Once most of the searing heat had faded, Liu Yu let out a soft breath, and the strange sensations in his body slowly subsided.
He put the five hundred-odd spirit stones into his Storage Bag, then swept through them with his divine sense to count them.
His Storage Bag now held thirteen hundred low-grade spirit stones, along with one Mid-Grade Spirit Stone.
For a cultivator in the Qi Refining Period, this was undoubtedly an enormous fortune.
Even some less wealthy cultivators in the Foundation Establishment Realm possessed no more than this. It was nearly enough to buy two poorer-quality Top-grade Magical Artifacts.
Most of these spirit stones, however, could never see the light of day.
Some had come from selling pills made with spirit herbs ripened in the Immortal Mansion, while others were spoils looted from the scholar-robed cultivator. None could withstand close scrutiny.
This fortune far exceeded anything a novice alchemist and outer sect disciple should have possessed.
If Liu Yu's wealth were discovered, even some Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators would likely grow green-eyed and entertain thoughts of killing him for his treasures.
Liu Yu put the Silver Ruler and Yellow Fork, both Lower-grade Magical Artifacts, into his everyday Storage Bag.
He also placed his magical artifacts, talismans, and several bottles of pills for healing injuries and restoring magical power into that bag, sorting them by category.
He made sure, as far as possible, that he could find whatever he needed immediately.
He put the miscellaneous odds and ends into the Storage Bag taken from the scholar-robed cultivator. He normally kept it in a hidden compartment in his cave abode, taking things out as needed.
He placed the ruined magical artifacts-the Green Knife and that length of Red Silk-along with other items he had no use for into the Storage Bag taken from the alluring female cultivator.
He would dispose of them when a suitable opportunity arose.
Liu Yu sat cross-legged on the stone bed, picked up the small oval mirror, and slowly infused it with magical power to begin refining it.
A quarter of an hour later, the preliminary refinement was complete.
With a thought, he sent his divine sense, slightly stronger than that of an ordinary late Qi Refining cultivator, surging into the little mirror.
He began expelling the scholar-robed cultivator's divine sense imprint and replacing it with his own.
Everything proceeded in an orderly manner. Roughly half a quarter of an hour later, he had finished refining the small oval mirror.
Liu Yu patted his Storage Bag and took out the Golden Dragon Sword, controlling it to float twenty or thirty feet in front of him.
Then he held the small oval mirror with its surface facing the Golden Dragon Sword. He infused it with magical power, directing a faint beam of white light from its surface onto the blade.
The Golden Dragon Sword itself suffered no damage, but he could feel the flow of magical power inside it suddenly becoming sluggish.
Its spiritual glow also dimmed, and its might fell sharply, leaving it only as powerful as a Middle-grade Magical Artifact.
After experimenting for a while, Liu Yu discovered that the white light emitted by the small oval mirror could disrupt the circulation of magical power inside magical artifacts.
Even Superior-grade Magical Artifacts were no exception. However, he had no Top-grade Magical Artifact, so he could not tell whether the white light would affect one.
Still, Liu Yu suspected it could. Compared with Superior-grade Magical Artifacts, Top-grade Magical Artifacts merely used better materials and possessed greater might; there was no fundamental difference.
The only regret was that the white light had to shine continuously on the artifact itself to have any effect. To maintain the light, he had to hold the mirror in one hand and keep feeding it magical power.
This was a major drawback, but even so, it remained a rare support-type magical artifact.
"Golden Silk Mirror."
Looking at the small oval mirror's golden frame, Liu Yu gave this support artifact, which he valued quite highly, a name. Then he put both magical artifacts into his Storage Bag.
Next, he took a wooden box out of his Storage Bag. It contained the Clear Lotus Tea Tree seed he had obtained from Zhang Chunming.
A Clear Lotus Tea Tree needed a hundred and eighty years to grow from a seed to the point where it produced tea leaves. Afterward, it yielded only one jin of tea leaves every ten years.
A Qi Refining Period cultivator's maximum lifespan was only a hundred and twenty years. To most of them, it was a chicken rib-too little meat to enjoy, yet a pity to discard.
They would likely die of old age before ever tasting this tea, while it had no effect whatsoever on Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators.
