The Eternal Saint of Alchemy

Old Jiao stared at him for a few seconds, a hint of surprise appearing in his cloudy eyes. "Transcendent Realm... I've studied the Ancient Fire Dao for most of my life, and I've only ever seen it in ancient books. The choice made by the Grandmaster of the Void back then was correct; Young Master Xiao has been able to reach where he is today."

Standing behind Jiao Lao, Fei Song's face turned pale and then red, and he hesitated to speak.

Elder Jiao turned to look at him and said calmly, "Go back. Now that Young Master Xiao has paved the way, the Purple Crystal Alliance has nothing left to fight over."

Fei Song's expression shifted, but in the end he said nothing. He simply lowered his head and beckoned to his men behind him.

The Purple Crystal Alliance team, led by Elder Jiao, brushed past Xiao Fan and his group.

Fei Fei followed at the very back, and when he brushed past Xiao Fan, he deliberately slowed down.

He glanced at Xiao Fan furtively, his eyes no longer showing the previous contempt, but instead filled with hesitation.

Xiao Fan and Fei Fei exchanged a glance, and the latter immediately lowered his head, quickened his pace, and walked towards the group.

Ning Yao watched Fei Fei's retreating figure and sneered, "I bet he'll avoid you like the plague from now on."

The group continued their journey towards the Aurora Plain.

The pale golden sunlight shone on the white tundra, and the concentration of spiritual energy in the air had increased even more than before the seclusion. The Transcendent Spirit Core adapted to the new environment and only took half an hour to adjust its state to its best.

Upon arriving in the northeast direction of the Aurora Plains, Xiao Fan followed the spiritual energy nodes sensed by his spiritual power and appeared on a white tundra, which was no different from any other place.

He bent down and placed his palm on the ice. The perception of his Transcendent Spirit Core penetrated through the thick ice layer and probed downwards, clearly touching a hollow structure about two zhang deep.

"There's something down there." He stood up, took out his short axe, and channeled his spiritual power into the blade, drawing a circle on the ice.

The short axe, enhanced by the spiritual power of the Transcendent Realm, was much sharper than before. It carved a three-foot-wide circular opening in the ice, revealing the entrance to the stone passage.

At the top of the passage, there is a recess resembling a white pagoda. When he puts the talisman into the recess, the passage automatically expands, forming a staircase leading underground.

The group walked down the steps and arrived at a stone hall that was slightly smaller than the Wan Yao Hall, but still about the same size.

On the high platform in the center of the stone hall, there was a jade slip that was half open, and inside the jade slip was a scroll made of black jade.

The surface of the bamboo slips is covered with fine and smooth characters, much smoother than the characters on metal books, clearly left by the Grand Master of Alchemy in his later years.

Xiao Fan took the jade slip and began to read it carefully.

This book describes a brand-new concept of combining magical artifacts in combat. It connects several magical artifacts together with a specific spiritual energy resonance frequency to form a complete battle formation, allowing the user to control multiple magical artifacts simultaneously, enabling them to attack while reducing the consumption of spiritual energy.

At the end of the jade slip, several different combinations of spiritual artifacts were also included. One of them corresponded perfectly to the short axe and the heart-protecting mirror in his hand. Only one more ranged spiritual artifact needed to be crafted to form a three-person combined attack formation.

"This book is just as valuable as that piece of metal paper." He carefully put the jade slip into his spatial artifact, checked the stone hall again to make sure there was nothing missing, and then led everyone back to the ice surface.

After returning to the White Tower in the Gray Domain, he spent two more days studying the basic knowledge about the array formation on the jade slip before starting to prepare the materials for the third spiritual artifact.

Just as the preparations were halfway through, new news came from the Aurora Plains. A small team from further north of the Aurora Plains contacted them, saying that they had found the core of an ancient formation in the far north, but the outer perimeter of the formation required two keys to open, so they wanted to ask Xiao Fan for help.

Xiao Fan, Cheng Xiushi, and Ning Yao followed the envoy northward, passing through the Aurora Plain and two identical teleportation gates, arriving at a vast silver plain.

The spiritual energy here is many times denser than that of the Aurora Plains. Starlight floats in the air, and when he tries to touch it, it automatically avoids his fingers.

At the core of this ancient magic circle is a raised iceberg, surrounded by twelve silver crystal pillars, each inscribed with runes.

The leader was a middle-aged monk with an elegant demeanor, dressed in a white robe.

The two sides exchanged their findings in front of the ice mound and reached an agreement that the spiritual materials obtained after activating the keys by inserting them into the corresponding slots would be divided equally.

Just as Xiao Fan inserted the talisman into one of the grooves, another cultivator also inserted the same round magic artifact into the groove.

As the two keys were in place simultaneously, twelve silver crystal pillars lit up one after another from top to bottom, and the ground at the center of the magic circle slowly sank, revealing an underground space enveloped in silver spiritual light.

A crystal-clear silver crystal, an ice flower radiating a seven-colored halo, a jade sword the size of a palm, an amber bead, a bead the size of a thumb, and inside which is a golden nebula.

As agreed, each of the four people took two items.

Xiao Fan chose the amber bead and the miniature jade sword, which Cheng Xiushi helped him keep. The silver crystal and the ice flower were given by Ning Yao to the two people in the team who were most suitable for them.

After the distribution was completed, the middle-aged cultivator solemnly cupped his hands to Xiao Fan and left him a token engraved with his contact information, indicating that they could inform each other of any discoveries made in the future.

The two returned the way they came, and Xiao Fan took the newly acquired materials back to the White Tower to begin his third weapon forging.

He chose a miniature jade sword with an amber bead inlaid at the end of the hilt to regulate spiritual energy.

With the experience gained from the first two spiritual weapons, the forging process went much more smoothly this time. Three days later, the third spiritual weapon was already taking shape—a silver-white longsword with a faint amber light shimmering on its blade. It was incredibly light, and its spiritual energy transmission efficiency was much higher than expected.

Together with the previously crafted short axe and heart-protecting mirror, the three spiritual artifacts, in conjunction with the jade slip, formed a stable cycle.

Just a few days after he forged his third magical weapon, Scarface from Westwind Fortress sent him a letter.

The letter was much more polite than the last one, mainly inviting Xiao Fan to Westwind Fortress to discuss the mining rights of a new area discovered deep in the Aurora Plains.

Xiao Fan and Master Cheng agreed on a time and went together to a temporary camp of Westwind Fortress outside the Aurora Plains.

The camp was much larger than when we last met, with more than a dozen more tents and green flags flying everywhere. In the open space in the center of the camp, several solemn-looking monks were sitting around a stone table, looking at the map on it over and over again.

This time, the scarred man wasn't as polite as before. He personally led him into the main tent and even had hot tea served.