New Ideas for Cultivation Advancement

For the past four days, Li Xiuchang had handed over all responsibilities except for curing the Spirit Meat, acting as a hands-off manager while he cultivated in his quiet room.

However, he kept a close eye on the time. As soon as the appointed hour arrived, he immediately emerged to inspect the quality of the smoked meat.

With Senior Brother Wang Long supervising day and night, the hired laborers had no choice but to work diligently. Consequently, all thirty batches of smoked meat turned out perfectly, with none failing or being undercooked.

Only the piece of Tier 1 Demonic Beast Meat, which Li Xiuchang took down to examine, was still far from being successfully smoked.

It appeared it would eventually be ready, but it required a significant amount of time.

Considering the high procurement cost of the Tier 1 Demonic Beast Meat and the time investment, Li Xiuchang weighed the pros and cons and abandoned the idea of smoking large quantities of it.

Perhaps once his cultivation improved and the smoke he produced became stronger, he could shorten the smoking time.

"Senior Brothers, thank you for your hard work. You can go back and rest for a day. Come back the day after tomorrow."

Li Xiuchang thanked the three laborers and paid them their wages.

Having worked non-stop for four days, the three were exhausted and didn't feel that taking a day off would hinder their earnings of Spirit Stones.

Li Xiuchang was slightly worried they might find the work too tiring and quit, so he deliberately mentioned "Come back the day after tomorrow" to gauge their reaction.

To his surprise, all three nodded, showing no intention of abandoning the job.

Pockmarked Senior Brother even remarked, "Operating my Mana continuously for these four days has actually helped my cultivation advance a bit. It hasn't hindered my progress at all."

The other two agreed, "That's right. Cultivating in seclusion usually gets too boring, and I often get distracted. Here, with Wang Long supervising, I can focus completely. Not only do I earn Spirit Stones, but my cultivation also improves!"

Relieved, Li Xiuchang saw them off.

Meanwhile, Senior Brother Wang Long was already eagerly collecting the smoked Spirit Meat and picked up a knife to start slicing.

Li Xiuchang joined him. His knife skills were exquisite, and he sliced the meat strips much more efficiently than Wang Long.

Together, they quickly cut fifteen hundred meat strips.

Each strip was uniformly sized and equivalent in effect to one Grain-Aversion Pill.

Wang Long packaged every ten strips together and then left with the smoked meat strips.

Li Xiuchang entrusted the entire sales process to Wang Long, only charging 1.5 Spirit Stones per group of ten strips. He didn't inquire about how much Wang Long sold them for or how he sold them.

Wang Long left at noon and returned in the evening with a joyous expression.

"Junior Brother, they're all sold out!" he exclaimed excitedly.

"Great!"

Li Xiuchang's face was also beaming with joy.

Although he had confidence in his product, it wasn't until the smoked Spirit Meat was actually sold that Li Xiuchang felt completely at ease.

Li Xiuchang received a total of 225 low-grade Spirit Stones for the 1500 smoked meat strips.

After deducting costs, he had made a profit of over 180 Spirit Stones.

However, Wang Long had also purchased an additional 80 Spirit Stones worth of Spirit Meat, so Li Xiuchang only had 145 Spirit Stones left after receiving the payment.

After repaying the borrowed Spirit Stones with interest, and including the income from selling "smoke rights" in the past few days, Li Xiuchang was left with 125 Spirit Stones.

It didn't seem like much, but it was primarily due to the high initial investment. With all costs deducted, having this much remaining was quite good.

Furthermore, once the remaining five batches of smoked Spirit Meat were completed the next day, it would bring in another substantial sum of Spirit Stones!

Wang Long couldn't stop smiling. The income from just one day was equivalent to his earnings for over a month previously!

Ever since becoming a Talisman Master, this was the first time he felt... the future was bright!

Li Xiuchang chatted with Wang Long for a while and learned that he hadn't even gone to the market. He had sold all 1500 meat strips within the sect itself.

