Ch. 7315 May
After returning to his survival base, Alexei didn't sit idle. If something could be automated, he automated it. That was just how players worked, whether they needed it or not. And now that he had snow golems, a snow farm was the obvious next step.
He didn't have many uses for large amounts of snow blocks yet, aside from making more snow golems. Still, that wasn't the point. If something could be farmed and you didn't do it, you were wasting resources. Besides, his storage system still had plenty of empty space. He might as well fill it.
The snow farm itself didn't take long to set up.
The design was simple. A 2x2 hopper array connected to a large chest. Above the hoppers, he left a one block gap and used three glass panes to trap a snow golem in place, making sure it stood right over all four hoppers. The golem would slowly generate snow layers on top of them.
Then he added pistons linked to fast observers to break the snow layers as soon as they formed, turning them into snowballs that dropped straight into the hoppers.
Below that, a crafter combined four snowballs into a single snow block and sent it into the storage system.
If it still felt too slow, he could always add a torcherino.
A Level 1 Torcherino doubled the speed of machines within a 13x13 area.
The recipe was simple: one torch, four clocks, and four Nether Stars.
The mod Alexei had access to wasn't one of those flashy ones with a GUI where you could tweak range or flow rate. He never liked those. Opening a floating interface in the middle of the world always felt off.
And speeds like 100,000x or 1,000,000x just ruined the game. At that point, you might as well cheat items in.
After looking through his options, he settled on this one.
The higher-level torches had ridiculous crafting costs, but the main advantage was that they worked on everything. Compared to mods that only boosted crops, this one was on a different level.
There were two types of torches: torcherinos and slowing torches. Both ranged from Level 1 to Level 9.
Nine of the same level could be combined into a higher-level torch.
The maximum speed was 512x.
Not that Alexei was planning to go that far. A single Level 9 torch needed over forty million Level 1 torches.
That was just insane.
Still, there was one item in the mod he wanted, even if it was basically out of reach.
The Time-Stop Pocket Watch.
The effect was simple and completely broken. Press it, and time froze in a sixteen-meter radius. Only you could move. Press it again, and everything went back to normal.
Of course, the recipe was even worse than the Level 9 torch.
You needed a clock in the center, Level 9 torcherinos on the top and bottom, Level 9 slowing torches on the left and right, and Nether Stars in all four corners.
It was basically impossible.
Luckily, there were more realistic options. Acceleration and deceleration pocket watches worked the same way, just with weaker effects.
Their recipes were simpler too. You just had to replace the torches with ones of the same type and level, using four torcherinos for acceleration or four slowing torches for deceleration.
It was still expensive, but at least it was possible.
Alexei kept that in mind as a long-term goal before returning to work on the snow farm.
---
Once the farm was finished and connected to his storage network, Alexei headed back to the courtyard pavilion.
Qingxue was still there, quietly sipping tea as she watched the snow fall. Mengyao had already gone inside to continue her cultivation, leaving the two of them alone.
Alexei leaned against the railing and looked out over the snow-covered courtyard, feeling a faint restlessness now that he had nothing pressing to do.
Skipping cultivation for even a day made time feel strangely slow.
"Tomorrow I'm heading to Verdantree," Yan said as she appeared at the doorway, holding a cup of tea. "The Alchemy Alliance picked up some high-grade pills, and one of their senior alchemists is giving a lecture. Want to come?"
Alexei looked up. "Hm… not sure."
"It should be worth it," Yan said. "They don't open lectures to the public very often. Most of their knowledge stays internal."
Alexei thought it over.
He had been meaning to learn more about alchemy beyond the basic pill recipes Yan had taught him. Verdantree City had also left a good impression on him. It was orderly, protected by the Immortal Alliance, and home to several major righteous sects.
More importantly, it was a good place to set up a Nether portal.
Aureate Summit Sect was thousands of kilometers away from Verdantree City. Even with the new spirit boat, the Cloud Rider, the trip would take over ten hours. With Nether travel, that time could be cut down a lot.
Now that he had decided to use Nether transportation, it was only a matter of time before Nether portals became known across the cultivation world.
Since that was the case, there was no point in hiding it. He might as well place one somewhere reliable.
That way, when cultivators started using it, there would be no need to keep things secret.
"Alright, I'll go. Qingxue, you coming?"
Qingxue set down her cup and gave a small smile. "If you're going, I'll come along."
"Then it's settled."
---
Alexei sat in the pavilion for about half an hour before the restlessness got to him.
The cauldrons scattered around the courtyard were slowly filling with powder snow, but it was painfully slow. Watching it build up was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Then again, some people actually enjoyed that kind of thing.
He definitely didn't
So he headed back to the Nether to farm more Withers.
"I'm heading out," he called to Qingxue as he stood. "I'll be back before dinner."
"Don't overdo it."
"When have I ever overdone anything?"
"Do you want that list in chronological order or by severity?"
He waved her off and headed toward his base, grinning to himself.
---
The Nether portal stood where it always was, right next to his storage room. He had set up a small area beside it with a few chests for Wither materials.
He opened one of them and found more than a stack of wither skeleton skulls waiting inside. The farm had been running nonstop, sending skulls through droppers and hoppers until they ended up here.
Soul sand was in another chest. Most of it came from a soul sand valley he had found while searching for a Nether fortress. The place was huge and stretched for hundreds of meters.
It wasn't a long-term solution. The valley was over seven hundred kilometers away from his base, which made restocking a hassle.
He would need to set up a piglin bartering farm sooner or later. For now, though, he still had half a chest left, so it wasn't urgent.
---
After stepping through the portal, Alexei walked across his safehouse and headed straight for the mine shaft. It was a massive vertical tunnel he had dug, dropping kilometers into the depths of the Nether.
He stopped at the edge, glanced down into the darkness, and jumped.
The fall lasted more than thirty minutes. He used the time to go over his Wither setup and think about what to upgrade next in his base.
When he finally reached the bottom, he landed in the middle of a crowd of iron golems.
