Immortality and Cultivation: Starting with Improving Spiritual Root Aptitude

In the days that followed, Wu Fan devoted himself to the Dao of alchemy, spending almost all his time outside of his daily meditation and cultivation researching and refining pills.

Therefore, his alchemy skills improved steadily through daily practice, and his cultivation level rose accordingly, gradually approaching the sixth level of Qi Refining.

Time quietly flows by in this kind of life.

In the blink of an eye, two years have passed.

It was early morning that day.

Wu Fan had just finished collecting the pills when several round and plump first-grade pills of different types lay in his palm. The medicinal fragrance was clear and lingering, and all of them were of exceptional quality, far exceeding that of ordinary pills.

Now, relying solely on his alchemy skills, he can independently refine various first-tier pills and consistently produce high-quality ones. Although he occasionally makes mistakes, they are few and far between.

This was due not only to his thorough understanding and mastery of the alchemy insights left by Liu Xi, but more importantly, to his increasingly profound comprehension of the Five Elements.

What surprised him even more was that, over the past two years, he discovered that the Five Elements Beads had more than just the ability to sense the origins of the Five Elements.

During one of his attempts to refine an ice-attribute elixir, the Five Elements Beads helped him to precisely control the ice-attribute essence hidden within the herbs, allowing him to manipulate it with ease.

This is not an accident. All things in the world are born from the five elements, and ice is the form of water.

In the Five Elements, "water is said to flow downwards," which means coldness, flow, and concealment. Ice is simply water that has frozen into a solid state when it is cold, and it fully embodies the "freezing" and "cold" properties of water. There is no new origin of the Five Elements.

When combined with the astringent and sinking power of metal, water is condensed into ice, and its essence still belongs to the water element.

Since he could sense the origin of ice attributes, Wu Fan couldn't help but have a thought.

Perhaps the power of the Five Elements Beads can be supplemented by the power of other attributes to help with advancement and breakthrough?

We need to find a safer time to try this.

If he were to use the Five Elements Pearl to refine pills, the success rate of producing high-quality pills would be almost 100%. It was for this reason that he had already begun to consider aiming to become a first-grade high-level alchemist.

The herbs needed for first-grade high-quality pills are mostly old herbs, which are scarce resources even in the current Bai family. There is absolutely no way he could use them for practice. Even if he wanted to pay for them, it would be difficult for him to have a large quantity of herbs to practice with right now.

The reason is that although the Bai family and the Deng family have stopped fighting each other in the past two years, they are still hindering each other in some industries that source spirit stones, resulting in a sharp decline in the income of many of the Bai family's industries.

Although Yunxi Market was rebuilt thanks to the Bai family's efforts, it was no longer as prosperous as it once was due to the chaos caused by the robbery two years ago and the rumors that the Bai family patriarch was nearing the end of his life. Most of the shops were vacant and there were few customers.

The clan's resources were already stretched thin, and now they were trying to stretch every last drop, so naturally they didn't have enough spiritual herbs to meet his needs for breaking through to become a high-grade alchemist.

After much thought, Wu Fan realized that it might be time to make a trip to Falling Star Valley Market.

He still has a small shop on the outskirts of Yunxi Market, but it is now vacant and no one is interested in it. The rent is already meager, so he simply wrote a letter to entrust his second uncle to manage it, just to give his family a source of spiritual stones.

These two years of peaceful life also concealed a hidden worry that was quite troublesome for Wu Fan.

In the past two years, Bai Ruanyu has been visiting his courtyard more and more frequently.

At first, out of gratitude for being saved, she would often bring some spiritual fruits to visit him; later, she would often discuss the mysteries of alchemy and her insights into cultivation with him.

Recently, they've been sitting together for most of the day, chatting about everyday trivia.

Even though Wu Fan was slow to realize it, he had already figured out the feelings of the eldest daughter of the Bai family.

Bai Ruanyu is beautiful and talented. She has the ambition and vision of a noblewoman, as well as being kind and understanding. She is a true "rich, beautiful, and talented woman". For an ordinary cultivator to win her favor is enough to save twenty years of hard work.

If it were me without the Five Elements Beads, I certainly wouldn't have refused.

But it was the Five Elements Pearl that shaped him into who he is today, and it also destined him to never stop pursuing greater power, ultimately making him and Bai Ruanyu walk different paths.

He knew perfectly well that Bai Ruanyu's feelings for him might be mixed with practical considerations.

After her failed marriage alliance with the Zhao family, she intended to stay in the clan and find a husband, since staying in the Bai family was the best way to preserve her chances of reaching the Foundation Establishment stage.

He himself had a remarkable talent for alchemy and had saved her life, but his cultivation level was inferior to hers, making him the most suitable candidate.

Regardless of Bai Ruanyu's thoughts, Wu Fan's determination would not change. However, the thought of needing the Bai family to recommend candidates for the Falling Star Valley in the future made him somewhat troubled. He didn't know how to bring it up and could only put it aside for the time being.

In the afternoon, Wu Fan finished cleaning up the dregs from the alchemy furnace and got up to leave the courtyard.

Today he is going to a banquet, a banquet hosted by Niu Dazhuang.

Niu Dazhuang has been married into the Bai family for ten years and already has two sons and a daughter. Recently, his wife Bai Tao has become pregnant again. The news has made other married cultivators green with envy and secretly grit their teeth in hatred.

Among all the men who married into the Bai family, he was the first to impregnate a woman from the Bai family, the first to give birth to a son, and the first to have both a son and a daughter.

Most of the other cultivators who married into the Bai family now only have one child. There is even a cultivator named Xiao Yi who has been married for many years but has not been able to get his wife pregnant. A year ago, he was divorced by the Bai family and kicked out of the Bai family.

However, when Xiao Yi left, he did not show any sign of loneliness, but rather a sense of relief.

Wu Fan had previously met Xiao Yi at the full-moon celebration of Niu Dazhuang's third child. At that time, the Five Elements Bead suddenly reacted violently, and the sensation was several times stronger than when he had encountered rare spiritual materials in those shops. It was as if Xiao Yi had an extremely powerful primordial force within him, which was attracting the Five Elements Bead.

Wu Fan immediately sensed that if he could absorb this source, at least one of the sources in the Five Elements Pearl could be directly perfected. Perhaps Xiao Yi had some kind of rare treasure hidden in his body, or perhaps his own source was different from ordinary people.

Although his heart was pounding, Wu Fan dared not act rashly. He pretended to be nonchalant, deliberately keeping his distance from Xiao Yi, and secretly memorized the man.

What made everyone even more envious was that Niu Dazhuang's nine-year-old eldest son, Bai Ben, had been found to have a low-grade spiritual root during a spiritual root test five days ago, with a spiritual essence of eighteen strands, just two strands short of reaching the middle-grade level.

The Bai family took this very seriously and bestowed upon him many rewards. Taking advantage of this joyous occasion, Niu Dazhuang also successfully broke through to the fifth level of Qi Refining a few days ago and specially held a banquet to celebrate.

When Niu Dazhuang personally came to invite him, Wu Fan was astonished upon hearing this news, unsure of what to say.

Let alone those cultivators who married into the Bai family at the same time, anyone would probably feel resentful and unbalanced.

After all, since they were both marrying into the family, Niu Dazhuang not only gained all the advantages, but even though they had mixed feelings, they still had to suppress their displeasure and send gifts and congratulations to Niu Dazhuang with smiles on their faces.