"What the hell is this!" Lin Jing's face darkened completely.
He had assumed the liquid flowing out of the spirit bamboo was bamboo sap. Who could have guessed that it would gush harder and harder, forming a high-pressure torrent? Whether a Qi Refinement Realm cultivator's Water Arrow Art could even muster this much power was still an open question.
He struggled with both hands to control the spirit bamboo's wildly spraying water.
The Bamboo Mechanical Dragon Elder Yu had made could "generate fire from wood," but this "generating water from wood" was going too far.
Before long, Lin Jing slid down the wall and looked speechlessly at the flustered Pineleaf Squirrel. "Which great immortal in the upper realm did these Glazed Immortal Eyes belong to, anyway? How could their Divine Ability be so unreliable?"
Seeing that Lin Jing was unharmed, the Pineleaf Squirrel spread its paws, indicating that it had no idea.
It figured that next time they had something new, they should get Elder Black Bear to help test it.
Testing it ourselves is too dangerous!
"You're right." Lin Jing nodded. Elder Black Bear was at the Demon Core Stage, equivalent to a human cultivator's Golden Core Stage. A little thing like trying something new should not pose any difficulty for the elder.
Setting the blue spirit bamboo on the ground, Lin Jing dabbed a finger in the bamboo water and brought it to his nose for a sniff.
"It's refreshing, with no sweetness. It doesn't seem like spirit bamboo sap. This water probably doesn't have the sap's medicinal effects."
"But it isn't ordinary water either. It feels like water from a spirit spring or stream, nourished by spiritual energy in a place rich with it."
"If that's the case, it isn't terribly useful, but we could use it to water spirit plants. Maybe it could increase the yields of the spirit rice and spirit beans we grow, and make them grow faster."
After he finished speaking, the Pineleaf Squirrel pointed at the enormous hole in the surrounding wall. Water plants with this?
Are you sure it won't blast the spirit rice paddies away?
"We can collect it before using it to water them. Besides, I have a rough idea of how it works now. We should be able to control it from here on," Lin Jing said. "One of the books I read mentioned a spirit plant called the heavenly spring tree."
"It can accumulate moisture from heaven and earth and store it inside. Once it's full, it sprays that water into the sky, forming a heavenly spring."
"A heavenly spring tree once grew in a village in the Ancient Kingdom. A child accidentally cut its bark, and according to the records, that village fought flooding for three years!"
"This blue spirit bamboo should work much the same way. It probably sprayed all that water out just now because it had only just come into being and accumulated too much moisture during its mutation."
"So from now on, we just need to keep it from accumulating moisture for too long and pour out the spiritual liquid it produces every day."
The Pineleaf Squirrel looked at Lin Jing in admiration. He knows so much!
"Reading more books certainly doesn't hurt." Lin Jing looked at the Pineleaf Squirrel and adjusted his nonexistent glasses.
He marveled inwardly at how wonderful cultivation was. He had read so many books without becoming nearsighted.
"Oh, right."
Suddenly, something occurred to Lin Jing. "I was just worrying about what kind of mechanical beast to make, but now I've got an idea."
"Squeak?"
"We definitely can't make an overly complicated mechanical beast in a short time."
"To get ourselves eating at the dining hall as soon as possible, let's make a small support-type mechanical beast."
"We don't want a toy that can only move around, but we don't need to insist on something with the Bamboo Mechanical Dragon's combat strength either... let's make a Mechanical Tortoise that can find its own way around, spray water, and water spirit plants by itself!" Lin Jing smacked his fist into his palm, feeling that the idea had real promise.
"With blue spirit bamboo that can gather moisture from heaven and earth on its own, making it should save us quite a bit of work."
A Mechanical Tortoise?
The Pineleaf Squirrel scratched its head with its long, bushy tail.
"Squeak?" Why a Mechanical Tortoise instead of a mechanical frog?
The Water-Type Spirit Beast among the Beast Taming Sect's Five Basic Spirit Beasts was the Rain Frog, which could summon rain to water spirit plants.
It was more familiar with Rain Frogs than tortoises.
"Because I have a longevity body," Lin Jing said.
"Tortoises have always been one of the animal forms that represent longevity. Don't you think a Mechanical Tortoise suits a longevity body better?"
He took out the notes on Mechanism Art Elder Yu had given him, along with the Mechanism Soul Core.
The former was the key to making the Mechanical Tortoise, and he would have to study it patiently. As for the latter... he had no use for it yet.
The Mechanical Tortoise he intended to make in the short term was plainly a simple "watering can," while the Mechanism Soul Core was mainly meant to serve complex, advanced mechanical beasts.
It was a mechanical beast's heart.
Magic arose from technique; mechanisms sprang from the heart.
With mechanical beasts, "tug one hair and the whole body moved." Though wondrous, this also had its flaws. Advanced mechanical beasts were effectively composed of multiple mechanical systems, and compared with simple mechanical beasts, they suffered from a certain amount of "senile dementia."
In a life-or-death magical battle, that made them sitting ducks for the enemy.
As the heart of Mechanism Art, the Mechanism Soul Core largely solved this problem. It could act as a connecting medium between a mechanist and a mechanical beast, binding itself to the mechanist's mind and allowing them to control the operation and movement of the entire mechanical beast through the power of their mind.
With a mechanist's consciousness added to it, a mechanical beast could become more agile and react faster in combat!
After the Rising Dragon Festival, Lin Jing's name began circulating through the outer sect and even the inner sect.
Despite their growing fame, however, Lin Jing and the Pineleaf Squirrel's cultivation life remained simple. They studied what they needed to study and stockpiled what they needed to stockpile. Other Outer Gate Disciples rarely saw them.
To Lin Jing, this was not tedious. It was not that he delighted in it, but rather that the twenty-odd years of his previous life had already taught him to quiet his mind and endure monotony.
Besides, compared with working hard for a long time only to remain an ordinary face in the vast crowd, the rewards cultivation now offered-that sliver of a chance at transcendence-gave Lin Jing more reason and motivation to strive.
The tree wished for stillness, but the wind would not cease.
The outer sect, the Beast Arena.
Boom!
The tremendous crash echoed all around. A Battle Ape was covered in blood, several deep claw marks gouged into its chest and its eyes vacant. Beside it lay He Yiming, the former strongest disciple in the outer sect, in equally miserable shape. His whole body looked scorched by flames, and he lay in agony beside the Battle Ape.
At the sight, many Outer Gate Disciples below the platform covered their mouths, disbelief written across their faces. Sparring between disciples in the sect's Beast Arena usually stopped short of serious harm. Unless there was deep-seated hatred between them, matches that nearly crippled someone were exceedingly rare.
"Sorry, I failed to hold back. But Elder Li was right. Everyone in the sect really is a flower that's been sheltered far too well. You can't withstand a single blow."
The speaker was a black-clad youth stroking a Leopard Beast. Many newly admitted Outer Gate Disciples did not recognize him. Nearby stood three other boys and girls with a similar air, all exuding cold indifference.
None of them seemed to think anything of He Yiming, the disciple ranked first in Beast Arena points.
"Are these people... disciples of our Beast Taming Sect too?"
An Outer Gate Disciple could not help asking.
Beside him, Senior Brother Ziran, who had hurried over after hearing the news, looked at the rumored Blood-Patterned Black Garb, and his expression changed. He said gravely, "They're disciples from the outer sect's Demon Hunting Hall. This batch... so many of them actually came back alive."
Before you continue