There were close to a hundred of them, packed tightly together, standing still and waiting for something to attack.
The ground beneath them was still netherrack. He had planned to fight the Withers at bedrock level for safety, but no matter how much he searched, he had never found bedrock in the Nether.
So this would have to be enough.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
He moved without wasting time, switching items in his hotbar as he built the first summoning structure. Four soul sand blocks formed a T-shape, with three wither skeleton skulls placed on top.
The moment he set the third skull in place, the familiar sound echoed through the cavern. The Wither began to form. Black smoke swirled as its three skeletal heads took shape.
The iron golems reacted instantly. They rushed forward, their fists slamming into the Wither and knocking it into the air before it could fully spawn.
Alexei didn't stop. While the golems kept the first Wither busy, he moved to another spot and built the second summoning structure, then the third, and then the fourth without stopping.
By the time he finished the sixth Wither, the cavern had already fallen into chaos.
Explosive skulls shot in every direction. Iron golems swung their arms, sending Withers flying. Wither skeletons spawned from the blasts and joined the fight, clashing against the golems.
Alexei stayed out of it, hovering at a safe distance on his flying sword.
The final step was simple: fly back into the 16-meter range of the iron golem spawners.
The math behind his Wither farm was simple enough once you looked at the numbers.
With four iron golem spawners, he could produce around 48 golems per minute, and each Wither needed about thirteen or fourteen of them to go down. That meant that, with proper timing, he could keep up to seven Withers active at once and still clear them all within five to six minutes without things getting out of hand.
The only part that really slowed him down was the summoning. Building each structure and placing the skulls took time, even when he moved as fast as he could.
Even so, the setup was more than efficient enough for what he needed. He stayed in the Nether and worked through his entire stock of wither skeleton skulls, summoning and killing Withers one after another until he ran out. By the time he was done, just over half an hour had passed.
[Nether Stars: 34]
---
Back at his base, he stored the excess soul sand in a chest and then walked over to collect the experience orbs from the XP pool.
[Level 885 → Level 1046]
He stopped when he saw the number.
"Hm. I really need to stop forgetting about this."
Thinking about it now, he had probably wasted half a day's worth of experience just by not collecting it regularly. It was too easy to ignore when it sat out of sight like this. Maybe he should move the XP pool somewhere more obvious, like right by the entrance, so he would see it every time he came and went. If he switched the walls to glass, he could also keep an eye on the orbs as they built up. Adding a one-click release function would make things even easier.
Yeah, that would work.
He kept the idea in mind and headed back to the courtyard.
---
The next day, just past noon, Alexei arrived at the sect plaza with Qingxue, Yan, and Mengyao.
Duan and Jianqiang were already there, standing out in the snow with a thin layer settled across their shoulders, clearly having waited for some time. The moment they spotted the group flying in, both of them began waving enthusiastically.
The four landed in front of them.
Yan let out a quiet sigh as she looked at the two. "Why do you always show up so early?"
Duan and Jianqiang scratched their heads at the same time.
"Well, Alexei said he needed help buying metal ingots," Duan replied. "We didn't have anything else to do, so we figured it was better to come early rather than risk being late."
Alexei's gaze shifted to him. "How's the hammer working out?"
"It's perfect," Duan said immediately.
Over the past few months, he had spent nearly all his time at the forge. Aside from sleeping and cultivating, he rarely did anything else, and the number of artifacts he produced during that period was comparable to what he had completed over the previous decade.
With a steady supply of materials, his progress had been just as remarkable. His compression ratio for black iron ore had already improved from thirty-seven times to thirty-nine times, leaving him only a single step away from the forty-times threshold.
Half a month earlier, Alexei had given him six additional hammers, saying it would make his work more efficient.
Those hammers were absurdly high grade. Although they lacked any special abilities, the smoothness of their spiritual energy flow alone placed them on par with immortal-tier artifacts, making every strike feel far more efficient than before.
However, they were also incredibly heavy.
Because of that, while forging had become smoother and less taxing in terms of control, his physical limits still held him back. At his current cultivation level, the heaviest hammer he could use for extended periods was around 7,500 kilograms. Anything beyond that would start to affect his efficiency and slow his overall output.
The hammer was great, but after using it for half a day, the constant vibrations had brought his house down.
Then Alexei showed up and rebuilt everything. He expanded the forge into a proper cave workshop and added two side-by-side forging platforms that were completely indestructible.
According to him, the setup came with "redstone lighting," "half-slab flooring to prevent mob spawning," and "ultra-large storage capacity."
Duan didn't understand most of that, but he didn't need to. The forge worked exactly as it should.
If he had to choose a favorite feature, though, it would be the door.
When the lever wasn't pulled, it blended perfectly into the wall, without even a visible seam.
It was, in every sense, his ideal door.
After that, Alexei and Duan spent about ten minutes going over the details of the metal order, covering quantities, purity standards, and delivery timelines, along with all the usual logistics that came with bulk purchases.
"Quan is here," Qingxue said at last. "Time to board."
Alexei glanced around. "Where? I don't see..."
A sharp rush of wind cut him off.
Something streaked across the plaza, curved through the air, and came to a stop at the center. The force of it sent snow swirling outward, forming a brief, almost staged blizzard.
"Departure in five minutes," Quan said from the deck of the spirit vessel. "We should arrive by morning."
Changgui stood beside him, grinning as he waved at Alexei. He was close now, only one step away from reaching the Qi Refining stage.
If anyone deserved credit for that progress, aside from his own effort, it was the Spirit Essence Gourd Alexei had given him.
The spiritual liquid it produced could slightly increase cultivation without any side effects. One drop was worth about one percent progress in the early stages of Body Tempering, though that dropped to roughly 0.1% after reaching Qi Refining.
Even so, it was an absurd advantage, because it completely ignored bottlenecks.
Changgui had used it to move from late Body Tempering to peak without encountering a single barrier.
