Black Gold Ginseng

"Wuhu, takeoff!" Chen Beiwu's face lit up with delight.

Hunting Demon Beasts really was a lucrative business.

A few minutes of fighting had earned him Bullet Ape blood-heart Essence Blood-worth two Low-Grade Spirit Stones. That was equivalent to his mother's income from a month of embroidery at home.

Unfortunately, he couldn't explain where the ape blood had come from, so he couldn't exchange it for Spirit Stones through the Immortal Alliance. He could only use it himself.

But that was enough. Variant Beast Essence Blood was so expensive because it could help cultivators deepen their comprehension of the Ten Thousand Beasts Art and increase their Magic Power purity.

If he could gather a thousand kinds of Variant Beast Essence Blood, all from different beasts, Chen Beiwu was confident he could advance the Ten Thousand Beasts Art from Minor Accomplishment to Major Accomplishment and condense its core Spirit Art: the Thousand Beast Mark.

If he could gather ten thousand kinds of Spirit Beast Essence Blood, all from different beasts, he was confident he could advance the Ten Thousand Beasts Art to Perfection and condense the Third-Tier Treasure Art: the Myriad Beast Mark.

That was a Spell Art on par with the methods of a Golden Core True Person!

Unfortunately, Demon Beasts were hard to find. For now, Chen Beiwu could at most bully some low-tier Variant Beasts with insufficient Dao Practice.

While the sun was still up, he cleared the remains and trash from inside the rocky cave, then stuck a Spirit-Concealing Talisman and a Warning Talisman to the rock wall at the entrance. Using the cave as the center, he set up a small warning formation.

Before long, a crude cave abode was completely finished.

To keep himself from being disturbed while cultivating, he moved several rocks to block the entrance, leaving only a finger-sized air hole.

Once he had finished, Chen Beiwu sat cross-legged on the cold stone and began his first cultivation in this other world.

Perhaps because he was in the Primordial Forest, the abundant wood-element Spiritual Energy around him immediately turned into an unending stream of emerald-green light and flowed into his Dantian, becoming docile Magic Power.

A night passed in silence.

Chen Beiwu opened his eyes and smiled with satisfaction.

A Second-Tier Spiritual Vein really was extraordinary. One night of meditation was equivalent to two nights in a Middle-Grade First-Tier Cultivation Room. Even the Magic Power that had been somewhat sluggish deep in his Dantian now obeyed him like an extension of his limbs.

Compared to before, his cultivation speed had more than doubled.

At this rate, he was confident he could break through to the Eighth Layer of Qi Refining during his Senior Year, and to the Ninth Layer of Qi Refining during his fourth or fifth year of high school.

If he also counted the Spiritual Root boost from contracting a Companion Beast in the future, his Qi Refining efficiency could surge even further.

"Phew."

Chen Beiwu stood up, stretched, and exhaled a breath of stale air.

He had no classes this morning, so he could explore the area around his cave abode.

An hour later.

"Squeak, squeak, squeak!"

As the Water Needle fell, a fat-bellied Green Rock Rat let out a shriek and collapsed, revealing a cave behind it that was filled with flowers and plants.

Chen Beiwu tossed aside the useless pinecones and weeds covering the cave's surface. A Spirit Plant, black all over and resembling an old tree root, came into view.

The leaves at the top of the old root had curled slightly from improper storage and were dark brown. It was unmistakably a First-Tier Black Gold Ginseng.

What a waste! He hurriedly used his hands to carefully take out the ginseng.

Rodent Variant Beasts had always had keen senses of smell, so it was no surprise they could find Spirit Plants like this in the mountains.

The Immortal Alliance had spent years popularizing the four cultivation arts through compulsory education, and Chen Beiwu knew quite a few Pill Formulas. The Qi-Boosting Pill was one of them.

Black Gold Ginseng was the main ingredient in the First-Tier Qi-Boosting Pill. It was worth quite a lot on the market and could fetch at least ten Spirit Stones.

If he could refine the Black Gold Ginseng into pills, its value would skyrocket, and he could sell it for as much as fifty Low-Grade Spirit Stones.

