"So, to synthesize spiritual qi, I have to collect the materials first?"
Early the next morning, after receiving the list of materials needed to synthesize spiritual qi, Li Xingkong was a little dumbfounded.
The materials covered a wide range: gold, silver, copper and iron; vegetables and fruit; and even quite a few plastic bottles. It was all remarkably down-to-earth.
"That's way too wide a range of materials. How am I supposed to collect them?" Li Xingkong counted them up. There were hundreds of items on the list, and leaving everything else aside, buying them alone would cost a lot of money.
He checked the balance on his phone: less than fifty thousand yuan. Before, he had thought that would be enough to live on at home for a year or two without working. Now it seemed he was still a long way short.
"That's just the cost of the materials. There are processing machines too," the system said, sounding a little gleeful at his misfortune. "Leaving everything else aside, you'll at least need some machines for rough processing, like lithography machines and lathes."
"Huh? Industrial machines cost a fortune. A single machine could run into the tens of millions." Hearing that, Li Xingkong felt as though his journey to immortality was getting farther and farther away.
He had never imagined his dream of cultivating immortality would be interrupted by cruel reality in such a way.
"Don't worry, I've already made a plan for you!" The system put on the expression of a sage.
"With your current processing capabilities, even rough-processing the basic materials for spiritual qi would undoubtedly be a pipe dream. So we don't need overly complicated machines. I was just messing with you; you couldn't afford them even if you worked your whole life."
"That's true. The precision of Earth's current processing technology couldn't possibly meet your requirements, could it?"
Li Xingkong remembered that the most precise processing technology on Earth he might have access to was probably a lithography machine, but it could only operate at the nanometer level. That still fell well short of the precision the system required.
"So we don't need particularly expensive equipment," the system said. "With my help, it's still possible for you to produce the first spiritual qi particle."
"How do we do it?" Li Xingkong was completely bewildered. For him as he was now, the subject of producing spiritual qi was well beyond the syllabus.
"Simple. You need a sufficiently sturdy sealed chamber. Then you put the materials inside and get some explosives." As the system spoke, it projected the necessary diagrams into Li Xingkong's mind.
"Then all you have to do is set them off. Boom! And that's it." The system made it sound easy, but in Li Xingkong's eyes, it was clearly acting a little crazy.
"So I have to become a bombing maniac? What does that have to do with processing?"
For Li Xingkong, who had been afraid even to kill a chicken since he was little, this plan was undoubtedly very exciting.
"Because the current level of processing isn't good enough, we need to use a more violent method to obtain the materials." The system pushed up its nonexistent glasses.
"The explosion will blast the materials you buy directly into fragments. Although most of the fragments won't meet the requirements, there's such a thing as probability in mathematics. As long as the explosion is powerful enough and produces enough fragments, amid the deviations and repeated attempts, there will always be a piece of material that happens to deviate to exactly the right degree of precision. You understand that, right?"
"So we just have to blow up the raw materials a few more times, and eventually perfect materials will appear. Is that what you mean?"
Li Xingkong was a little speechless. He couldn't see particle-sized materials with the naked eye at all.
"But even if there are perfect materials, I can't see them."
"That's why you need my help," the system replied. "As a system, I can help you find perfect-grade materials."
"Then I really will have to rely on you." The plan was indeed a little crazy. If Li Xingkong had to do it himself, his path to immortality really would be cut off.
"So our first step is to get explosives! I've read up on your military. You just need to steal a Dongfeng-41, and that should be enough for our explosion."
That suggestion could only be called the boldest of the bold.
"I think I'm doing pretty well as I am. Maybe I should take the civil service exam instead, or even earn a little money..."
Li Xingkong completely ignored the system's damned suggestion. What did it mean, steal a Dongfeng-41? That was like lighting a lamp in a latrine-courting death. He would be better off giving up on the idea early and living a few more years.
"If you won't steal a Dongfeng, you can go get a few Tomahawk Cruise Missiles instead. I'm not picky." The system offered another suggestion.
"I think it'd be faster to hand you over to the state. That way, I might even reach qi refining in my lifetime." Li Xingkong had a hard time keeping a straight face.
How was it that this system became so unreliable whenever it came time to give advice?
"Host, as someone who's about to embark on the path of qi refining, you're already different from everyone else in this world. How could mortal laws constrain an immortal?"
The system's outrageous argument was hard to take seriously. Li Xingkong still found it difficult to accept what it was saying.
"Are you kidding? People who cultivate immortality are still people. Does becoming an immortal mean you can do whatever you want? Would that make me an immortal or a demon?"
The system's words made Li Xingkong very uncomfortable. He was an ordinary person now, and even if he became an immortal cultivator, he would still be a person. If he thought he was no longer human just because he had begun refining qi, and that he could turn a blind eye to the laws of the world and do whatever he wanted, he wouldn't consider that cultivating immortality. It would be more like becoming a monster.
Besides, if he couldn't even master his own heart, how could he succeed in cultivating immortality? If he couldn't control his own desires, wouldn't he be finished the moment a heart demon appeared?
"Very good. I hope you'll remember what you said in the future, too."
So the system had just been lecturing him. Li Xingkong breathed a sigh of relief. If the system really thought that way, he was genuinely afraid that one day they would disagree and part on bad terms.
"So, we need enough money to buy the materials, and somewhere we can conduct explosion tests."
Li Xingkong summed it up. Getting what they needed was still going to be a bit troublesome.
Money was essentially unavoidable. Although his abilities now far surpassed those of ordinary people, getting enough money to conduct his experiments in a short time would still be difficult.
Most importantly, he was only a slightly unusual ordinary person at the moment. He didn't have any extraordinary abilities he could use to get rich quickly.
These days, the money-making industries in society were basically controlled by giants. Even the fly's-head profits of online grocery shopping had several giants fighting each other to the death. For an ordinary person like him, making money quickly would undoubtedly be even harder.
As for setting off explosions, it would be very difficult to find such a place within the country. For now, the best option seemed to be going abroad to somewhere vast and sparsely populated, or somewhere explosions wouldn't attract attention.
He could consider going to a country already at war, where explosions were a common occurrence, but it would also be hard to guarantee his safety there. He could also go somewhere rarely visited, such as a desert or wilderness, but getting his materials delivered to those places would be inconvenient. Choosing a location really was troublesome.
But that was a matter for later. For Li Xingkong, the absolute, absolute top priority right now was making money.