There were limits, of course. Once a cultivator reached the Celestial Bridge realm, their spiritual energy transformed into immortal energy. After that, progress depended entirely on their understanding of the natural laws of heaven and earth, as cultivators liked to put it.
That level was still far beyond them.
"Let's go," Qingxue said when she noticed Yan had already boarded.
---
The journey went smoothly, with nothing of note slowing them down.
At one point, Alexei picked up Snowdrift and walked over to where Changgui and the other disciples were resting. Once he had their attention, he pulled out a deck of cards and gave it a light shuffle.
"Time for a battle of wits. Get ready."
Changgui frowned as he looked at the cards in Alexei's hands. "What's that?"
"Durak," Alexei replied. "You play against each other by throwing down cards, beating what's already on the table, and trying not to end up as the last one holding any."
He had originally wanted Jianqiang to make something like Monopoly or Dominion, but there hadn't been enough time. That was only part of the problem. He could barely remember the details. Monopoly alone had too many properties, prices, and different cards to keep track of. Dominion was even worse, with its many expansions and cards with all kinds of effects.
There was no way he could remember all of that.
For now, Durak would have to do.
Changgui still looked unconvinced. "And this is... fun?"
"It is," Alexei said with a smile. "Trust me."
About twenty minutes later, Changgui was already raising his voice at the cards in his hand, while Jianqiang confidently threw down another card, forcing Changgui to pick up the pile with a grin.
Watching the scene unfold, Alexei leaned back in satisfaction. Durak hadn't changed at all. It was still just as good at causing arguments and bad decisions as ever.
---
By dawn, after flying at full speed through the night, they finally reached Verdantree City.
The Immortal Alliance Plaza spread out beneath them, filled with spirit vessels of all sizes. There were easily over a hundred parked across the open space. Even so, it still felt less crowded than it had during the disciple recruitment ceremony.
A few nearby cultivators looked up in surprise as Quan guided the vessel down. Without slowing much, he slipped it neatly into a narrow gap between two ships, then eased it back into place.
There was less than half a meter of space on either side.
"We'll split up today," Quan said once they had landed. "When Yan finishes at the Alchemy Alliance, we meet back here."
Everyone agreed without objection.
Quan didn't waste any time. He grabbed Changgui by the back of his collar and rose into the air on his sword, heading straight out of the plaza. Changgui had been away from home for nearly a year. Letting him spend a few days with his family was only natural.
The rest stayed behind on the spirit vessel and began talking through their own plans.
Duan and Jianqiang decided to go with Alexei to purchase metal in bulk. At first, they had only been curious, but once they learned that Alexei needed only a small amount to produce more of the same material, they quickly agreed to help.
Forging was already tedious enough. Running out of materials in the middle of it would only make things worse.
"What about you, Mengyao?" Yan asked.
After spending so much time together, she already knew that Mengyao and Hongyan weren't related.
Mengyao didn't answer right away.
She had family in this world, or at least she once did. They were also the ones who had abandoned her.
After more than three hundred years and two lifetimes, their faces had long since faded from her memory. Even if she tried, she could no longer recall them clearly.
There was no reason to look for them.
She lowered her gaze to the jade pendant in her hand and held it for a moment before making her decision.
"I'm going to Steadyroot Company."
---
Snow drifted through the air and piled up along the sides of the street, reaching almost to mid-calf. The roads themselves were clear, though. Someone had been keeping them clean, and judging by the amount of foot traffic, it was probably a group effort.
People moved through the streets in steady streams. Some wore heavy robes and fur-lined coats. Others walked around in thin, flowing clothes. A few cultivators even went shirtless.
The Alchemy Alliance gathering had drawn a huge crowd. Alchemists had set up stalls along both sides of the street, selling pills, herbs, and all kinds of strange materials. Martial artists and wandering cultivators moved through the crowd as well, hoping to find rare items or cheap deals.
"Hey, Yan," Alexei said as they walked. "Where's your badge? I don't think I've ever seen you wear one before."
Yan looked at him blankly. "What badge?"
"The metal ones the alchemists are wearing." Alexei nodded toward a nearby stall.
An older woman stood behind it with a bronze badge pinned to her chest.
"Oh, that." Yan laughed lightly. "You mean the Alchemy Alliance badge? I've had it on since this morning."
She leaned closer. "Look."
Alexei glanced over.
An intricately crafted badge shaped like an alchemy furnace was pinned to her chest. A single number was engraved on it.
"I'm a sixth-rank alchemist. I came here to attend the lectures, but I'm also taking the fifth-rank assessment."
---
Alexei, Yan, and Qingxue walked side by side along the main street of the Alchemy Alliance district. Before long, more and more cultivators started recognizing Yan.
"It's been quite some time since you visited this side of the city."
"Do you need practice materials? My stall carries only the highest quality goods."
"Any pills for sale? I'm always interested in your work."
Alchemists wearing badges kept stopping to greet her as they passed.
"Yan, would you mind helping me identify some of the spiritual plants on my stall? I don't trust outsiders."
Alexei turned toward the voice and paused. Isn't that...
The speaker was an old man sitting behind a stall cluttered with herbs.
Yan turned toward the voice as well, her gaze sweeping across the stall. A moment later, she quietly sighed.
"Good grief," she muttered.
Out of the twenty or so spiritual plants on display, at least five were labeled incorrectly. Some names didn't match the herbs at all, and several prices were either absurdly high or far too cheap.
"I don't quite know how to put this. But, Elder Hao, with all due respect, the spiritual plant trade runs deep. You might not... well, you might be in over your head."
She paused, then offered a suggestion: "It might be better to sell directly to the Alchemy Alliance. That way you could reduce your losses."
Hao's expression didn't change, but there was a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Yan had spent months working with herbs from Alexei's plantation. The quality there was ridiculously high. Every plant was grown under perfect conditions, carefully nurtured, and harvested at the right time.
Compared to that, the herbs on Hao's stall looked miserable.
