Cultivation: I Can Solidify Equipment Attributes

Chapter 349: Chapter 338: Secret Room

The secret chamber was hidden underground, beneath the main courtyard of the Sun family’s residence.

The entrance was behind a seemingly intact stone wall. Following the method Sun Tong provided, Li Yuan injected a wisp of Spiritual Power into a specific spot on the wall. The stone wall silently slid open to both sides, revealing a narrow stone staircase extending downwards.

At the end of the stone steps was an underground chamber, not even thirty feet square.

The chamber was extremely dry, and a faint medicinal fragrance filled the air. Simple preservation Array Patterns were carved into the four walls. The patterns were still faintly glowing, barely sustained by the Spiritual Qi seeping from the rock.

Li Yuan’s gaze fell directly on the stone platform in the center of the chamber.

On the stone platform sat a palm-sized jade pot, in which grew a Spirit Plant that was as smooth and lustrous as jade.

A 320-year-old Jade Marrow Mushroom.

The Spirit Plant stood about six inches tall. Its main stem was as translucent as ivory, with a milky-white Spiritual Light faintly flowing across its surface. Three leaves sprouted from the top, their veins fine and dense, giving them a unique, semi-translucent quality. Its extensive root system was firmly planted in the Spiritual Soil at the bottom of the pot.

The medicinal fragrance was not strong, but light, elegant, and lingering, with a gentleness that seemed to seep into one’s very bones.

Li Yuan reached out, lifted the pot together with the Spirit Plant, and carefully placed it into a separate, partitioned space in his storage bag.

’The core ingredient for the Upper Element Pill. Secured.’

He turned and scanned the other items in the chamber.

On either side of the stone platform was a wooden chest. Li Yuan lifted the lids. Inside were neatly stacked Spirit Stones and various Low Tier materials. There were quite a few Spirit Stones; a rough count revealed several dozen Mid-grade Spirit Stones. The materials were basic items for Artifact Refining and Arrays, of average quality but in sufficient quantity.

There was nothing else of high value in the chamber.

Just as Sun Tong had said, the only rare material was the Jade Marrow Mushroom.

After emptying the two wooden chests, Li Yuan followed the coordinates marked on a bamboo slip to check the other four secret stashes Sun Tong had mentioned.

Two of them had already been looted. They were completely empty, with only a few discarded, broken storage bags and scattered rubble left behind.

The other two were intact, their Restrictions untouched. The items inside weren’t particularly valuable, consisting mostly of Low Tier Spirit Medicines and some daily supplies, but there was a large quantity of them.

Li Yuan put everything he could take into his storage bag, then did a final sweep of the entire location. After confirming he hadn’t missed anything, he returned the way he came.

「Two days later, Mist Forest Marketplace.」

When Li Yuan entered the marketplace through the south gate, he immediately noticed the changes inside.

The main street was much cleaner.

The stalls were arranged more neatly than before he left, and the common sight of merchants overstepping their boundaries or piling goods onto the street was almost gone. At regular intervals, patrol members wearing the Ji family insignia could be seen walking the streets, mediating disputes on the spot with great efficiency.

The changes in the southern district were even more obvious.

After Ji Mingyuan took over the daily management of the southern district, the registration and room assignment process for newly arrived Cultivators was greatly simplified. The procedures that used to require half a day of waiting in line at the administration office could now be handled on the spot at the Ji family’s duty station in the southern district.

Li Yuan said nothing, heading straight back to his stone house.

He took the Jade Marrow Mushroom out of his storage bag and placed it on the table to inspect it carefully. The Spirit Plant was in good condition. Although the preservation Array Patterns were weak, they were sufficient to maintain its medicinal properties for a short time. He put the pot away again and turned to other matters.

That afternoon, Li Yuan went to see Ji Huaiyuan.

The rhythmic sound of hammering came from Ji Huaiyuan’s Artifact Refining shop. When Li Yuan pushed the door open, Ji Huaiyuan was forging a piece of Red Patterned Iron, sending sparks flying everywhere.

"Fellow Daoist Ji, I was hoping you could help me with a recommendation."

