"How did you get here?"
Looking at the beautiful young woman before him, Shen Mo was slightly taken aback.
"Father asked me to come check on you and, while I was at it, bring you some Spirit Stones."
The young woman spoke calmly.
She was none other than Chen An's only daughter, Chen Mengze.
She and Shen Mo had known each other since childhood. They had grown up together in the River-Facing Sect, childhood sweethearts.
When they were young, the two had gotten along quite well.
But as Chen Mengze approached her coming-of-age, blossoming into a graceful young woman, the distinction between men and women had grown clear, and their childhood closeness had faded considerably.
Afterward, she successfully broke through to the Qi Gathering Realm and became an Inner Sect disciple. Shen Mo had even fewer chances to see her.
By his reckoning, they had not seen each other for two or three years.
Looking at the girl before him, brimming with youthful vitality, Shen Mo inexplicably felt his heart flutter. He could barely bring himself to look her in the eye.
It wasn't his own doing; it was the original owner's memories at work.
The original owner had lost his parents when he was young, so it seemed he had harbored a faint affection for this childhood companion, his playmate from days gone by.
Chen Mengze, however, did not seem to feel the same way. Once they had grown up, their relationship had grown much more distant.
"Here. Twenty Spirit Stones."
Chen Mengze hadn't noticed Shen Mo's odd reaction. She took the Spirit Stones out of her storage pouch and set them on the table without ceremony. "Father went into seclusion a few days ago. He probably won't have time to assess your cultivation progress for the next few months."
"He told me to remind you to cultivate diligently and not give up on yourself."
"Right. Please thank Uncle Chen for me," Shen Mo said gratefully.
"By the way, Father said you didn't want to stay in the River-Facing Sect anymore. Were you thinking of leaving?"
"My cultivation had been making no progress, so I did have that thought. But after Uncle Chen's guidance, I've put it out of my mind," Shen Mo answered honestly.
"Oh." Chen Mengze nodded, seeming a little disappointed. "All right, I've delivered the things and passed on Father's message. I'll be going now."
"Why not stay for a meal before you go?"
"No need. I have to go to the Sutra Lecture Hall this afternoon to listen to an elder's lecture."
Chen Mengze set down the Spirit Stones, turned, and left.
After she was gone, Shen Mo carefully put the Spirit Stones away and sighed inwardly. In the end, we've grown distant.
Their relationship had taken a sharp turn for the worse not only because their circumstances had diverged as they grew up, but probably because of Uncle Chen as well.
From the original owner's memories, Shen Mo knew that Uncle Chen had been an old friend of his parents and treated him like his own son.
He had not only looked after Shen Mo in countless ways, but had also hoped to bring his daughter and Shen Mo together.
The original owner, naturally, had been more than happy with the idea.
But Chen Mengze had not cared for it.
She was the sort of woman who would yield to no man, with little interest in romance and only a single-minded longing for cultivation.
In her own words, she wanted the stars in the heavens, not the love of this world.
So Uncle Chen's matchmaking had only backfired, driving the two farther and farther apart.
"There's no point dwelling on it. I should focus on cultivating."
Suppressing his wandering thoughts, Shen Mo stopped thinking about it.
What does a great man need with a wife? It's just the original owner's lingering attachment at work.
"I've been diligently making talismans this past month, and I've made quite a bit of progress."
Opening his character attribute page, Shen Mo checked his current experience bar.
[Talisman Dao (First Grade) 242/1000]
Over the past month, Shen Mo had made talismans nearly a thousand times, counting all the small and large batches.
With all that practice, he had finally reached the First Grade level.
"But ever since I reached First Grade, making Lightness Talismans and Focus Talismans—these miscellaneous, ungraded talismans—has barely given me any experience."
Shen Mo murmured to himself.
At first, his Talisman Dao cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds as his number of attempts accumulated.
But after he reached First Grade, the experience he gained from making talismans began to plummet. Where successfully making a single talisman had once earned him at least two or three points, later on it became a matter of luck. Sometimes he gained experience, sometimes he didn't.
"Looks like I'll have to make more advanced talismans if I want to keep gaining experience in the Talisman Dao."
Shen Mo had originally planned to grind his Talisman Dao cultivation to Second Grade using cheap, low-end talismans.
Clearly, reality wasn't giving him a chance to exploit a bug.
The experience bonus from low-end talismans diminished over time.
"Even though I'm not getting much Talisman Dao experience anymore, my proficiency in making Focus Talismans and Lightness Talismans keeps increasing."
He checked his proficiency in making the two kinds of talismans.
[Lightness Talisman (Masterful) 105/5000] [Focus Talisman (Masterful) 25/5000]
Over the past month, Shen Mo had made each kind of talisman hundreds of times, and his proficiency had grown enormously.
He had advanced from the most basic level, Unfamiliar, to Proficient, then to Entering the Hall, and finally to Masterful in making both kinds of talismans.
With his rising proficiency, along with the effects of reaching First Grade in the Talisman Dao, Shen Mo's success rate had improved dramatically.
At first, he might not have managed to make even one successful talisman out of ten. Now, he had at least a nine-in-ten chance of producing a finished talisman.
"At this rate, I've got a trade I can make a living from."
With a success rate like this, he could already treat talisman-making as a way to earn money.
These two kinds of talismans were cheap, but even a tiny fly was still meat.
At least he could recoup some of what he spent on cultivation.
With that thought, Shen Mo rummaged around the room, took out all the finished talismans he had made over the past month, and counted them.
Two hundred and twenty Lightness Talismans.
Exactly one hundred Focus Talismans.
"Going by the market rate, ten Lightness Talismans can be sold for one low-grade Spirit Stone, while five Focus Talismans can fetch one low-grade Spirit Stone."
Shen Mo worked it out and reached a conclusion. "Forty-four low-grade Spirit Stones. That's what I've earned this past month!"
Forty-four low-grade Spirit Stones was quite a lot. For an outer disciple, it was a fortune!
Even by taking all sorts of sect assignments and collecting their monthly stipend, an outer disciple might not save up more than forty Spirit Stones in two years.
"But I have to account for the raw materials I used." Shen Mo checked how much Sandalwood Ink, Beast Blood, and yellow paper he had gone through, then estimated the total. "The cost was probably around twenty low-grade Spirit Stones."
Even after deducting the cost, he had twenty-four low-grade Spirit Stones left. That was still quite a lot.
If he chipped in a little more, he could buy a Qi Gathering Pill!
"Excellent. Truly excellent!"
Shen Mo nodded in satisfaction, thinking he would ask for leave tomorrow and visit the marketplace to sell all these talismans and turn them into Spirit Stones.
While he was there, he could use the Spirit Stones to see if he could buy a pill cauldron and officially start learning Alchemy!
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