Picking Up a Wisp of Dragon Qi (Part 1)-Thanks to Lord Feng Junzi Haoran for Becoming a Patron!

Zhang Chen carried the wild chicken straight into the hole he had dug beneath his home. In mere moments, he arrived at the Stone Tablet.

After carefully brushing the dirt off the Stone Tablet, Zhang Chen stared at its profound runes. He took the wild chicken from the basket, then pulled out the clay pot he often used to boil water in the mountains. Zhang Chen offered the chicken an apology. "Brother Chicken, please don't blame me. That damned Fox Spirit forced my hand. If she hadn't pressured me, I wouldn't have resorted to this."

With a flick of his wrist and a falling blade, chicken blood splashed out in an instant. As the wild chicken struggled continuously, the clay pot gradually filled with a bowl of blood.

Zhang Chen took out a brush he had prepared beforehand, dipped it in chicken blood, and began tracing the characters on the tombstone. He knew blood coagulated quickly, and he did not have much time. Fortunately, there were not many characters on the Stone Tablet. As his brush fell, one bloody character after another appeared on its surface.

Fortunately, ever since gaining the Golden Light skill, Zhang Chen felt that his hands had become incredibly steady. Every movement seemed to carry an inexplicable force of calm stability. Though he moved in great haste, he made no mistakes.

After a Teacup Time, Zhang Chen finished tracing the words on the tombstone. Then he took a sheet of white paper and pressed it directly against the tombstone to make a rubbing.

Under the normal rubbing procedure, the first step was applying the paper, the second was tamping it down, the third was applying ink, and the fourth was removing the rubbing. The entire process was exceedingly tedious. But Zhang Chen had no intention of studying calligraphy, nor did he intend for the copied words to last long. He merely wanted to use the Fox Spirit's hand to have Zhang Chen read the words on the Stone Tablet.

The rubbing went smoothly. When Zhang Chen peeled the white paper off the Stone Tablet, the writing was not blurred in the slightest. Yet those bloody characters looked especially terrifying within the gloomy cave.

"Now I just need to wait for that Fox Spirit to take the bait." Zhang Chen picked up the Luoyang Shovel and resumed his Great Cause of digging.

By now, the ground had become Frozen Soil, making excavation incredibly difficult, as though he were carving ice directly into ice. Zhang Chen found that the Luoyang Shovel alone could no longer move the earth. He needed to use a chisel and hammer as well.

"I still need to make gunpowder. Then I can blast apart this Frozen Soil with it, and digging will go much faster." As Zhang Chen hammered his chisel into the soil, he muttered to himself, "And those people at Blacksmith Cui's house—they don't look like decent folk. If they cause any trouble, they may kill to silence witnesses, perhaps even slaughter the entire village. I've crossed paths with them several times. If they want to silence me, I definitely won't be able to escape. If I can make gunpowder..."

Zhang Chen dug for half a shichen, only to feel bone-piercing cold all over his body. That chill did not merely freeze the earth—it seemed to burrow into his bones, intent on freezing his blood.

With numb hands and feet, Zhang Chen rushed out of the underground passage. Standing beneath the sunlight, he greedily basked in the warmth from the sky, a trace of delight appearing in his eyes. "What exactly is inside that underground cave? Why is it so cold? I'll come back tomorrow to keep digging. I'll need to prepare a few cotton-padded garments beforehand."

After warming himself for a while, Zhang Chen climbed back into the cave, took out his chisel and iron shovel, and resumed digging.

Yet Zhang Chen did not notice that the blood on the Stone Tablet beside him was gradually seeping into the stone, vanishing completely bit by bit, as though there had never been any blood on it at all.

At the moment, Zhang Chen's heart was wholly focused on digging out the cave and collecting Experience Points. Why would he pay attention to the now-useless Stone Tablet at his side?

After digging in the cave for another two shichen, the cold grew increasingly severe. Not only had Zhang Chen's body become frozen stiff, but even his hair was coated in a layer of frost. At last, he could no longer endure it. He packed all the dirt into the basket, then carried it out on his back.

"My digging speed is getting slower and slower. I only dug out ten baskets of dirt today." Zhang Chen laboriously crawled out of the hole and carefully scattered the dirt around the area, lest he reveal any flaws or disturb some wild beast.

He checked the Golden Finger Interface again:

Name: Zhang Chen

Skill (Second Order): Light of the Righteous God (0/5000)

Points: 1100

"I gained three hundred points today. I've already gathered eleven hundred points. Five thousand doesn't seem that far away now. In a few more days, my skill should be able to level up."

