Earth Guiding Art

Earth Guiding Art

Night.

Jiang Ning sat cross-legged on his bed. Spiritual Energy flowed continuously through his spiritual meridians, and as a bottleneck broke open, its circulation became increasingly smooth.

"Qi Refining Layer 1 in less than ten days."

"With my Heaven Spiritual Root aptitude, combined with body tempering, I was only able to break through in such a scarce spiritual environment. This speed is acceptable." Jiang Ning thought.

The further one progressed in cultivation, the slower it became. By his estimate, completing the entire Qi Refining Stage might not even be possible during all of high school.

However, with Pills to assist him, the speed would increase considerably.

Cultivation resources were indispensable. In his previous life, he had relied on the Fallen Cloud Sect and had barely ever worried about resources below the Golden Core Stage. The sect's finest Alchemists had always kept supplies ready for him; he could have whatever he wanted.

Now that he had started over, without the sect's support, he had to acquire resources himself.

And the Golden Altar buried beneath Xue Yuantong's house was the first step toward his fortune.

Although he had eaten a meal at Xue Yuantong's home during the day, only to dig up her house that night...

Jiang Ning still acted decisively.

Recalling Aunt Gu's kindness and Xue Yuantong's lively appearance, he silently said:

"Sorry, Xue Yuantong, Aunt Gu. I'll compensate you someday!"

He activated his Spiritual Sense. After reaching Qi Refining Layer 1, his Spiritual Sense had also increased slightly, barely enough for a small-range, unobstructed scan.

His Spiritual Sense was like an invisible hand reaching toward the ground, treating the soil as though it were nothing and passing straight through it.

Moving through the soil was extremely arduous, as if it had sunk into mud. Every inch deeper consumed great effort. If Jiang Ning had not also cultivated a secret art that tempered Spiritual Sense, making it exceptionally resilient, he would have long been unable to endure such expenditure.

By the time Jiang Ning had reached a depth of roughly one meter, sweat was already beginning to trickle down.

"Still too much of a strain!"

Jiang Ning sighed, but he did not give up. Enduring his mental exhaustion, he continued scanning below.

A minute later, a puzzled expression appeared on his face. His Spiritual Sense had found no foreign object underground.

After a brief consideration, he directed his Spiritual Sense into the neighboring room—the kitchen. As it continued extending, Jiang Ning finally discovered something unusual.

His Spiritual Sense then circled around it, confirming the shape of the object: an oval jar.

As expected, it was the jar containing the gold.

After marking its exact location, Jiang Ning rose from the bed, opened the door, and went to the kitchen.

He reached out and moved aside the storage cabinet. The jar was directly beneath it.

In the darkness, Jiang Ning looked at the cement floor and frowned slightly. With his current Spiritual Energy, cutting through the cement floor would not be difficult. The difficult part was doing so without making any noise.

It was deep in the night. If he made too much of a disturbance and alerted the neighbors, it would cause unnecessary trouble.

After considering it, he decided to expend Spiritual Energy to solve the problem.

Jiang Ning traced a cyan ring in the air. The ring trembled faintly, seeming extremely unstable.

With a flick of his finger, the cyan ring slowly descended onto the cement floor. Like a sharp knife slicing through tofu, it silently cut through it.

This was a method Jiang Ning had used in his previous life to wield Sword Qi: compressing Spiritual Energy until it became exceptionally sharp. At a profound level, it could even cut through Magic Artifacts.

However, with Jiang Ning's current cultivation at Qi Refining Layer 1, its power was extremely limited, and it could only barely cut through cement.

Even so, this move consumed seventy percent of the Mana in his body.

A line split off from the cyan ring and lightly plowed through the soil beneath the cement. Jiang Ning beckoned through the air, and a basin-sized circular slab of cement detached intact.

He had done it so carefully so as not to damage Xue Yuantong's floor too badly. Once he removed the jar, he could simply fit the cement slab back into place.

Looking at the dark yellow soil exposed beneath the cement, Jiang Ning naturally had no intention of digging it out himself. He was a Qi Refining Layer 1 cultivator. Though his Mana was meager, he still had methods to retrieve a jar from the soil.

He only needed to use the Earth Guiding Art to draw out the jar. However, Jiang Ning's Mana was too weak to support the spell.

So before that, he needed to make one more preparation.

The kitchen Water Bucket was full. Jiang Ning lifted it and poured the water onto the soil. As if under his control, the stream seeped into the earth. Guided by Jiang Ning's Water Guiding Art, it went straight downward, all the way to the jar.

The originally somewhat hard soil softened from the water.

This would make the Earth Guiding Art much easier to use.

Jiang Ning formed a Magic Art with his right hand and pressed his palm into the mud. Every bit of Spiritual Energy in his body surged forth. The underground jar seemed to be pulled by an invisible chain, trembling lightly before slowly rising upward.

More than ten seconds later, Jiang Ning slowly lifted his palm, and a black jar emerged from the mud.

The jar weighed roughly twenty jin. Jiang Ning did not open it. At that moment, he only felt mentally exhausted. He had consumed too much Spiritual Energy and Spiritual Sense, and his head felt heavy and muddled.

Jiang Ning barely managed to replace the cement cover, move the storage cabinet back into place, and clean the jar. He then placed it beneath his bed and fell asleep at once.

When Jiang Ning woke the next day, sunlight streamed in through the window, warming his body.

Facing the sunlight, he felt the abundant Spiritual Energy throughout his body and his fully restored Spiritual Sense. His spirits lifted slightly.

He spread out his Spiritual Sense and retrieved the jar from beneath the bed. It was not large, only slightly wider than the mouth of a bowl.

After examining it for a moment, Jiang Ning opened the jar. Several thick pieces of burlap came into view.

He used Mana to draw the burlap out from a distance, and a pile of objects tumbled out from within—Gold Bars and gold beans piling on the floor.

Twelve thumb-thick Gold Bars and twenty-three broad-bean-sized gold beans.

There was nothing else in the jar.

Jiang Ning weighed them in his hand. Each Gold Bar was about 300 grams, while each gold bean was around 20 grams.

Gold was currently worth a little over three hundred per gram. This pile was worth over a million. In 2013, before housing prices had skyrocketed, that amount could buy a house of more than a hundred square meters even in the provincial capital.

For Jiang Ning, it was enough to support his cultivation for quite some time.

Jiang Ning was in high spirits. With this gold, he could eat whatever he wanted in the future, buy medicinal herbs in bulk, prepare all kinds of Pills and body-tempering spiritual liquid, and speed up his progress.

Over a million—after working for several years in his previous life, his savings had not even reached half that amount. If he were not a cultivator who had seen the wider world, he would have been overjoyed beyond measure. Unfortunately, after seeing a greater world, what he sought was no longer merely money, but his own power.

Money, power—before absolute strength capable of crushing all things, they were all fleeting clouds.

Those tiny handful of people standing at the pinnacle of the Current Realm were still made of flesh and blood. A single bullet could take their lives.

Cultivation, however, could change the essence of life.

What Jiang Ning sought was the eternal Great Dao, and the joy of exploring the path toward eternity.