Chapter 336 - 325: Trade Routes Warming Up

Chapter 336: Chapter 325: Trade Routes Warming Up

Early the next morning, Li Yuan emerged from his stone house after finishing his cultivation to check on the state of the marketplace.

Since the elimination of the outer Demon Cultivator transit point, the Primordial Yang Sect had organized several subsequent sweeps.

Li Yuan hadn’t participated in the subsequent operations, contenting himself with reviewing the submitted jade slips at the outpost each day.

The casualty figures on the jade slips steadily climbed. Several teams, patched together from Loose Cultivators and family cultivators, had met with desperate counterattacks from Demon Cultivators deep within the Ghost Mist Forest.

But this price had been paid for safe passage.

The various hidden posts, both large and small, that had blocked the border between Liangzhou and Yunzhou were rooted out. The trade routes, once completely stagnant, were finally showing signs of recovery.

In the early morning, the south gate of the Mist Forest Marketplace stood wide open.

Li Yuan stood atop a two-story stone building in the expansion area, looking down at the activity on the main street.

The influx of people was faster than he had anticipated. The few remote guest rooms in the expansion area that had been vacant were fully booked within the hour by a swarm of Loose Cultivators and traveling merchants.

Li Yuan descended the stone building and walked to a large storefront under his name.

Behind the counter, two clerks were sweating profusely, busy sorting goods and stocking the shelves.

After a quick look around, Li Yuan left the shop and headed toward the Spirit Fields on the outskirts of the marketplace.

The core area of the three-thousand-mu Spirit Fields was now covered in a layer of light green vegetation.

In the centermost Spirit Field, the stalks and leaves of Spirit-Gathering Flowers swayed gently in the breeze. According to their normal growth cycle, this batch would need at least another half a month to fully mature. However, under the daily, meticulous nourishment of the Soil Cultivation Skill, the soil’s spirituality had been amplified many times over.

The edges of the petals were already showing a faint blue halo—a sign of maturity.

A dozen or so hired Low Tier Spirit Farmers were bent over, carefully cutting down each Spirit-Gathering Flower at the root with small jade scissors and arranging them neatly in wooden crates lined with moisture-proof cloth.

Li Yuan walked to the edge of the field, casually picked up a freshly cut Spirit-Gathering Flower, and gently rubbed a leaf with the pad of his finger.

The leaves were slightly thin, and the amount of Spirit Liquid in the roots and stems was a bit less than that of wild or carefully nurtured Spirit Medicines. As the first batch to be forcefully ripened, their absolute value wasn’t exceptionally high.

But this was only the beginning.

As Li Yuan watched the Spirit Farmers carry crate after crate of Spirit-Gathering Flowers to the marketplace’s storehouse, the ledgers in his mind began to turn automatically.

These Spirit-Gathering Flowers would be sent to the Pill Furnace in the stone house and refined into vials of basic pills.

The pills would be placed on the counter of that shop he had just visited, to be exchanged by passing merchants and Loose Cultivators for hefty Spirit Stones.

Once the Spirit Stones were booked, Li Yuan would immediately divide them into three portions.

One portion would pay the Spirit Farmers and fund the hiring of more people to cultivate the remaining fringe Spirit Fields.

Another would be used to purchase High Tier Spirit Medicine Seeds, expanding the cultivation area for Vascular Grass and Soul Condensing Grass.

The final portion would flow toward the underground mine, covering the costs of recruiting miners and purchasing Array Materials.

Herb output would increase, and the cost of pills would drop.

Profit margins would widen, and the return of capital would accelerate.

The returning Spirit Stones, like a flowing spring, would once again be poured into the Spirit Fields, the mine, and the Arrays. An incredibly stable, closed-loop, compounding system had officially begun to operate in this land on the fringes of a war zone, the Mist Forest Marketplace.

And it wasn’t just the Spirit Fields and Alchemy.

As Li Yuan passed the eastern side of the expansion area, he saw a line of seven or eight people had already formed outside Zhou Yuan’s Artifact Refining shop.

