Treasure Refiners

"Special Envoy, that brat's a direct descendant of the Luo Clan! Kill him, quickly.♙♕  😲✌" The black-clad man had narrowly escaped death at Sanbao's hands. Overjoyed, he hated Sanbao even more than before. And since he was from Lushan Town, if Sanbao made it back, he'd be dead without a burial place. That was why he'd hurriedly called out.

"Useless. You can't even handle a little brat. How are you supposed to work for me?" The young man wasn't the least bit flustered. He didn't take Sanbao seriously at all, merely watching him lazily with some apparent interest.

"You're quite the prodigy, reaching three-star Spirit Scholar at twelve or thirteen. What a pity. You're still going to die by my hand today. To show you respect, I'll make it quick."

The young man in purple drifted up beside Sanbao and swung a fair-skinned palm, intending to end his life.

Sanbao naturally wasn't going to sit back and wait for death. But no matter how he moved, he seemed to remain right in front of his opponent, unable to escape the man's lock on him.

Spirit Commander—his opponent was definitely a Spirit Commander expert.

"Golden Sand Palm!"

Sanbao put all his strength into a palm strike, eyes squeezed shut. He regretted it bitterly. He'd only just arrived in this world and hadn't even experienced what it was like to be strong before he was about to die. He couldn't accept it!

Pfft.

Their palms met. His opponent wasn't nearly as powerful as Sanbao had imagined; the contact even felt a little soft and warm. Sanbao opened his eyes in disbelief and found his opponent looked even more astonished than he did. The black blood trickling from the man's mouth seemed to prove just how fragile he was.

With a thud, the young man in purple crashed to the ground. Someone appeared before Sanbao: Luo Kaifeng.

Just before the young man in purple could kill Sanbao, Luo Kaifeng had suddenly appeared and struck with a palm, shattering the man's heart meridian and saving Sanbao's life.

"Big brother, what are you doing here?" Having escaped death, Sanbao was overjoyed to see Luo Kaifeng.

"There was such a commotion. How could we not know? You're far too bold. Good thing Father was worried and sent me along." Luo Kaifeng smiled and patted Sanbao, then checked the young man in purple and rummaged several items from his body.

"Oh no, there's still another one. Don't let him get away!" Sanbao suddenly remembered that the black-clad man hadn't been dealt with yet.

"He won't." Luo Kaifeng darted off, vanishing into the dense forest in a few leaps. It was only a moment before he reappeared before Sanbao, carrying the black-clad man.

Compared to before, the black-clad man had lost all his ferocity. He only stared at Sanbao and Luo Kaifeng in terror.

"Come on. We'll talk back at the mansion." Luo Kaifeng moved both hands at once, carrying the black-clad man in his left and the young man's corpse in his right. He led Sanbao away, and they soon vanished into the dense forest.

In an underground chamber beneath Luo Mansion, the black-clad man, looking utterly dejected, was explaining what had happened.

"Sirs, please spare me! I'm just a small-time hoodlum from town. I don't know much. A few days ago, I was relaxing at Doujin Hall when Special Envoy Huang took a liking to me. He said he was from the Huang Clan of Hundred Leaf, and that he was a Treasure Refiner. Then he told me to do this and that..."

It took a full half-hour before Sanbao and the others learned the whole story.

It all went back to the feud between the Luo Clan and the Yan Clan. That time, Yan Gaojin of the Yan Clan—Yan Wuji's biological father—had had both his feet cut off by Luo Kaiyu in front of thousands of people. For the Yan Clan, it had been a humiliation beyond measure.

When Yan Wuji of the Hundred Leaf Sect heard the news, he was naturally furious. But with his current strength, he couldn't do anything to the Luo Clan. Still, hatred had taken root in his heart. If he ever found an opportunity to bring down the Luo Clan, he would never let it slip by.

As luck would have it, that opportunity really did come. After the Luo Clan had controlled the Lushan copper mine for decades, news suddenly reached the Yan Clan: someone had found Spirit Copper in the Luo Clan's mine.

Spirit Copper was an extremely rare metal and one of the core materials used to make Spirit Weapons. It was worth a great deal.

A Spirit Weapon was a weapon that could channel spiritual power. Spirit Cultivators generally attacked with Spirit Skills and weapons, either separately or in combination. Pairing a Spirit Skill with an ordinary weapon produced almost no additional effect. But with a Spirit Weapon, the difference was considerable. Since a Spirit Weapon could channel spiritual power, it greatly amplified a Spirit Skill's might.

The higher the grade of the Spirit Weapon, the greater its amplification of a Spirit Skill. Spirit Weapons were generally divided into four grades: low, middle, high, and true. (True-grade Spirit Weapons were also called divine weapons, superweapons of immense power.)

