After returning, Chen Lin resumed refining pills.
Once he had obtained the ten Chuyuan Pills he wanted, he began making talismans.
Although he still had some spirit stones, he needed to sell a few talismans to keep up appearances and maintain his cover as someone who made his living through talismancrafting.
Perhaps because his cultivation had increased, he was in exceptionally good form that day, and his skill at making Fireball Talismans improved again.
With his talent ability included, he actually succeeded three times out of ten!
Three talismans bearing flame patterns lay in a row. The longer Chen Lin looked at them, the more delighted he became.
With a thirty-percent success rate, ten sets of materials could earn him seventeen or eighteen spirit stones after costs. Among the rogue cultivators of Shanty Town, that put him comfortably near the top.
After savoring his excitement for a while, he picked up his talisman brush, ready to ride the momentum and make more.
Before he knew it, the night had grown late.
Clang!
A muffled toll startled Chen Lin out of his absorption in talismancrafting.
He froze, then rose with a puzzled expression and walked over to the bronze bell.
"This is definitely the time I set, but why did I set it to ring at this hour?"
Looking at the mechanical apparatus mounted on the bronze bell, Chen Lin once again realized that he had forgotten something.
Yet he had certainly set the time himself. He had even made the timer personally, only succeeding thanks to his talent, Ten Attempts One Hit.
What exactly had I forgotten?
Why did I set an alarm for this hour?
Chen Lin racked his brains.
Right, the red threads!
Suddenly, a flash of insight crossed his mind, and everything he had forgotten came flooding back.
He hurried to the window, opened it, and looked up at the sky.
Everything was still.
The moon overhead was round, and the stars shone brightly, but there was nothing else unusual.
The thin red threads that appeared every night were nowhere to be seen.
"Have the red threads not appeared, or can I no longer see them?"
Chen Lin's expression began to fluctuate.
After waiting for a full hour, he closed the window with a grim look.
"The problem must be with me."
He muttered those words to himself and sank weakly into his chair.
All the joy of his improved talismancrafting vanished.
After sitting in silence for a while, he stood again, quickly stripped off all his clothes, and examined himself inch by inch.
Finding nothing unusual, he turned his perception inward to inspect the state of his body.
After going through these checks, his expression grew increasingly grim.
There was nothing abnormal about his body.
More likely, something was indeed wrong, but he simply could not detect it.
It took no thought to guess that this had to be connected to the red thread attaching itself to him the previous night.
He was now one of those "string-controlled puppets" himself!
Not only could he no longer see the thin red threads, he had even considered those people's sidelong looks and cold smiles perfectly natural earlier.
I've been "assimilated"!
The more Chen Lin thought about it, the more frightened he became.
Fortunately, he had been cautious enough to make an alarm, which had given him a reminder.
Although the alarm did not qualify as a magical tool, it was made from fragments of magical tools and had a certain mind-clearing effect. When he made it, he had already considered guarding against something like this.
Of course, that little alarm alone could not have restored his clarity. That probably had something to do with his talent ability, or his unusual soul as a transgressor.
Chen Lin gazed up at the sky, his face as dark and still as deep water.
An entity capable of turning an entire city's cultivators into string-controlled puppets had to possess unimaginable power. Even if he had something special about him, it would do him no good.
But why was it doing this? What was its purpose?
How could he break free?
He sank into profound helplessness and terror.
For several days in a row, Chen Lin failed to see the spectacular sight of red threads filling the midnight sky, and gradually calmed down.
Whatever the case, he had no good way to resolve the problem.
Fortunately, his mind remained reasonably clear, and he understood his situation, unlike the city's other cultivators, who were completely unaware.
He therefore still needed to follow his original plan: raise his cultivation to the mid Qi Refinement realm, learn the Flight Technique, and leave this place.
After that, Chen Lin began making talismans furiously. Whenever he accumulated enough spirit stones, he bought pill-refining materials and refined Chuyuan Pills.
With the pills piling up, his cultivation advanced rapidly.
