Cultivation: I can solidify equipment attributes

Li Yuan sat at the stone table in the main room, concealing his aura to suppress the outward fluctuations of spiritual power to the level of the sixth level of Qi Refining.

A sheet of golden talisman paper lay on the table, the dark gold spirit ink glowing faintly at the tip of the brush. The Azure Cloud Talisman Brush was held in his hand, its handle steady and warm.

The fourth circle of the Concentration Rune is halfway through—

Footsteps suddenly came from outside the courtyard gate.

Two people.

The one in front had steady, powerful steps, while the one behind took even faster steps, as if following.

Li Yuan stopped using the talisman brush in his hand.

The next instant, a sense of oppression rolled over from outside the courtyard wall.

It wasn't a spiritual attack, nor a magical fluctuation; it was the sheer weight of existence itself.

Spiritual pressure.

The spiritual pressure of a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

It's quite different from Alchemist He's. Alchemist He's spiritual pressure is like an anvil on a table, quiet and still, its weight only felt upon approaching. This spiritual pressure, however, is much more outward-facing; it can be sensed even before entering the room.

The courtyard gate was pushed open.

Two people walked in.

The man in front was an elderly man in his sixties. He wasn't particularly tall, but he was extremely upright, his back as straight as an iron pillar.

He had a thin face, high cheekbones, graying temples, and small but very bright eyes.

He wore a dark blue robe with no patterns on it, but the fabric was of excellent quality and shone with a subtle luster in the sunlight.

Foundation building.

Following behind was Wang Lu.

The old man walked into the courtyard without stopping. His gaze swept from the stove in the corner of the courtyard to the door frame of the main house, and finally landed on Li Yuan, who was standing next to the stone table.

When he walked to the stone table, he lightly ran his fingertip along the edge of the table, looked down at the trace of spirit ink powder on his fingertip, and flicked it away expressionlessly.

Then his gaze fell back on Li Yuan.

With both the Aura Concealment and Aura Shield skills operating at full power, the effects of the Breath Concealment Pill hadn't worn off yet. The triple shielding combined suppressed the aura of a seventh-level Qi Refining cultivator to the level of a sixth-level Qi Refining cultivator.

A moment later, the old man's gaze shifted from Li Yuan to the half-finished Spirit Refining Talisman on the table. He looked down at it for a moment, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.

The moment my gaze left her, a familiar line of words surged from the depths of my consciousness.

The conditions for permanent "Aura Concealment (Green)" have been met.

Is it permanent?

Li Yuan's expression remained unchanged.

Yes.

[Permanentization successful]

[Hidden Aura (Green)] has become a permanent entry.

[Equipment consumed]

There is one empty slot in the equipment inventory.

Li Yuan remained motionless, standing still with a normal expression.

The old man's gaze lingered on the Spirit Refining Talisman for two breaths.

"The technique is alright."

He drew a faint arc on the table with his index finger.

"When you reach the fourth circle of the Concentration Rune, most rune masters will encounter problems with the density increase. Your approach is correct; you're increasing it at a steady pace, without skipping steps."

He lifted his finger from the table and pointed it at Li Yuan.

"But when you collect the talisman in the fifth circle, a tiny bit of your spiritual power leaks out. Not much, but it's there. That tiny bit of leaked spiritual power will interfere with the settling of the talisman, reducing the quality of the finished product by about 10%."

He withdrew his hand behind his back, his tone more like stating a fact than lecturing.

"good."

After saying that, he turned around.

He took two steps, then stopped.

He turned his head and glanced at Li Yuan from above his shoulder.

"Which talisman hall are you from?"

"Qinghefang Market Talisman Hall. Class C Talisman Maker."

"Category C." The old man repeated these two words, but it was unclear what they meant.

The old man took out a thin booklet, casually placed it on the stone table, and pushed it towards Li Yuan.

"Take a look."

