The convoy turned onto a main road heading north.
The road is made of compacted earth and rock, about two feet wide, and winds into the remaining veins of the Frost Ridge Mountains. The mountains on both sides gradually rise, and the trees become taller, mostly pines and cypresses, with dark green branches and leaves. The air has cooled down, carrying the smell of rocks and rotten leaves.
The expressions of the guards were not completely relaxed. Yang Scarface rode in front, scanning the mountains and forests on both sides. Although this road was gentler than the mountain road when they came, it was still within the scope of the mountains, and wild animals occasionally appeared.
The head of the Feng family was in the car, occasionally lifting the curtain to look outside.
Qin Tiexin was walking on the right side of the convoy, with Edgeless on his back. His footsteps made a dull sound on the gravel road. His breathing matched the rhythm of "Hunyuan Jue", and spiritual power circulated in the tempered limb bones, nourishing the upcoming tempering of the spine.
Rest at noon by a stream.
The stream flowed down from the mountain and was crystal clear. The guards took water bags to fill the water, and the coachman gave the horses water. Qin Tiexin squatted by the water and washed his face with water. The water was very cold and stung his skin.
Lunch was hard biscuits and jerky. Qin Tiexin ate for four people and sat on a rock to chew slowly. He closed his eyes and tried to mobilize the vague sensing ability of [Spiritual Material Sensing].
The range is about a hundred steps, and it's very blurry, like seeing something through a thick layer of cloth. I can only feel the general direction, but I can't tell what the specific thing is, and I can't judge the depth.
He concentrated and "looked" towards the mountains and forests on the left.
There was a faint metallic coolness on the hillside a hundred steps away. It was very weak and intermittent.
After he finished the last bite of the cake, he stood up and said to Yang Scarface, "I'll go over there and have a look."
Qin Tiexin walked into the forest. There were thick pine needles on the ground, which were soft when stepped on. He walked in the direction of the sensor. After about eighty steps, the sensor became clearer - in a collapsed pit at the bottom of the slope.
He used a short knife to peel away the loose soil and fallen leaves, revealing several pieces of dark red Shitou. They were about the size of a fist and had a rough surface, shimmering in the mottled light of the tree shadows.
Red Heart Copper Ore, unrefined. There are three pieces in total, adding up to seven or eight kilograms.
He collected Storage Bag, filled up the pit, and walked back.
"What did Master Qin pick up?" a young guard asked curiously.
"Shitou." Qin Tiexin spread out his hand, and there was a small ore in his palm.
The guard took it and looked at it. "The reddish-brown one... is it copper ore?"
"Maybe." Qin Tiexin took back the ore, "Take it back and have a look."
The convoy continued on its way.
Qin Tiexin tried to strengthen his induction while walking. He found that when he calmed down and focused completely on that fuzzy feeling, the range could be slightly expanded, but only to about one hundred and twenty steps. It was also very mentally draining, like opening his eyes wide in the dark to look for a glimmer of light.
After walking for an hour, that metallic coolness appeared again. This time it was under the mountain wall on the right, very close to the roadside.
He was a few steps behind the convoy and squatted down to dig quickly. Below were scattered wind copper particles, the size of rice grains, embedded in the rock crevices. He carefully pried out more than a dozen particles with the tip of a knife, which added up to less than half a tael.
The sensing ability responds more clearly to shallowly buried and large objects. For these small particles, you can only feel a vague "metallic smell" and cannot accurately locate each particle.
In the evening, the convoy spent the night at an abandoned mountain post.
Only the stone foundation and half of the stone wall remained of the outpost, and the roof had long since disappeared. The guards cleared a piece of flat land and lit a bonfire. The light of the fire dispersed the cold air in the mountains and illuminated the rugged rocks around it.
Qin Tiexin sat next to the fire, closed his eyes and adjusted his breath.
I continued to use my sensing ability during the day and was very tired. But when "Hunyuan Jue" was running, the fatigue was slowly fading. The three cyclones in Dantian were full and full, and the rotation speed was one minute faster than before.
