With Enough Effort, an Iron Pestle Can Be Ground into a Needle

Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!

Wang Chen felt as though he had chugged a bottle of Ice Cola beneath the blazing summer sun.

The pleasure ran from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.

This was his first battle since transmigrating.

Though his enemy had only been a tiny Earth Rhinoceros.

After such prolonged focus, preparation, and buildup, the release in that single instant was utterly exhilarating.

One Shot One Kill!

The feeling truly defied description.

Gengjin Finger · Experience +1

Seeing the notification, Wang Chen habitually summoned his Cultivation Panel.

With a sweep of his gaze, his eyes abruptly narrowed!

Gengjin Finger (Proficient): 0/200

It had leveled up!

The Gengjin Finger he had mastered had actually broken through its bottleneck, advancing from Beginner Level to Proficient Level!!

Wang Chen suddenly understood.

Poor Spiritual Roots and low comprehension were not beyond remedy.

As the saying went, with enough effort, even an iron pestle could be ground into a needle.

If one or two attempts could not break through a bottleneck, then try ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, ten thousand times!

Sooner or later, the opportunity for a breakthrough would come.

This realization greatly boosted Wang Chen's confidence.

His fingers itched, and he dearly wanted to test the power of the Proficient Level Gengjin Finger.

But Wang Chen quickly suppressed the impulse.

Among all the skills he possessed, Gengjin Finger was his only offensive spell.

Activating it consumed a great deal of Mana.

He did not yet know how many Earth Rhinoceroses remained in the Spirit Fields, so wasting Mana now would not be wise.

Wang Chen first picked up the insect corpse that had been split in two and placed it into the Storage Bag hanging from his waist.

His Storage Bag had been a gift from one of Wang Shaoyuan's friends in his sect.

Though it was only three feet square inside.

Pitifully small.

It was nevertheless the only Magic Tool Wang Chen possessed.

Earth Rhinoceroses could be roasted, ground into powder, and used as medicine. The medicine shops in Yunyang City bought them at the price of one Lower Spirit for three jin.

That was roughly the amount yielded by twenty of them.

The Earth Rhinoceros he had just killed was worth five Shattered Spirits!

Danger was danger—the appearance of Earth Rhinoceroses was certainly a calamity, but it was also an opportunity to earn Spirit Stones.

Wang Chen continued searching the other Spirit Fields.

Recalling how he had discovered the Earth Rhinoceros earlier, he tried to enter that same state again.

He focused all his attention on sensing every rustle of wind and grass around him.

Perhaps because his Divine Soul attribute was high, or perhaps because Wang Chen was sufficiently focused, he soon formed a marvelous resonance with the Spirit Rice in the field.

The Spirit Rice eagerly "told" Wang Chen.

Where the enemy was!

The second Earth Rhinoceros was thus easily exposed before his eyes.

Without hesitation, Wang Chen gathered his qi at his fingertip and activated Gengjin power, striking at the new target.

The Gengjin Qi blade tore through the air and instantly hit the unsuspecting Earth Rhinoceros, cleanly slicing it in half.

Yet what Wang Chen had not expected was that after slaying the Earth Rhinoceros, the Gengjin Qi blade still had force to spare. It grazed a stalk of Spirit Rice and pierced into the soil.

Leaving behind a deep hole!

Wang Chen was quite startled—he had nearly injured the Spirit Rice by mistake.

Compared with the Beginner Level, the Proficient Level Gengjin Finger had clearly gained a tremendous increase in power.

It was faster, had a longer range, and possessed greater killing power!

Moreover, Wang Chen felt that his grasp and understanding of this spell had also deepened considerably.

Correspondingly, it consumed more Mana as well.

Gengjin Finger · Experience +1

Gengjin Finger (Mastery): 1/200

Seeing the display on the Cultivation Panel, Wang Chen's heartbeat suddenly quickened.

Each activation gave him 1 point of experience.

Did that mean that if he cast Gengjin Finger another 198 times, he could challenge the bottleneck again?

A souped-up Skill Necklace!

Wang Chen believed that other cultivators might find it easier than him to break through bottlenecks while practicing spell techniques.

But there was absolutely no way they could reach those bottlenecks as quickly as he did.

And the higher the level of a spell technique, the harder it was to cultivate.

