At the beginning, I cleaned the Sutra Library and completed the incomplete skills.

Mining spirit stones was no easy task.

Especially for these spirit bean soldiers with extremely weak mana.

Even though Li Lan had already taken out the largest spirit bean soldier he could currently refine.

After continuously striking with the spirit-splitting pickaxe for a day and a night, he had only managed to carve out the outline of a spirit stone.

It wasn't until noon the next day that he successfully extracted the complete spirit stone.

To make matters worse, due to the lack of mana.

After excavating a spirit stone, this spirit bean soldier

showed signs of cracking in its wooden arms due to the impact.

If it continued,

it was likely that this spirit bean soldier would break down before the next spirit stone could be mined.

And Li Lan now urgently needed the help of a large number of spirit stones to break through to the fifth level of Qi Refining.

He pondered for a moment,

and took out a walnut-sized purple sandalwood spirit bean from his storage bag.

Now that things had come to this,

he could only use this spirit plant that was over twenty years old,

to refine a new spirit bean soldier as soon as possible to break the deadlock.

Li Lan did not rashly choose those purple sandalwood spirit beans that were older.

The older the spellcasting auxiliary material, the more it changed not only the power of the spell.

The difficulty of refining it would also be further increased.

With Li Lan's current cultivation level,

refining this spirit plant that was over twenty years old was already very difficult.

As for those purple sandalwood spirit beans that were forty or fifty years old, or even seventy or eighty years old,

he didn't dare to hope that he could successfully refine them now.

In addition, there were not many of these two types of spirit plants to begin with,

so Li Lan didn't plan to waste them casually before he had sufficient certainty.

After placing all the materials needed for refining in front of him.

He sacrificed the imitation treasure Judge's Pen again.

Li Lan only discovered by chance,

that this item could actually be used in place of a wolf毫 brush to draw talismans and formations.

Not only was the effect quite good, but it could even greatly improve the success rate.

Such an alternative use was never recorded in the jade scroll for tempering imitation treasures.

There were only two possibilities for this situation to occur.

One was that the original owner of the Judge's Pen imitation treasure did not know that this item could be used in this way.

The second was that it was originally recorded in the jade scroll, but was later erased by the original owner.

Judging from the character of Zhang Jingyuan, the original owner of this imitation treasure, Li Lan was more inclined to the second possibility.

Although this guy was not righteous, he was extremely insidious and cunning.

Even after death, he was unwilling to leave any benefits to future generations.

Because of this,

Li Lan, who had seized this imitation treasure, could only slowly explore and develop more uses for it himself.

According to habit,

he recalled the chapter of the Spreading Beans into Soldiers spell in his mind again.

After making sure that he was fully aware of everything,

he dipped the tip of the Judge's Pen in the spirit ink and began to write.

This spirit ink was made from spirit resin scraped from the purple sandalwood old tree,

after rough processing.

Although this spirit resin was also quite old,

as long as it was not used as the main material, Li Lan could still easily control it.

He held the walnut-sized purple sandalwood spirit bean in his other hand.

The spellcasting auxiliary material for Spreading Beans into Soldiers,

required one hundred and eight special runes to be drawn on the spirit bean with spirit ink.

In the past, when drawing on ordinary thumb-sized purple sandalwood spirit beans that were two or three years old,

it was quite a test of eyesight and technique.

Now, the volume of this spirit bean was as large as a walnut, from this point of view,

the difficulty of drawing it was reduced instead.

Li Lan held his breath and concentrated, eliminating distracting thoughts from his mind.

Only after his mind reached a state of emptiness did he officially begin to write.

As soon as the tip of the Judge's Pen landed on the purple sandalwood spirit bean,

he felt an invisible resistance coming from it.

Looking closely, it was not difficult to find that

a faint spiritual energy had emerged on the surface of the spirit bean.

These spiritual energies seemed to form an invisible shield, creating an obstacle to the intrusion of the spiritual ink.

This force was very weak, but it was very stubborn.

Like fine spider silk, it seemed to be easily broken with a light pull,

but in reality, it had a very strong toughness.

