Refining the Mountains and Rivers

Shua –

Winds swirled in the clouds above. Light scattered to reveal Qin Yu’s form. He was wreathed in magic power as he stood high in the air. He looked down on Immortal Eclipse Valley with happiness. Here, he had made great harvests.

His cultivation had reached the fifth level of Golden Core and he had even more storage bags. Just the pills he obtained from the Pill Disposal Department were an unimaginable wealth.

He had his cheap senior-apprentice brother Pill Crucible, and had obtained the friendship of Daoist Wang and Jiang Li. Not just that, but he even had a deep graciousness owed to him from Zeng Zhongxiu. Although he might not be able to make use of things now, they could be highly useful to him in the future. Besides that, there was also the Radiant Red Wood and the Soul Mushroom. These were similarly harvests that were hard to imagine!

As he thought of this…

He turned his palm and several Greatsun Mulberry leaves appeared. Qin Yu formed a mudra with his hands and its aura dispersed far out into the distance.

Suddenly, the sound of buzzing filled the air. A mass of dark shadows rapidly flew up from the ground; these were the Purpleback Bluewing Ants. The one leading them was the ant king which had been subdued by Qin Yu. At this moment, it was staring tightly at the Greatsun Mulberry leaves, trembling with excitement. These ants had quietly shifted out from Immortal Eclipse Valley and waited outside for their master to appear.

Qin Yu smiled and fed it the Greatsun Mulberry leaves. The ant king ate the leaves in great bites. Afterwards, it felt the will of its master, and with a loud hum it flew into Qin Yu’s sleeves. Within the sleeve of his robe was an imperial spirit bag. It was similar to a storage bag and could provide space for spirit insects to dwell. This item was naturally extremely precious, but luckily for Qin Yu, he had his cheap senior-apprentice brother. After Qin Yu pleaded a little, Pill Crucible passed it to him, although it wasn’t without a bit of pain.

Only around a fifth of the Purpleback Bluewing Ants in Immortal Eclipse Valley had been taken away by Qin Yu. With the ant king as well as a mature Greatsun Mulberry, he could definitely produce more at a rapid rate, without needing to ruin the bottom line of his cheap senior-apprentice brother. Perhaps before long, he would be able to become a powerful and prestigious imperial spirit cultivator. With a wave of his hand he would be able to send out tens of thousands of Purpleback Bluewing Ants and be unrivalled below the Nascent Soul realm!

With a deep breath, Qin Yu turned and flew away. At this time, he suddenly recalled how Pill Crucible had said he was a person with inborn good fortune. Just the title alone made it seem extraordinary. To exist beyond yin, yang, and the five elements…could this be because of him, or was it because of the little blue lamp?

The highest likelihood was because of the latter.

Before he obtained the little blue lamp, Qin Yu had only been the most ordinary of low level cultivators. This treasure had changed his destiny, allowing him to reach his current state. Regarding this, Qin Yu had always clearly and soberly realized the truth of the situation, so he considered the little blue lamp his greatest secret of all. But, what was the little blue lamp? It was something that could even reverse a cultivator’s destiny!

Qin Yu paused for a moment and then suppressed these thoughts. So what if it was because of the little blue lamp? All he needed to know what that this unsurpassed treasure was his; that was enough!

Whoosh –

Qin Yu vanished from sight.

….

Severed Spirit Mountain.

This was a name that Qin Yu had come up with. The reason was simple: this mountain range had extremely sparse spiritual strength, so little that it barely existed. But as he returned today and entered the area of the mountain range, a strange expression crossed his face. Although the heaven and earth spiritual fluctuations here were thin, it was actually quite pure.

What was going on here?

Qin Yu pondered over this for a long time but couldn’t come up with a reason. In the end, he reasoned that this was a cycle of the world’s energy, as a tide goes in and out, and this might be why the faint spiritual strength was here. He had originally chosen this area as his dwelling in order to avoid the flames of war between the orthodox and demonic paths disturbing him. But in these past days, the war had calmed down briefly, so it might be a good thing that the spiritual strength here had begun to restore itself. At the very least it would be beneficial to the spiritual plants growing in the medicine garden.

He didn’t think about these things any longer. Qin Yu hurried along, and the mountain valley soon appeared in his vision. Looking over the area, he smiled as he saw the revolution of the array formation was intact. He stepped down and plummeted into the fog. As he fell to the ground, he looked at the well-growing spirit plants all around him and his smile widened.

