Grace and Severity in Equal Measure

The jostling from racing after the Gold-Eating Rat on the way there had nearly left Zhou Yang with lasting trauma. Thus, at his repeated insistence on the return trip, Elder Zhou Quan could only slow down and accompany him back at a leisurely pace. It took them nearly two full days to return to Qingping Mountain Oasis.

By then, Qingping Mountain Oasis had descended into complete chaos. The Gold-Eating Rat had gone on a killing spree, slaughtering twenty or thirty miners, while Zhou Yang, the stationed cultivator, had vanished without a trace. Zhou Bao, a temporary replacement with no formal appointment from the Lineage, simply could not hold the situation together or soothe the surviving miners, whose courage had been scared out of them.

Honest and dull-witted as he was, he could only remain on Qingping Mountain, helplessly watching the miners wreak havoc in the camp and vent their fear and fury.

When Zhou Yang and Elder Zhou Quan returned and saw this sight, they were both furious and amused, left utterly speechless.

With no other choice, Zhou Yang could only step forward personally to clean up the mess.

While Zhou Yang was dealing with the aftermath, Elder Zhou Quan stormed into Qingping Mountain in a rage and slapped Zhou Bao, who had hurried up to greet him with delight, sprawling to the ground.

"You truly are worthless! You are at least a Qi Refining Layer Four cultivator. Yet a mere group of mortals had you at a loss, cowering inside the formation and staring blankly? What are the artifacts in your hands for? Are all those spells you cultivated just tricks for amusing children?"

The old man glared at his aggrieved grandson with a look of bitter disappointment. His spittle sprayed all over Zhou Bao's face as he raged, thoroughly beside himself with anger.

Yet Zhou Bao, that honest, dull-witted fellow, was also stubborn to the bone. Hearing the old man's scolding, he defended himself with an aggrieved expression. "Grandfather, you have wronged me. The Lineage has rules strictly forbidding cultivators from harming the Lineage's mortals. Just because those people would not listen to me, was I supposed to kill them?"

At those words, the old man's fury surged upward in waves. Unable to restrain himself, he slapped his grandson across the other cheek as well, then cursed in a mixture of anger and exasperation, "Kill, kill, kill! With your cowardly nature, would you even dare kill anyone? Open your eyes wide and look! Look at how Little Nine solves problems! Other than being older, what part of you, his Second Brother, can compare to him?"

I was never as capable as Ninth Brother anyway!

Zhou Bao thought bitterly, but he did not dare talk back again. Obediently, he cast the Heavenly Eye Technique and looked toward the miners' camp beyond the mountain to see how Zhou Yang would handle the miners.

Zhou Yang's method for dealing with the miners was simple. He directly unleashed the Crimson Flame Sword, turning it into a streak of sword light that drove the miners into an open clearing. Then he threw the Gold-Eating Rat's corpse before them.

"Do you see this? This was the man-eating demon beast. Now it is dead!"

"I know you are afraid—afraid of being eaten by demon beasts. But fear is not a reason for you to wantonly destroy the Lineage's property!"

"Now I will give you a chance. Immediately clean up the camp and honestly await the Lineage's further arrangements. Otherwise, I will truthfully report everything you have done these past two days to the Lineage and suggest that it strip you of your surnames and expel you, along with your wives, children, and elderly, from the Lineage!"

A First-Rank spell, the Clear Sound Art, which could focus the mind and awaken the senses, carried Zhou Yang's icy voice clearly into every miner's ears, reaching deep into their minds.

Under the effects of the Clear Sound Art, the miners' minds became clearer than ever before. The Lineage rules they had memorized since childhood swiftly surfaced in their awakened minds. Cold sweat immediately drenched them as they stared in terror and dread at the young immortal master standing beside the demon beast's corpse.

Although the Zhou Lineage's rules strictly forbade Lineage cultivators from slaughtering Lineage mortals, they were even less tolerant of Lineage mortals damaging the Lineage's spiritual resources. Any mortal who violated this rule would, at best, lose his life; at worst, have his surname stripped and his entire family exiled.

Once their surnames were stripped, they would no longer be members of the Zhou Lineage and would no longer receive the protection of Zhou Lineage cultivators. If a Zhou Lineage cultivator then cut them down with a single sword, it would not count as violating the clan rules.

And if their entire families were exiled, then in the boundless sea of sand, without sufficient food and water, all their young and old would perish within three days!

"Mercy, Immortal Master! Please spare us, Immortal Master!"

"We were wrong! We know we were wrong! Immortal Master, please show mercy and spare us this once! We will never dare again!"

"I have been wronged, Immortal Master! I stayed inside the barracks these past two days and never took part in destroying the camp! Your immortal eyes see all, Immortal Master—I am truly innocent!"

In an instant, once they understood the consequences, all the miners' knees gave way. They fell to the ground in unison, frantically kowtowing and begging for mercy. Not a trace remained of their earlier mad recklessness, like men with no fear of death.

On Qingping Mountain, Zhou Bao stared at the scene with wide eyes, completely dumbfounded.

Seeing this, Elder Zhou Quan took the opportunity to instruct his grandson. "Did you see that? Do you understand now how foolish what you said earlier was? If you have to beat and kill people whenever you deal with a mere group of mortals, then what is the difference between you and sand bandits? Why do you think the Lineage does not teach you other spells, yet makes you learn those First-Rank spells that seem useless for combat and cultivation from childhood?"

Zhou Bao had no answer. He might have been stubborn, but he was not a truly brainless fool. The facts lay before his eyes, leaving him no room to deny or argue any further.

