Breakthrough to Mid-stage

After returning, Chen Lin continued alchemy.

Having obtained ten First Origin Pills as desired, he began talisman crafting.

Although he still had some spirit stones on hand, to avoid drawing attention, he needed to sell a few talismans to maintain the persona of a rogue cultivator who made a living by crafting talismans.

Perhaps due to his cultivation breakthrough, his condition was exceptionally good today, and his skill in refining Fireball Talismans had improved further.

With his Talent Ability added in, he actually succeeded three times out of ten!

Three talismans bearing flame patterns were laid out in a row, and the more Chen Lin looked at them, the happier he became.

With a success rate of thirty percent, after deducting costs, ten sets of materials could net him seventeen or eighteen spirit stones—enough to be considered upper-class among the rogue cultivators in the shantytown.

After a burst of excitement, he picked up his Talisman Brush, ready to push forward and craft more in one go.

Before he knew it, the night had grown deep.

"Clang!"

A dull bell toll jolted Chen Lin awake from his immersion in talisman crafting.

He was startled at first, then stood up with a puzzled expression and walked over to the Bronze Bell.

"I set this timer myself, but why did I set it to ring at this exact time?"

Looking at the mechanical device on the Bronze Bell, Chen Lin once again sensed that he had forgotten something.

But the ringing time was definitely set by him, and even the timing device was made by his own hands, relying on the Ten Times Certain Hit talent to succeed.

What exactly had he forgotten?

Why set an alarm for this moment?

Chen Lin racked his brains.

Right, the Red Thread!

Suddenly, a flash of light struck his mind, and everything he had forgotten came rushing back.

He quickly moved to the window, opened it, and looked up at the sky.

All was silent.

The moon in the sky was full, the stars were bright, but there was nothing else unusual.

The red Fine Line that appeared every night was not there.

"Is it that the Red Thread didn't appear, or that I can no longer see it?"

Chen Lin's expression began to shift uncertainly.

After waiting a full half-hour, he closed the window with a dark face.

"It must be me that's the problem."

He muttered to himself, slumping weakly into a chair.

The joy of his improved talisman-crafting skill vanished without a trace.

After a moment of silence, he stood up again, quickly stripped off all his clothes, and examined himself inch by inch.

Finding no abnormalities, he began to look inward, inspecting the state of his body.

After going through all these steps, his expression grew darker and darker.

His body showed no anomalies.

More likely, the anomaly did exist, but he was unable to detect it.

He didn't need to think hard to guess—it was definitely related to being connected by that Red Thread last night.

He was now one of those "Puppets"!

Not only could he no longer see the red Fine Line, but even the sidelong sneers of those people had seemed perfectly normal to him before.

He had been "assimilated"!

The more he thought about it, the more terrified Chen Lin became.

Fortunately, he had been cautious enough to set an alarm, which had given him a warning.

Although this alarm was not a magical artifact, its materials included Artifact Fragments, giving it a certain mind-clearing effect. When he made it, he had already considered the possibility of such an event.

Of course, his recovery of clarity was not something this little alarm could achieve on its own; it was likely related to his Talent Ability, or perhaps the special soul of a transmigrator.

Chen Lin looked up at the sky, his face as heavy as water.

For something to turn an entire city of cultivators into Puppets, its power was unimaginable. Even if he had some special traits, it wouldn't matter.

But why was it doing this? What was its goal?

How could he break free?

He sank into a deep sense of helplessness and terror.

For several days in a row, Chen Lin failed to see the spectacular scene of red threads filling the sky at midnight, and he gradually calmed down.

No matter what, he had no good solution.

Fortunately, his mind remained clear enough to recognize his own condition, unlike the other cultivators in the city who were completely oblivious.

So he still had to follow the original plan: raise his cultivation to Qi Refining Mid-stage, learn the Flying Technique, and then leave this place.

Next, Chen Lin began frantically making talismans. Once he had accumulated enough spirit stones, he purchased alchemy materials to refine First Origin Pills.

