For these four days, aside from curing the spirit meat, Li Xiuchang had left everything else to others, calmly cultivating in the Quiet Room.
But he had been keeping close track of the time. The moment it was up, he would come out and check the color of the smoked meat.
With Senior Brother Wang Long supervising day and night, the several hired fire tenders naturally had no chance to slack off. As a result, all thirty furnaces of smoked meat had turned out perfectly, with none failing or being undercooked.
Only that piece of Tier 1 Demonic Beast Meat was different. Li Xiuchang took it down to inspect it, but it was still far from being successfully smoked.
It looked like it could be smoked successfully, but it would require a great deal of time.
Considering the high purchase price of Tier 1 Demonic Beast Meat and the time costs involved, Li Xiuchang weighed the matter carefully and abandoned the idea of smoking Tier 1 Demonic Beast Meat in large batches.
Perhaps only after his Cultivation Level rose and the smoke he produced became stronger could the smoking time be shortened.
"Thank you for your hard work, Senior Brothers. Go back and rest for a day. Come back the day after tomorrow."
Li Xiuchang thanked the three fire tenders and paid them their wages in full.
After working nonstop for four days, the three men were all utterly exhausted. None of them felt that taking a day off would mean missing out on Spirit Stones.
Li Xiuchang had been somewhat worried that they might find the work too tiring and quit, so he had deliberately said, "Come back the day after tomorrow," to test their reactions.
Unexpectedly, all three nodded. None of them showed any intention of packing up and running off.
Pockmarked Senior Brother even sighed, "Circulating my magic power without pause for these four days actually improved my Cultivation Level a little. At least it didn't interfere with my cultivation."
The other two agreed as well. "Exactly. Meditating in seclusion every day is too boring, and it's easy to get distracted. Here, with Wang Long supervising us, we can stay focused. We earn Spirit Stones and improve our Cultivation Levels at the same time!"
Hearing this, Li Xiuchang finally relaxed and saw the three men off.
On the other side, Senior Brother Wang Long was already itching to collect the Smoked Spirit Meat. He picked up a knife and began cutting it.
Li Xiuchang joined him. His knife skills were superb, and he cut the meat strips far more deftly than Wang Long.
Working together, the two quickly finished cutting fifteen hundred meat strips.
Each strip was uniform in size, and its effect was equivalent to one Grain-Aversion Pill.
Wang Long bundled the meat strips into groups of ten and left with the smoked meat.
Li Xiuchang left the subsequent sales entirely to Wang Long. He only charged 1.5 Spirit Stones per bundle of meat strips. He did not concern himself with how much Wang Long sold them for or how he sold them.
Wang Long left at noon and returned in the evening with joy written all over his face.
"Junior Brother, they all sold out!" he said excitedly.
"Excellent!"
Li Xiuchang was beaming as well.
Although he had confidence in his own product, it was only after the Smoked Spirit Meat had truly been sold that Li Xiuchang felt completely at ease.
Of the 1,500 smoked meat strips, Li Xiuchang received a total of 225 low-grade Spirit Stones.
After deducting the costs, he had earned more than 180 Spirit Stones.
However, Wang Long had bought another 80 Spirit Stones' worth of spirit meat, so Li Xiuchang was left with only 145 Spirit Stones in hand.
After repaying the borrowed Spirit Stones together with the interest, and adding in the income from selling "smoke-gathering rights" over the past few days, Li Xiuchang still had 125 Spirit Stones left.
It did not look like much, but most of the money had gone into costs. After deducting everything, having this much left over was already quite good.
Moreover, once the remaining five furnaces of Smoked Spirit Meat were finished tomorrow, another large sum of Spirit Stones would come in!
Wang Long was grinning so broadly that he could barely close his mouth. A single day's income was equivalent to what he had earned over the previous month or more!
Since becoming a talisman master, this was the first time he had felt that... the future looked promising!
Li Xiuchang chatted with Wang Long for a while and learned that he had not gone to the market district at all. He had sold all fifteen hundred meat strips within the sect.
He knew exactly who the customers for Smoked Spirit Meat were.
Foundation Establishment cultivators could subsist without food, so it was Qi Condensation cultivators who needed Grain-Aversion Pills.
