At the supply station, in a room.
Wang Jixuan felt the energy in his dantian swirling. As he opened his eyes, he could see the fine details of the painted iron wall around him.
He pressed his hands together in a sword gesture, slowly lowering them. The rotation speed of the energy in his dantian, which he could barely call a ‘sea of energy,’ gradually decreased as he absorbed the surrounding spiritual energy.
In front of him, three crystal cores still had about ten percent of their spiritual power left. Wang Jixuan pulled them out and sealed them with a magic seal.
He had successfully broken through to the Gathering Spirit stage, the second level of cultivation.
The process of gathering his spiritual awareness was much simpler than he had expected. It took him less than three hours.
Wang Jixuan didn’t feel overly excited; he just felt that his thoughts were clearer now. This was likely because he was only at the second level of cultivation, and he had experienced this once in his past life.
His lingering soul had taken root in this body, and today it fully merged with it. From now on, there would be no more Mu Liang or Wang Zheng.
“My strength should have improved quite a bit since yesterday.”
“Ah, mainly because it was too low before.”
Wang Jixuan smiled lightly and closed his eyes to concentrate, holding his sword gesture in front of his nose, letting his spiritual awareness spread like flowing water.
This was a small spell.
In an instant, he had a clear overhead view of a thirty-meter radius around him.
Uncle Tai and Sister Wan were asleep on the second floor; middle-aged people didn’t have much entertainment.
Today, Wan Xiao Qi, who was on duty, was sitting at the control desk in dirty overalls and a shirt, playing an old arcade game on a vintage console.
Ling Tong was still outside his room.
She had fallen asleep in her chair, and her mechanical arms automatically switched to sentry mode, preventing anyone from getting within half a meter of her.
Wang Jixuan felt a bit apologetic.
He couldn’t explain his breakthrough too directly; otherwise, she might misunderstand. He would try to make it up to her later, maybe by giving her a magic tool or something.
“Let’s check the camp.”
With that, Wang Jixuan lightly waved his sword gesture and pointed it at his forehead.
The overhead view in his mind changed to a normal level view, allowing him to explore a radius of over two hundred meters around him.
There were no formations or barriers; his spiritual awareness was all-encompassing.
What a refreshing feeling!
However… uh… there were many humanoid frogs hugging each other at night… and he could hear their croaking…
Wang Daochang shook his head with a smile, then let his spiritual awareness sink underground, trying to find out why the spiritual energy concentration was slightly higher below ground than above.
He reached the limit of his spiritual awareness but didn’t discover anything extra.
He saw the corners of the mine, miners working the night shift, and soldiers patrolling with small mechanical dogs and self-service security robots.
Wang Jixuan was a bit lost in thought.
Everyone had their own things to do, all working hard to live under the threat of blade beasts; it felt quite nice.
He vaguely saw a male miner wiping sweat off his face, putting down his electric tool, while a female miner quickly handed him a thermos. They were a couple, quietly talking to each other.
“Dear, we’ll have ten years of work experience in two months, and then we can send our child to the central city.”
“Will they really let us send them?”
“The gang won’t, but the fortress will. Coming here to mine is actually an opportunity to break away from the gang’s territory. It’s tiring every day, but we do live with more dignity.”
“Yeah, the fortress is pretty good.”
“If the fortress was really good, how could the gang keep doing whatever they wanted in the lower city? That’s just the order designed by the fortress.”
“Don’t say too much, dear. What if we fail the thought test later?”
“Don’t worry; your husband is fine. Come, give me a kiss.”
“Ah, your mouth is all dirty! Let me wipe it first.”
Wang Jixuan didn’t continue listening, slowly retracting his spiritual awareness and feeling a bit enlightened.
Life in the world is full of suffering.
Eliminating demons and monsters shouldn’t just be a slogan for righteous cultivators; there are indeed many people threatened by demons and monsters in the world.
And there are evil people acting recklessly; righteous cultivators should help the weak against the strong… well, as long as they ensure they won’t die while doing so.
Wang Daochang was about to get up.
Suddenly.
Goo—
Wang Jixuan’s hair stood on end!
He turned to look toward the fortress, and his retracted spiritual awareness immediately spread out like a net toward the fortress.
