Rich Harvest

When he returned to Happiness Estate, the room was already empty.

He Tang was boarding at school, while the two ladies, He Yin and Chen Yun, had moved to a hotel in the inner city at the first opportunity after Chen Jue submitted evidence of the Rat Gang's rebellion and murder of officials.

Although the City Patrol Office had sent experts to level the Rat Gang, who could guarantee that no fish had slipped through the net?

With some things, there was no harm in being cautious.

"I still need to find a way to make money..."

"At the very least, I need to buy a house in the inner city and move Mother and Auntie into the safe zone."

The junction between the inner and outer cities had once been a safety zone tacitly acknowledged by both the underworld and the authorities.

But now, the gangs even dared to murder officials in broad daylight. Expecting them to keep observing the unspoken rules and never step beyond the thunder pool was simply giving their morals too much credit.

As the saying went, a gentleman did not stand beneath a crumbling wall. Only the inner city, strictly controlled by the authorities and powerful clans, was a safe place to settle down.

With that in mind, Chen Jue used his phone to browse housing listings in the inner city. The moment he saw the prices listed by the agents, he was so furious that he cursed.

"Coachmen, boatmen, shopkeepers, porters, and brokers—guilty or innocent, they all deserve to be killed!"

"How can these damn agents be this rotten? Even the cheapest two-bedroom in the inner city has been driven up to eight million dollars..."

At that price, forget buying—it was more than he could afford to rent!

"Forget it. I should hurry up and cultivate, replenish the Five Elements true qi I used up first, and think about everything else once my strength improves..."

Before a martial artist could "plant spirits in the five viscera," true qi was a consumable resource that diminished with use.

Martial artists needed to continually consume their qi and blood to refine spiritual qi, accumulating their "capital" bit by bit.

Therefore, unless necessary, True Qi realm martial artists were generally reluctant to use true qi.

Only those martial artists whose meridians had been unable to expand, whose limits had already been fixed, and who could no longer advance their cultivation would casually use true qi against enemies.

Chen Jue sat cross-legged and regulated his breathing, beginning to draw in the spiritual qi of heaven and earth. He started with the "Heavenly Yin water qi" of the Hour of the Pig, then transitioned into the "northern water qi" of the Hour of the Rat.

[Over the past day, you meditated for 12 hours, fought 1 actual battle using the Six Directions Saber Art, consumed 2 high-grade Qi-Nourishing Capsules, consumed 1 bottle of Blood Burning Potion (defective), and used 7 applications of specially made wound medicine...]

[Today's evaluation: unceasing day and night, giving your all in battle. Diligence index: 2 (3).]

[Reward settlement]

[You additionally gained the true qi earned from 24 hours of meditation. True Qi realm, first level (2.2% → 8.2%)]

[You additionally gained the qi and blood earned from 4 Qi-Nourishing Capsules. Qi and blood value (112.3% → 113.9%)]

[You additionally gained the combat experience from 2 battles using the Six Directions Saber Art. Proficiency increased to (2140/10000)]

[You additionally gained the knowledge "Blood Burning" (defective version).]

[Injury recovery +30%]

As the brand-new spirit stone in his hand lost sixty percent of its spiritual power, the Diligence Rewards Log once again transformed into a golden book and floated above Chen Jue's head.

Golden rain spilled down and seeped into Chen Jue's body, where six strands of pure Five Elements true qi quietly emerged.

Bolstered by "perfect" experience, Chen Jue's proficiency and accuracy in circulating the Minor Five-Forms Severing improved slightly once more.

It was an exceedingly subtle sensation, as though the Diligence Rewards Log was a filter that stripped away the dross and retained the essence, continuously cutting away the improper parts of his cultivation while leaving behind only ever-improving refinement.

This was, in truth, an outrageously heaven-defying ability. It allowed Chen Jue to remain on the path best suited to himself—and also the most correct one!

After the true qi merged into his meridians came the enhancement of memories from two battles.

It did not simply make Chen Jue revisit the day's fight. Instead, it mashed together every battle he had ever seen into a bloody arena of beasts.

Chen Jue could only use the Six Directions Saber Art to battle all kinds of creatures from reality, movies, novels, and games, experiencing once more the feeling of being driven into a corner and forced to stake his life on one desperate fight!

Two simulated battles with realism turned to the fullest sent Chen Jue's understanding and insight into the Six Directions Saber Art soaring once again. His proficiency shot up by 210 points, equivalent to another sudden enlightenment in saber arts!