As he thought, being in his own domain was the most comfortable and carefree! Perhaps it was finally time for him to truly establish his domain here and make it into an abode that was his alone.

The bamboo dragonfly had long since exhausted itself of energy and landed in front of the wooden house. Qin Yu poured magic power into it and sent it flying deep into the medicine garden. The room was clean and well-kept, but, something was strange. Some three toed footprints seemed to have been purposefully left on the floor. After a moment, Qin Yu laughed as he thought of the chicken overlord. That fellow never missed an opportunity to flatter him, and it naturally needed him to know of its hard work. This sort of standard wasn’t something that everyone was born with.

Qin Yu hadn’t yet met the chicken overlord, so he assumed that the little fellow had either run away looking for food or it had found a comfortable place to rest for a while and wasn’t willing to leave yet. With Qin Yu’s pills to eat, that fellow definitely developed a spiritual wisdom of its own. And, in this place that was barren of spiritual energy, Qin Yu couldn’t imagine that it would encounter any dangers.

Now, there were still many matters he had to attend to!

For instance, the Radiant Red Wood, the Soul Mushroom, and the Purpleback Bluewing Ants.

The originally large room now seemed a bit tight. Luckily, for a cultivator that was successful in his cultivation, building houses was extremely simple. Half a day later, several wooden houses were built on the flat land, and many of the reserved areas in the valley had been cleared up for open stretches of land.

One house served as the new lair for the Purpleback Bluewing Ants.

One house served as a new place to cultivate spirit plants.

One house served as his new residence.

The open land was prepared for the Radiant Red Wood. The growing root in his storage bag had bathed beneath the light of the little blue lamp for a long time, and it had saved up so much energy that it seemed as if it would explode. Qin Yu truly was worried that if he didn’t plant it soon, there would be a day when he would wake up and it would turn to dust.

With a flick of his sleeve, magic power dug up the dirt, forming a round 10 foot deep hole. Qin Yu carefully took out the growing root from his storage bag. As if feeling the aura of soil around it, the growing root swayed from side to side, incomparably excited.

He opened the jade box and placed the growing root into the hole. As soon as the root came into contact with the soil, tiny roots rapidly formed on its surface and drilled deep into the earth. The growing root rapidly grew in size. In several breaths of time it was already ten times larger and it was still growing.

After some time, without Qin Yu needing to do anything, the entire hole was filled up by the Radiant Red Wood’s growing root. Several moments later, young and fiery red leaves emerged. An hour later, the tree was nearly the height of a person and seemed to burn with shimmering flames.

The thin heaven and earth spiritual strength seemed to be summoned by it. It gathered in from all directions and the amount of spiritual strength within the valley rose at an astonishing pace.

Qin Yu praised the sight in his heart. This was truly worthy of being a spiritual plant from ancient times. The Radiant Red Wood’s method of accumulating spiritual strength was something that other spiritual plants couldn’t compare with. Right now it was only a seedling, but once it entered its mature stage, it could be just like its parent in Immortal Eclipse Valley and form a domain of its own. Only then would this method of converging the power of the heavens and earth reveal its terrifying power.

At that time, this mountain valley would become a cultivating paradise!

He carefully inspected it, making sure that the Radiant Red Wood was growing well. He found that the massive amount of energy the growing root had saved up hadn’t completely dispersed. With the little blue lamp helping it in the future, its speed of growth would definitely be extraordinary.

Qin Yu thought for a moment and then took out all the array discs in his storage bag and laid them down. He had no intentions of allowing anyone to discover the existence of the Radiant Red Wood. This wasn’t Immortal Eclipse Valley and he didn’t have the strength of his cheap senior-apprentice brother standing behind him. If news of the Radiant Red Wood’s existence were to spread out, then this entire land would be decimated.

The spiritual plants in the cultivation room, the Soul Mushroom, Greatsun Mulberry, Skythunder Bamboo, all of those treasures were here. Qin Yu could guarantee that these plants bathed in the light of the little blue lamp, but he also felt helpless at the foot-wide radius of the sea blue light. The coverage area was just too small. Even if it rose to two feet, that still wouldn’t be enough…and when he saw it swallow the tribulation thunder from before, he hadn’t noticed any change.