Thus, his targets were those Qi Condensation Stage disciples who had money to spare and decent backgrounds. Only they would pay more than the price of Grain-Aversion Pills just for the sake of "good flavor" and buy Smoked Spirit Meat.
People like that were actually concentrated within the Immortal Dust Sect. The Qi Condensation Rogue Cultivators in the market district were all miserably poor. Few of them would buy Smoked Spirit Meat merely to satisfy their appetites.
Wang Long had worked in the Reception Area for many years and knew every "rich disciple" in the outer sect. He went straight to their doors to promote the product and easily sold all the Smoked Spirit Meat.
The next day, the second batch of 2,500 smoked meat strips came out of the furnaces!
This time, Wang Long used less than two hours to sell all the smoked meat strips, bringing Li Xiuchang back 375 Spirit Stones!
The Spirit Stones in Li Xiuchang's hands finally surpassed the five-hundred mark.
With their finances comfortable, they naturally began considering expanding production again.
However, after discussing it for a while, the two felt they could not expand blindly.
Smoked meat strips, like Grain-Aversion Pills, would certainly have a long-term demand and market, but they were also just as durable as Grain-Aversion Pills.
A bottle of Grain-Aversion Pills could last about a month, but that was under the assumption that one neither ate nor drank anything else.
In reality, people only took Grain-Aversion Pills when cultivating in seclusion or concentrating on studying a craft. In their daily lives, they still ate normally.
After all, ordinary food was cheaper and more delicious than Grain-Aversion Pills.
Thus, on average, a bottle of Grain-Aversion Pills lasted far more than a month. The same naturally applied to their Smoked Spirit Meat.
Moreover, there were only so many customers for Smoked Spirit Meat. Their numbers were far smaller than the audience for Grain-Aversion Pills.
At the beginning, Smoked Spirit Meat would certainly sell well, but the number of wealthy Qi Condensation disciples within the Immortal Dust Sect was limited.
Once most of the customers had bought Smoked Spirit Meat, they might not purchase it again for a long time.
Therefore, they could not expand rapidly just because business was good at present.
They had to build steadily, step by step.
"Add another twenty furnaces, bringing the total to one hundred. After that, we'll adjust the scale according to sales." Li Xiuchang made his decision.
With one hundred furnaces, they could produce five thousand smoked meat strips every five days, bringing Li Xiuchang more than a hundred Spirit Stones in profit per day on average.
The expansion was still entrusted to Senior Brother Wang Long. Li Xiuchang only needed to cure the spirit meat and start the fires, leaving him with plenty of free time.
Thanks to the help of that piece of Spirit Tung Wood, Li Xiuchang's Cultivation Level had advanced considerably over these past few days. His cultivation speed was much faster than before.
But compared with the other outer-sect disciples who possessed mid-grade Spiritual Apertures, he was still inferior.
Li Xiuchang could absorb wood-attributed Spiritual Power from the spirit wood, but he still had to rely on his own cultivation to transform it into fire-attributed Spiritual Power.
With his mere low-grade Spiritual Aperture, his speed of transforming fire-attributed Spiritual Power was far too slow. If his fire-attributed Spiritual Power was insufficient, then no matter how much wood-attributed Spiritual Power he had, he could not transform it into magic power.
The shortest plank determined the limit.
Of course, this was not completely impossible to remedy.
Li Xiuchang had come up with an idea long ago, but he had previously been too short on funds to put it into practice.
Now that he had sufficient Spirit Stones, his foremost goal was to raise his Cultivation Level first.
During this period, an idea had taken shape in his mind.
He realized that he had fallen into a certain blind spot in his thinking all along.
Since he wanted to cultivate immortality through "length," why not directly increase his own magic power to raise his Cultivation Level?
"Next comes the pay-to-win phase. Heavy spending! I'll cultivate to the Third Layer of Qi Condensation first, no matter the cost!"
Once he reached the Third Layer of Qi Condensation, he would be able to form a faint Spiritual Sense and look inward.
Once Li Xiuchang could see the magic power within his body, raising his Cultivation Level might no longer require relying on cultivation.
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