Cultivation: I Can Solidify Equipment Attributes

Chapter 297: Chapter 287: Evil Stone Transaction

The night after he returned from the Ji family, Li Yuan didn’t go to the Spirit Vein Core to cultivate. Instead, he went straight down into the ore vein.

Deep in the mine tunnel, in a natural cavity, the Cultivating Evil Array was still operating as usual. The Spirit Patterns on the Array Hubs were restrained and stable, and Evil Qi slowly pulsed along the main circuit.

Li Yuan didn’t check the Evil Stone output first. Instead, he stood at the edge of the cavity, closed his eyes, and sank his mind into the large Spirit Vein.

After the full view of the Spirit Vein unfolded in his perception, Li Yuan followed the main vein outwards and quickly locked onto a suitable branch vein.

This branch split off from the middle section of the main vein, headed south, and happened to pass through a layer of subterranean rock not far above the ore vein.

Previously, when the Spirit Vein’s Spiritual Power naturally seeped into the Evil Ore, it had traveled through the fissures in this area’s rock layer. However, its direction was scattered and the flow was minuscule, relying entirely on the weak guidance of the rock layer itself.

Li Yuan reviewed the workings of the Meridian Guiding Skill in his mind, then began to cast the skill.

Spiritual Power flowed from his fingertips, slowly seeping along the surface of the branch vein.

The Spiritual Power barely managed to cling to the surface, following the flow of Spiritual Power within the vein for a short distance.

Using this point of attachment, Li Yuan began to try and shift it.

A quarter of an hour later, the branch vein finally reacted.

The entire vein didn’t shift. Instead, a very slight bend appeared in the path of that small section. The change was almost imperceptible, but in his perception of the Spirit Vein, that sliver of a shift was clear enough.

’It’s working.’

Li Yuan stopped the Meridian Guiding Skill and first checked the branch vein’s condition. The shifted section showed no abnormalities, and the vein itself had no rejection reaction. It seemed that as long as he controlled the force properly, he could indeed bend the branch vein’s path little by little with repeated castings.

For the next few days, Li Yuan went to the vicinity of the ore vein every night to cast the skill.

The degree of shift was small each time, but its strength lay in its sustained stability. This was the requirement of the Meridian Guiding Skill: no rushing, no force, just a gradual process like grinding a stone.

Five days later, the path of the branch vein’s target section had clearly bent toward the Evil Ore. The Spirit Vein’s Spiritual Power, following the shifted path, began to seep into the subterranean rock layer above the ore vein in greater quantities.

The seepage rate was several times greater than the previous natural seepage.

Three more days passed. When Li Yuan returned to the natural cavity to check the output, the result was right before his eyes.

Four new Purple Evil Stones had condensed near the Array Hubs.

It wasn’t a sporadic one or two, but four appearing simultaneously at different points on the main circuit. The color of each was deeper than the previous one, and they felt heavier in his hand.

Li Yuan took out one of them and probed it with his Divine Sense.

The ratio of Evil Qi to Spiritual Power had become nearly one-to-one.

The production frequency had also clearly increased. Previously, Purple Evil Stones only condensed occasionally, relying entirely on the luck of natural seepage. Now that the Meridian Guiding Skill had guided the branch vein over, the influx of Spiritual Power had become a continuous and stable state. The condensation of Purple Evil Stones was no longer a random event but a part of the ore vein’s normal output.

Li Yuan collected all four Purple Evil Stones. After checking the shifted path of the branch vein and its seepage status one more time to confirm there were no problems, he left the mine tunnel.

During this time, the cleanup of the ruins was also reaching its final stages.

The Primordial Yang Sect had invested a large amount of manpower over time. From the outer perimeter to the middle layer and then to the deep layer, the cleanup was finally nearing completion.

Most of the remaining Arrays and old Restrictions had been dismantled or sealed. Over a dozen stone chambers and three old corridors had been cleared from the collapsed areas, and all items and records worth noting had been cataloged and archived.

In this final phase, the Primordial Yang Sect wasn’t just cleaning up anymore; they began to lay new Arrays inside.

Li Yuan was responsible for a considerable portion of this work.

Defense Arrays, Investigation Arrays, Early Warning Arrays, and Stabilizing Arrays were laid out from the outer ring of the deep layer all the way to the edge of the Core Formation District.

The Primordial Yang Sect clearly intended to completely appropriate these ruins, no longer treating them merely as an old site to be explored, but as a stronghold to be permanently garrisoned.

The workload for setting up the Arrays was not small.

Li Yuan was busy in the ruins for more than ten days, dealing with Array Patterns, nodes, and circuits every day. When setting up new Arrays, he had to consider their compatibility with the old structures. When dismantling old Restrictions, he had to prevent them from affecting the newly laid Arrays. He had to manage both ends.

Fortunately, after reaching the entry level of Tier Two Array Dao, this work, while tedious, was not beyond his capabilities. With a large amount of practical application, his proficiency in Array Dao progressed even faster than through pure cultivation. By the time the last batch of Defense Arrays was set up, the progress of his Tier Two Array Dao on the panel had advanced from "Entry" to "Proficient."

[Skill: Tier Two Array Dao—Proficient (0/400)]

At the same time, his proficiency in the Cyan Wood Longevity Skill was also steadily advancing through daily practice. The panel showed that it had already crossed the halfway mark of the "Mastery" stage and was heading toward Minor Achievement.