Wang Chen could not help clenching his fist.

He realized that he had uncovered one small mystery of the Cultivation Panel.

Wang Chen was even more fired up.

Relying on Tongling Rice's wondrous perception, he smoothly searched every Spirit Field.

He killed a total of seven Earth Rhinoceroses!

Wang Chen's Gengjin Finger was not infallible, and he missed twice along the way.

Yet the skill experience still increased.

However, it also exhausted him to the point of nearly collapsing. His Dantian was utterly empty, and almost all of his Mana had been drained.

Just as Wang Chen sat beneath the shade of a tree, sipping Mountain Spring Water while happily going through the spoils in his Storage Bag, Old Sun hurried over with a tall, burly middle-aged man.

A youth of seventeen or eighteen followed behind them.

Wang Chen recognized the man as Zhang Ada of the Zhang Family.

Zhang Ada, who was at the sixth layer of Qi Condensation, was rather well-known among the spirit plant farmers of Yunyang Sect's outer sect.

Not only was he a skilled hand at farming himself, he had also married the grandniece of an alchemist from Yunyang City.

One had to know that an alchemist's status far surpassed that of a spirit plant farmer.

Thus, within dozens of li around here, Zhang Ada of the Zhang Family was quite a figure.

Wang Chen had no idea what price Old Sun had paid to actually invite Zhang Ada to help clear out the Earth Rhinoceroses.

He had never dealt with Zhang Ada before.

But he had once had a minor clash with Zhang Xiaoshan, who was following behind him.

Zhang Xiaoshan was Zhang Ada's son.

Old Sun, Zhang Ada, and Zhang Xiaoshan all noticed Wang Chen sitting in the shade.

Old Sun nodded in greeting, while Zhang Ada acted as though he had not seen him.

Zhang Xiaoshan merely snorted with his nostrils pointed at the sky.

What a clown!

Wang Chen sneered inwardly and watched them head toward Old Sun's Spirit Field.

Actually, Wang Chen rather wanted to see how Zhang Ada dealt with Earth Rhinoceroses.

But with Zhang Xiaoshan around, he had no intention of walking into a snub.

Seeing that the sun had nearly reached the Wushi hour, Wang Chen returned home.

He began lighting the fire and cooking.

After putting the Spirit Grain into the pot to boil, Wang Chen took all the Earth Rhinoceroses out of his Storage Bag.

Using the Skinning Knife, he carefully dug out the white flesh from their bellies.

An Earth Rhinoceros had a strip of lean meat inside its body, white as jade and wonderfully springy, with quite a good flavor.

Moreover, it had to be removed before drying and roasting, or it would affect the quality of the dry powder and fetch no price.

After digging out all the Insect Meat, Wang Chen added soy sauce to the bowl and marinated it to remove the gamy smell.

Once the Spirit Grain in the pot was half-cooked, he placed the bowl inside and simmered them together.

Before long, the fragrance of meat mingled with the rich aroma of Grain Rice drifting through the small kitchen.

The smell was enough to make one drool.

Even Wang Chen's saliva began to flow!

"Squeak, squeak!"

Suddenly, a thin little shriek caught his attention.

Following the sound, Wang Chen looked over and saw a White Fur Mouse that had crawled out from who knew where beside the corner.

Squatting on the ground, it rubbed its paws together and stroked its whiskers, its red nose twitching as it sniffed at the fragrant rice and meat.

It looked rather amusing.

Wang Chen's index finger twitched slightly, but he did not make a move.

If it had been an ugly black-furred rat, Wang Chen's Gengjin Finger would already have pierced out.

But this White Fur Mouse was quite adorable, and it had not provoked him.

So Wang Chen decided to spare the little fellow.

To his surprise, when Wang Chen did not move, the White Fur Mouse grew bolder and crawled another two feet forward.

Then it squatted down again.

Its pair of little eyes looked up at Wang Chen imploringly.

Wang Chen was amused.

After giving it some thought, he got up, lifted the pot lid, and used his chopsticks to pick up a strip of nearly cooked Insect Meat.

He tossed it in front of the White Fur Mouse.

"Squeak, squeak!"

The White Fur Mouse squeaked twice in delight.

It picked up the Insect Meat from the ground in its mouth, then turned and swiftly vanished into the woodpile against the wall.