Wizard Cultivation

Yin Ming finished the day's land-clearing quota right on time.

From the weeds and shrubs he had cleared, the Scavenger Gourd extracted nine Grain-Repelling Pills, two packets of hemostatic powder, and a Myriad Poisons Pill synthesized from a hundred herbal toxins.

That old dog Hoven came over to inspect the work and looked at the neatly cleared half-acre of land.

He nodded in satisfaction. "Not bad! You were just a little short of being today's best farm slave."

Yin Ming shrugged.

Jeroen Hoven saw that Yin Ming was utterly unmoved.

His face darkened as he turned and left, leaving everyone baffled.

"Did that old dog Hoven take the wrong medicine? How could his face change faster than flipping a page?"

With the Grain-Repelling Pills, Yin Ming no longer had to worry about going hungry, and his energy was boundless.

In this perilous world, Tulip Manor was not a bad place to cultivate in seclusion.

The prerequisite was having sufficient strength.

Farm slaves had no rights. If he was chosen as a sacrifice again someday, he at least needed the strength to flip the table.

"..."

As night fell, the farm slaves gradually returned to Blackstone House.

The moment Yin Ming returned, he heard someone draw a painful breath.

In the dim light, Randy lay resting on his stone bed, his back covered in whip marks, his flesh split open.

"Randy, how did you offend Hoven to get whipped this badly?"

Once farm slaves survived their first week, they were rarely whipped again, since injuries affected their work efficiency.

That bloody back had taken at least a dozen lashes. They had clearly intended to kill him.

"This morning, I reminded you to eat the black bread. Do you remember?"

Randy shifted and brushed against his wounds, sucking in a breath from the pain. He said weakly, "Hoven thought I was the one who woke you up, so he took his anger out on me."

Randy had nearly been beaten to death because he had woken me up?

Thinking of how Jeroen Hoven's expression had changed faster than flipping a page earlier, there was definitely something here Yin Ming did not know.

"What do you mean by waking me up?" Yin Ming asked with a suspicious look.

"White bread, spending more than you earn, and what happened to Jettansen?" Jack quietly prompted.

The words seemed disconnected. Yin Ming frowned and thought for a moment before linking the three clues together.

For farm slaves to obtain white bread, their bodies had to work beyond their limits, becoming the so-called best farm slave of the day.

White bread might taste better, but it was no more nutritious than black bread. A tiny piece could not make up for the body's depletion. Over time, their bodies would grow weaker and weaker, until they collapsed like the once-strong Jettansen and never rose again.

Jeroen Hoven had been guiding him step by step, making him addicted to the taste of white bread, then boiling the frog in warm water.

If all this was not a coincidence, then the human heart was truly hideous and terrifying.

"Jeroen Hoven used white bread as bait to work me to death! But what does he stand to gain? Even farm slaves, no matter how lowly, have to be sold for money, don't they?" Yin Ming muttered in confusion.

"Count Golden Lion does not lack money. What he cares about is something more advanced," Randy said, seeming to understand yet not fully understand.

"People are divided into high and low status, and so is food. White bread is food for free folk and nobles. Farm slaves who want to eat white bread deserve to work themselves to death. I heard the other old farm slaves say so before." Jack smiled bitterly.

"Every batch of farm slaves has one Jettansen selected from it. The old farm slaves all know this, but whoever dares to wake that person up has to face Jeroen Hoven's whip," Randy said.

"You don't need to worry anymore. As long as you understand one thing—that lowly people like us do not deserve white bread—Jeroen Hoven will stop targeting you. Those are the rules of the game," Jack said.

"This is fucking..."

Sure enough, once someone had enough gold coins, they no longer cared about pursuing wealth. Instead, they devoted themselves to keeping others from becoming wealthy.

Yin Ming could not understand the nobles' warped values. He took out a packet of hemostatic powder wrapped in withered leaves. "For stopping bleeding! Otherwise, with your injuries, if you fail to finish tomorrow's quota, you'll get whipped again."

The hemostatic powder worked immediately.

Within minutes, the wounds began to scab over, and it also had a certain painkilling effect.

What the Scavenger Gourd extracted was essence, maximizing the utility of substances of the same kind. Ordinary hemostatic powder had displayed the effects of a miracle drug.

"..."

Late at night!