Ji Huaiyuan put down his hammer and wiped away his sweat.

Li Yuan briefly explained the idea Wang Ting’an had proposed about setting up arrays across different elemental veins: placing a Cultivating Evil Array on a Fire Vein and a Fire Cultivation Array on an Evil Vein to accelerate the natural fusion of the two veins.

"I don’t have enough experience in this to act rashly, and Wang Ting’an is pressing me for results," Li Yuan said. "You’ve studied Fire Veins extensively, Fellow Daoist. Do you think this could work?"

Ji Huaiyuan thought for a moment.

"I can’t do it myself, but there is someone in the Primordial Yang Sect," he said.

"His surname is Lu, name Lu Pingyuan. He’s an Array Master from the Sect who specializes in how the attributes of mineral veins and Spirit Veins interact. I’ve dealt with him a few times. His skills are excellent, and he’s a reliable person."

"Can you contact him?"

"He’s in Yunyang Marketplace right now. You can go find him directly the next time you go to set up the arrays. I’ll give him a heads-up beforehand."

Li Yuan nodded in agreement.

Three days later, when Li Yuan went to Yunyang Marketplace again, Ji Huaiyuan had already arranged a meeting for him with Lu Pingyuan.

Lu Pingyuan was a middle-aged Cultivator in his early forties, at the Late-stage of Foundation Establishment. He had a calm face and spoke in a slow, deliberate manner. The two sat down in a tea house in Yunyang Marketplace.

Li Yuan explained the situation with the veins in detail: the network structure connecting the three mines, the layout of the Fire Cultivation Array and the Cultivating Evil Array, the natural tendency of the Fire Vein and Evil Vein to merge deep underground, and the cross-attribute deployment plan proposed by Wang Ting’an.

Lu Pingyuan listened and pondered for a moment.

"Deploying cultivation arrays on cross-attribute veins is theoretically feasible," Lu Pingyuan began. "The Fire Vein and Evil Vein already have a natural tendency to merge, which indicates that the two types of Spiritual Power are not completely antithetical underground. When using arrays to artificially accelerate this process, the key is to control the injection speed of Spiritual Power from both sides. You can’t let the concentration of one side overwhelm the other in a short period, or it will trigger an attribute clash and cause the veins to become chaotic."

He drew a simple diagram on the tabletop with his finger.

"The most stable approach is to deploy the Cultivating Evil Array on the Fire Vein at thirty percent of its normal initial power. Then, observe the vein’s reaction every ten days. If there are no abnormalities, you can gradually increase it. The same applies to the Fire Cultivation Array. The entire process will take at least three to four months to achieve preliminary fusion."

Li Yuan mentally noted down all the key points Lu Pingyuan mentioned.

’It’s feasible. It just requires time and patience.’

After returning to Mist Forest Marketplace, Li Yuan didn’t start immediately. Instead, he first organized Lu Pingyuan’s suggestions into a complete plan to be referenced and executed during the subsequent construction.

In the following days, Li Yuan’s time was completely filled with three things: cultivation, Alchemy, and Arrays.

The high-intensity array work in Yunyang Marketplace, combined with the continuous optimization of the Defense Arrays in Mist Forest Marketplace upon his return, provided a vast amount of hands-on experience. Through this, his mastery of arrays steadily grew without him even realizing it.

This night, inside his stone house, Li Yuan completed the final node optimization for the joint Defense Array on the east side of Mist Forest Marketplace.

He withdrew his Spiritual Power from the Array Pattern. The instant his fingertip left the Spirit-Guiding Stone, his understanding of arrays suddenly underwent a deep restructuring in his mind.

The paths of the Spiritual Power circuits, which he previously had to repeatedly deduce, now became as clear and intuitive as an unfurled blueprint. The carrying capacity of each node, the Spiritual Power decay rate of each circuit segment, and even the stress distribution of the entire array under different attack intensities—all of it was presented in his mind in an extremely intuitive way.

A panel popped up.

[Tier Two Array Magic: Great Success (0/1600)]

Tier Two Array Magic, Great Success.

Arrays, Alchemy—both of his core skills had reached the Great Success stage.

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