With the accumulation of pills, his cultivation advanced rapidly.

During this time, the city grew increasingly unstable.

After the Zhang Family's Foundation Establishment Patriarch went missing, the patriarch of the Han Family, one of the Five Great Families, also vanished without a trace, making the already chaotic cultivators in the city even more anxious and fearful.

Moreover, because of this heavy snow, not only were all the wild plants buried, but the merchant caravans that used to appear frequently had long since stopped coming. Food within the city began to run scarce.

It wasn't just food—the prices of other cultivation resources also climbed higher and higher.

Fortunately, he had purchased a large stock of supplies in advance for his seclusion training, or he would have been starving.

Chen Lin paid no attention to the outside world, focusing single-mindedly on alchemy and cultivation.

With such concentration, time flew by.

Winter passed, and spring arrived.

Three months later.

Chen Lin, who had been sitting cross-legged, suddenly opened his eyes.

He checked his body in disbelief, and only after confirming it did a look of ecstasy spread across his face.

"I really broke through!"

Chen Lin lightly clenched his fist, feeling the surge of mana within him, his heart stirred with emotion.

He had only been trying it out, never expecting to break through to Qi Refining Layer 4 so easily. Even he found it hard to believe.

The process was simple and smooth, with nothing shocking happening—except that he had taken three pills at once, causing the medicinal power to be too fierce, sending sharp pains through his meridians.

But compared to advancing to Qi Refining Mid-stage, this minor side effect was nothing worth mentioning.

After calming himself, Chen Lin raised his hand and struck an empty palm toward the table in front of him. Instantly, an invisible energy was released, shaking the table slightly.

Done!

Mana externalization—this was the mark of entering Qi Refining Mid-stage!

He nodded in satisfaction.

In Early Qi Refining Stage, to use mana, one needed a medium; mana could not be released out of thin air.

Only by entering Qi Refining Mid-stage could this be done.

That was why those in Early Qi Refining Stage couldn't learn spells.

Though the mana he had just released only made the table wobble, that was because he hadn't learned any spells yet. Once he did, the power would naturally increase greatly.

His mana had multiplied several times over. In his excitement, Chen Lin kept trying different ways to release it externally, turning the room into a mess.

It took a while before he calmed down.

Then he took out two more items.

One was an Introduction to Basic Spells, and the other was a small, slightly greenish short sword.

He had prepared these before going into seclusion, afraid that if a major upheaval occurred in the city, he wouldn't be able to buy them, or the prices would skyrocket.

Now it seemed he had made the right choice.

The short sword was called the Carefree Sword.

The name sounded quite imposing, but in reality, it was just the lowest-grade First-grade Low-rank Artifact, offering only a limited boost to mana.

Even so, it was worth several hundred Low-grade Spirit Stones.

This was already the cheapest among artifacts; anything slightly better cost even more.

After learning about artifact prices, Chen Lin even entertained the idea of becoming an Artifact Refiner.

The Introduction to Basic Spells was much cheaper.

That made sense, since books could be copied. If he hadn't been afraid of buying defective fakes and gone to a proper shop, he could have gotten it from a street stall for the price of two Fireball Talismans.

He opened the book first. The first page recorded the 'Fireball Spell'.

This spell was essentially one of the must-have spells for cultivators; every Qi Refining Mid-stage cultivator knew it.

In fact, common knowledge in the Cultivation World held that there were barriers to learning spells.

To cultivate a certain series of spells, one needed the corresponding spiritual root.

For example, to learn the Fireball Spell, one normally needed a Fire Attribute spiritual root; otherwise, one couldn't sense the fire-element energy in the world and couldn't form the spell.

However, during the Qi Refining Stage, the barriers to spells were not that strong. Even without the corresponding spiritual root, one could use some mediums to cast spells, and low-end mediums were easy to find and cheap.

Of course, an even easier method was to use talismans.

Can't learn fire-attribute spells?

No problem—just buy the corresponding talisman for whatever spell you want to use!

Money could solve everything.