With the trade routes recovering, more Cultivators were passing through, and the demand for Magical Artifact repairs and replacements had skyrocketed. Relying on his solid Artifact Refining skills and an ample supply of materials, Zhou Yuan had quickly made a name for himself over the past few days.

Li Yuan averted his gaze and returned to the stone house.

Night fell.

The Array within the stone house sealed it off, blocking all noise from the outside world.

Li Yuan sat cross-legged at his table. Four of his Divine Sense Lines spread out as usual, monitoring the Spirit Vein and the outside world. His primary thread of Divine Sense, however, remained gathered in the center of his sea of consciousness, continuously circulating the Divine Soul Manipulation Skill.

Lately, he had been splitting off a part of his Divine Sense each day to control the flames of the Pill Furnace. The power of his Divine Soul was being repeatedly tempered through countless minute adjustments of the heat.

Deep within his mind, that formless power of his Divine Soul suddenly trembled.

The power of his Divine Soul, once like a mass of translucent gel, suddenly became dense and solid. The blurriness at its edges vanished completely, replaced by the sharpness and precision of a physical blade.

A panel appeared at the edge of his vision.

[Divine Soul Manipulation Skill: Master Level (0/800)]

Li Yuan opened his eyes.

He didn’t touch the Pill Furnace in the corner. Instead, his gaze fell upon the Talisman Making tools arranged on his desk.

A blank talisman paper, made from the hide of a Tier Two High Grade Demon Beast, was spread flat on the desk. Beside it was a pot of ice-blue Spiritual Ink, mixed from the essence blood of a Tier Two Water Element Demon Beast.

Li Yuan’s hands rested flat on his knees, showing no intention of lifting them.

He activated his Master Level Divine Soul Manipulation Skill.

A strand of highly condensed Divine Soul power extended from between his eyebrows, precisely coiling around the Jade Cloud Talisman Brush on its rack. The brush hovered steadily in mid-air without the slightest tremor, as if held tight in an invisible and perfectly steady iron grip.

The brush tip dipped into the inkstone, becoming fully saturated with the ice-blue Spiritual Ink.

Then, guided by his Divine Soul power, the brush descended upon the upper-right corner of the Tier Two talisman paper.

The talisman Li Yuan intended to create was a Tier Two Water Spirit Talisman.

This was a Tier Two Talisman he had attempted before, but had failed to create because the precision of his Divine Soul had been insufficient, causing the pattern to collapse at a crucial midway point.

The brush tip glided across the paper’s surface.

There was a fundamental difference between control via the Divine Soul and control via one’s hands. When drawing a talisman by hand, one had to control their breathing, muscle tremors, and the varying thickness of Spiritual Power as it flowed through the meridians and into the brush tip.

But now, Li Yuan had completely stripped away the physical interference of his body.

His Divine Soul power dragged the brush directly, evenly pressing the Spiritual Power and ink into the paper’s texture. When it reached an overlapping node that required a greater concentration of Spiritual Power, his Divine Soul merely had to pause the brush for a moment, precisely increasing the downward pressure, before smoothly gliding into the next arc.

「A quarter of an hour later.」

The talisman brush lifted sharply at the bottom-left corner of the paper, locking the very last drop of Spiritual Ink into the terminal point of the Array Pattern.

An ice-blue light flared across the entire sheet of Tier Two Demon Beast hide, then quickly receded inward. All the Spirit Patterns were perfectly integrated, forming a complete, miniature Tier Two Water Element Array.

Li Yuan withdrew his Divine Soul power, and the talisman brush fell back onto its rack with a CLACK.

He gazed at the Tier Two Water Spirit Talisman on the desk, which was now brimming with Spiritual Qi.

Now that his Divine Soul Manipulation Skill had reached the Master Level, its precision and stability had completely surpassed the demanding threshold for Tier Two Talisman Making. Not only could he create them, but by eliminating the tremors of his physical body, the quality of the finished talismans was even more consistent than those he could draw by hand.

The panel’s notification lit up right on cue.

[Tier Two Talisman Making Skill: Minor Achievement (0/1600)]

Li Yuan picked up the Water Spirit Talisman. The cool touch on his fingertips confirmed that its Spiritual Power circuit was perfectly complete.