Wine Worm

With the Spirit Stones in hand, Long Xuan left without delay, not even bothering to say goodbye.

The Rogue Cultivators still watching the spectacle hurriedly made way. By now, they knew that the large quantity of Spirit-Gathering Pills had come from this person, so his background was surely extraordinary. They did not even have time to curry favor with him—how could they dare make an enemy of him?

Once they realized he was merely a clone, they became even less inclined to entertain any other thoughts.

Thus, the Flame Clone Long Xuan had arranged left the market without the slightest risk. Along the way, he occasionally looked back. With the Eye of Heavenly Secrets' farsighted vision, tracking him was no easy task. Even releasing tiny insects to follow him would never escape his notice.

After confirming that no one was following him, the Flame Clone reunited with the main body and immediately returned to Great Stone Village.

The various household heads indeed had no intention of tracking him. After acquiring the mineral vein at auction, they were beside themselves with excitement. One after another, they gathered their Lineage's experts and set off in great fanfare toward that barren land. Who still had the mind to stir up extra trouble?

More than a month had passed since his departure. Long Xuan returned once more to his warm little home, to that sea of multicolored flowers, to the Spirit Bees dancing above the blossoms.

He also saw that plump chicken with its head held high and chest puffed out. Everything felt so familiar that Long Xuan could not resist reaching out to stroke it, only for it to nimbly evade him.

"Nothing unexpected happened while I was away, right?"

Upon seeing the busy figure in the medicinal garden, Long Xuan walked over with a smile, placed his hand on Wood Clone's body, and swiftly assimilated Wood Clone's memories.

After finding nothing noteworthy in those memories, Long Xuan finally began attending to serious business.

His so-called serious business was naturally refining a supreme-grade Gu worm. He had unexpectedly picked up a Supreme-grade Spirit Insect in the mine—if he did not grind out a supreme-grade Gu recipe now, when would he?

Long Xuan took a small white snake from the Insect-Rearing Pouch, a thrilled smile appearing on his face.

This was the Supreme-grade Spirit Insect extracted from that fossil. It was a serpent-type Spirit Insect, snow-white from head to tail and exceptionally adorable. Most bizarrely, its body gave off a faint fragrance of wine.

Though Long Xuan was poorly informed and knew very, very few Supreme-grade Spirit Insects, he happened to recognize this one.

This little white snake was the famous Wine Worm. As the name implied, it was an insect species that loved to drink wine.

Wine Worms came in four grades: lower, middle, upper, and supreme. Unlike traditional Gu refinement methods, Wine Worms became different Gu worms by tasting and combining different fine wines.

It could be said that the quality of the wine determined the strength of the Wine Gu. Different fine wines would grant the Wine Worm different abilities and cause different transformations in its form.

The rarer and more peerless the wine, the stronger the Wine Gu it brewed.

And so Long Xuan's imagination began to run wild. The brewing techniques of this world differed from those of his previous life. If he used the distillation techniques from his previous life to refine a Wine Gu, what kind of thing would it produce?

The moment he thought of it, his heart felt as if cat claws were scratching at it. He could not wait to give it a try.

Long Xuan immediately took out paper and brush, sat down at the table, and searched for inspiration while a light breeze blew and the fragrance of flowers filled the air.

Very soon, he wrote the two words "Wine Gu" on the blank paper. Drawing inspiration from novels from his previous life, he directly wrote beneath them four flavors of fine wine: sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy.

At that very moment, the progress on the incomplete recipe shot straight to 100%.

Long Xuan was dumbfounded on the spot. He had created a Gu recipe in just a few seconds? No way, right?

There were only four ingredients. Was that not far too careless? With so few ingredients, how could the Gu worm refined from it possibly be strong? He deeply doubted it.

But he quickly came to his senses. The small number of ingredients was likely only an illusion.

This Gu recipe appeared to require only four types of fine wine—sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy—but how many ingredients would each of those four wine recipes require?