But Chen Beiwu wasn't an Alchemist of any Tier, and he wasn't skilled at refining pills with Water Arts. If he rashly tried to make pills, he would only waste the medicinal ingredients. He might as well eat it raw.

For cultivators in Late Qi Refining, eating Black Gold Ginseng raw was quite beneficial and could save them half a month of hard cultivation.

What a shame. Chen Beiwu sighed.

He had once wanted to become an Alchemist, too.

Among the hundred cultivation arts, Alchemy, Artifact Refining, Formation Arts, and Talismans were the mainstream. Alchemists were vaguely considered the foremost among the four arts, and theirs was also the most in-demand and profitable trade.

But Alchemy was far too costly. Generally, only cultivators from Cultivation Lineages could afford to learn it, unless they had exceptional talent.

Most Alchemy apprentices had to work for their teachers for several years without pay when they first entered the trade, and spend large amounts of Spirit Stones firing up furnaces to build experience.

On the Immortal Alliance's website, some Alchemy apprentices even joked among themselves that they were "paying to work." They worked themselves to exhaustion for years, wore out their bodies, and ended up earning nothing but experience.

It was precisely because Alchemy required such a huge investment, far beyond what an ordinary family could afford, that Chen Beiwu had given up on becoming an Alchemist.

Xu Lingling had become the only Middle-Grade First-Tier Alchemist at Shouhe No. 2 Middle School during her second year of high school not only because of her own talent, but even more because of the backing of her family.

Artifact Refining was slightly better than Alchemy: it required less investment and was in greater demand.

Even if a newcomer had bad luck and failed to refine a Variant Artifact, they could still salvage it by reworking it in the furnace and recover some of the materials. There were simply too many cultivators in the trade, so prices for Variant Artifacts on the market were fiercely competitive.

The Talisman path was suited to those with ordinary talent and resources, but it required a great deal of time and effort, and might even delay their cultivation.

Novices had an extremely low success rate when making low-tier Talismans. Even if they got lucky and succeeded, the cost of drawing them far exceeded their selling price. As with the Dao of Alchemy, they had to spend Spirit Stones to gain experience; they just lost less.

As for Formation Arts, they were hard to learn and master, and relied most heavily on talent.

Formation Masters didn't make money at the beginning, because cultivators had little need for low-tier formations.

But once a Formation Master reached a higher Tier, things were different.

There was a saying in the world of formations: "Ten years without a job, then one job feeds you for ten years." It described the money-making power of high-tier Formation Masters.

But Formation Arts were too difficult to master. To put it bluntly, if some cultivation forces were willing to spend enough resources, they could pile them into producing a high-tier Alchemist, Artifact Refiner, or Talisman Master.

Formations were different. If you couldn't learn the Formation Patterns, you simply couldn't learn them. Even if you pushed a cultivator to desperation, they still couldn't inscribe the obscure, complicated patterns.

It was no exaggeration to say that anyone without enough talent for Formation Arts could spend their entire life stuck as a First-Tier Formation Master. At most, they might become a Second-Tier Formation Master through some stroke of luck, but they absolutely could not become a Third-Tier Formation Master.

Chen Beiwu's talent in Formation Arts was passable. The Formation Patterns that most people found obscure and difficult weren't complicated to him. All he lacked was an opportunity to set up a formation.

With enough Formation Diagram resources, he might become a Second-Tier Formation Master in the future.

Putting his wandering thoughts aside, Chen Beiwu carefully put away the ginseng.

He was lucky today. If he had come a day later, this ginseng might have had several ragged holes bitten into it, and most of its medicinal properties would have dissipated.

Pushing aside the bushes blocking his view, Chen Beiwu continued exploring and carefully mapped the terrain around his cave abode.

Huh!

Chen Beiwu suddenly stopped and listened closely to the unusual sounds coming from the bushes ahead.

"Help... help!"

Hearing the extremely weak cry for help, Chen Beiwu furrowed his brows and looked toward the scattered footprints not far away.