Chapter 58: Chapter 58 Return to Fang Market 1
Translator: 549690339
Once back home, Chen Mobai pondered over the whole situation.
He then searched for “Devour God Technique” online, but indeed, he found no useful information, as if it was controlled by immortal sects.
He looked up Gu Changfeng only to find out from the police department’s announcement that he was suspected of tax evasion and was under administrative detention for investigation.
This seemed to be the universal excuse used by the celestial police department whenever they arrested someone.
Unconvinced, Chen Mobai visited the Water Mansion again and entered “Devour God Technique” in the Auxiliary Cultivation application. As expected, thanks to his Rank-5 user privileges, he saw an intriguing post.
The poster was anonymous.
The title was: “On the Possibility of Refining the Forbidden Technique, Devour God.”
Chen Mobai glanced through the post. The writer had not maintained a high standard in her writing. It seemed like the readers were assumed to know the Devour God Technique as the author directly put her conjectures and solutions to refine it.
The post mentioned that the most challenging part after cultivating the Devour God Technique was controlling the suddenly surging Divine Sense, which, if exceeded the limit of the Sea of Knowledge at the Purple Mansion, would lead to mental confusion and even the possibility of exploding and dying.
Chen Mobai thought for a while, then opened the National Library software again and entered the keyword: Devour God.
!!..
Surprisingly, a Cultivation Technique did appear.
“Devour God Technique: Fragment” stated: “A secret technique from the ancient evil path. The practitioner transforms his own Divine Sense into a ‘God Seed’ and injects it into the Qi Sea of a cultivator. When the cultivator matures, the God Seed follows the Qi, refining itself and returning to the practitioner’s Sea of Knowledge, thus eventually attaining Dao.”
After reading up to this point, Chen Mobai found it very intriguing and wanted to read more. However, a prompt popped up saying: Insufficient authority, insufficient points, cannot redeem.
Even though his pseudonym, Turtle Hermit, became a Rank-3 user of the National Library after the agent’s intervention – equivalent to a Gold Core cultivator, he even had insufficient privileges?
Looking at a footnote in small fonts at the bottom of “Devour God Technique”, as Chen Mobai suspected, it was written that a Rank-4 user could use points to view the complete article.
This Foreign Technique indeed had a high threshold.
Chen Mobai had no choice but to give up.
However, it wasn’t a complete loss. He now knew that if he wanted to cultivate the “Devour God Technique”, a cultivator would indeed need a Pill Furnace to plant a God Seed. If Gu Changfeng had cultivated this forbidden technique, then Qing Nu would indeed be the only choice for a Pill Furnace.
In that case, Lan Haitian had indeed given him a kind reminder.
Thinking of the worst possible scenario, Chen Mobai frowned slightly, feeling that he needed to find a way to verify whether Qing Nu’s Sea of Knowledge had been implanted with the so-called “God Seed”.
But even if he did verify it, he would not know what to do.
Gu Changfeng was a Foundation Establishment cultivator. If he had truly made some moves on Qing Nu, what could he, a junior cultivator at the Sixth Layer of Qi Cultivation, do?
A sense of powerlessness surged in his heart. This was the first time he had felt a desperate need for power.
If in the past he cultivated merely to fulfil his parents’ expectations, and his own satisfaction derived from breaking through, now Chen Mobai had one more reason: to escape from his feelings of powerlessness in the face of Lan Haitian.
He sat straight on a cushion in the Water Mansion, took out a tube of Qi-replenishing Spirit Water that Qing Nu had prepared, stared at it for a while, and with a firm look in his eyes, uncorked the bottle and drank it all at once.
For seven consecutive days, Chen Mobai attended school, caught up with his previous coursework using his newly cultivated Divine Sense, cultivated his mind in the school’s cultivation room, chatted and confided with Qing Nu after school, and cultivated in the Water Mansion after returning home. In between, he read the books he had bought from Southstream Market.