Looking at his Golden Finger Interface, Zhang Chen felt that the future was promising. The day his skill advanced again was not far off. Raising his head to look at the sky, he saw that the sun had already passed noon. Zhang Chen was utterly exhausted, and it felt as though cold air were rising from his bones. He did not intend to keep digging. Instead, he carried the basket away to prepare for making gunpowder.

The Fox Spirit was terrifying, but the outsiders were no pushovers either. He did not want to kill the Fox Spirit only to be killed by a group of ordinary men afterward. What an unbearably stifling way to die that would be.

Zhang Chen packed the rubbing paper into a bamboo tube, then carried his basket toward the mountains.

An ordinary person might know how to make gunpowder—after all, the formula of one part saltpeter, two parts sulfur, and three parts charcoal was taught in junior high chemistry. But that was only theory; it did not mean they could actually make it. Yet Zhang Chen truly knew the formula and process for making high-purity explosives! In his previous life, after watching wilderness survival techniques, he had even followed his second uncle into the mountains to blast wild boars and fish. He had not learned those skills for nothing!

"To make explosives, I'll need to make two kinds. A small amount of highly sensitive explosive as the detonator, and a large amount of insensitive explosive as the main charge." Zhang Chen pondered inwardly.

He now lived in a remote mountain village, where materials for making explosives were abundant. He merely needed to be careful not to let the Fox Spirit notice anything amiss, and not to let the villagers discover any clues either.

Fortunately, he often went hunting in the mountains, so he could make the explosives deep in the wilderness. So long as the fox did not leave Zhang Chen's side, she would have a hard time discovering what he was doing.

"Why not make the explosives directly inside that tomb... No, if there's an explosion, I'm afraid I'll be buried alive inside. I still need to find an open area."

Zhang Chen quickly selected a location: a natural cave that was usually so deserted that scarcely anyone ever came there.

(PS: I won't go into the detailed tutorial for making explosives, in case the River Crab God comes after me. In any case, it isn't difficult, and the raw materials are easy to find in the countryside.)

Zhang Chen did not dare let anyone know he was making explosives capable of changing an era. He did not even dare tell Wang Wu.

Zhang Chen tinkered about in the mountains for half the day. Then he emerged, ash-faced and grimy. Golden light flickered in his eyes, but he detected no trace of the Fox Spirit's aura. Knowing she had not followed him, he finally felt at ease enough to inspect his traps in the mountains.

Zhang Chen's harvest today was once again a bumper one. He caught two wild chickens and a rabbit. He directly roasted one chicken and the rabbit in the mountains to fill his belly. Only when the sky began to darken did he carry the remaining chicken and the prey he had caught that morning, swaying leisurely toward home.

When he reached his door, Zhang Chen indeed saw the White-Haired Fox standing outside, craning her neck in eager anticipation. The Fox Spirit seemed to have caught the scent of wild chicken and immediately began jumping for joy. She frolicked with a bounce on the ground, then rushed happily into the house, waiting to reap the fruits without lifting a finger.

"This damned Fox Spirit has practically become a demon!" Zhang Chen looked at the jubilant fox, but he could not smile at all. So angry was he that he stomped his foot on the spot.

PS: Let me explain. I originally posted chapters of four to five thousand characters, but later someone told me that splitting them up would work better during the new-book period. So for now, one chapter has temporarily been split into two.

Yesterday's thank-you note was deleted because the editor said it involved PK. I'll post the thanks below now.

Also, special thanks for this book's first Patron. Thank you to Lord Feng Junzi Haoran for becoming a Patron. Since this is the new-book period, I'll keep the extra chapters owed on record for now and make them up after the book goes premium.

This little author would like to thank the following lords for their rewards:

Lord Feng Junzi Haoran: 100,000 points. Tang Youyou: 1,000 book coins; Book Friend 20230102230047014: 100 book coins; Ni Shui Han Jiang Jing: 100 book coins; 20210906100024851: 100 book coins; So It Turns Out Uncle Is a Male God: 100 book coins; 20220509151614285: 158 book coins; Don't Steal Loli: 500 book coins; No More Words: 5,000 book coins; Carefree Wanderer: 100 book coins; Brother Li 10086: 100 book coins. Thanks as well to Lord "Blessing Others" for the reward of 300 book coins.

Thank you to all the lords above for your support.

This author can only see these lords in the backend. There are still some others I can only find by digging through the reader rankings. Once I finish digging through them, I'll post them in the next chapter, so please don't be anxious.