confused; he had never encountered this prompt while playing the game!

However, based on the literal meaning of the hint, Zhang Chengdao could roughly guess the result, so he tried to control his thoughts and chose [Decompose].

Then, three new materials appeared in the backpack: animal meat, animal hide, and bear bile.

Bear bile is classified as a medicinal material, while animal meat and hides are considered ordinary materials.

The only thing that puzzled Zhang Chengdao was that the decomposed beast meat did not overlap with the batch of beast meat he had drawn earlier; instead, each occupied a separate grid.

Is there some difference between the two kinds of animal meat?

Zhang Chengdao looked at it carefully for a while and found that the meat he had previously drawn from the member's red envelope had a light brown background, while the newly decomposed meat had a gray background.

Based on his years of experience playing games, he knew that meat with a colored background was definitely of better quality than meat with a gray background. However, since they had the same name and looked the same when taken out, it was a bit difficult to tell them apart.

Could it be that the animal meat drawn from the member's red envelope also possesses a spirit, which is why it has a light brown background?
Realizing this, Zhang Chengdao quickly looked through each of the backpack compartments and found that all the items bought from the game store or obtained from member red envelopes had colored backgrounds. For example, wheat seeds, fairy dew, beast meat, and the synthesized [lean meat soup] were light brown or blue, and even the book "Heavenly Craftsmanship (Part 1)" was purple.

Any items collected from this martial arts and cultivation world will have a gray background, such as soy sauce, salt, hemp rope, bamboo strips, stones, and wooden boards.

So that’s it!
If you make an item using ordinary gray-quality materials, what quality will it be?

With that in mind, Zhang Chengdao used the newly extracted animal meat to make a bowl of lean meat soup.

Sure enough, the newly synthesized [Lean Meat Soup] did not overlap with the old [Lean Meat Soup], but instead occupied a new backpack slot, and its background color was also gray—creating a very striking difference from the light brown background of the other bowl of [Lean Meat Soup]!

Zhang Chengdao suddenly realized.

It's past midnight!! To be continued tomorrow!!! Powder!

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(End of this chapter)