Some were wilted. Some were poorly stored. A few higher-grade plants could also be found on Alexei's plantation, except theirs looked healthier and were worth several times more.
Hao glanced at the herbs, then back at Yan. "They've always looked like this. Don't be rude."
Yan decided not to argue.
Looking back, she realized she hadn't used subpar herbs for alchemy in months. Everything she worked with now came from the plantation's setup, and the difference in quality was night and day.
But Hao hadn't called Yan over just to have her identify his plants. He wanted an excuse to give her something.
Over the years, she was one of the few young alchemists who had impressed him. Her skills were solid, her temperament steady, and her approach to alchemy careful without being inflexible.
The problem was that her talent still fell short of his standards for accepting a disciple. And she was already too old.
At that thought, his eyes shifted toward the young man beside her.
Then he froze.
Mid-stage Qi Refining?
This was the same boy who had caught his attention months ago. Back then, he had even considered taking him in as a disciple. But when he mentioned it to an old friend in the Immortal Alliance, the man immediately shut the idea down.
Hao still remembered the strange look on his friend's face.
According to him, the white-haired boy only had a talent value of twelve points, with neither a special constitution nor a unique spiritual body. In theory, he should never have been able to sense qi, let alone cultivate.
But Hao had always felt something was wrong with that explanation. The way his friend reacted back then felt off, like he was hiding something.
After enough pestering, he finally got the full answer.
The boy possessed twelve-element spiritual roots. Every attribute was present, and every single one was valued at exactly one point.
He had spent more than a thousand years studying alchemy. He had traveled across the four regions, competed against the greatest alchemists of his era, and ranked among the top three on the Alchemy Prodigy Rankings.
His experience was vast, and his knowledge ran deep.
Which was exactly why he didn't believe a word of it.
Twelve spiritual roots, all with exactly one point?
Ridiculous. His friend had to be drunk when he said it.
Still, he eventually gave up on the idea of taking a disciple.
He had wandered the outer regions for over a thousand years. He understood better than most how awkward the position of Eastern Territory cultivators was in the wider world.
At every major alchemy competition, elderly Eastern Territory alchemists who were nine hundred or even over a thousand years old had to stand on the same stage as geniuses from other regions who were barely fifty.
The gap was so ridiculous that the Immortal Alliance eventually loosened some ranking restrictions for Eastern Territory cultivators. Even then, the so-called fairness only gave people more reasons to look down on them.
He understood that better than anyone.
Back in his day, he had reached third place on the Prodigy Rankings at the age of three hundred. The cultivators ranked above him had only been thirty-nine and fifty-one years old.
By normal standards, someone his age should never have appeared on the same ranking as monsters like them. The only reason he had even qualified was because the Eastern Territories were humanity's ancestral homeland. Because of that, the Immortal Alliance allowed Eastern Territory cultivators certain exceptions, and many rankings loosened their restrictions for them.
But that "favor" came with a price.
No matter what an Eastern cultivator achieved, people would always say the same thing behind their backs. They only won because the rules were biased in their favor.
He had heard those words his entire life.
He hated them, but hatred alone couldn't change reality.
After returning from his travels, he decided that if he couldn't change the rules, then he would prove those people wrong another way. Using the resources he had gathered over centuries, he wanted to raise a disciple from the Eastern Territories into the top three of the outer-region prodigy rankings.
Just once was enough.
He wanted the entire continent to see that Eastern cultivators didn't rely on pity or special treatment to stand among the best.
Unfortunately, his resources were limited. He only had one real chance to make it happen.
That was why he had spent the last hundred years searching for the right disciple.
As for which ranking to target, cultivation rankings had never been an option.
Regions with denser spiritual energy naturally produced cultivators with better spiritual roots. Compared to the outer regions, the Eastern Territories were lacking from the very beginning. The spiritual energy there was ten, sometimes dozens of times weaker, and the gap only became more absurd in the four great immortal domains of the Profound Sky Continent, where spiritual energy was said to be nearly a hundred times denser than in the Eastern Territories.
Even after traveling for so many years, he had only heard stories about those places. He had never once qualified to enter them himself.
With a gap like that, no amount of resources could push a disciple to the top of the cultivation or combat rankings.
That left only three possible paths: alchemy, artifact forging, and formation arrays.
And for him, the choice had been obvious from the start.
He had once been an alchemy prodigy himself.
Ch. 7418 May
Hao pulled his scattered thoughts back together and looked at the young man in front of him again.
And he told me his talent value was twelve points?
Even in the outer regions, this kind of progress would make him a sect prodigy. And that was with the thin spiritual energy of the Eastern Territories holding him back.
If you put someone like that in the outer regions, his achievements would only be higher.
He gave Alexei another careful look, keeping his spiritual sense subtle enough not to draw attention.
The young man's aura was just as clean and pure as it had been during their first meeting months ago. Perfect cultivation material. The kind any sect would fight over.
Right now, Hao wanted nothing more than to go back to the Immortal Alliance and punch that old bastard who had claimed this kid only had twelve points of talent.
He wanted to drag the man over here and make him see what "twelve points" looked like.
At the same time, he couldn't help feeling some regret.
Back then, he had dismissed the possibility too quickly. He had trusted second-hand information without properly checking for himself.
If he had taken things more seriously at the time, this kid might already have reached Foundation Establishment under proper guidance and enough resources.
But then his thoughts immediately stopped.
His spiritual sense shifted toward the fox resting in Alexei's arms. The fox was lazily staring at the herb stall.
He nearly choked.
That fox was in the Foundation Establishment realm.
He remembered seeing that animal several times when he was setting up his stall last year. The kid had been carrying it around back then too, and at the time, it had looked like nothing more than an ordinary mortal beast.
Now it was already at the Foundation Establishment realm, even though less than a year had passed since he first saw it.
That kind of growth should have been impossible. Even spirit beasts and demon beasts from the outer regions weren't capable of growing that quickly.
Unless someone had been feeding it high-grade spiritual plants every day and constantly supplying it with spiritual energy.
