Cultivation: I Can Solidify Equipment Attributes

Chapter 263: Chapter 253: Exploring the Ruins Again

After entering the outer region of the Alchemy Dao area, the group from the Primordial Yang Sect didn’t just barrel their way deeper. Instead, they first split up.

Chen Yi stood at the entrance, scanned the layout, and directly pointed to a few locations.

"The pill chambers, ingredient rooms, side storage, and Side Palaces—split up and check them all. Look for Registers, jade slips, and anything that isn’t damaged first. Magical Artifacts and pills can wait."

"Don’t touch any of the furnace platforms or floor tiles recklessly. Check for Restrictions first."

Everyone acknowledged his orders and quickly dispersed.

Li Yuan and two other Foundation Establishment Cultivators were assigned to a medicinal records area on the east side. The place wasn’t large, just three stone chambers side by side. The medicine racks outside were long empty, but inside, there were still many wooden boxes and bookshelves, though most were covered in a thick layer of dust.

Li Yuan first swept the area with his Divine Sense, confirming there were no obvious lingering Restrictions, before reaching out to push open the innermost stone door.

The door hinges were dry and let out a soft creak.

The medicinal scent in the stone chamber had long since faded, leaving only a musty smell of old wood and paper. Three rows of bookshelves stood against the walls, with a long table in the middle. On the table lay several yellowed old tomes.

The Foundation Establishment Cultivator next to him had just reached out to touch one when the corner of a page crumbled into ash.

"It’s badly decayed," the man said with a frown. "Why didn’t they use jade slips?"

"Without a supply of Spiritual Power, jade slips decay even faster, unless they’re high-grade. Besides, these probably aren’t worth much anyway," another Cultivator said.

An hour later, over a dozen old tomes were piled on the long table.

When Li Yuan picked up the thinnest volume from the bottom of the pile, he paused.

The cover didn’t bear the name of a pill. It only had two words.

Core Formation.

He opened it to the first page. The first few pages weren’t about a specific Skill, but rather a very orderly record, clearly written by an Alchemy Dao Cultivator using the standard itemized format customary within the Sect.

Li Yuan’s gaze swept downward.

There was no esoteric jargon inside, only a list of what needed to be solidified before Core Formation. One’s Spiritual Power foundation had to be stable, one’s physical body could not be too weak, and one’s Divine Soul could not be ephemeral. If the three were imbalanced, even if one managed to form a core, it would likely be flawed.

The following pages were dedicated to several common problems.

Some had sufficient Spiritual Power, but their physical bodies were too weak and couldn’t withstand the backlash of Spiritual Power during Core Formation, resulting in a flawed core. Others had unstable Divine Souls and would lose their focus at the critical moment of Solidifying the Pill, wasting all their previous efforts. Further on, it mentioned that the truly superior Alchemy Dao sought not singular strength in one area, but the simultaneous advancement and mutual support of all three.

Li Yuan’s page-turning slowed.

This volume wasn’t a Cultivation Technique or some secret manual. It was more like a basic preparatory record for the junior members of a Sect. But what was written inside perfectly matched the path he was currently on.

Spiritual Power, physical body, Divine Soul.

His Three-in-One Unity technique had forcibly twisted these three elements together, while this old tome explained that one should strive to balance and stabilize these three things before attempting Core Formation in the first place.

Li Yuan didn’t linger on it. He set the volume aside and continued flipping through two more books. After confirming there was no other crucial information, he placed the entire stack into a temporary storage pouch, preparing to hand it all over to Chen Yi later.

Seeing him set one book aside, the Cultivator next to him asked, "Is it useful?"

"It seems to be a preparatory record for Core Formation," Li Yuan said. "I’ll turn it in first and let Fellow Daoist Chen take a look."

The other man nodded and didn’t press the matter.

After they finished searching the three medicinal records rooms, the group went out with their findings and ran into another team returning from a nearby side chamber.

They had found some things as well, but it was mostly incomplete pill formulas and a few small booklets recording the properties of medicinal herbs. Their value was hard to say, but it was better than coming back completely empty-handed.

Chen Yi quickly reassigned the teams.

"Consolidate the Registers from the east side first, then search the side storage in the west again. Don’t touch the Pill Furnaces or medicine racks for now."

This time, Li Yuan headed to the side storage.

The so-called side storage was actually just a series of utility rooms on the outer edge of the Alchemy Dao area. It was divided into several chambers; some stored jade bottles, some held tools, and two appeared to be specifically for storing jade slips and records of Magic.

The first room was filled with shattered bottles and broken racks, with nothing worth seeing.

The second room was much tidier, though the racks were mostly empty. Li Yuan swept his Divine Sense across it and was about to turn away when a gray jade slip, toppled over next to a wooden box in the corner, suddenly caught his eye.

The surface of the jade slip showed no Spiritual Light. It looked like it had been sitting there for a long time, and its edges were coated in a fine layer of dust.

’But I can sense an entry.’

Li Yuan’s expression remained unchanged as he flipped the jade slip over to look at it.

[Equippable Item Detected: Unnamed Body Refining Technique (Complete)]

[Equipment Entry Preview: Bone-Membrane Co-cultivation (Green)]

[Effect: Increases physical body strength by 10%, up to a maximum of 30%. The more Magics you have cultivated, the greater the increase.]

