Come Out and Look at the Spirit Stones

"Wahahahaha!"

From an utterly ordinary little stone house in the western part of the city came a lewd, chilling laugh.

Wei Suo, the source of that laughter, stared at the huge pile of Spirit Stones on his bed with golden light gleaming from his eyes.

Before heading to the Golden Jade Pavilion, Wei Suo and the others had sold the three Ice Silk Spiders, two rock snakes, and all the Ice Spider Silk from the cave, fetching a total of two hundred and ten Low-grade Spirit Stones. Ye Xiaozheng had been quite fair, taking only sixty Low-grade Spirit Stones—the equivalent of one Ice Silk Spider—while Nangong Yuqing took forty. The remaining one hundred and ten Low-grade Spirit Stones immediately stuffed the beast-hide pouch Wei Suo had taken from Lin Daoyi until it bulged.

Of course, Wei Suo also tucked into his robe the thirteen Low-grade Spirit Stones and three Mid-grade Spirit Stones found on Lin Daoyi and the unlucky low-level cultivators the Ice Silk Spiders had used as rations in the cave.

Adding the fifteen Mid-grade Spirit Stones obtained from the Golden Jade Pavilion and the remaining Low-grade Spirit Stones Wei Suo had already possessed, there were now eighteen Mid-grade Spirit Stones and one hundred and twenty-eight Low-grade Spirit Stones piled on his bed.

This enormous pile of Spirit Stones made Wei Suo rush straight home without even selling the miscellaneous items he had obtained from Lin Daoyi and those two unlucky fellows. He could not wait to see what such a heap of Spirit Stones looked like when piled together.

Since it was not yet night, the Green Robe Old Man had not emerged from the Ghost Nurturing Jar. In the somewhat lonely little stone house, the radiance of that mountain of Spirit Stones made the entire room shimmer.

The Low-grade Spirit Stones emitting faint green light were nothing special; Wei Suo had long since lost his sense of novelty toward them. But the pale yellow Mid-grade Spirit Stones were different. In the past, he had mostly only seen them and rarely gotten his hands on them.

"Let's enjoy a Mid-grade Spirit Stone first!"

In truth, compared to Low-grade Spirit Stones, Mid-grade Spirit Stones merely contained more abundant spiritual energy. The Heaven and Earth spiritual energy contained in one was equivalent to ten Low-grade Spirit Stones. With Wei Suo's current Third Level of Sea of Consciousness Realm cultivation, he could not even refine a single Mid-grade Spirit Stone in one day. Yet having never cultivated with one before, he felt an indescribable freshness. The more he played with those gleaming pale yellow Mid-grade Spirit Stones, the more reluctant he was to put them down. After a while, he finally could not resist gripping one in his hand, closing his eyes, and beginning to cultivate.

For several full hours, Wei Suo remained motionless. Threads of pale yellow spiritual energy continuously seeped from the Mid-grade Spirit Stone, slowly entering his body through the meridians in his hand. Within him came a faint, rhythmic sound of True Essence flowing, like running water.

At his crown, the Purple Palace in his chest, and the dantian in his lower abdomen, three clusters of purple light faintly shone through. As spiritual energy continued to seep in, the three clusters of purple light seemed to be steadily growing.

Those three vortex-like clusters of purple light were the Seas of Consciousness formed through his cultivation of the Purple Profound True Art. Only when these three Seas of Consciousness had grown to a certain extent could he use the power of the True Essence within them to open another Sea of Consciousness and break through to the Sea of Consciousness Realm Fourth Level. But judging from how his three Seas of Consciousness were not yet surging like stormy seas, it seemed he would still need some time before breaking through.

"Feels incredible!"

Only after the sky outside had unknowingly turned completely dark did Wei Suo suddenly open his eyes and stretch lazily in utter satisfaction.

"A Mid-grade Spirit Stone really is a Mid-grade Spirit Stone. It lasts long and has plenty to spare."

The pale yellow color of the Mid-grade Spirit Stone in Wei Suo's hand had only faded by half. It looked as though it could still sustain several more hours of absorption. Turning to glance outside the window, Wei Suo found that night had fully fallen. His eyes rolled, and he gave a sly chuckle before pulling out the Ghost Nurturing Jar from beneath his bed, where he had disguised it as an ordinary black clay jar. He patted it. "Lazy old ghost, still sleeping? Come out and look at the Spirit Stones!"

"Why are you howling like a ghost?"

At Wei Suo's pat, the Green Robe Old Man really did slowly float out of the Ghost Nurturing Jar.

"How do you have so many Spirit Stones?!"

But the moment he saw the huge pile of Spirit Stones spread across Wei Suo's bed, the Green Robe Old Man's eyes immediately bulged, and he nearly suffered a stroke. He was no longer as clueless about Spirit Stones as when Wei Suo had accidentally released him from the Ghost Nurturing Jar. He now knew very well how valuable each Spirit Stone was. At a glance, he saw at least sixteen or seventeen Mid-grade Spirit Stones among the pile on Wei Suo's bed. By that count, the heap was worth over three hundred Low-grade Spirit Stones.

"I killed someone and took his goods." Wei Suo laughed heartily at the Green Robe Old Man. "I used Fireball Talismans to kill a guy at the Divine Ability Realm Fifth Level and got quite a lot of good stuff from him."