But that sounded ridiculous.
Spiritual plants couldn't be grown too close together. Pure spiritual energy was stable by nature. It clung to the plants and spread outward as more accumulated. If too many were packed into the same area, weaker plants would eventually wither under the pressure.
Earth-tier spiritual plants already needed dozens of meters between each other, while Heaven-tier plants required even more space. Some needed hundreds of meters. Others occupied entire mountain ranges on their own.
To raise a mortal beast all the way to Foundation Establishment in less than a year, the amount of land and resources required would have been unimaginable.
There was no way that should have been possible.
No matter how he looked at it, it should have been impossible.
"Elder Hao? Elder Hao?"
Yan's voice pulled him out of his thoughts. She noticed the way he was staring at Alexei and the fox, and realization quickly appeared on her face.
She briefly released her spiritual sense to check, then leaned closer and whispered something into Alexei's ear.
"The bracelet."
Alexei looked confused for a second and rubbed his ear. "What bracelet?"
Yan covered her face with one hand.
"The concealment bracelet."
"Oh." Alexei immediately understood.
With a thought, he activated the bracelet on his wrist. It was a new piece Duan had recently forged for him.
[Grass Crystal Bracelet:
Spiritual Energy Circuit V
Spiritual Energy Absorption V
Aura Concealment V
Spatial Storage II]
All of the enchantments had been taken from low-grade concealment artifacts made by Duan and Jianqiang, along with a few purchased outside by Quan.
The grass crystal itself didn't have any special properties. It was simply a rare crystal known for being beautiful, lightweight, and extremely durable. Unfortunately, it was also spirit-null material, which meant it couldn't normally be forged into magical artifacts.
On top of that, grass crystal could only be found in certain secret realms, and mining it was extremely dangerous. Because of this, it eventually became a luxury decorative material among cultivators.
As for where the bracelet material came from...
It had been taken from the generous headless cultivator who fell into the Aureate Summit Sect some time ago.
"Don't forget Snowdrift," Yan added quietly.
Alexei reached out and activated the pendant hanging from the fox's neck. It was another grass crystal artifact with the same concealment enchantments.
Normally, an aura-concealing artifact with Spiritual Energy Circuit V didn't need much attention after activation.
But places without spiritual energy were a different matter.
If no spiritual energy was supplied to maintain the artifact, the concealment effect would eventually shut down once the stored energy ran out. After returning to an area with spiritual energy, it had to be activated again manually.
He traveled between the Nether, where spiritual energy didn't exist, and the Profound Sky Continent almost every day.
There was no way he could remember to reactivate it every single time.
After a while, he simply forgot about it altogether.
As for Snowdrift's pendant, it had probably stopped working back when they were helping Duan build his new house.
Hao felt something inside his chest twist.
What kind of artifact can hide someone's aura from me?
His spiritual sense could detect a moth's heartbeat from a kilometer away. And yet, once those bracelets activated, he couldn't sense anything from either Alexei or the fox.
They registered as ordinary mortals. For that to work on someone at his level, the artifacts would have to be... Immortal-tier.
But that was insane.
Forging even a single Immortal-tier artifact required an absurd amount of heavenly materials and earthly treasures. Entire sects would go to war over resources like that.
Who in their right mind would waste those materials creating concealment jewelry?
Did they think spiritual energy circuits grew on trees?
"Um, Elder Hao," Yan said, pulling his attention back. "I think there might be an issue with the spiritual plants on your stall."
Hao turned back to her.
Are you trying to gaslight me right now?
As someone not far from the Immortal realm, there was no way he could misidentify spiritual herbs.
Wait... the girl's eyes were closed. She couldn't see anything wrong with the herbs from a visual inspection alone.
Only now, looking at all three of them, plus the fox, did he realize that none of them were giving off any detectable aura. They looked and felt exactly like ordinary mortals.
Then he noticed the identical bracelets on all their wrists.
He understood. Or rather, he understood nothing at all.
Had everything he witnessed in the cultivation world over his thousand-plus years been a lie?
Was basic artifact theory just wrong?
---
It wasn't until the group disappeared into the crowd that Hao finally came back to his senses.
He immediately began packing up his stall.
He was done staying here.
His position in the Immortal Alliance didn't mean much to him anyway. It was just something to pass the time while searching for a suitable disciple.
As for his cultivation, it had long since stagnated. He hadn't made any progress in decades, and trying to force a breakthrough now would only bring down an Immortal Tribulation he couldn't survive. Worldly attachments were another thing he lacked. His entire life had been devoted to alchemy, leaving little room for personal relationships.
So what was left for him here?
The answer was obvious.
He was returning to the Aureate Summit Sect.
If he could no longer advance further, then he might as well spend the rest of his life in peace. With his current mental state, living another seven or eight hundred years shouldn't be difficult.
It was less than the two thousand years he might have reached in his prime, but that was enough.
A wise man knew when to adapt to circumstances. Trying to force a path forward when none existed would only end in disaster.
---
"We will see you later, then," Qingxue said as they reached the entrance to the Alchemy Alliance headquarters.
Yan nodded. "I will meet you back at the vessel once I am done."
"Before you go in," Alexei said, "you are going to do the thing, right?"
"The thing?"
"The dramatic deep breath thing you always do."
Yan's expression went blank. "I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Sure you don't."
She turned away from him and took a deep breath, drawing in the concentrated energy that saturated the air around the building.
Alexei grinned. "Called it."
---
Alexei and Qingxue didn't head straight back to the spirit vessel.
They were already in Verdantree City, one of the few places in the Eastern Territories with variety in food and goods. It would be a waste not to stock up before returning to the sect.
Besides, sitting inside the spirit vessel while snow fell outside, eating good food, playing cards, and reading sounded far better than rushing back to immediately start building the Nether portal.
They could rest for a day first.
The portal wasn't going anywhere, and there was no way they would finish it in a single trip anyway.
As for the design, Alexei honestly didn't care that much.