His knowledge, Cultivation Level, and even Divine Sense were all steadily improving.
The Water Mansion…
After Chen Mobai completed his cultivation for the day, sensing the increasingly round and three-dimensional vortex of spiritual power in his Dantian Qi Sea, he nodded slightly in satisfaction.
However, when he checked the unopened Qi-replenishing Spirit Water in his bag, he found that only one bottle was left, which made him frown in distress.
During this period, Qing Nu had come out of her depression thanks to his companionship and comfort, and she had become even more hardworking than before.
She believed that her master was wronged, and that he expelled her from the sect to protect her.
So, she wanted to become stronger, in order to clear the false charges against her imprisoned master.
She took the initiative to offer help to Chen Mobai in alchemy, to earn tuition fees.
According to her ideas, she sought to enter the Great Dao Academy, improve herself, and make it easier to clear her master’s name. Chen Mobai naturally encouraged Qing Nu’s ideas, but also tactfully mentioned that failing to get into the four major Daoist academies was not a big deal, as the top ten colleges were also good.
To this, Qing Nu simply smiled.
Then they both returned to the topic of producing Qi-replenishing Spirit Water.
Before Gu Changfeng went in, he annulled Qing Nu’s master-apprentice status at the Education Department’s Inheritance Hall, so she could not inherit the things from the Evergreen Pharmacy. Things like medicine pots were fine because they were not expensive. Buying a small cold brewing machine, with a slower efficiency in producing Rank-1 elixirs, was just adequate.
But only the medicine pond and Pill Furnace were indispensable, and pricey key tools.
Usually, alchemists would find a spiritual spring for the Medicine Pond, then spend a long time nurturing it with the Water Method Alchemy, to slowly raise its grade.
The medicine pond of the Evergreen Pharmacy was fed by the Spiritual Spring from the Immortal Gate Water Bureau, and the cost of the Spiritual Spring alone required tens of thousands of Good Deed Points a year.
There was even less need to mention the Pill Furnace, many alchemists would find an Artifact Refiner to custom-make one according to their own habits.
Qing Nu had an intermediate grade Rank-1 Pill Furnace, which was a gift from Gu Changfeng when she refined her first kind of elixir. It was just enough to produce Qi-replenishing Spirit Water.
The problem now was to find a medicine pond.
Qing Nu had been exploring various pharmacies in Red Sandstone City after school these days, hoping to rent a spare one that hadn’t been used for a long time.
Chen Mobai had become accustomed to the rapid progress of cultivation after taking Qi-replenishing Spirit Water. If this type of spiritual medicine were to run out, and he had to revert back to the slow pace of refining Spirit Qi he was used to, the contrast would be too great, and he would not be able to accept it.
As he was preparing to return to the city, Chen Mobai noticed a thick pile of spirit talismans in his bag.
These were the talismans he had initially prepared to get rich in the Southstream Market. Sadly, reality was cruel, and he was a bit thin-skinned. After not making any business for a few days, he felt disheartened. And with Gu Changfeng’s incident, he had too many other things on his hands, so he didn’t bother to go anymore.
“It’s been a while, let’s go check it out tomorrow.”
With the idea of gaining experience, the next day Chen Mobai once again dressed in traditional clothes with a cloth bag hanging from his waist, heading to the Southstream Market which he hadn’t visited for almost half a month.
He didn’t see Qi Er at the entrance. Maybe he had business today.
Thinking so, Chen Mobai first strolled around the market place, found no change from before, and then walked to his own stall.
The three people who used to have stalls nearby were now missing one. Only a bearded youth and a woman in a yellow dress remained. The other one might have made enough money and rented a cave dwelling for cultivation.
Chen Mobai greeted the two stall neighbours without noticing their weird expressions, laid out his blanket elegantly, then proficiently laid out the spirit talismans one by one.
“Fellow Daoist, how much are you selling this Green Arrow Talisman for?”
The woman in the yellow dress came over and asked after he finished setting up..