"Kill someone and take his goods! How could you do such a thing?!" The Green Robe Old Man immediately grew anxious. "Do you know who the other party was? Even powerful cultivators should commit murder and robbery as little as possible, because you never know what kind of background they might drag out. Do you know how Nantian Ba, the Golden Core Realm rogue cultivator who once shook an entire region twenty thousand years ago, died? Once, he was poisoned by a demon beast, and his mouth swelled up like two fat sausages. A cultivator at the Second Level of Divine Ability Realm could not help laughing at him, so Nantian Ba killed him in a fit of rage. Who would have thought that little cultivator's seventh maternal uncle's eighth paternal aunt's mother-in-law's son's younger brother was a great cultivator of the Divine Profound Realm? In the end, Nantian Ba was killed by that great cultivator. You're only a cultivator at the Third Level of Sea of Consciousness Realm, yet you dare to kill and rob people?..."

The more the Green Robe Old Man spoke, the more worked up he became. If he had possessed saliva, he probably would have drowned Wei Suo in spittle alone. But Wei Suo merely chuckled and said, "Don't worry, old man. That guy was just an ordinary rogue cultivator. And even if something happens, a major sect will be the one taking the blow—it won't reach me. Besides, if I hadn't killed him and taken his goods, he would have killed me and taken mine."

"What exactly happened?" The Green Robe Old Man froze for a moment.

"It went like this..." Wei Suo told the Green Robe Old Man everything from beginning to end: how he had accepted Lin Daoyi's invitation to hunt Ice Silk Spiders for Spirit Stones, how Lin Daoyi had tried to rob them after killing them, how Lin Daoyi had instead been drowned beneath Fireball Talismans, and how they had discovered an enormous chunk of Mid-grade Cold Jade.

"You pigheaded fool! With cultivation like yours, you actually dared to hunt demon beasts with people whose backgrounds you didn't know?" Wei Suo had originally expected the Green Robe Old Man to praise his cleverness, but instead received another furious scolding. "At least two of my former masters were killed because they hunted demon beasts with people whose backgrounds they didn't know. If you don't want to become the third, then never earn Spirit Stones with people whose roots you don't know."

"Fine, then. At most, from now on I'll only go out with people who definitely can't kill me." Wei Suo pinched his nose and spoke to the Green Robe Old Man.

"That's more like it. In any case, remember this: over the years, many cultivators in the Cultivation World with high cultivation and long lives did not survive because their cultivation arts were powerful or their sects formidable. They survived because they were more cautious than ordinary cultivators." Seeing Wei Suo's obedient expression, the Green Robe Old Man's face softened somewhat, and his gaze swept toward the pile of objects beside the Spirit Stones.

That pile consisted of Qi Replenishing Pills and other miscellaneous items looted from Lin Daoyi and the several low-level cultivators used as food by the Ice Silk Spiders. Wei Suo intended to keep useful items like the Ice Mist Fruit and the Wind Lord Treasure Talisman, then sell everything else for Spirit Stones. He simply had not had time to deal with them yet.

"This is...?" After one glance, a look of astonishment and suspicion appeared in the Green Robe Old Man's eyes.

"Oh, it's an Ice Mist Fruit. It grew alongside that piece of Cold Jade." Thinking the Green Robe Old Man meant the Ice Mist Fruit, Wei Suo answered carelessly.

"Bring that white jade box over for me to look at." Yet the Green Robe Old Man did not even glance at the Ice Mist Fruit. He stared fixedly at the plain white jade box without any patterns.

"What is it, old man? Isn't this just an ordinary white jade box?" Wei Suo was no fool. He immediately detected something from the Green Robe Old Man's expression and swiftly placed before him the white jade box he had found on the chest of the cultivator the Ice Silk Spider had treated as dried rations.

The Green Robe Old Man examined the plain white jade box with exceptional care for a while. Without answering, he suddenly said to Wei Suo, "Go outside and casually pluck a stalk of Silver Candle Grass. Put it inside."

"Put a stalk of Silver Candle Grass inside?" Wei Suo did not understand what the Green Robe Old Man meant, but he immediately went out, plucked a stalk of Silver Candle Grass, returned, and placed it inside the white jade box. Only then could he not help asking, "Old man, what exactly does this mean?"

"I suspect this is a Treasure Origin Jade Box," said the Green Robe Old Man.

"A Treasure Origin Jade Box? What kind of thing is that?"

"It is a treasure that can prevent the medicinal properties and spiritual energy of harvested spiritual medicines from dissipating. Its main effect comes from the material of the jade box itself: Nourishing Origin Jade."

"Damn, I thought it was some particularly powerful magical treasure. Doesn't it just keep things fresh?"

"You're so ignorant that I can't even be bothered to talk to you." The Green Robe Old Man looked at Wei Suo with extreme contempt. "Do you know that some spiritual medicines and demon cores begin rapidly losing their spiritual energy the moment they are harvested, or the moment the demon beast is killed? This thing may seem insignificant ordinarily, but if you really do collect such spiritual medicines or demon cores and lack this kind of jade box or another treasure that can preserve spiritual energy, all you can do is watch the good things you obtained lose their spiritual energy at once, turn to dust, and cry yourself to death. Such things are rare to begin with. When you urgently need one, you might not be able to buy it even if you have Spirit Stones, because knowledgeable cultivators always keep one for themselves."

"Now that you put it that way, this thing does seem quite useful." Wei Suo thought about it and gave a sly laugh, then pushed two items toward the Green Robe Old Man again. "Speaking of knowledge, you really reminded me. Help me see what these things are. Also, do you know how to remove the restriction on this jade talisman?"