Cultivation: I can solidify equipment attributes

Chapter 478: The Secret of Instruments

The retreat has ended.

Li Yuan removed the three layers of array in the cave and stored the remaining array materials in his personal space. After several days of natural recovery, the spiritual vein's main trunk had regained its spiritual light, but it was not advisable to extract large amounts of spiritual energy from it in the short term.

After exchanging ideas with the people of Mozhou for a while, he gave them some materials and elixirs.

He then stepped out of the spiritual vein, raised his right hand, and gently drew a line in the air in front of him with his index finger.

The gray crack opened silently, its edges smooth and without any unnecessary ripples.

Li Yuan stepped in sideways.

A familiar sense of emptiness descended, and gray mist swirled all around.

During the process of traversing the mezzanine, Li Yuan noticed a detail.

The spiritual power of the supreme-grade elixir did not leak out in the slightest.

The void interlayer is a truly spiritually isolated environment. Without the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, any fluctuations in spiritual power will become exceptionally noticeable due to the lack of buffering from external spiritual energy.

When he passed through the interlayer before, even though he had extremely subtle control over his spiritual energy and demonic energy, there was a slight tendency for the demonic energy and spiritual energy to seep outward. Although it did not cause any impact, Li Yuan could clearly sense that extremely weak leakage.

It's completely gone now.

The spiritual power released by the supreme-grade elixir is perfectly enveloped as if by a transparent shell: it does not leak at all when circulating in the meridians; even in a place devoid of spiritual energy, the amount of spiritual power stored in the dantian does not produce any detectable fluctuations.

Even demonic energy remains completely contained within this protective barrier.

This is the essential difference in quality between premium and mid-grade products.

After thinking for a moment, Li Yuan decided to try to return to Liangzhou through a spatial rift.

Half a day later, an exit suddenly appeared out of thin air in the mountain rocks behind the Misty Forest Market, and Li Yuan landed in the dense forest on the outskirts of the market.

"I consumed a lot of spiritual energy. If I hadn't left the void to replenish my spiritual energy, I probably wouldn't have been able to complete the transmigration."

"However, it's also related to my rapid escape."

It was afternoon when I entered the market. Scattered monks were going in and out of shops, and patrols were moving about as usual; everything seemed normal.

Upon arriving at the market management office, Chen Yi was sitting in a side hall looking through a stack of documents. When he saw Li Yuan enter, he spoke to him.

"Fellow Daoist Li, the sect has completed the initial cleanup of the Lingxu Secret Realm matter. The sect is hereby presenting this reward."

Chen Yi then took out a jade box from his storage bag and placed it on the table.

Li Yuan opened it and took a look. Inside were dozens of mid-grade spirit stones and several sets of array materials.

The amount wasn't much, but considering that he had only set up one formation before being interrupted, the reward was quite generous.

Li Yuan put away the jade box, paused for a moment, and then asked, "Does the sect have any extra refining materials? Red copper essence, spirit silver ingots, fire jade marrow, grade doesn't matter, I'll take as many as you have."

Chen Yi nodded: "If the sect has sufficient reserves, it shouldn't be a problem."

Then Chen Yi lowered his voice and said, "The news of the destruction of the Spirit Ruins Secret Realm has spread, and the impact is greater than we expected."

"There's been a new development at Dry Bone Ridge."

Chen Yi said.

"With the secret realm destroyed, the negotiations that were about to be reached naturally fell through, and the sect and the Demon Sect clashed on the spot."

Li Yuan nodded and did not ask any further questions.

"Even Foundation Establishment cultivators are discussing this now."

Chen Yi added, "Almost all the Golden Core cultivators near the Dry Bone Ridge have withdrawn, presumably because none of the parties want to escalate the conflict at this critical juncture. Those who remain there are mostly Foundation Establishment cultivators, acting as messengers for various factions."

The game was a contest between Golden Core cultivators, yet Foundation Establishment cultivators were made to run errands; all parties were controlling the intensity of the conflict.

After reporting on the events at Kugu Ridge, Chen Yi took out a letter from his pocket.

"This letter was delivered this morning; the sect leader personally sent someone to deliver it."

Li Yuan took it and opened it.

The letter was written in the handwriting of Zhou Mingyuan, the sect leader of Yuanyang Sect. It was brief: the Tianyue Sect's Nascent Soul Ceremony was scheduled for several months later, and Yuanyang Sect, as an affiliated sect of Liangzhou, had received a formal invitation. Zhou Mingyuan, on behalf of the sect, conveyed the message to Li Yuan, and enclosed a token for attending the ceremony and a list of gifts for Li Yuan to choose whether or not to attend.

The token was a palm-sized jade token, with the emblem of the Tianyue Sect engraved on the front and the mark of the Yuanyang Sect on the back.

Li Yuan carefully put away the tokens and letters.

The Nascent Soul Ceremony. The Heavenly Peak Sect's patriarch is attempting his third Nascent Soul breakthrough; discussions about it had already circulated at the Kunpeng Island auction. Held several months later, there's ample time.

After finishing his official business, Li Yuan reviewed the recent accounts of the market.

The occupancy rate of shops in the expanded Misty Forest Market continued to rise, and the newly built stall area on the outskirts also attracted many itinerant cultivators to trade. In addition, Xu Zhang's Mingyuan Chamber of Commerce continued to supply low-grade spiritual materials and pills, and the market's turnover more than doubled compared to a few months ago.

The accounts showed a significant increase in spirit stones.