Though Spirit Weapons could enhance the power of Spirit Skills, they were so scarce that ordinary people could only dream of owning one. Even major powers possessed few of them.

There were two reasons Spirit Weapons were scarce. One was that the materials used to make them, such as Spirit Iron and Spirit Copper, were extremely rare. The other was that crafting them was exceptionally difficult. Only the few and far between Treasure Refiners could make Spirit Weapons; no matter how high an ordinary Spirit Cultivator's cultivation was, they could do nothing.

Returning to the cause of all this: the Luo Clan had actually mined Spirit Copper. Whether the news was true or not, it was enough to draw the covetous attention of many powers. Yan Wuji had provided the information to the Huang Clan of the Hundred Leaf Sect, bringing countless troubles down on the Luo Clan.

The Hundred Leaf Sect, a first-rate power in the Yunli Kingdom, was jointly controlled by the Ye Clan of the Royal Family and the Huang Clan. Yan Wuji had become a disciple of an elder of the Huang Clan, who was also a sect leader of the Hundred Leaf Sect. As soon as the elder learned of the news, the Huang Clan immediately sent people to investigate. The young man in purple had been one of them.

They had planned to create a disturbance outside the Luo Clan's gates to draw the Luo Clan's attention and observe the movements of its experts. If all the Luo Clan's experts were at Luo Mansion, they could secretly send experts into the copper mine to verify the news. They hadn't expected none of the Luo Clan's core members to come out. The black-clad hoodlum had been about to go into the mountains to pass on the news when he realized Sanbao was following him, leading to what came afterward.

The unluckiest of all was the young man in purple, the Special Envoy. After the black-clad hoodlum left, he'd grown worried and followed him all the way. He'd happened to end up behind Sanbao. With his strength, Sanbao naturally hadn't noticed him. But there was always a bigger fish: the Special Envoy himself had been followed by Luo Kaifeng, a Spirit King whose strength far surpassed his. His death had been inevitable.

The black-clad hoodlum's account had been incomplete, but the Luo Clan members pieced together what had happened and guessed most of the rest.

With a fierce palm strike from Luo Kaifeng, the black-clad hoodlum's soul was sent flying beyond the heavens.

In truth, the Luo Clan's copper mine had indeed yielded Spirit Copper, but that had only happened a year ago. They hadn't expected the news to have leaked anyway. Though they had killed the young man in purple, the trouble wasn't over. If anything, this was probably only the beginning.

From the few items they'd taken from the young man in purple, they learned that he was a core member of the Huang Clan. Not only that, but he was also a Treasure Refiner of exceptionally noble standing.

Treasure Refiners were divided into two types: Artifact Refiners, who could craft Spirit Weapons, and Alchemists, who made Spirit Pills (also called medicinal pills). Because of the immense importance of Spirit Weapons and Spirit Pills to Spirit Cultivators, these were the most revered professions on the continent. But due to the particular requirements, very few Spirit Cultivators could become Treasure Refiners.

To become a Treasure Refiner, one first needed extraordinary talent in soul power. One also had to cultivate two types of spiritual power at the same time: cultivating metal and fire spiritual power made one an Artifact Refiner, while cultivating wood and fire spiritual power made one an Alchemist.

Neither of these requirements was easy to meet, and meeting both was harder still. That was a major reason Treasure Refiners were so rare.

"Big brother, what about the defenses at the copper mine? No matter what, we can't let the Huang Clan find out the truth." After they executed the black-clad man, the group discussed their options, and Sanbao asked.

"Don't worry. Second brother is stationed there, and Father and the three of us take turns guarding it. The problem now is how to dispel the Huang Clan's suspicions. Besides, they've lost a Treasure Refiner, so this will be hard to settle. Damn the Yan Clan. I want to wipe them out to the last member." Luo Kaifeng seemed to regret having killed the young man in purple. He hadn't expected him to be a Treasure Refiner, too.

"No. That would only make things more obvious. If they want to investigate, let them. After all, the Spirit Copper deposit is only in a very small area. Get rid of all the people currently mining it, then seal that area off and leave it untouched. As long as they can't find evidence against us..."

Clan Head Luo Dingyi brought his hand down firmly, his expression exceptionally calm.

"Father, isn't that a little inappropriate? Those people are all dead-soldier retainers we've trained for over a decade." Luo Kaifeng found it hard to accept.

"What dead-soldier retainers? If they really were dead soldiers, how could the news have leaked? Someone must be compromised. Better to get rid of them and avoid future trouble," Old Luo said angrily.

Sanbao's heart jolted. He silently pitied the people mining Spirit Copper, but when he thought about it, this was also a helpless move. If the Huang Clan of Hundred Leaf got solid proof, life would truly become difficult for the Luo Clan.