Begin your practice with the crane-shaped stance.

Magistrate Yang is leaving office this year, so in order to avoid making his political record too bad.

He forcibly assigned the gentry and wealthy families in the city to set up more than a dozen soup kitchens, barely keeping the refugees alive and preventing too many from starving to death.

At the same time, he issued a notice to organize doctors in the city to conduct free clinics inside and outside the city.

This thankless and arduous task, which also carried the risk of contracting diseases, was something that the pampered old doctors in the city would naturally avoid as much as possible, making excuses and delays.

Xia Dong was also among those invited, and surprisingly, he not only didn't refuse but readily agreed. However, he made a small request to Magistrate Yang: he wanted to leave the city alone.

Over the past three years, Xia Dong has served as a physician in the Eagle Wolf Guard, and has occasionally been "forced" to display his skillful martial arts techniques.

Magistrate Yang knew that this Master Xia was not only a skilled physician but also had some martial arts skills, and was more than capable of protecting himself, so he did not try to dissuade him.

On the other hand, in recent years, Xia Dong has not only expanded his family's residence into a grand three-courtyard mansion, but also moved "Changchun Medical Clinic" to a bustling street-front location in the city.

The clinic's daily operations no longer require him to personally oversee the patients.

In recent years, Xia Dong has taken in many children from impoverished families as apprentices free of charge. As long as a person is clever and willing to work hard, Xia Dong will teach them everything he knows.

He broke down complex medical principles into simple and easy-to-understand terms. Apprentices could often master the prescriptions for colds, sprains, and common epidemic diseases after a few months of training, and then go back to their hometowns to become respected barefoot doctors.

These apprentices, having completed their training, would return to the city every month without fail to ask their fellow apprentices at the clinic for Xia Dong's newly compiled "lecture notes" to continue their studies.

Xia Dong's move not only made medical care more affordable for the lower-class people of Pingyang County, but also squeezed out the business of other old-fashioned clinics.

Who could blame Dr. Xia for being such a skilled doctor, and so gentle and humble? He's practically a living bodhisattva descended to earth!

In addition to teaching his apprentices, Xia Dong also helped the He family improve the process of selecting raw materials and processing medicinal herbs, which significantly raised the quality of the He family's medicinal herbs to a higher level.

In exchange, He Jiade would help him collect those ancient and extremely rare precious medicinal herbs.

Xia Dong now only treats seriously injured martial artists or wealthy individuals, and his fees are extremely high. Martial artists without money exchange their martial arts insights for medical care.

He set himself a small goal: to collect all the martial arts and cultivation techniques in the world and create his own blessed land!

The Changchun Medical Clinic is now managed by the apprentices, while Xiao Hong serves as the accountant, keeping the Xia family's business in good order.

Although the family business has grown, spirit stones are still too difficult to obtain.

Spirit stones, the hard currency of the cultivation world, rarely circulate among ordinary people and are basically only in the hands of high-level martial artists and cultivators.

These people, once they engage in a battle of magic, are almost always the ones who lose and have their tendons and bones pulled out, their souls refined and their spirits stolen. They rarely have the chance to "be seriously injured and barely have a breath left to run to find a doctor."

It's even less likely that they'll seek out renowned doctors in the county town.

Therefore, it would be extremely difficult for Xia Dong to earn spirit stones.

Taking advantage of this free clinic opportunity, Xia Dong arranged for his apprentices to distribute medicine in the city, while he himself carried his medicine box out of the city.

When the people in the city heard about it, they all praised Dr. Xia, saying that he was a truly benevolent doctor.

After leaving the city in summer and winter, he would provide free medical consultations during the day and secretly go to select newly formed and relatively weak haunted places late at night.

After a period of time, Xia Dong quietly captured all the newly formed, weak ghosts and stuffed them all into the ancient bronze bell in his mind.

Refined in an instant!

Over the past three years, Xia Dong has gained a deeper understanding of ancient bronze bells.