The experiences of the past few days have accumulated in my body: what I saw in the Meteoric Pavilion, the information from the Listening to the Wind Pavilion, the trek and exploration along the way. These experiences are like firewood, making the cyclone burn even more vigorously.
The barrier leading to the fourth level of Qi Refining is becoming thinner and thinner in perception.
He opened his eyes. It was already dark, and the night in the mountains was deeper than that on the plains. The howl of an unknown beast could be heard in the distance, long and lonely.
"The Shitou that Master Qin picked up today, can it be used to refine something?" Yang Scarface handed over a bowl of hot soup.
"Go back and try." Qin Tiexin took the soup bowl. The soup was made of dried meat and wild vegetables, and was steaming hot.
"It is not easy to make weapons." Yang Scarface said, "I know an old blacksmith who has been making iron all his life, but in the end he has never made a single Law Artifact."
Qin Tiexin Drink the soup slowly.
Late at night, everyone wrapped themselves in blankets and fell asleep. Qin Tiexin leaned against the half stone wall and did not sleep.
He got up and walked to the back of the outpost. There was a slightly flat slope there, surrounded by rocks on three sides, blocking the wind. He sat down cross-legged and began to practice.
As soon as "Hunyuan Jue" is activated, the Spiritual Qi from the mountains will come in one after another. The Spiritual Qi from the Frost Ridge Mountains is richer than that from the plains, and is also messy, with the five elements mixed. But "Hunyuan Jue" is good at harmonizing the five elements. After the chaotic Spiritual Qi enters the body, it is sorted out by Cultivation Method and turned into pure Hunyuan spiritual power.
In Dantian, three cyclones began to accelerate.
Spin, compress, spin again.
At a certain moment, three cyclones shook at the same time.
Immediately afterwards, the fourth cyclone slowly condensed in the corner of Dantian - it was just a small vortex at first, absorbing the spiritual power from the other three cyclones. It slowly grew and rotated until it was similar in size to the other three cyclones and had the same speed.
The fourth level of Qi refining is done.
Almost at the moment when the fourth cyclone stabilized, Qin Tiexin felt something "break out of its shell".
It's not what you see with your eyes, it's not what you hear with your ears, it's a brand new perception - Divine Sense.
At first it was only three feet long, like a foggy vision. With a thought, Divine Sense expanded outward: one step, three steps, five steps... ten steps.
Within ten steps, everything was visible: the tracks of ants crawling in the cracks on the ground, the texture of moss on the surface of the rocks, the arc of the grass blades swept by the night wind. He could even "see" a borer slowly gnawing in the trunk of a pine tree ten feet away.
This is Divine Sense.
He continued to expand. Fifteen steps, twenty steps - when he reached twenty steps, he felt obvious pressure, like a heavy object on his head. This was the current limit.
Qin Tiexin Open your eyes.
The world was still that world, but it was completely different. He stretched out his hand, Divine Sense condensed on his fingertips, and he could "see" the blood vessels under the skin and the flow of spiritual power in the meridians.
He stood up and stretched his muscles. The spiritual power in his body was nearly 30% thicker than before, and it was like a rushing stream.
When we returned, it was still dark.
There were only embers in the bonfire, and the guards were wrapped in blankets and slept soundly. Li Yun leaned against the stone foundation, her eyes closed, but Qin Tiexin could feel that she was awake.
"Breakthrough?" Her voice was very soft.
"Hmm."
"Fourth floor?"
"Hmm."
Li Yun said no more.
Qin Tiexin sat down against the wall and closed his eyes. Divine Sense unfolded, covering a range of twenty steps. All the movement of wind and grass, the sound of insects and the falling of leaves within this range are all under control.
Early the next morning, the convoy continued on the road.