Although the tea could slightly nourish and enhance divine sense, its growing period was too long and its yield too low. Cultivating it simply was not worthwhile.
Consequently, very few cultivators were interested in it, and almost no one asked after it.
To Liu Yu, however, these shortcomings were entirely acceptable.
He had the Immortal Mansion to rely on. As long as he used it to accelerate growth, neither the growing period nor the yield would pose a problem. It would merely cost some spirit stones.
Despite its many limitations, this tea was an exceptionally rare and valuable spirit tea to Liu Yu.
He had already experienced the benefits of a powerful divine sense.
It allowed him to control three magical artifacts while still in middle Qi Refining. Several times when he had encountered danger, he had turned peril into safety and defeated his enemies.
His powerful divine sense had played a pivotal role.
As divine sense was an outward manifestation of the soul's power, could enhancing it indirectly strengthen the soul?
Many texts mentioned that those with powerful souls often had roughly a ten percent greater chance than ordinary cultivators of breaking through a major realm, along with all manner of other wondrous benefits.
At this thought, Liu Yu could not help feeling his heart burn with excitement.
If things truly worked as he imagined, his path of cultivation would become much smoother. For someone with his mediocre aptitude, it would be nothing short of a blessing.
He also resolved to do everything he could to collect spiritual objects capable of enhancing divine sense in the future.
Placing the wooden box in his palm, Liu Yu took out another three hundred spirit stones and set them on his legs. Then he guided his divine sense toward the Emerald Light Dot.
The Emerald Light Dot hovered quietly above his niwan palace, suspended in a dark void and radiating a faint glow.
It dispelled a small patch of seemingly eternal darkness, bringing a tiny glimmer of light to this mysterious place.
The moment his divine sense touched the Emerald Light Dot, a familiar suction arose. His nascent primordial spirit entered the Immortal Mansion together with the wooden box in his hand.
His surroundings abruptly changed. Liu Yu once again became a fist-sized ball of red light, appearing above the black spiritual field inside the Immortal Mansion.
The wooden box and spirit stones floated beside him.
Nothing unexpected happened. After so many trips back and forth, he had long since grown accustomed to arriving this way.
Liu Yu's primordial spirit guided the wooden box over to the black spiritual field, opened it, and planted the Clear Lotus Tea Tree seed.
Then he drew a bucket of water from the nearby Mottled Ancient Well and poured it over the patch of black soil where he had planted the seed.
He also placed all the spirit stones he had brought beside the soil to replenish what the Clear Lotus Tea Tree consumed as it grew.
Before long, a green sprout broke through the soil.
After roughly twenty hours, it had grown into a small tree ten feet tall, covered in emerald-green leaves.
It had already reached two hundred years of age, the current limit of the Immortal Mansion's accelerated growth. Its age therefore stopped increasing, and it ceased depleting the black soil.
By then, most of the spirit stones beside it had been consumed. Only fifty-odd remained.
A single spirit stone could ripen three stalks of Clear Spirit Grass, the main ingredient in Pure Spirit Pills. Yet the Clear Lotus Tea Tree had consumed over two hundred spirit stones, showing just how valuable this tea was.
Liu Yu began picking the tea leaves and placing them in a large jade box he had prepared beforehand to prevent their spiritual energy from dissipating.
Once he had picked the leaves from the Clear Lotus Tea Tree, fresh green buds soon emerged on its branches, growing into leaves at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Another dozen or so spirit stones on the black soil were consumed, after which everything fell still.
Committing these changes to memory, Liu Yu returned his primordial spirit to his body with a thought. The jade box appeared out of thin air in his hand.
He opened the jade box and began processing the freshly picked leaves, patiently preparing the tea according to the method Zhang Chunming had described.
After a flurry of work, the Clear Lotus Tea leaves were finally ready.
Looking at the leaves, whose color had changed slightly, Liu Yu's eyes flashed with anticipation. The tea was now prepared.
However, brewing this spirit tea with ordinary water would be a wanton waste of heaven's gifts.
Although he could not obtain spirit spring water just yet, collecting some dew at dawn to brew the tea would be barely acceptable.
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