After his two roommates had fallen asleep, Yin Ming prepared to begin his wizard cultivation.

He reviewed the Vast Sea Meditation Method in his mind.

Wizard cultivation could be divided into three parts: spiritual power, sorcery runes, and magic power.

However, whether engraving sorcery runes or condensing magic power, both required spiritual power. Spiritual power was the key factor determining a wizard's strength.

Wizard meditation methods and the Corpse-Liberation Immortal Visualization Method both focused on the "spirit" among the three treasures of the human body.

Yet there was an essential difference between them.

First, the amount of spiritual power a human body could contain was limited.

The Corpse-Liberation Visualization Method caused spiritual power to undergo a qualitative transformation, turning into divine sense that could see through the body and perceive objects. After Corpse-Liberation, one could even use a magical artifact to send the Primordial Spirit out of the body.

The wizard meditation method turned generated spiritual power into runes of permanent spiritual power, allowing one to contain vast amounts of spiritual power.

Then, one used spiritual power to sense the elements of heaven and earth, refining magic power similar to mana. By infusing magic power into spell-form runes drawn with spiritual power, one could directly cast sorcery.

A One-Ring Wizard needed to permanently solidify ten basic spiritual power runes.

Before the First Ring, one was called a Wizard Apprentice. Every three runes corresponded to a minor realm.

"..."

After confirming that he had forgotten none of the technique, Yin Ming quickly adjusted his breathing and entered meditation.

Meditation was not only a realm, but also a state.

"Vast Sea..."

Within his mind, he visualized an endless vast sea. Fierce winds raised monstrous waves that crashed against a reef as smooth as a Three-Body Problem droplet.

When the tide receded, the reef was as clean as if washed, without a single drop of water remaining.

This was the first level of the Vast Sea Meditation Method—Mirror Reef.

When one could use spiritual power to retain one hundred droplets on Mirror Reef, it meant one possessed enough spiritual power to permanently solidify the first spiritual power rune.

Wizard talent was an innate potential, though it could also be altered by one's former cultivation.

"..."

Half an hour later, Yin Ming slowly opened his eyes, disappointment showing in them.

Spiritual power cultivation was like rolling a snowball. Wizards placed enormous importance on talent. Those with the potential to become wizards were all one-in-a-hundred geniuses.

Yin Ming could leave sixty droplets on Mirror Reef. His initial talent met the standard for becoming a wizard.

His Corpse-Liberation Immortal cultivation had completely dissipated. Without its enhancement, this was his truest talent. His innate spiritual power surpassed more than ninety-nine percent of ordinary people, but it was not outstanding among wizards.

A very small number of wizard geniuses possessed enough innate spiritual power to permanently solidify the first spiritual power rune, or even the second.

"One step behind, every step behind! With this talent, others would be lucky to break through to One-Ring Wizard before dying of old age."

Yin Ming sighed, then revealed a faint smile. "Fortunately, my control over spiritual power is high enough, and this Yin has never relied on talent to make a living."

Compared to cultivating immortality in the Age of Dharma Decline, this little difficulty was nothing!

Yin Ming had gone from an ordinary mortal to the Corpse-Liberation Tribulation-Transcendence Realm in only twenty short years.

His strength might be gone, but just answer this: was he fast or not?

Corpse-Liberation was a shortcut to ascension, but its cultivation speed was not normally this exaggerated.

Yin Ming had taken a shortcut through a shortcut. Only he knew how much modern technology he had used and how many experiments he had conducted.

Now that he had the Scavenger Gourd, and heaven and earth had not entered the Age of Dharma Decline, his conditions were countless times better. There was no reason he could not solve the problem of cultivation talent.

"If I accumulate spiritual power through the meditation method, it will probably take at least half a year, even at the fastest, to gather enough to engrave the first spiritual power rune."

After thinking for a moment, Yin Ming could not help frowning. "Too slow! I can't even wait a single day."

Jeroen Hoven's murder attempt had failed. Although Randy had already been whipped, who knew whether, after sleeping on it, he would grow angrier and angrier, disregard the nonexistent rules of the game, and decide to beat Yin Ming to death!

Surviving in this world was truly too difficult!

He had spent nearly a month learning to be an honest farm slave, only to find that someone was targeting and trying to murder an utterly insignificant farm slave.

He had to become a Wizard Apprentice as quickly as possible!