The booklet felt slightly heavy in my hand. The cover was wrapped in dark gray animal hide. There was no title, only the words "Essentials of Talisman Making" engraved in tiny characters in the lower right corner.

From entering to leaving, it took less than 15 minutes.

Wang Lu did not follow them and stayed in the courtyard.

He waited until the old man's footsteps had completely disappeared before turning around to look at Li Yuan.

"The family's Grand Elder, one of the family's two Foundation Establishment cultivators."

His tone was flat, as if he were introducing someone who didn't need much explanation.

Wang Lu sat down on the stone bench in the courtyard, putting his hands into his sleeves.

"The Grand Elder came here to see Senior He."

Li Yuan sat down opposite him and waited for him to speak.

"I'm asking Senior He to refine my Foundation Establishment Pill. This isn't some secret. Everyone knows Senior He's rules: he accepts anyone who comes, as long as they pay him."

Wang Lu held up one finger.

"However, he also has his own principles. For example, the Wang family and the Li family are fighting, and both sides need Foundation Establishment Pills. Senior He won't just help one side because he has a good relationship with someone. His rule is to refine one for each side. If the Wang family asks him to refine one, and the Li family asks him to refine one, he will also refine one. Even if he charges less spirit stones, he will do it for both sides."

He withdrew his finger.

"To put it bluntly, it's about balance. If we only give it to the Wang family, the Li family might hold a grudge."

Li Yuan hummed in agreement, then asked a question.

"Weren't the main ingredients for Foundation Establishment Pills that were stolen from the medicine garden said to be lost? What will the Grand Elder use to refine them?"

"It's the one that's missing from the herb garden." Wang Lu pulled his hand out of his sleeve and patted his knee twice. "The family has more than one herb garden. The most important herbs are under comprehensive protection; it's impossible to risk leaving them in an outer herb garden."

"It's the one that's missing from the herb garden." Wang Lu pulled his hand out of his sleeve and patted his knee twice. "The family has more than one herb garden. The most important herbs are under comprehensive protection; it's impossible to risk leaving them in an outer herb garden."

He glanced at Li Yuan.

"It's a pity that the herb was taken from the garden, but it wasn't the only one. The family's heritage is there; losing one is a blow, but it won't wipe out the entire family."

Li Yuan nodded and did not pursue the matter further.

There was a brief silence.

Li Yuan spoke up.

"I have a question for you. Besides external concealment, what other methods are there to conceal one's aura?"

Wang Lu's gaze lingered on Li Yuan for a moment longer. He didn't ask anything, but after thinking for a moment, he spoke.

"The circulation of spiritual energy within a cultivator's body will cause leakage, and the amount of leakage depends on the precision of the circulation. The coarser the control, the more leakage occurs. The more precise the control, the less leakage occurs."

"To give you an analogy. When you carry a bucket of water, the more the bucket shakes, the more water spills; the more steadily you hold it, the less water spills. Spiritual energy is the same. If the spiritual energy in your body circulates roughly, you can feel it from the outside. If it circulates finely and without any leakage, it looks like there is no spiritual energy at all from the outside."

He paused.

"At its peak, spiritual energy circulates within the body with almost no leakage. However, this level of control is almost impossible to achieve by simply cultivating spiritual energy manipulation; special techniques or methods are required to assist it."

"What kind of technique?"

"I don't know the specifics," Wang Lu shook his head.

Li Yuan listened to these words and nodded.

Wang Lu then took out two more rolls of animal hide from his sleeve and placed them on the stone table.

"The recipes you requested have arrived. Blood-restoring talismans and detection talismans."

He pushed the animal hide over, finished speaking, stood up, pushed open the door, and went out. The courtyard became quiet again.

Li Yuan opened the thin booklet.

The first page is straightforward, with no fluff and just the spirit runes.

