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

Chapter 51 Equipment Distribution

But...

Although there wasn't much ramie and kudzu in the backpack, there was a huge pile of animal hides!

Besides the animal hides left over from Xu Ying, Murong Ruyan, and Chang Ping'an's hunting spree, there were also quite a few that Zhang Chengdao had broken down. For some reason, the surrounding sects and forces always seemed to send a bunch of hides as gifts. Zhang Chengdao kept all the beautiful and valuable hides, and broke down the less valuable ones into animal hide resources. This resulted in him having more than two thousand units of animal hides in his backpack!
A single [Animal Hide Robe] only requires 12 units of animal hide!
Let alone making one set for each of my two apprentices, I could make ten sets for each of them and that would be more than enough!

Soon, Zhang Chengdao crafted five sets of animal hide armor: an animal hide coat, an animal hide belt, and animal hide bracers.

As for the others... he simply couldn't gather the materials. Only these three required relatively less linen and kudzu silk. The others required ten or more units of linen and kudzu silk, which Zhang Chengdao simply couldn't bear to use!

Items like the [Coarse Cloth] can no longer be crafted, but you can still try crafting jade-type equipment.

There are six types of jade hairpins, jade hair crowns, jade earrings, jade pendants, jade bracelets, and jade thumb rings!

The so-called "jade" is a material that drops in small quantities when mining stone resources in the [Stone Mine].

Zhang Chengdao has been mining a lot of stones lately, so he has accumulated quite a bit of "jade" material, enough to craft at least a few dozen pieces of equipment.

Both the Jade Hairpin and the Jade Crown are headwear items, just with different names for male and female characters; their attributes are the same.

Although the Jade Earrings, Jade Pendant, Jade Bracelet, and Jade Thumb Ring are all equipment in the "Accessories" category, they are not related to the character's gender, but rather to their different attribute tendencies.

That's right, in the original game, male characters could also wear earrings and bracelets. This setting once caused a lot of complaints from players. It wasn't because people thought men couldn't wear earrings, but because the icon for the [Jade Earrings] in the game was a pair of delicate and cute earrings that were obviously for women. Even if a male character wore them, the icon would still be displayed in the equipment bar, which was quite absurd.

After considering the attributes of each accessory, Zhang Chengdao decided to craft a pair of Jade Earrings, a Jade Thumb Ring, and a Jade Pendant, which he would then distribute to Murong Ruyan, Xu Ying, and Chang Ping'an, respectively.

As for himself...

What kind of player would be willing to craft equipment for themselves?!

……

"Come, come, your master has crafted some equipment for you these past few days, come and share it!"

As soon as he returned to the courtyard, Zhang Chengdao shouted.

Chang Ping'an was meditating in the farmland behind the house, while Murong Ruyan occupied a few bamboo stalks nearby and was also meditating. Only Xu Ying was holding a book and muttering to herself. Judging from the thickness of the book, Zhang Chengdao estimated that it was either an account book or a warehouse list.

Zhang Chengdao coughed lightly, feeling guilty, before calling out to Xu Ying, "Manager Xu, come over here too, I've made some for you as well!"

Upon hearing this, Xu Ying casually tucked the book under her arm and strode over, her face showing a mixture of joy and gratitude: "Sect Leader, you flatter me! I am truly unworthy of such a gift!"

"I told you before, hiring you as the sect leader comes with all sorts of benefits, and this equipment is naturally one of them!"

As Zhang Chengdao spoke, he pulled a bunch of things out of his backpack.

Soon after, Chang Ping'an and Murong Ruyan arrived. Chang Ping'an was alright, but Murong Ruyan looked at the plain hairpins and earrings on the table—so plain they could be described as "ugly"—with a complicated expression. She finally realized that even her divine master had something he wasn't good at—his craftsmanship was just too poor!
"Here, one set of clothes, one belt, and one set of wristbands for each of you, and one set of these two hair ornaments for each of you as well,"

As Zhang Chengdao spoke, he distributed the equipment one by one, and then gave the Jade Crown to Xu Ying and Chang Ping'an.

“The earrings and hairpin are yours,” Zhang Chengdao then pushed the jade earrings and hairpin in front of Murong Ruyan, pointing to the last jade thumb ring and pendant, and said, “You two can take whichever ring and pendant you like, one each!”

Xu Ying and Chang Ping'an exchanged glances, neither of them wanting to be the first to choose, so they politely declined each other's offer.

"Manager Xu, you are the manager of the sect, you take it first!"

"Ping An, I'm a few years older than you, so you should take it first!"

Seeing that the two were actually playing the "Kong Rong sharing pears" game, Zhang Chengdao stopped them with a wry smile, saying, "It's not that serious. They're all very ordinary things, with little difference. It's just that the added attributes... uh, the effects are a bit different. You can try them both and then decide!"

Since Zhang Chengdao had said so, Xu Ying and Chang Ping'an could no longer be coy. One of them took a thumb ring and the other took a pendant, and they put them on.

At first, he didn't notice anything unusual, but soon, Xu Ying, who had taken the pendant, felt that he seemed to be more sensitive to the spiritual energy around him. With a thought, he circulated his spiritual power within his body, trying his best to absorb the surrounding spiritual energy. He found that although his cultivation speed had not increased, his absorption speed of spiritual energy seemed to have increased...

Xu Ying was extremely surprised: "This treasure... can actually make my breathing faster!?"

Zhang Chengdao nodded: "More or less!"

Actually, it also adds 5 points of defense and 5 points of attack. The so-called "faster breathing" is the only effect attribute: [Increases spirit power recovery speed by 20%].

There was no response from Chang Ping'an's side.

He was holding a thumb ring with the effect of "increase critical hit rate by 5%". Even in battle, it is difficult to notice the difference of such an effect, let alone when it is worn normally. Therefore, Chang Ping'an just observed the thumb ring repeatedly without any special emotion.

Murong Ruyan was very reluctant to wear these two pieces of jewelry.

She didn't even want to wear that animal skin coat!

The clothes she brought herself, even the simplest ones, were more luxurious than these, not to mention that she was at the age where she should be most concerned about her appearance...

The simple animal skin coat, whose color was even the natural leather color, made Murong Ruyan frown.

However, despite disliking the clothes, Murong Ruyan was not ungrateful.

After all, what kind of things are created by gods?
So what if I'm ugly? Maybe it'll save my life!

With that in mind, Murong Ruyan forced herself to take off her outer garment and put on the animal skin coat.

(End of this chapter)