[Permanence Condition Preview: Cultivate three Body Refining-related Magics (0/3)]

[Current Equipment Slots are full (5/5). Replace a currently equipped item?]

’A green entry.’

The exterior was indeed undamaged, and its Spiritual Power structure was still intact. However, the inside seemed to be covered by a layer of extremely chaotic, miscellaneous patterns. The moment he probed it with his Divine Sense, he was met with a jumbled mess, making it impossible to read the contents.

He didn’t try to force it himself. He took the jade slip directly to Chen Yi.

Chen Yi was standing outside a pill chamber, watching several Array Masters dismantle a Restriction on a cabinet door. When he saw Li Yuan approach, he took the jade slip, probed it with his Divine Sense, and frowned a moment later.

"The jade slip itself isn’t damaged."

"The contents are scrambled?" Li Yuan asked.

"The recorded sequence inside has been disrupted, as if something stirred it up."

Chen Yi turned the jade slip over, tried sending a wisp of Spiritual Power into it, but ultimately shook his head.

"It can’t be read normally."

After saying this, he handed the jade slip directly back to Li Yuan.

"Hold onto it for now. Since it’s not broken, we can see if there’s another way to deal with it later."

Li Yuan took it and put it away without further questions.

They continued to search deeper into the side storage, finding a few more Alchemy Dao record slips and two old registers. They still hadn’t found any truly valuable Magical Artifacts or finished pills.

As evening approached, the small teams regrouped in the outer hall of the Alchemy Dao area.

Everything was piled together. The haul was much better than last time; at least it was no longer just picking up scraps. There were some Registers, old jade slips, and medicinal ingredient ledgers. Whether they could actually find anything useful among them would have to wait until they could sort through it all later.

Afterward, the group continued to explore deeper into the Alchemy Dao area.

The path ahead had been cleared for a stretch, but it grew progressively harder to traverse.

It wasn’t that the path was blocked, but that the surviving Restrictions were clearly on another level. The grayish-white Spirit Patterns were laid out more densely, and many places were embedded with dark, later-added patterns. It looked like a mix of the old Sect’s Restrictions and subsequent modifications, and a moment of carelessness could trigger two layers of mechanisms.

Spirit Pattern Analysis was still in effect, allowing Li Yuan to discern the structures more easily than the others, but the deeper he went, the more troublesome he felt it was becoming.

The Restrictions on this level were no longer simply Tier One Top Grade.

Some sections of the Spirit Patterns were so complex that they were beyond the ability of Foundation Establishment Cultivators like them to slowly dismantle. This was especially true for the archway at the very end, where the Restrictions weren’t layered one on top of another. Instead, several main patterns were interlocked, almost as if they had locked the entire area into a single, unified whole.

Chen Yi and several Array Masters stood before the door for a full thirty minutes before finally giving up.

Li Yuan was also looking at the door.

The Spiritual Power behind the door was very heavy, as if a much larger area was being suppressed. If they tried to break it by force, they probably wouldn’t open the door but instead cause the entire web of Restrictions inside to collapse.

Then they could truly forget about getting anything.

Someone next to them whispered, "The entrance to the deeper levels?"

"Most likely," Chen Yi nodded. "But we can’t get in right now."

As soon as he said this, everyone understood the situation.

For now, this was as far as they could go.

They could search the outer Alchemy Dao area, but the truly deeper regions within were beyond what their team could handle. They would have to wait for someone stronger to arrive, or for a higher-level Array Master to take charge, before they could possibly push forward.

Chen Yi quickly made a decision.

"We’re pulling out for today. We’ve already got what we can from the outer area, so there’s no point wasting time here."

"Take everything we found back to the Sect for sorting. Report the deep entrance and the Restriction patterns as well."

No one objected.

On the way back, the team moved faster than they had on their way in.

Back in the market city, Li Yuan mulled it over for a moment, unequipped an item he wouldn’t need in the short term, and after the conditions were met, swapped in the gray jade slip. The panel vibrated slightly. The moment the jade slip was successfully equipped, an incomplete yet exceptionally clear stream of information flooded into his mind.

It wasn’t a normal reading process. It was more like the remnant of a Skill that had been forcibly sorted by the entry and stuffed into his head.

The contents of the Magic quickly took shape.

It wasn’t a Cultivation Technique, but a Tier Two Body Refining Magic that focused on refining the bones and skin membranes. When activated, it used Spiritual Power to repeatedly wash over the outer layer of the bones and the texture of the skin membranes. It wasn’t meant for a single, dramatic improvement, but for gradual strengthening through accumulated effort over time.

What was even more special was that this Magic was connected to the cultivation of other Magics. The more Magics one mastered, the stronger the mutual influence between them, and the faster this Body Refining Magic would advance.

But this Body Refining Technique had no name.

Li Yuan didn’t rush to continue cultivating. He just sat quietly in his stone house for a while.

’The outer layer of the ruins, the old tome, the entrance to the deeper levels, and this scrambled but still preserved Body Refining Magic... what I gained today is far more than it seems on the surface.’

Outside the stone house, all was quiet. Most of the lights in the market city had already been extinguished.

Li Yuan closed his eyes and began to regulate his breathing.

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