Zhang Tie did not know how long had passed before he opened his eyes.
He looked at the Earth Element Crystal in his hand, its golden luster completely gone, its pale, milky base color beginning to show through. He shook his head with a bitter smile, ended his meditation, stepped down from the bed, and placed the now-useless crystal on the table in the room.
Twenty-one Earth Element Crystals lay neatly arranged on the table in seven rows of three. By now, every one of them had become just like the one in Zhang Tie's hand, fading from splendor into dullness. The pure earth elements within had been completely drained. At this point, the Earth Element Crystals were like empty bottles left after the wine had been drunk—utterly useless.
Zhang Tie looked up at the date displayed on the wall clock.
—December 29.
Without realizing it, he had already cultivated in the underground palace for a month and a half. The twenty-one Earth Element Crystals in his possession had also been consumed at an alarming rate; they had not even lasted two months before being exhausted. And that was with him using only a quarter of his ability to extract the earth elements from the crystals. If he had used all his ability, those twenty-one Earth Element Crystals would not have lasted even two weeks.
This cultivation session had also made Zhang Tie thoroughly understand just how arduous and lengthy the road to condensing a second chakra and advancing to Earth Knight truly was.
Thanks to the Abacus Mental Calculation and the Fruit of Radiance he had just eaten—which had nearly doubled his spiritual power again—Zhang Tie could now split his mind four ways, manifesting four hands in the elemental realm to capture those earth-element crystals. His cultivation speed had