His cultivation level was low, and his spiritual awareness wasn’t strong enough, but his understanding of the Dao and techniques was still there.
Soon, Wang Jixuan caught the sound of continuous ‘goo goo’ calls.
The source was… from the main body of the fortress?
Wang Daochang was genuinely puzzled.
His spiritual awareness couldn’t reach that far, so he could only carefully sense it. The ‘goo goo’ sound lasted for about ten seconds before disappearing.
There were two peculiarities about it.
First, although the sound was similar to what he heard before fighting the mutated blade beasts, it was completely different.
Second, the source of this sound… was very weak, lacking energy, as if it were on the verge of death.
‘That direction is sloping downwards; it seems to be the third level of the fortress… are those spiritual energy users up to something?’
Wang Jixuan felt a desire to investigate the fortress, but he quickly dismissed the thought.
He couldn’t let himself get carried away just because he had just broken through!
He was only a small cultivator in the Gathering Spirit stage, not a mid-level Golden Core cultivator in the cultivation world!
How could he alert Xiao Ling Tong?
He couldn’t say it directly; otherwise, he would have to explain what spiritual awareness is, what the Purple Mansion is, what Qi Gathering and Spirit Gathering are, and what Foundation Establishment is.
Got it.
Wang Jixuan raised his eyebrows and opened his door.
A red light flashed on his mechanical arm.
Wang Jixuan hurriedly called out, “Ling Tong! Officer!”
“Hmm?”
Ling Tong opened her eyes, and the sentry mode of her mechanical arms automatically turned off.
She instinctively stood up, “What’s wrong?”
“Something’s come up.”
Wang Jixuan grabbed her mechanical arm and pulled her into the room, not waiting for Ling Tong to break free from his grip. He immediately said, “I saw it again!”
“Saw what?”
“Vertical pupils!” Wang Jixuan said with a serious face, lowering his voice, “In the direction of the fortress! But it’s different from before!”
Ling Tong looked puzzled, “Are you saying a young king worm appeared in the direction of the fortress?”
“I don’t know if it is; I heard the ‘goo goo’ sound.”
“Like a pigeon cooing?”
“Yes.”
“Which direction specifically?”
“Above the fortress, not more than a hundred meters from the ground.”
Ling Tong turned and rushed back to her room, carefully taking off her ordinary fabric dress and the stockings on her legs.
—These decorative materials were quite hard to find.
Wang Jixuan quickly retracted his spiritual awareness, thinking to himself that it was rude to spy, and shouted outside, “Do you need me to accompany you?”
“No need, I’ll first mobilize the cleansing troops. Xiao Qi, call the fortress garrison.”
“Understood!”
Wan Xiao Qi was stunned for a few seconds, then hurriedly sat at the control desk, starting to press buttons frantically.
Ling Tong quickly dashed out of the supply station, and Uncle Tai and Sister Wan quickly got to work, preparing equipment for Ling Tong. Two large mechanical dogs swiftly set off a few minutes later, automatically searching for Ling Tong’s whereabouts.
Wang Jixuan watched for a while from behind the control desk, confirming that Ling Tong was going to the garrison to “mobilize troops” instead of directly confronting those spiritual energy users, and finally felt relieved.
What if they got the wrong target?
That wouldn’t be a problem.
It’s always good to check on those spiritual energy users a bit more.
Wang Daochang didn’t spend much time watching the situation here and instead walked to the corner, squatting down in front of several large boxes of “supplies” to start rummaging through them.
Dozens to hundreds of types of ores were packed into two boxes.
Wang Daochang raised his eyebrows lightly, picked up a box, and went to the outdoor workspace to begin his selection journey.
After forming his spiritual awareness, refining tools would be much easier. He could directly determine the affinity of materials with spiritual energy and whether the materials themselves were permeable.
This was also a significant area of study.
…
On the fortress side, Ling Tong led the cleansing troops into the home of the spiritual energy users.
In the supply station, after about an hour of busy work, Wang Jixuan looked at the table full of “samples,” crossing his arms and falling into deep thought.
There were many materials he was familiar with;
But unfortunately, these materials had no spiritual nature and could only be used as ordinary iron, needing to be infused with spiritual energy.