Qin Tiexin was still walking, and his pace was lighter than before. After the fourth level of Qi refining, his physical strength recovered faster and his spiritual power ran smoothly. He began to try to combine Divine Sense with the induction of spiritual materials.
This is a wonderful change.
The originally vague sense of spiritual materials, which could only sense the general direction, became clear with the cooperation of Divine Sense's "vision". Divine Sense is like eyes, and the sense of spiritual materials is like the sense of smell - the combination of the two not only knows which direction there is spiritual materials, but can also "see" its general shape and burial depth.
He tried to spread Divine Sense like a net, covering a radius of thirty feet. He did not seek precision, but only captured the strong fluctuations of spiritual materials.
After walking for about three miles, a clear metallic reaction came from the edge of Divine Sense.
In the middle of the mountain wall on the left, in a rock crevice about two feet above the ground. He slowed down and said to Yang Scarface, "Wait a minute, I'll go up and take a look."
The mountain wall is not too steep, and there is a place to stay. Qin Tiexin climbed up and found three pieces of red-core copper ore in the crevices of the rock. The quality was better than the ones picked up yesterday, and there were natural cloud patterns on the surface.
"Did Immortal Qin find Shitou again?" the guard below looked up and asked.
"Yeah." Qin Tiexin jumped down and collected the ore.
The convoy continued to move forward.
In the afternoon, I passed the entrance of an abandoned mine.
The entrance to the cave was sealed with wooden stakes, but over time, most of the wooden stakes rotted away. A strong and concentrated "call" came from the spiritual material induction - not from the cave, but from the pile of rubble piled below the entrance of the cave.
Qin Tiexin The heart beat a beat faster.
He walked to the waste rock pile and pretended to check the mine. Divine Sense looked down - three feet deep, there was a small area of dense spiritual material reacting, like a burning fire.
It is an outcrop of a mineral vein, which was buried by the waste rocks abandoned by the miners.
The convoy stopped in front to rest. The guards found a place to sit down, drink water and eat solid food.
Qin Tiexin said to Li Yun: "I'm going to relieve myself."
He walked around to the side of the mine, made sure there was no one around, pulled out his short knife and started digging. The waste rock pile was very loose, and he quickly dug it to a depth of three feet. Black and gray ore was exposed underneath, one next to another, and the smallest one was as big as a fist.
Nine dollars in total.
He quickly collected Storage Bag, filled the pit, stepped on it, and sprinkled some gravel and fallen leaves. After doing this, his palms were a little sweaty.
When we returned to the convoy, the guards were chatting. Qin Tiexin took a few sips of the water bag and looked as usual.
The convoy set off again.
Qin Tiexin walked in the queue, and Divine Sense swept over Storage Bag. Nine pieces of black iron sand ore, if refined into black iron sand ingots, would be worth nearly two hundred spiritual crystals.
This is the first time he has achieved a decent harvest based on his ability.
When setting up camp in the evening, Qin Tiexin helped collect firewood. Yang Scarface glanced at him. "Master Qin Xian looks good today."
"The air in the mountains is good." Qin Tiexin said.
At night, he found a secluded place to practice.
After the fourth level of Qi refining, "Hunyuan Jue" operates more smoothly. The four cyclones rotate synchronously, and the spiritual power circulates continuously in the body. The numbness and itching in the spine becomes more and more obvious, like countless fine needles gently pricking.
When returning to the camp, Li Yun warmed herself by the campfire.
"You always go out at night," she said.
"Cultivation." Qin Tiexin sat down. He didn't want to, or didn't dare to let others know about his ability.
"Found a good place?"
"Hmm."
Li Yun didn't ask any more and handed him a piece of hot cake.
Qin Tiexin took it and ate it slowly. The cake was slightly burnt on the outside and chewed very fragrantly.
The firelight reflected on the faces of the two people, flickering brightly and dimly. The outline of the mountains in the distance was dark and heavy under the night sky, like the back of a giant beast.
You can return to Liuyun Sect tomorrow.
Qin Tiexin thinks.