Function came first. As long as the portal worked and monsters couldn't escape through it, appearance didn't matter.
And charging spirit stones for access was only natural. Resources weren't free.
As for collecting payments remotely, that was easy enough to solve.
The More Crafting mod had given him access to something called a Transmission Ender Storage.
The recipe was simple: one ender chest, one ender pearl, four redstone dust, and one block of redstone.
It looked almost identical to a normal ender chest, except the corners and center of the lid had extra redstone decorations.
Its biggest advantage was automation.
The chest could connect directly to redstone circuits, and clicking it with a block of redstone allowed the owner to switch between public and private mode. In public mode, anyone could place items inside. In private mode, access was restricted to a specific user.
It was perfect for handling payments.
Anyone who wanted to use the Nether portal only needed to drop spirit stones into the chest. The redstone circuit would detect the payment and activate the portal automatically.
Simple, efficient, and difficult to bypass unless someone destroyed the entire setup.
As they walked through the snow-covered streets of Verdantree City looking for food stalls, Qingxue occasionally pointed out shops that had opened since their last visit.
It was a nice break from the usual chaos of Nether exploration. Even if it probably wouldn't last long.
---
The snow was still falling the next morning, though it had lightened considerably from the heavy downfall of the previous night.
About fifteen kilometers outside Verdantree City, in a clearing that offered good visibility in all directions, Alexei placed down an ender chest and began pulling out redstone components, smooth stone, obsidian, quartz blocks, red terracotta, and several kinds of wooden planks.
As he sorted through them, a thought occurred to him.
Could I charge people to use cultivation rooms in the Nether?
He ran the numbers in his head.
Even if he packed a hundred cultivators into a single room and they meditated there for a full day before leaving, the total income would only be a few hundred spirit stones, maybe less.
And there was no reliable way to prevent freeloaders. Someone could easily slip in using another person's payment, and the redstone circuitry wasn't sophisticated enough to track individual users.
"That's not worth the headache."
It would probably be easier to just charge people for portal access.
And once he established proper Nether travel routes between the major cities, he could charge people once on entry and again at their destination.
The pricing structure was simple enough. Basic portal access would cost low-grade spirit stones, while fast travel between cities would require mid-grade ones. As for long-distance routes to the outer regions, those would naturally be priced in high-grade spirit stones.
It wasn't that he wanted to be greedy. It was just that redstone circuits had limitations, and he couldn't exactly implement a dynamic pricing model based on distance traveled.
This was the best he could manage with the tools available.
The first step was building the portal frame itself.
A standard rectangular obsidian frame would have worked, but it looked too plain. If he was going to build a public transportation hub, he might as well make it look decent.
After thinking about it for a bit, he settled on a design he remembered from a tutorial video back on Earth. It was a large decorative archway built with warped wood pillars, stone brick supports, and quartz accents.
He added red terracotta details, redstone lamps arranged like hanging lanterns, actual lanterns for softer lighting, and a few bells to give the structure more presence.
After that came the smaller details. He placed signs, fences, buttons, and trapdoors around the structure to break up the larger surfaces and make the whole build feel less flat.
The entire construction took around three hours.
When he finally finished, he stepped back and looked over his work.
"Definitely better than a boring rectangle."
Qingxue, who had been watching from a nearby tree branch, floated down to get a closer look. "You really went all out on this."
"If people are going to be paying to use this thing, it should at least look professional." Alexei pulled out flint and steel, positioned himself in front of the obsidian frame, and struck a spark.
Click.
Purple particles erupted from the obsidian frame, swirling in chaotic patterns before being pulled inward by some invisible force. Nearby snowflakes and accumulated snow were dragged into the vortex as well, vanishing into the forming portal.
After a few seconds, the chaos stabilized into a smooth, water-like curtain.
Qingxue stared at it. "So it's finished?"
"Not quite. This is just the entrance. The Nether-side still needs work."
Alexei leaned forward and stuck his head through the portal.
The view that greeted him was a landscape of crimson.
Warped fungi towered overhead. Crimson nylium covered the ground in patches, and in the distance, he could see the vague shapes of hoglins wandering through the forest.
"Huh. Crimson Forest."
It wasn't that spawn location mattered much to him personally. He could handle pretty much any Nether biome at this point. But the Crimson Forest was objectively one of the safer starting areas.
He pulled his head back and turned to Qingxue. "I'm going in to set things up on the other side. It shouldn't take more than a few hours."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"No, better if you stay here. If someone stumbles across the portal while I'm working, just tell them it's under construction or something."
Alexei stepped through the portal properly this time, feeling the familiar disorientation of Nether travel wash over him. When he emerged on the other side, he immediately turned around to check the portal that had spawned.
It was tiny, maybe 2×3 blocks at most. The obsidian frame looked haphazardly placed, like the game had just picked the nearest flat surface and slapped the portal down without much thought.
He pulled out his pickaxe and dismantled the ugly portal, then rebuilt it on the same spot using smooth stone blocks for a cleaner look. This time, he made it 6×8 and placed a lodestone on top as a landmark.
The room itself would be 16x16.
He started by laying down the floor using smooth stone, then built up the walls using a mix of smooth stone and Nether brick blocks. The color contrast looked decent, and more importantly, both materials were blast-resistant enough to survive most accidents.
The real work, though, was the payment system.
He'd already worked out the design in his head during the trip from Aureate Summit Sect. It was essentially a modified automatic sorting machine. The core component was a single-item filter chest. When a cultivator placed an item into the input hopper, the hopper would transfer it into the sorting system. If the item was a low-grade spirit stone, it would pass through the filter chest and continue down into a dropper positioned below.
A comparator placed next to the dropper would detect the spirit stone's presence and emit a redstone signal. That signal would be strengthened and delayed by 0.5 seconds using a repeater, which would activate an iron door in front of the payment hopper for exactly half a second.
Meanwhile, the dropper itself would fire the spirit stone into a transmission ender chest for collection.