He was well aware of the target customer base for smoked Spirit Meat.

Foundation Establishment cultivators could go without eating, so only Qi Condensation cultivators would need Grain-Aversion Pills.

Therefore, his target was wealthy Qi Condensation disciples with good backgrounds. Only they would spend more than the price of Grain-Aversion Pills for "delicious food" like smoked Spirit Meat.

And these individuals were mostly concentrated within the Immortal Dust Sect. The Qi Condensation rogue cultivators in the market were all struggling, and very few would buy smoked Spirit Meat just to satisfy their appetites.

Wang Long had worked in the Reception Area for many years and knew exactly which "wealthy disciples" were in the Outer Sect. He went directly to them to promote his products and easily sold all the smoked Spirit Meat.

The next day, the second batch of 2500 smoked meat strips was ready!

This time, Wang Long took less than two hours to sell them all, bringing back 375 Spirit Stones for Li Xiuchang!

Li Xiuchang's Spirit Stones finally broke the 500 mark.

With their finances improving, they naturally considered expanding their production scale again.

However, after discussing it, they decided against blind expansion.

Smoked meat strips, like Grain-Aversion Pills, would always have demand and a market. But like Grain-Aversion Pills, they were also durable.

A bottle of Grain-Aversion Pills could last about a month, but that was under conditions of not eating or drinking at all.

In reality, people only took Grain-Aversion Pills when they were in seclusion or deeply engrossed in their studies. They would still eat normally on other days.

After all, ordinary food is cheaper and tastier than Grain-Aversion Pills.

Therefore, a bottle of Grain-Aversion Pills lasts much longer than a month on average, and the same goes for their Smoked Spirit Meat.

Furthermore, the customer base for Smoked Spirit Meat is limited, far smaller than the audience for Grain-Aversion Pills.

Smoked Spirit Meat might sell well at first, but the number of wealthy Qi Condensation Cultivators in the Immortal Dust Sect is also limited.

Once most of the customer base has purchased Smoked Spirit Meat, it might be a long time before they repurchase.

So, one shouldn't expand rapidly just because business is good now.

It's better to proceed steadily.

"Add twenty more stoves, bringing the total to one hundred. We'll adjust the scale later based on sales," Li Xiuchang decided.

With one hundred stoves, they could produce five thousand smoked meat strips every five days, bringing Li Xiuchang an average daily profit of over one hundred Spirit Stones.

The task of scaling up was still handed over to Senior Brother Wang Long, while Li Xiuchang only handled the marinating of the Spirit Meat and starting the fires, leaving him with plenty of free time.

His cultivation had improved significantly in the past few days, thanks to the help of that Spirit Tung Wood, much faster than before.

However, compared to other Outer Sect disciples with mid-grade Spiritual Apertures, he was still inferior.

Li Xiuchang could absorb wood-attribute Spiritual Power from the Spirit Wood, but he still had to cultivate and convert the fire-attribute Spiritual Power himself.

His low-grade Spiritual Aperture made the conversion of fire-attribute Spiritual Power too slow. Without enough fire-attribute Spiritual Power, even with abundant wood-attribute Spiritual Power, it couldn't be converted into Mana.

His weakness determined his ceiling.

Of course, this wasn't an insurmountable problem.

Li Xiuchang had already had an idea, but he lacked the funds to implement it before.

Now that he had sufficient Spirit Stones, his primary goal was to improve his cultivation first.

During this time, a new idea had formed in his mind.

He realized he had been stuck in a mental rut.

If he wanted to cultivate immortality using "Length," why not directly increase his Mana to boost his cultivation?

"It's time to spend money now, a lot of it! I'll spare no expense to cultivate to the Third Layer of Qi Condensation first!"

Upon reaching the Third Layer of Qi Condensation, he would be able to form a weak Spiritual Sense and perform internal observation.

Once Li Xiuchang could see the Mana within his body, his cultivation improvement might no longer rely on cultivation.