During this time, the city grew increasingly unsettled.
After the disappearance of the Zhang Family's Foundation Establishment patriarch, the patriarch of the Han Family, another of the Five Major Families, also vanished without explanation, leaving the cultivators in the already chaotic city even more anxious.
Moreover, the heavy snow had buried all the plants in the wilderness, and the merchant caravans that used to arrive regularly had not appeared for a long time. Food in the city began to run short.
It was not just food. The prices of other cultivation resources climbed steadily as well.
Fortunately, he had bought a large stock of supplies in advance for his secluded cultivation. Otherwise, he would have gone hungry.
Chen Lin paid no attention to outside affairs, focusing wholeheartedly on refining pills and cultivating.
With such concentration, time flew by.
Winter passed, and spring arrived.
Three months later.
Sitting cross-legged, Chen Lin suddenly opened his eyes.
In disbelief, he inspected his body. Only after confirming the change did wild delight spread across his face.
"I really broke through!"
Chen Lin gently clenched his fist, feeling the increased mana within him as excitement surged through his heart.
He had only intended to give it a try. He had never expected to break through to Qi Condensation Layer 4 just like that, and even he found it hard to believe.
The process had been simple and smooth, with nothing extraordinary happening. It was just that taking three pills at once had made their medicinal power too fierce, sending waves of stabbing pain through the meridians throughout his body.
But compared with advancing to the mid Qi Refinement realm, that minor side effect was hardly worth mentioning.
After steadying his emotions, Chen Lin raised his hand and thrust his palm toward the table without touching it. A surge of invisible energy immediately shot out, making the table shake.
It worked!
Mana Projection-the hallmark of entering the mid Qi Refinement realm!
He nodded in satisfaction.
In the early Qi Refinement realm, using mana required a medium; it could not be released directly into the air.
That became possible only upon entering the mid Qi Refinement realm.
This was why cultivators in the early Qi Refinement realm could not learn spells.
Although the mana he had just released had only shaken the table, that was because he had not learned any spells. Once he did, its power would naturally increase greatly.
The mana within him had increased severalfold. In his excitement, Chen Lin kept trying different poses for projecting it, leaving his room in complete disarray.
Only after quite some time did he calm down.
Then he took out two more things.
One was a copy of Detailed Explanation of Elementary Spells, and the other was a small short sword with a faint green tint.
He had prepared these before entering seclusion, afraid that some major upheaval in the city might make them impossible to buy, or that their prices might soar.
Now it seemed he had made the right choice.
The short sword was called the Xiaoyao Sword.
Its name sounded quite imposing, but in reality, it was merely a first-rank, low-grade magical tool of the lowest tier, offering only a limited boost to mana.
Even so, it was worth several hundred low-grade spirit stones.
This was already the cheapest sort of magical tool. Anything slightly better cost even more.
After learning the prices of magical tools, Chen Lin had even entertained the idea of becoming an artifact refiner.
Detailed Explanation of Elementary Spells had been much cheaper.
That was only natural. Books could be copied, after all. If he had not gone to a reputable shop for fear of buying a flawed counterfeit, he could have bought it from a street stall for the price of just two Fireball Talismans.
He opened the book first. The very first page described the Fireball Spell.
This was essentially one of the spells every cultivator needed, and all cultivators in the mid Qi Refinement realm knew it.
In fact, it was common knowledge in the Immortal Cultivation World that there were barriers to learning spells.
To practice a particular category of spells, one needed the corresponding spiritual root.
For example, learning this Fireball Spell normally required a fire spiritual root. Otherwise, one could not sense the fire-attribute elements between heaven and earth, and thus could not form the spell.
However, in the Qi Condensation realm, these barriers were not particularly strong. Even without the corresponding spiritual root, one could use certain mediums to cast spells, and low-end medium objects were easy to find and inexpensive.
Of course, an even easier method was to use talismans.
Can't learn fire-attribute spells?
No problem. Whatever spell you want to use, just buy its talisman!
The power of money can smooth over anything.
Before you continue