Generally speaking, the best materials for refining tools are born in places rich in spiritual energy, and many top-quality materials are born alongside spiritual veins.
Spiritual veins are one of the two main sources of spiritual energy in the cultivation world, the other being the pure energy from the heavens.
Wang Daochang summarized simply; many of the materials in front of him could actually be used. With some simple forging and engraving of restrictions, he could create some decent magic tools.
“Strange, are there no spiritual veins in this world? Or have the blade beasts occupied all the spiritual veins?”
“What’s wrong, Xiao Wang? You’ve been fiddling around here.”
Uncle Tai yawned and strolled over, lighting a cigarette and looking at the table full of ores.
“What are you doing?”
Wang Jixuan calmly replied, “I’m trying to make a knife that can cut through the outer shells of ordinary blade beasts.”
“Huh?” Uncle Tai was taken aback, “How do you do that? Use a metal knife to break the blade beast’s outer shell?”
“Pretty much.”
Wang Jixuan pointed to a small sample of a blade beast’s limb in the corner:
“Uncle Tai, look, this thing is generally hard, but once it gets the enhancement of the blade beast’s spiritual energy, doesn’t it become incredibly sharp?”
Uncle Tai looked enlightened: “You’re talking about spiritual energy weapons! Right now, the cutting-edge research is on light blades; no one is studying spiritual energy weapons anymore.”
“Eh? Has it been studied?”
“It’s been researched for decades, but with no progress.”
Uncle Tai sighed:
“The military has launched over a hundred projects in this category, but they all failed. Not to mention extracting spiritual energy from crystal cores, the release of spiritual energy comes with many unstable factors.
“The most reliable method before was actually using lasers to irradiate crystal cores to produce dissipative spiritual energy, but the energy consumed in that process is less efficient than just using high-powered laser cannons to burn the blade beasts.
“I participated in a few of those projects, and in the end, well, they all failed.”
Wang Jixuan thought carefully.
He wasn’t thinking about any technical problems. — Behind him was the civilization of cultivation, so technology wasn’t an issue.
He was thinking about the level of things.
He feared that if he revealed too many things at once, it would attract too much attention and cause unnecessary turmoil, which could affect his own cultivation.
“Uncle Tai, do you have any alloys for making military daggers?”
“I’ll find some for you.”
Uncle Tai quickly stubbed out his cigarette, placed the remaining half on the table, and ran back inside.
Before long, Uncle Tai and Wang Jixuan were squatting under the table, mumbling while holding several alloy plates.
Wang Jixuan already had a rough idea of the magic tool he wanted to create.
These alloys couldn’t be used; after being made into alloys, their ‘spiritual energy permeability’ had almost completely vanished. However, the strength of these alloys did open Wang Jixuan’s eyes.
Unfortunately, not all hard materials were suitable for making magic tools.
Wang Jixuan planned to forge two types of knives today.
One would be embedded with a crystal core for his own use; the other would reuse the spiritual energy from the air, which would be for the military.
In front of Uncle Tai, he naturally chose to make the second type.
“Do you have a furnace?”
“Yes, we have small melting furnaces and electrolysis furnaces. I’ll go get one!”
“Also get me a hammer and an anvil!”
“Huh? An anvil? You’re not planning to forge iron like ancient blacksmiths from hundreds of years ago, are you?”
Uncle Tai joked.
However…
Half an hour later…
Amid the rhythmic sound of hammering iron.
Uncle Tai watched as Wang Jixuan, with his shirt off and showing off his muscular build, started hammering away with a heavy hammer, beads of sweat on his forehead.
This scene definitely had some issues!
He, Tai Tianle, a senior mechanic with thirty-six years of service, and the recipient of the ‘Best Logistics Support Team Leader of the Year’ award, was staying up late, not watching the monitors to see if his officer needed support, but here helping a young man… forge iron?
Uncle Tai felt that one of the two people in this workshop had to be crazy!
If they could forge a cold weapon that could break through the outer shell of a blade beast, then tonight, Tai Tianle would eat whatever iron lump Xiao Wang had brought from who knows where!
(End of Chapter)