If someone inserted multiple spirit stones at once, the repeater delay would make the comparator release rapid 0.2-second pulses. Each pulse would refresh the repeater's 0.5-second timer, keeping the iron door open until all the spirit stones had been processed and transferred into the ender chest.
If someone tried to insert something that wasn't a low-grade spirit stone, the filter chest would reject it, and the item would pass through the system and get ejected back onto the ground by a secondary dropper.
They could pick it back up and try again.
Ten low-grade spirit stones inserted at once would keep the door open for five seconds.
For the return trip, he could extend the payment system outside the door using additional hoppers and droppers, allowing him to collect a second fee when people wanted to leave the Nether.
Even if someone tried to slip through without paying, Alexei would never lose money. The worst case was that he didn't collect a fee from one person. But the system would still profit overall.
The iron door design was intentional as well. The passage was only wide enough for one person at a time. Trying to squeeze two people through together would be difficult, which greatly reduced the chances of people bypassing the fee in groups.
He installed identical payment stations on all four walls of the room. Someone could enter from any direction and still have to pay the toll.
Outside the room, he concealed the redstone circuitry by covering it with netherrack and using bone meal to grow giant crimson fungi into a small hill. Inside the hill, he added an additional layer of obsidian for security. Even if someone discovered the hidden circuits, breaking through obsidian wouldn't be quick or quiet.
By evening, the underground portion was mostly complete.
Alexei stood in the center of the payment room, hands on his hips, and looked around with satisfaction.
"Not bad."
For a moment, he considered heading back to Aureate Summit Sect right away.
With Qingxue flying and the trip starting from the Nether, it would only take around an hour.
But after thinking about it, he dismissed the idea.
He still did n't fully understand how damage from Nether creatures worked against cultivators. That ghast fireball had apparently been able to kill a peak Core Formation cultivator, but what about Nascent Soul cultivators? Or Dharma Aspect experts?
He didn't have enough information yet.
Until he understood the mechanics better, he wasn't comfortable letting sect members explore the Nether without supervision.
Then there was the respawn anchor.
He had asked Qingxue and Yan to charge it with glowstone, but he hadn't explained its purpose yet. Ideally, nobody would ever need to use it.
But if someone did...
He had no idea whether resurrection would cause side effects for cultivators. He didn't know whether their souls would properly bind to the anchor, or whether they would end up trapped in some kind of limbo state instead.
There were too many unknowns. Being cautious was the safer choice.
He pulled out nine low-grade spirit stone lanterns from his inventory and flew around the room on his sword, placing them evenly throughout the space.
The lanterns would constantly give off spiritual energy, spreading it throughout the room. Cultivators waiting for the portal would recover their energy more quickly and use the portal more often.
Which meant more profit.
"Is it finished?" Qingxue asked.
She'd been flying him around the Nether for most of the day. Snowdrift, unable to handle the heat, had retreated into Qingxue's qi sea hours ago.
"Mostly. There's still the fast-travel network to build, but that's not something I can handle right now."
"Fast-travel network?"
Alexei nodded. "Nether travel works on an eight-to-one compression ratio. For every meter you travel in the Nether, you move eight meters in the Profound Sky Continent. Verdantree City is about 31,000 kilometers from the sect. But if we travel through the Nether, we only need to cover about 3800 kilometers. I already built a Nether portal at the sect. It's inside the survival base under the mountain. So as long as we find the corresponding Nether-side coordinates and open a portal there, we can travel directly between Verdantree and the sect."
Qingxue thought about it for a moment. "How long would it take to travel that distance through the Nether?"
"On foot, a pretty long time. With your flying speed, though, probably only an hour. The main issue is all the hostile mobs along the way. Once I confirm the coordinates, I can build a tunnel bore to clear a path underground. That way we won't have to deal with ghasts and piglins every time we travel through there."
Qingxue glanced at him. "What's a tunnel bore?"
"Hm... Basically an automated drill. It uses TNT to blast through netherrack and make a safe tunnel. I just need enough materials to craft the TNT first."
"TNT?"
"Uh... it goes boom. Ignore that..." Alexei coughed lightly.
Qingxue simply stared at him.
---
By the time Alexei and Qingxue returned to the spirit vessel, evening had already settled over Verdantree City.
Alexei didn't waste time relaxing. He headed down into the cargo hold and got to work redesigning the storage layout. The hold was roughly 2.3 meters tall and stretched nearly twelve meters from bow to stern. After accounting for the entrance corridor, there was still enough room to fit five large chests in a row.
He placed transmission ender chests along the upper wall, connected hoppers beneath them that fed sideways into the large chests below.
The entire setup could hold up to 17,000 low-grade spirit stones.
And if that somehow wasn't enough, he could always manually transfer stones from the chests into empty cabin space, stack them, then mine them back into his inventory for even more compressed storage.
For a few days in Verdantree, it would be more than sufficient.
Honestly, he would be satisfied with a few hundred spirit stones of profit. He was just starting out, after all, and Eastern Territory cultivators weren't exactly swimming in wealth.
Low expectations meant pleasant surprises.
---
The Li Estate in Verdantree City was brightly lit that evening, almost like a festival. Lanterns and streamers hung everywhere, and the estate was packed with guests.
Ever since their son returned, Li Zheng and Yun Mei had been hosting a three-day celebration.
The first day was for family and close friends.
The second day was for Verdantree's prominent merchant families.
And the third day would be for neighbors and business associates.
Tonight happened to be the second day.
Some guests were genuinely happy for the Li family. Others were not.
The Li merchant house already controlled a large share of Verdantree's trade. Now they also had ties to the cultivation world. Even if it was only Aureate Summit Sect with its questionable reputation, it was still more than most families could boast.
"Why the long face?" Zheng asked with a grin as he looked at his longtime business rival. "Were you always this miserable, or did it happen recently?"
Liang Shuren was a man in his fifties with almost completely grey hair and a permanently irritated expression.
