Immortality begins with inheriting the myriad arts of cultivation.

Return to the riverside cave.

He summoned Meng Wanjun and questioned her carefully.

Li Ping found that although he had experienced a lot and many ups and downs during the six months he was away, Lingxiao City was very peaceful and no different from usual.

Cai Bai Xuan was well-managed. There were three tasks to be entrusted to refine third-order pills. However, Li Ping was not in the city, so Meng Wanjun arranged for the people to come and refine the pills after Li Ping arrived.

There were also four secondhand items to be acquired, and Meng Wanjun dared not make decisions on her own; she needed Li Ping's confirmation.

As for the matter he was most concerned about—the acquisition of the spiritual object 'Supreme Yang Wood'—there was no news at all.

After listening, Li Ping nodded and proceeded to handle the backlog of issues one by one.

He first ordered Meng Wanjun to invite those who wanted to sell their secondhand items to Caibaixuan, where he would examine each of their items.

As for refining third-tier pills, it takes quite a bit of time, so he needs to wait until he has finished inspecting the secondhand items before he can process them.

With a fourth-tier spirit brewer's magical brewing cauldron in front of him, Li Ping originally had high expectations for these four second-hand items, but after inspecting them, he was greatly disappointed.

Of the four secondhand items, three were ordinary, worn-out magical artifacts. Li Ping bought them with spirit stones and then left them in Caibaixuan without paying them any more attention.

The remaining item, as verified by the Tree of Inheritance, was a talisman brush used by a mid-grade third-tier talisman maker, and could barely be considered a useful item.

However, Li Ping now has many combat methods and no longer relies heavily on spirit talismans as he did when he was in the Foundation Establishment stage. Therefore, he can only say that the third-tier mid-grade talisman-making inheritance is "tasteless to eat, but a pity to throw away", and he can't help but feel somewhat uninterested.

Holding a tattered golden talisman pen, he gazed at a line of text that appeared in the void.

[A talisman brush treasured by a mid-tier third-level talisman maker, 100 mid-grade spirit stones, three liters of mid-tier third-level talisman ink, and three feet of mid-tier third-level spirit wood. These can be used as nourishment to master mid-tier third-level talisman-making skills.]

Li Ping nodded slightly. Among the four common cultivation techniques of alchemy, artifact crafting, array formation, and talisman making, the one that requires relatively simple nourishment is the one that is most suitable for cultivation.

Leaving aside spirit stones, mid-grade third-tier talisman ink might be considered a rare item in the Western Wilderness, but it's not exactly uncommon in Lingxiao City, the number one city for rogue cultivators in the Great Zhou Dynasty.

High-level runes generally require the blood essence of demonic beasts to make, and there are plenty of mid-stage third-tier demonic beasts in the East Sea.

As for the third-grade mid-level spirit wood, Li Ping could buy it in the city or cultivate it himself on Gray Island, so it wasn't a big problem.

The only problem is that he no longer thinks highly of the power of a mid-grade third-tier spirit talisman.

"Forget it, let's keep it for now. It's always good to have more skills. We'll learn them when we have the chance." Li Ping shook his head slightly.

……

One month later, in the alchemy room of the riverside cave.

Li Ping cast a spell to lift the lid of the alchemy furnace, and twelve round pills, each the size of a pigeon egg, flew out, all of which floated to a graceful middle-aged female cultivator sitting cross-legged not far away.

Amidst the enticing aroma of medicinal pills filling the entire alchemy room, Li Ping smiled and said, "Madam Yue, I have not failed you."

When the middle-aged female cultivator, Madam Yue, saw the twelve pills floating before her, her eyes lit up with joy: "Thank you for your trouble, Fellow Daoist Li."

As she spoke, she waved her hand and put all the pills in front of her into a jade bottle. Then she took out a small pile of spirit stones from her storage bag to pay the remaining balance for the pill refining.

Throughout all of this, she wore a satisfied smile, clearly pleased with Li Ping's service.

After all, the other third-tier alchemists in Lingxiao City, remember our domain name: [domain name omitted], would extract one to two percent of the finished pill after each successful alchemy, which caused her immense heartache every time she refined a pill.

Unlike this fellow Daoist Li, who only needs to pay spirit stones as payment.

However, Lady Yue speculated that Fellow Daoist Li did this mainly because he had just arrived in Lingxiao City and wanted to quickly establish himself. Once his reputation spread, he would probably, like other third-tier alchemists, demand a cut of the pill-making process.

"I should visit him more often before he does that," Lady Yue thought to herself.

……

After seeing Lady Yue off, Li Ping went to the courtyard, summoned the Earth Spirit Rat, and carefully examined its condition.

The Earth Spirit Rat has been at the late stage of the second tier for several decades. During this time, Meng Wanjun has taken good care of it. Li Ping estimates that it may be able to try to break through to the third tier in twenty or thirty years.

Putting aside the Earth Spirit Rat's talent for treasure hunting, its ability to use earth-遁神通 (earth-遁神通, a magical ability to escape from the earth) has been of great help to Li Ping over the years, so Li Ping naturally wouldn't treat it unfairly.

brush!

With a flick of his wrist, a fist-sized, yellowish-brown crystal appeared in his palm.

This was the third-tier Earth Rock Python Demon Core that he had obtained through an exchange at the Donghua Mountain Exchange Meeting nearly twenty years ago.

He accepted the exchange hoping that the demon core of the same attribute could help the Earth Spirit Rat break through to the third tier, but at that time the Earth Spirit Rat was still far from its bottleneck and didn't need it yet.

Now we can give it this demon core.

"Squeak~"

The earth spirit rat's nostrils twitched rapidly, its limbs flailed wildly, it scratched its ears and cheeks, and couldn't help but growl softly. Clearly, it had already sensed the immense benefits that the demon core in Li Ping's hand would bring to it.

Li Ping chuckled softly and tossed the demon core in his hand directly to the earth spirit rat, which swallowed it whole.

"Go, refine it carefully, don't waste the demon core!"

"Squeak~"

……

After arranging for the Earth Spirit Rat to refine the demon core, Li Ping returned to his training room to cultivate in seclusion.

To his disappointment, Meng Wanjun did not bother him at all during the year.

Clearly, there's no news about Zhiyang Wood, and there's nothing particularly noteworthy about the secondhand goods market either.

At the end of the year, Li Ping went through customs as usual, and received a few ordinary second-hand items, but gained nothing.

Afterwards, he refined third-grade pills for five cultivators who came to his door. After finishing all the work, the year gradually passed before he knew it.

Sitting in the pavilion in the courtyard, Li Ping pondered the content of his conversation with the five cultivators of the same level.

During their casual conversations while refining pills, these cultivators, eager to befriend him, shared almost everything they knew, from which he gained a great deal of useful information.

The first piece of news that caught his attention the most was...

The Four Fiends of the East Sea, who had wreaked havoc in the waters near the East Sea for nearly a century, have been brought to justice. The ones who killed them and went to the Demon Slayer Division to collect the reward money were two female cultivators at the Core Formation stage.

These two female cultivators at the Core Formation stage were respectfully called the "Twin Beauties of the East Sea" by the cultivators of the East Sea, and their fame spread far and wide.

Li Ping knew that this must be referring to Wei Yiling and Feng Xishuang.

However, what he hated most in his life was being deceived, and he had already severed ties with Wei Yiling. So, after being surprised by the news about the two of them, he put it out of his mind.

Besides this matter, there was another thing that caught his attention.

A senior elder of the Nascent Soul sect, the Heavenly Thunder Sect, passed away not long ago.

Moreover, this Supreme Elder is also a highly skilled fourth-level alchemist.