Seeing this situation, Li Lan raised his eyebrows.

He had never encountered this kind of obstruction when drawing on ordinary purple sandalwood spirit beans in the past.

This may be the unique characteristic of spirit plants that have been around for many years.

Thinking this in his heart.

Li Lan gripped the Judge's Pen tightly and continued to advance steadily.

If an ordinary spirit brush were to do this,

the wolf毫 hair of the tip would probably have been corroded and curled up by the spiritual energy long ago, making it impossible to continue using.

But after all, the one in his hand was an imitation treasure that far surpassed ordinary magical instruments.

Although he could still feel the resistance.

The Judge's Pen still easily penetrated this layer of spiritual energy shield,

leaving the first rune on the surface of the purple sandalwood spirit bean.

Li Lan did not pause. As soon as one rune fell, he immediately began to draw the second one.

But when he put his pen down again,

he clearly felt that the resistance seemed to have increased slightly.

As one rune after another appeared on the surface of the spirit bean, the difficulty became greater and greater.

This was, after all, a spirit plant that was over twenty years old.

The spiritual energy contained within it was vast and complex.

A slight deviation could cause spiritual energy turbulence, causing the entire spirit bean to be scrapped.

Li Lan had to continuously inject mana to ensure that the Judge's Pen could break through the thin spiritual energy shield.

He also had to control his strength well, ensuring that he would not destroy the spirit plant due to injecting too much mana.

This was much more difficult than refining ordinary purple sandalwood spirit beans.

There were extremely high requirements for the cultivator's mana, divine sense, etc.

Fortunately.

The imitation treasure Judge's Pen played a crucial role in this process.

The special material of its tip could sensitively sense the flow of spiritual energy inside the purple sandalwood spirit bean.

Whenever Li Lan was about to put his pen down, it would give different degrees of response according to the strength of the spiritual energy on the surface of the spirit bean.

So that he could adjust the brushwork in time, as well as the amount of mana injected.

This made the mana that Li Lan injected into the Judge's Pen,

not too strong or too weak each time, just enough to break through the spiritual energy shield,

and not damage the spirit bean.

In this way,

one rune after another gradually appeared on the surface of the purple sandalwood spirit bean under Li Lan's careful drawing.

Each rune flickered with a strange light, intermingling and colliding with the spiritual energy of the spirit bean itself.

It wasn't until after eighty runes that.

Li Lan felt a large consumption of energy and divine sense, and a burst of fatigue came from his mind.

He knew that the closer he got to the end, the more critical it was.

His eyes were still focused, and he didn't dare to relax in the slightest.

The Judge's Pen in his hand, under the control of his powerful divine sense, continued to jump on the surface of the spirit bean like a nimble elf.

When it came to the one hundred and sixth rune.

The resistance of the purple sandalwood spirit bean reached its peak.

The spiritual energy on its surface surged wildly, even stirring up a slight vortex of air.

Li Lan suddenly had the illusion that he was not refining a spellcasting auxiliary material,

but rather condensing a mana vortex in his dantian.

To be honest.

The difficulty he was facing now,

was not much different from when he first broke through to the first level of Qi Refining.

However.

Li Lan at this time was already a different person.

What's more, he now had the help of an imitation treasure in his hand.

Feeling the bursts of spiritual energy swirling, the Judge's Pen also flashed a strong light.

Without any hesitation, it confronted the purple sandalwood spirit bean.

Helping Li Lan stabilize the direction of the pen tip.

Finally.

When Li Lan's divine sense was almost exhausted, the one hundred and eighth rune was also completed.

The spiritual energy shield on the surface of the purple sandalwood spirit bean suddenly dissipated.

The one hundred and eight runes seemed to come alive, slowly flowing on the surface of the spirit bean,

forming a perfect spiritual energy cycle.

The purple sandalwood spirit bean that was over twenty years old had been successfully refined.

Li Lan immediately picked up the walnut-sized spellcasting auxiliary material,

chanted the spell in his mouth, and began to cast the Spreading Beans into Soldiers spell.