Although he didn't have any spirit stones, he could use his divine sense to forcibly draw upon the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to "nourish" the ancient bell, allowing it to slowly accumulate spiritual power. After about ten to fifteen days of this process, it would be equivalent to the spiritual power of a spirit stone.

However, the ancient bronze bell will also consume some of the spiritual energy over time, and the rate of this "basic consumption" is increasing.

If you have ready-made spirit stones, you can just throw them in directly. This is naturally not a problem.

Therefore, the demand for spirit stones is getting stronger and stronger during summer and winter.

After scouring the area outside the city and acquiring a sufficient number of Yin Sha Pills, Xia Dong contentedly slipped back to the secret room at the bottom of the dry well in his own courtyard.

In the past three years, he has steadily cultivated his martial arts to the peak of the Bone Forging Realm. His blood and qi are incredibly powerful. In addition, with the magic power to nourish his divine sense, the burden of his divine sense on his physical body has become extremely light.

It was precisely the time to use the Yin Sha Dan to break through the barrier.

Xia Dong sat cross-legged, and with a thought, tossed a pitch-black Yin Sha Pill into his mouth, instantly activating the Xuan Yin Refining Spirit Technique at full speed.

The pure and flawless power of the Yin spirit surged straight into the space between his brows and his consciousness.

However, Xia Dong underestimated the difficulty of breaking through to the fifth level of Qi Refining.

As Xia Dong refined one Yin Sha Pill after another, he reached the bottleneck in cultivating his divine sense to the next level.

However, the first attempt to break through the bottleneck only caused that invisible barrier to tremble slightly.

Without hesitation, he swallowed the Yin Sha Pills one after another.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Under repeated impacts, the seemingly impenetrable bottleneck of divine consciousness finally loosened.

"Now!"

The immense blood and energy of Xia Dong, who had reached the pinnacle of the Bone Forging Realm, suddenly surged and boiled.

At the same time, the "Qi" condensed from the "Changchun Xingqi Jue" deep within his heart also stirred, winding around him like a gossamer thread, assisting in the deep refining and fusion of his blood and medicinal power.

The cold, dark power of the "Mysterious Yin Scripture" within his dantian surged out like a black serpent, fiercely protecting the acupoint between his eyebrows.

Qi and blood serve as fuel, primordial Qi serves as the ignition point, and the power of the mysterious Yin serves as the cauldron.

Click.

A crisp, cracking sound exploded in Xia Dong's mind.

In that instant, Xia Dong felt as if the whole world had been put on slow motion.

His divine sense expanded instantly, passing through the secret room and reaching the courtyard.

He could see the trajectory of flying insects' wings, the wriggling of earthworms underground, and even the undulation of dust particles in the air, all vividly presented in his mind, as if he were looking at the lines on his palm.

Moreover, this divine consciousness became more solid and resilient.

The fifth level of spiritual consciousness has been successfully cultivated.

Xia Dong continued to take the remaining Yin Sha Pills.

However, he soon discovered that although he was refining the Yin Sha Pill faster, the effects of the Yin Sha Pill were also weakening.

"So that's drug resistance?" Xia Dong frowned slightly, then relaxed.

Over the past few years, he has come to realize that refining the spirit is far more difficult than refining the qi.

Moreover, he has always sought out low-level ghosts to refine Yin Sha Pills, and even the spirit of the Gathering Yin Banner he initially refined was in a very damaged state.

Later, he can try to find even more powerful ghosts and spirits.

Anyway, the Yin Sha Pill is still effective.

However, once one's divine sense breaks through to the fifth level of Qi Refining, the burden on the physical body becomes noticeable again. Refining the spirit, refining the Qi, and refining the body truly require simultaneous progress.

Over the next period of time, Xia Dong began to familiarize himself with the divine sense of the fifth level of Qi Refining, and then made full preparations to seek Zhang Ping's inheritance.