During the final phase of the cleanup, another batch of new items was unearthed.

This time, they were discovered in the corner of an old workshop in the deep layer which had previously been completely blocked by rubble. A few Cultivators spent half a day clearing the stones blocking the entrance. The items inside were actually better preserved than those outside.

On a stone shelf were a dozen or so old scrolls, along with several completely sealed jade bottles and two sets of old Array Discs that had lost their spirituality.

When Li Yuan arrived, the deacon in charge of registration was flipping through the old scrolls one by one.

When he reached the fourth scroll, the deacon’s movements suddenly slowed.

"These aren’t Arrays, nor are they Cultivation Techniques."

The people nearby gathered to look.

Li Yuan also took a scroll and flipped through a few pages.

The scroll recorded a systematic set of life-nurturing skills.

They weren’t Cultivation Techniques for practice, nor Magic for combat, but methods specifically used to help those whose lifespans were nearing their end to delay death.

The content was very eclectic.

There were methods for temporarily halting meridian decay by infusing Spiritual Power along with specific medicines. There were skills that used Arrays to forcibly push external Spiritual Qi into a dying Cultivator’s body to sustain them. There were also several prototype pill formulas refined from a mix of blood essence, medicinal power, and unorthodox supplementary materials.

The more Li Yuan read, the more familiar it seemed.

The underlying principles of these things were completely in line with the records of the unorthodox Life Nourishing Vein he had previously discovered at the edge of the Core Formation District.

And the medicinal ingredients and refining concepts involved in some of the prototype pill formulas were not just similar to the Lifespan Extension Pills the Dark Abyss Association was currently hawking outside—it was a clear upstream-downstream relationship.

Unfortunately, these pill formulas were only prototypes and couldn’t be used for Alchemy directly.

Li Yuan put the old scroll back. The items were registered and archived as usual, then sent to the outpost.

After leaving the ruins, Li Yuan returned to the market city and discovered that its landscape was quietly changing.

The first thing he noticed was the supply from the Spirit Fields.

Previously, one of Li Yuan’s sources for Spirit Field herbs and some of his talisman paper was through the Li family’s channels.

The Li family had ten shops in the market city and also served as one of Li Yuan’s sources for supplies.

But recently, this line had been cut.

It wasn’t a sudden break. It slowed down little by little and then stopped completely.

Li Yuan went to the management office to check and finally understood. Two of the shops the Li family had been operating in the market city had already closed, and the group of errand-running Loose Cultivators who worked under the Li family’s name had also vanished. They hadn’t run off; they’d been poached by the Wang family.

The Wang family had acted extremely quickly during this period.

After the Li family came under the Sect’s scrutiny, the Wang family had almost seamlessly taken over the material channels, shops, and errand runners that the Li family originally controlled.

The alchemy materials shop on the west side of the market city, which used to bear the Li family’s sign, was now staffed by people from the Wang family. The Loose Cultivators running the various procurement routes on the outskirts had also been replaced by faces arranged by the Wang family.

The Sect hadn’t moved against the Li family directly. They hadn’t seized their businesses, nor had they made any formal announcements. But the covert pressure was obvious. The supply to several of the Li family’s strongholds on the front lines had been reduced, and their network in the market city was also rapidly deteriorating. The Wang family seized this window of opportunity to expand aggressively, devouring most of the territory the Li family had vacated.

This directly affected Li Yuan’s supply chain.

He had to find new sources for Spirit Field seeds and supplementary materials, and he also had to figure out another way to get talisman paper.

Li Yuan wasn’t in a hurry to negotiate with the Wang family. He first took stock of his current inventory to confirm he wouldn’t have any short-term problems, then turned his attention back to the Purple Evil Stones.

After the Meridian Guiding Skill established a stable flow, the ore vein’s production of Purple Evil Stones had gotten on track.

Li Yuan had accumulated over a dozen high-quality, stable Purple Evil Stones. This time, he didn’t hold onto them, but took them directly to the market city to try selling them.

His first stop was the general store where he had previously inquired about the price.

The Shopkeeper’s eyes lit up as soon as he saw the Purple Evil Stone. After examining it over and over, he directly quoted a price.

"Two hundred Spirit Stones apiece."

It was fifty Spirit Stones more expensive than before. Li Yuan didn’t haggle and sold three of them first.

Afterward, he went to two other shops, where the prices were more or less the same. The difference mainly depended on how uniform the ratio of Evil Qi to Spiritual Power was inside each Purple Evil Stone; the more uniform, the more expensive.

After visiting the three shops, Li Yuan sold a total of seven Purple Evil Stones and recovered over a thousand Spirit Stones.

The dividends from the Evil Ore’s return period were transforming from a vague concept into a tangible inflow of resources.

The output from the Spirit Fields, the returns from the Evil Ore, the sales of Talismans and pills, plus this new line from the Purple Evil Stones—several resource streams were replenishing his coffers simultaneously. Although the loss of the Li family’s channel had caused some trouble for his supply chain, his overall rate of resource accumulation had increased instead of decreasing.

Li Yuan sorted and stored the alchemy materials and Spiritual Sand he had traded for that day, then sat down cross-legged to cultivate.

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