In the future, would he need to summon down more tribulation thunder to supplement its diet? As he thought about how the little blue lamp had remained indifferent when he broke into the Golden Core realm, could it be that the quality of that tribulation was too low, so it disdained doing anything? But if he really tried to stir up pill tribulation from something like a top grade Heaven Mending Pill and he didn’t have Pill Crucible helping him to suppress the pressure, that would definitely stir up a massive amount of trouble.

No. He would have to consider this matter later.

As for why he shifted the spiritual plants outside and didn’t leave them inside his storage bag to grow, in the end, the reason behind this was the revolution and exchange of world energy. The storage bag wasn’t a true world. Although the little blue lamp could help spiritual plants grow and provide them with an incomparably potent amount of energy, they eventually needed to absorb the aura of the world.

This was something that Qin Yu had realized in Immortal Eclipse Valley as he studied alchemy.

While spirit plants were silent and all he needed to do was simply settle them in, the Purpleback Bluewing Ants actually caused Qin Yu to wrack his mind for ideas. They simply weren’t willing to stay in the wooden house. They anxiously flew about, seeming as if they would rush into the spiritual plant-cultivating building at any moment.

The enticement of the Greatsun Mulberry was an instinct that originated in their bloodline, and this was something even the ant king couldn’t avoid. The pitiful Radiant Red Wood had been planted in the valley and was now all alone without even a single Purpleback Bluewing Ant willing to look at it anymore. If the Radiant Red Wood had a spirit and saw this sight, then perhaps it might have cried until its eyes turned red.

Qin Yu had a sudden inspiration. He connected the spiritual plant cultivation building together with the ant raising room. As the aura of the Greatsun Mulberry flowed through, the Purpleback Bluewing Ants immediately calmed down. Through communicating with the ant king, Qin Yu made a new discovery. Originally, the Purpleback Bluewing Ants only needed to eat Greatsun Mulberry leaves when they were on the verge of a breakthrough. On ordinary days, absorbing the aura of the Greatsun Mulberry was all they needed to grow.

This loosened Qin Yu’s heart. Otherwise, this really would have developed into a headache. He would have had to find some way to provide enough food for the rapidly growing Purpleback Bluewing Ant population.

Cling –

Qin Yu pushed open the door. He stretched his waist and breathed in the abundant spiritual strength in the air. A light smile covered his face. Suddenly, the mist on the edges of the valley began to tumble. One of the newly laid down array discs displayed its function of imprisonment. A familiar noise sounded out from the mist, panicked and surprised, without any of its usual arrogance.

Quack!

Quack!

Quack!

Qin Yu shook his head. He was beginning to suspect just what sort of species this fellow was. As a wild chicken, how could it produce sounds that would cause others to think it was something else? With a flick of his sleeves, the strength of the array disc dispersed. A wind blew over, rolling in a large mass of chicken feathers.

The chicken overlord was still shaking. It plopped onto the ground, its butt aimed high into the skies and its wings brought together. It swung back and forth, as if begging for mercy.

These movements seemed quite familiar. For some reason, it seemed as if it had trained itself.

Qin Yu didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. After a long period of not seeing each other, this fellow’s acting ability had risen considerably. He suppressed a smile. “And where did you learn this?”

The chicken overlord raised its head. As it saw Qin Yu, its eyes coordinated with its face to instantly reveal surprise, happiness, joy, injustice, sorrow, excitement, dispiritedness…it was hard to imagine that a chicken could show such a rich range of emotions.

Of course, the richest expression was a prideful aura, as if saying, ‘this father’s backer has returned, let’s see who dares to continue bullying me!’

It crawled up off the ground, its wings spinning around and its eyes filling with tears. And in the next moment, it really couldn’t help but cry.

Buzz –

A pale purple shadow rushed out from nowhere and ruthlessly smashed into the chicken overlord, sending it soaring away. Its crown of feathers was immediately smeared red as tears streamed down its bloodshot eyes. The ant king fell down on Qin Yu’s shoulder. It combed its wings even as it gave a side glance at the chicken overlord. This arrogant and disdainful look nearly caused the chicken overlord to explode with rage!

Quack –

Just what are you?

Quack –

That is my place!              

Quack –

Before this father gets angry, screw off!