To be fair, most of that grey hair was Zheng's fault.
For more than ten years, the Liang family had been steadily losing against Li business tactics. Their advisors spent day and night trying to predict Zheng's next move and come up with ways to counter him.
It hadn't helped much.
Over the past fifteen years, Liang family assets had shrunk by nearly thirty percent. As the current family head, if Shuren's hair wasn't grey already, then whose would be?
"Narrow-minded fool," Shuren muttered.
Zheng didn't look offended. If anything, he looked even more pleased. He still remembered how the Liang family's youngest son had once been praised as a prodigy. The boy had learned to read at two, memorized several classics by three, and by four, even academy instructors praised his calligraphy.
Everyone had thought the Liang family had produced a future cultivator. The Liang family certainly believed it themselves. From the moment the boy could eat solid food, they had fed him spirit-infused grains and vegetables while keeping him away from ordinary food.
That belief lasted until this year's recruitment ceremony.
The so-called Liang prodigy turned out to have no cultivation talent at all. But the real joke was that he did possess something rare: a special physique called a Resonant Heart.
According to the Immortal Alliance examiner, people with a Resonant Heart could comprehend techniques, spells, and divine abilities over 30% faster than normal cultivators. Their control over spiritual energy was also far more precise.
It was an ideal physique for alchemy, artifact forging, and formation arrays.
Unfortunately, the boy's aptitude for cultivation was poor. He only had dual water and wind spirit roots, with talent values of thirteen and seven.
That level of talent was nowhere near enough to pursue cultivation seriously. His future was basically limited to business or government work. With the Resonant Heart, he would probably do well in either.
But in the Liang family's eyes, none of that could compare to immortal cultivation.
Zheng moved through the crowd. As he passed by, several family heads and elders looked miserable. They all came from old families that now had to watch the Li family rise above them.
Eventually, he stopped near a much more relaxed group.
These families already had children or relatives in immortal sects, so they naturally saw things differently.
"Patriarch Huang," Zheng said as he approached a well-dressed middle-aged man. "Your son has been in that third-rank sect for over ten years now, right? How's his cultivation these days?"
The middle-aged man remained calm on the surface, but his back straightened slightly, and his expression softened.
This was exactly the kind of question he had been hoping for.
Huang Rui casually placed down his tea cup.
"It's nothing special. My son has what's called a half-step Heavenly Spirit Root. He sent word recently and said he ran into a few fortuitous encounters while traveling with his sect. He should break through to Qi Refining within half a year. My son's master also said that, as long as nothing unexpected happens, he should reach Foundation Establishment within 50 years."
He paused for a moment.
"Core Formation within 170 years. Spirit Condensation within 400, assuming his Dao Heart remains stable. And within 900 years..."
At this point, Rui could no longer hide the smile on his face.
"There may even be a chance for him to reach Nascent Soul."
Nascent Soul was considered top-tier combat power in the Eastern Territories. In the entire city of Verdantree, there were only around thirty to fifty Nascent Soul cultivators at any given time.
He had prepared for situations like this and had already looked into the matter beforehand.
According to the records, the Eastern Territories had a population close to twenty billion, yet there were fewer than 20,000 Nascent Soul cultivators in total.
One Nascent Soul cultivator for every ten million people.
As for the Dharma Aspect realm, there were only around a hundred across the entire Eastern Territories.
But that realm was far beyond Rui's reach. Anyone capable of reaching Dharma Aspect in the Eastern Territories possessed at least a top-grade Heaven spirit root. People like that lived in a completely different world from ordinary mortals like him.
Even on a smaller scale, the numbers were still shocking.
Verdantree alone had a mortal population of 330 million, with around 5.7 million births every year. The Immortal Alliance only held recruitment ceremonies once every ten years, meaning nearly 60 million children under the age of fourteen would qualify each time.
Out of those 60 million, fewer than 5,000 would enter ranked immortal sects.
Less than one in 10,000.
And more than 80% of those accepted only had Profound-tier talent. For most of them, Core Formation would already be the limit of their lives. They would never become important figures in the wider cultivation world.
According to what Rui had heard, the Li family's son had tested as a mid-grade Profound spirit root during the ceremony. Foundation Establishment was likely his limit. If he was lucky enough and willing to risk everything, he might have a small chance of reaching Core Formation.
Meanwhile, his own son was guaranteed to reach Spirit Condensation and even had a fifty percent chance of reaching Nascent Soul.
The gap between them was obvious.
Rui's chin lifted slightly.
With his fifth son's talent, the Huang family would eventually rise into a true cultivation family within Verdantree. There was no reason to keep competing with ordinary merchant families like the Lis anymore.
One had to look further ahead in life.
Zheng watched Rui puff himself up like a rooster and look down on everyone in the room, barely holding back his laughter.
His own son had only been at Aureate Summit Sect for half a year and was already one step away from Qi Refining.
The boy had written home about his progress before.
That eight-hundred-kilo grinding stone in the courtyard, the one even oxen struggled to pull? He could lift it with one hand now like it weighed nothing.
Yet according to Chang himself, he was still among the weakest of the new disciples and had to work hard just to keep up.
His junior sister was already at Foundation Establishment.
His senior brother could apparently withstand attacks from Nascent Soul cultivators head-on. Just the man's armor alone weighed several hundred thousand kilos.
Zheng was only an ordinary mortal. He rarely even met cultivators, let alone understood the world they lived in.
But he did know one thing.
An adult bull couldn't even pull 800 kilos.
Several hundred thousand kilos meant the strength of hundreds of bulls put together.
That was the level those people stood at.
He really wanted to brag. The urge was so strong it almost hurt.
But Changgui had made himself clear in his last letter. The sect had given him an artifact to conceal his aura, and for now, he didn't want to attract too much attention unless it was necessary.
Zheng understood that much.
Still, seeing Rui act so smug while knowing nothing about the real cultivation world...
Why was it so satisfying?
He took a sip of wine to hide his grin and quietly let the man continue talking.