When Chen Jue gripped a saber again, he faintly felt that man and saber had become one. The blade seemed like an extension of his arm, a part of his body.

Unfortunately, the feeling was not very strong, and it broke off from time to time.

Chen Jue understood.

"Man and saber as one" was one of the signs that a saber art was about to enter the "great mastery realm."

The Diligence Rewards Log had once told him that once his Six Directions Saber Art proficiency reached three thousand, he would smoothly break through into the "great mastery realm."

Now that he was already more than halfway there, it was only natural for his saber art to display some signs of the great mastery realm.

And as the urge to enter the beast arena and slaughter with a saber faded, a freshly produced piece of knowledge imprinted itself in Chen Jue's mind with drumbeat urgency.

"Blood Burning (defective): Use demon blood as medicine and ignite the qi and blood throughout the body through the human body's intense rejection reaction. Depending on the amount of qi and blood consumed, temporarily increase physical strength by 30%–50%.

Note: It can be improved by using furnace fire to ignite qi and blood. After removing the rejection reaction, qi and blood consumption can be reduced from over 6% of the total to under 3% of the total. The increase in physical strength depends on qi and blood consumption, with the upper limit stabilized at 30%."

Chen Jue's eyes lit up.

This knowledge concerning Blood Burning had arrived at exactly the right time.

If he could successfully turn it into a secret art, it would greatly make up for the shortcomings of his current low strength.

Unfortunately, this was only a piece of knowledge, not a ready-made secret art he could cultivate. He would need to slowly test and research it in the future until he finally formed a fixed secret art.

"Actually, I could also find a way to get another defective Blood Burning Potion, just in case..."

Deducting more than six percent of one's qi and blood limit was no different from destroying one's own foundation for ordinary martial artists, especially those who had just undergone "martial path Foundation Establishment."

Not only would it directly affect the temperature and pressure of the dantian furnace refining spiritual qi, it would also reduce the efficiency of the qi and blood river chariot transporting spiritual qi. It amounted to the collapse of an entire cultivation system and a fall in martial talent.

That was precisely why, after learning that Chen Jue had taken a Blood Burning Potion, Wu Yue had abandoned him without hesitation and treated him as a discarded pawn meant to draw the Qi family's wrath.

Yet no one knew that Chen Jue possessed the astonishing talent of martial diligence. As long as he was willing to cultivate diligently and keep taking pills, there was no upper limit to his qi and blood.

So although he had lost six percent of his qi and blood limit in one go, all he needed was three straight days of high-grade Qi-Nourishing Capsules to replenish it with interest!

Praise the conscientious capitalist. This is practically a secret-art potion tailor-made for someone like Chen!

Chen Jue sighed inwardly and shifted his gaze to the weapon case Wu Yue had given him.

This boss was genuinely worth following.

Whenever there were combat losses, there would always be compensation for medicine; when he was in a good mood, he could even drop some gold and equipment.

After opening the case, Chen Jue froze.

That was because there was no saber inside, but four sections of jet-black spear shaft, each two chi long.

Both ends of the four shaft sections were threaded, clearly allowing them to be assembled into a non-standard long spear nearly three meters in length.

Chen Jue picked up one section of the spear shaft and weighed it in his hand.

It was quite heavy, and a thin silver line of uneven thickness, not particularly conspicuous, was engraved along the shaft.

At the sight of that silver line, Chen Jue's eyes slowly widened.

Holy shit! A mystic weapon!

Director Wu was this generous?!

Chen Jue hurriedly tested it with the true qi inside his body.

Unlike the sluggish conduction of an ordinary weapon, the spear shaft engraved with the silver line seemed to possess a meridian of its own. True qi could flow freely through it.

Chen Jue's hunter's heart was delighted. He assembled the entire spear, only to discover an obvious break in the silver line at the middle of the shaft.

"So it's only a defective mystic weapon..."

"Fair enough. If Director Wu had truly rewarded me with a low-grade mystic weapon, I might have suspected he had ulterior motives."

"What a pity I don't cultivate spear arts... No—because of this mystic weapon, once I perfect the Six Directions Saber Art, I'll immediately cultivate a spear art."

Chen Jue opened the notes app on his phone and wrote down a small goal beneath his plan to "buy a house in the inner city": "Find a spear art."