Li Yuan took most of it, leaving enough for the market's daily operations. The auction had cost a lot of spirit stones, which helped to make up for some of the shortfall.

As evening fell, Li Yuan took a walk alone through the market.

Some things I'd never seen before appeared on the market shelves.

A blue spiritual herb with a strong moisture content, a transparent, fish-scale-like spiritual material, and several bottles of low-grade pills labeled as originating from Shuizhou. The quantities were small, scattered across a few stalls and shops.

The ultra-long-distance teleportation array in Tianyue Market leads to the outer islands of Kunpeng. Once the teleportation array is operating stably, materials from Shuizhou can flow into Liangzhou Market through this channel.

The profit margin of my previous trading model of buying low and selling high between the three markets of Liangzhou, Jingzhou and Shuizhou will be squeezed.

However, the impact will be limited in the short term. The consumption of spirit stones for ultra-long-distance teleportation is extremely high, and currently only small quantities of high-value materials can be circulated through this channel; the transportation cost of low-grade spirit materials far exceeds the profit. The real impact will be on the trade of high-grade materials.

Li Yuan returned to the main hall and closed the door.

The next problem needs to be solved.

Gongfa.

He currently needs to cultivate a third-tier spiritual power technique, but he doesn't have a suitable one at the moment.

Li Yuan sat down cross-legged and closed his eyes.

The supreme-grade elixir within his body slowly circulated, its spiritual energy flowing through his dantian along the path it followed during the formation of the elixir. The perfect control achieved after the permanent creation of the elixir platform allowed for precise control over every fluctuation of the spiritual energy.

Li Yuan began to simulate the scene of forming the Golden Core.

Spiritual energy surged from his dantian, simulating the characteristic frequency of the moment of condensation within his meridians. He gradually recreated the unique fluctuations of spiritual energy as it moved from dispersion to condensation, from flow to solidification.

A few breaths later, an extremely dense aura of spiritual energy emanated from his body, the frequency and intensity of which were almost identical to those of a real Core Formation process.

Li Yuan simulated it again.

This time, he deliberately mixed a small amount of unstable fluctuations into the halo to simulate the process of losing control of spiritual power and then regaining control during a breakthrough. The realism was enhanced.

It is so realistic that it can easily be mistaken for the real thing.

Li Yuan withdrew his spiritual power and transformed into a beam of light, heading straight for Tianyue Market.

Tianyue Market has grown significantly larger than it was a few months ago. More than a dozen new shops have opened near the teleportation array plaza, and the pedestrian density on the streets has increased noticeably.

Li Yuan first went to the neighborhood where books were sold.

Forging a natal magic weapon requires a third-tier weapon-refining skill, while my current weapon-refining level is only at the second tier. The gap is significant, but with the support of attributes like "Mastery of All Techniques" and "Craftsmanship," the improvement speed should be quite fast. The prerequisite is sufficient theoretical knowledge of weapon-refining.

Li Yuan spent half a day searching through various shops and collected more than a dozen books on weapon crafting.

In a large shop called Baiqizhai, Li Yuan discovered a jade slip on a bookshelf.

A green light appeared within a three-foot radius.

The shopkeeper, an elderly man in the mid-Foundation Establishment stage, glanced at him and said, "Fellow Daoist, just give me twenty mid-grade spirit stones."

Li Yuan tossed out the spirit stone and carefully put away the jade slip.

Back on the street, Li Yuan found a quiet corner and reached out to touch the jade slip.

[Equipable item detected: Comprehensive Explanation of Artifact Principles (Complete)]

[Equipment Attribute Preview: Subtle Insight into Artifacts (Green)]

[Effect: Increases sensitivity to the compatibility of materials used in crafting magical artifacts, significantly improves the accuracy of identifying the quality of spiritual materials, and allows for better fusion of materials with different attributes during artifact crafting]

[Preview of conditions for permanentization: Complete the crafting of one hundred magical artifacts, or reach the mid-grade level three in artifact crafting skill.]

After purchasing the books, Li Yuan went to the Tianyue Market, a secret chamber area specifically rented out to cultivators for closed-door cultivation breakthroughs.

Li Yuan rented a top-of-the-line breakthrough chamber, which could be used to assist in breaking through to the Golden Core stage.

After paying for thirty days, Li Yuan entered the secret room and closed the door. The internal array automatically activated, and a light blue light curtain isolated the entire secret room from the outside world.

The secret chamber was small, but the surrounding spiritual energy was extremely abundant, almost comparable to his own third-tier spiritual vein, with various formations operating continuously.

Li Yuan sat cross-legged in the secret room, took out all the weapon-refining books, and spread them on the stone platform in front of him.

The contents of more than a dozen classic texts were simultaneously scanned by divine sense, and a massive amount of knowledge about weapon crafting flooded into his sea of ​​consciousness.

Creating a personal magical artifact is an extremely large undertaking.

From material selection, proportioning, and pretreatment to smelting, forging, inscription, and quenching, every step has extremely high requirements. Third-tier weapon crafting skill is the minimum threshold, and a large amount of high-grade spiritual materials are needed.

Li Yuan compared the known embryonic state of his natal magic weapon with the records in the classics and compiled a preliminary list of the required materials.

The list is long. It's unrealistic to collect it all in a short time, but we can start by improving our weapon crafting skills.

While studying classical texts, Li Yuan also engaged in making talismans and refining elixirs.

The three tasks are performed alternately, which is highly efficient.

Every few days, he would deliberately release a spiritual energy fluctuation that simulated the formation of the core, gradually increasing the intensity.

The days passed peacefully in study and practice.