"Learn properly from this. You are not getting any younger. In the future, use your brain more when you do things. If you encounter something difficult to decide again, remember to ask Little Nine for advice and hear his opinion before making a decision!"

After all, he was his own grandson. The old man could not bear to keep beating or scolding him, so he could only sigh and focus on persuasion, hoping Zhou Bao would change.

By then, Zhou Yang waited until the miners had kowtowed until their foreheads split and were covered in blood before agreeing to forgive their mistake this time. He then waved them away to clean up the oasis camp, which was in complete disarray, while he collected the Gold-Eating Rat's corpse and returned to Qingping Mountain.

"What an excellent display of grace and severity in equal measure. First, you used the clan rules to threaten and terrify them into losing their nerve, then you granted them mercy to settle their hearts. Little Nine, you understand this principle at such a young age. If the Lineage is handed over to you in the future, I believe you will do even better than old fellows like us!"

Even before his own grandson, Elder Zhou Quan did not hesitate to openly state that he favored Zhou Yang as the next clan leader. Zhou Bao, upon hearing this, felt no jealousy at all.

The position of clan leader had always belonged to the capable. Zhou Bao might have been somewhat simple-minded, but he still possessed self-awareness. Among the fifteen members of the Zhou Lineage's Yuan generation, even if his abilities were not at the very bottom, they were still among the last few. Whoever became clan leader, it would never be him.

"Third Grandfather, although these mortal miners have been pacified for now, there is probably no hope of getting them back into the mines anytime soon. Therefore, after you return to the Lineage, I must ask you to report the situation here to the Old Clan Leader as well and have the Lineage recruit another group of miners to replace them."

Zhou Yang glanced at Zhou Bao, who stood beside him in silence with both cheeks flushed red. Wisely asking nothing, he directly made his request to Elder Zhou Quan.

"Do not worry about that. Once I return, I will certainly see this matter properly handled for you."

The old man nodded slightly and readily agreed to Zhou Yang's request.

After resting another day on Qingping Mountain, Elder Zhou Quan and Zhou Bao, grandfather and grandson, mounted Sand Camel Beasts and returned to the Lineage under Zhou Yang's watchful gaze.

Once Elder Zhou Quan and his grandson had departed, Zhou Yang finally had the leisure to deal with the gains from this trip.

He first skinned and dismantled the Gold-Eating Rat's corpse, processing and preserving the rat hide, teeth, claws, bones, and eyes that could be used for artifact forging. The rat meat, meanwhile, was cooked with Golden Pearl Rice into a spiritual meal to improve his diet.

Then he set up a Red Copper cauldron furnace he had forged himself, tossed the grape-sized pellets of rat droppings into it, added spring water and charcoal, and slowly boiled them.

After boiling all several thousand pellets of rat droppings in this manner, Zhou Yang obtained several dozen catties of metal sand.

These several dozen catties of metal sand were not yet the special spirit gold Zhou Yang wanted. They still needed further extraction, and that next stage would test an Artifact Forger's skill.

To extract the special spirit gold from the metal sand, Zhou Yang switched to the high-grade First-Rank artifact furnace he used for artifact forging. He then took out several dozen palm-sized chunks of fiery red charcoal, stuffed them beneath the furnace, and ignited them with a spell.

This fiery red charcoal was made by burning a kind of spirit wood known as Blazing Sun Wood. Ten palm-sized chunks were worth one low-grade spirit stone, making it extraordinarily precious.

Blazing Sun Wood was a Second-tier spirit wood that grew only near active volcanoes and subterranean fire lava. The flames it produced when lit were white in color and comparable to the true fire wielded by Foundation Establishment Cultivators.

When Qi Refining Stage alchemists or Artifact Forgers needed to refine materials requiring especially high temperatures, they would generally burn charcoal made from Blazing Sun Wood to raise the flame temperature if no subterranean fire was available.

The Blazing Sun Wood in Zhou Yang's possession had been specially taken from the Lineage storehouse by the Old Clan Leader, Zhou Minghan, after Zhou Yang had previously asked his clan cousin Zhou Qi to take the First-Rank Artifacts he had forged back to the Lineage. Zhou Minghan had then had Elder Zhou Quan deliver it to him so that he could reach the level of a Second-Rank Artifact Forger as quickly as possible.

As several dozen pieces of Blazing Sun Wood were ignited at once, scorching incandescent white flames immediately surged up beneath the artifact furnace. The temperature of those flames was terrifyingly high. Even a cultivator with magical power like Zhou Yang would break into hot sweat and become drenched from head to toe after staying beside the furnace for too long.

But Zhou Yang had no time for such trivial matters as wiping sweat. He released his divine sense into the artifact furnace and could clearly see the metal sand slowly melting within. His task was to continually cast artifact-forging hand seals, removing the impurities from the molten metal until only the special spirit gold he needed remained.

This work severely tested an Artifact Forger's eyesight and ability to judge the right moment. It also consumed enormous amounts of divine sense and magical power. Despite Zhou Yang's cultivation at Qi Refining Layer Six, he lasted less than half an hour before dizziness overwhelmed him and his body went weak, forcing him to extinguish the furnace fire and suspend the extraction.

After spending several days like this and carrying out several rounds of extraction, Zhou Yang finally extracted all the special spirit gold from the metal sand. In the end, he obtained a palm-sized piece of dark golden spirit gold.

This palm-sized piece of dark golden spirit gold weighed roughly the same as refined iron, yet it was harder than even the Second-tier spirit gold Dark Iron. If judged by rank, it was at least a third-tier spiritual material.

This was the first time Zhou Yang had acquired a spiritual material of such a level, and he had obtained it with his own hands. For a time, he could hardly put it down, turning it over and over in his hands with delight written all over his face.

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