The complete trajectory of the Fire Gathering Pattern is marked with precise values ​​for spiritual energy density and wrist rotation angles at every turning point, from the beginning to the end. It's not a vague description like "the force should be even and the hand should be steady," but rather precise to the point that the spiritual energy density increases by 12% from the baseline value at the third turning point, and the wrist rotates outward by seven degrees.

Li Yuan's eyebrows twitched slightly.

He had never seen such precision in annotation before. The training materials of the Talisman Hall also had spirit rune trend charts, but the precision was far inferior to this. Those materials followed a "general approach," suitable for most people, but not detailed enough. The trend charts in this booklet were viewed from a perspective magnified tenfold, with every inch of detail broken down.

Turn the page.

The second page depicts the nail polish pattern. The same precision, the same finesse.

Li Yuan continued flipping through the pages.

Page 3, Page 4, Page 5.

Each page features an in-depth analysis of a spirit rune, covering common spirit runes of the five elements: fire, earth, wood, metal, and water.

But what truly made Li Yuan stop and examine the booklet closely was not the precise numerical markings, but the annotations scattered in the corners of each page.

The short passages, some three or five lines long, some only one or two sentences, seem to be the author's thoughts that suddenly came to mind while drawing talismans late at night, and he jotted them down on a whim.

"The essence of spirit patterns is not the lines drawn, but the traces left by spiritual energy on the talisman paper. The lines are just the carrier; the direction of the spiritual energy is the core. The same fire-gathering pattern, drawn with different directions of spiritual energy, may look exactly the same, but the effect can differ by 30%."

"The talisman's core is not the end. The talisman's core is the starting point of the entire talisman. The process of drawing a talisman starts from the first stroke and moves towards the talisman's core, but the flow of spiritual energy on the talisman paper moves outward from the core. The direction of drawing is the opposite of the direction of using it. Once you understand this, you will no longer be confused about the amount of energy when you finish drawing it."

"Once you reach a certain level in talisman making, the biggest bottleneck isn't technique or the control of spiritual power, but rather the understanding of the spirit runes themselves. Every spirit rune has its own 'temperament'—some like to be controlled, while others prefer to be guided. Once you understand their temperament, the failure rate will naturally decrease."

Li Yuan flipped through the booklet from beginning to end, then flipped back from end to beginning, reading it twice.

It wasn't that he couldn't remember them; it was that some annotations required him to understand them in conjunction with his own experience in making talismans. There were a few places that he only thought made sense on his first reading, but only understood which specific step they referred to on his second reading.

The half-finished Spirit Refining Talisman was still lying on the table. When the Concentration Rune reached the middle of the fourth circle, the spiritual ink had dried and couldn't be continued.

Li Yuan picked up the discarded talisman and set it aside, then laid out a new golden talisman paper.

As the last stroke was completed, the dark golden light gathered layer by layer from the outside in, condensing into a single point of light at the center of the talisman.

The light spot didn't flash—in the past, every time I succeeded, the light spot would flash briefly before sinking into the paper. This time, it didn't flash; it sank straight down.

Then open the animal hide from which the blood-replenishing talisman was made.

The spiritual energy flow of the blood pattern is somewhat similar to that of the Rejuvenation Talisman, but its core has shifted from wood-based nourishment to accelerating the return of qi and blood.

Dip the brush in ink and begin writing.

The first one is ruined. The spiritual energy in the middle of the blood-red pattern is too strong.

The second one, with adjusted force, was successful. A layer of dark red luster rose on the surface of the talisman, deep and dark, carrying a warm and heavy feeling.

The probe has been changed.

The combination of the sensing and expansion patterns caused spiritual energy to radiate outwards. The first one was complete. A very faint silver sheen rose on the surface of the talisman, spreading outwards in concentric circles from the center.

He mastered the two new talismans extremely quickly. The low-grade first-tier spirit rune structure now posed little technical challenge for him.

Li Yuan folded the finished products and placed them on the corner of the table. He then took out a Spirit Refining Talisman and used it to enhance his own soul.