Qi Forger
The female cultivator flew over and swept the area with her Divine Sense. Somewhat despondent, she said, "The Seven-Colored Setting Sun Bow was far too powerful. It actually blasted Duan Zhengfeng, his Storage Bag, and that snake Demon into dust.
"Bi Crow Moon Gang is gone. Perhaps it was never meant to be mine."...
Ten Thousand Snakes Island, in the cellar beneath the bed.
"Phew!"
Tang Yuan abruptly opened his eyes, gasping for breath. "The Spiritual Qi in that cultivation world really is much denser than here."
Tang Yuan snapped his fingers and lit a few candle stubs.
Seated on his meditation cushion, Tang Yuan sat quietly for a few breaths and sensed something in his Dantian.
He immediately circulated his Spiritual Qi and spat out a round bead glowing with a soft golden light. It hovered in the air: his natal Demon Core.
After looking at his natal Demon Core, which contained the faint image of a nine-faced snake, Tang Yuan swallowed it and concealed it in his Dantian.
Since he was human in this world, he might as well call it the Human Realm;
and the cultivation world where he was a snake Demon might as well be called the Demon Realm.
He could not take his cultivation in the Human Realm to the Demon Realm; likewise, he could not take his cultivation in the Demon Realm to the Human Realm.
But in the Human Realm, he could use his natal Demon Core to perform some Divine Abilities, secret arts, and Law Techniques of Demon Beasts and the Demon Realm.
But if his natal Demon Core shattered, he would never be able to go to the Demon Realm again...
Although he could still go to the Demon Realm now, he had better wait a while in case that female cultivator was camping his corpse. In any case, he could go to the Demon Realm for seven days starting on the day after each full moon.
"That's right. Although I only spent fifteen minutes in the Demon Realm, I came back with quite a haul."
With a thought from Tang Yuan, several objects flew out of the Mystic Spoon in his sea of consciousness and landed before him: a defensive cloak that could disguise its wearer and turn them invisible, a spiderweb, a toad pearl, and a Storage Bag.
"I've struck it rich! Not only did I get three Demon Race treasures, I also got a Foundation Establishment great cultivator's Storage Bag."
After putting away the three Demon treasures, Tang Yuan infused a trace of Spiritual Qi into Duan Zhengfeng's Storage Bag.
He picked up the Storage Bag and tipped it over, and the floor was instantly piled with things.
Twenty Spirit Stones, a few Spirit Stone fragments, seven jade bottles, a stack of talismans, several Jade Slips, a few miscellaneous books, some robes, and a beast-hide Storage Bag.
Tang Yuan recognized the beast-hide Storage Bag as belonging to his monkey master from when he was a snake in the Demon Realm.
Ordinarily, a human cultivator's Storage Bag could not be placed inside another Storage Bag, but Monkey Master's Storage Bag was rather special and could be placed inside a human cultivator's Storage Bag.
Monkey Master's Storage Bag had a restriction on it. Even after his death, it could only be opened thirty-five days later.
Tang Yuan sighed softly, put away the beast-hide Storage Bag, and looked at the floor. He immediately curled his lip. "He was a Foundation Establishment mighty figure, at least. How could his belongings be so meager? He didn't even have a decent weapon.
"Oh, his one and only spirit sword was also blasted to bits by that Seven-Colored Setting Sun Bow or whatever it was."
One jade bottle was completely empty.
A cyan jade bottle contained a wisp of wind-attribute Spiritual Qi of at least mid fourth grade. It was probably Bi Crow Moon Gang.
A jade bottle labeled "Lesser Spirit Augmentation Pill" contained thirteen small white pills;
a jade bottle labeled "Greater Spirit Augmentation Pill" contained four small black pills;
a jade bottle labeled "Eagle Transformation Pill" contained more than fifty small cyan pills;
another jade bottle labeled "Tiger Transformation Pill" contained more than sixty golden pills;
and the last bottle, labeled "Turtle Transformation Pill," contained nearly a hundred pale blue pills.
Tang Yuan did not know what the turtle and tiger transformation pills did, and he did not dare take them recklessly, so he could only put them away for now.
As for the Jade Slips, they contained things like Cultivation Methods. Perhaps Tang Yuan's spiritual power was insufficient at present, for he could not examine any of them.
The miscellaneous books were autobiographies, travelogues, assorted notes, and the like. There was also an illustrated erotic booklet whose pages had been thumbed until their edges curled.
After putting everything in order, Tang Yuan climbed out of the cellar and began leafing through the autobiographies, travelogues, and other books.
"I possess a mid-grade wind Spirit Root and am obsessed with collecting and appraising all kinds of wind-attribute Spiritual Qi. I aspire to meet a mighty figure someday and become a Qi forger who can create Spiritual Qi."
"To raise travel funds, I entered the Luo Household, a Core Formation cultivation Lineage in Loulan City, and became a Qi gatherer.
"To obtain the Spiritual Qi in the Demon Race's hands, I purchased pills such as Eagle Transformation Pills and Tiger Transformation Pills to transform into Demon Beasts and infiltrate the spirit mountains and great rivers under the Demon Race's control.
"Alas, more than forty years slipped by. My cultivation stopped at the great perfection of Qi Refinement, I gathered no special, powerful fourth-grade Spiritual Qi, and I met no mighty figure who knew the art of Qi forging..."
Before he knew it, Tang Yuan had spent the night reading until dawn. As he pieced what he read together with his memories as a snake Demon in the Demon Realm, delight gradually spread across his face.
The Human Realm, where Tang Yuan now lived, cultivated the Purple Mansion Golden Core Dao. Its cultivation realms, from lowest to highest, were Meridian Opening, Qi Refinement, Foundation Establishment, Purple Mansion, Golden Core, and Lodge Transformation.
Not only was Spiritual Qi relatively thin in the Human Realm, but the Purple Mansion Golden Core Dao also cultivated Dao lineages and fruition ranks, requiring one to swallow and refine the corresponding strands of Spiritual Qi and practice the corresponding Cultivation Methods.
Cultivation in the Human Realm had limited fruition ranks, thin Spiritual Qi, and entrenched social strata.
Not only was high-grade Spiritual Qi hard to come by, but the corresponding Cultivation Methods were even more tightly controlled by cultivation Lineages and sects.
In the Human Realm, without Spiritual Qi or Cultivation Methods, a cultivator could forget about attaining the Golden Core fruition rank, say nothing of cultivating Purple Mansion Divine Abilities or forging a Dao foundation and achieving Foundation Establishment. Even reaching Qi Refinement was harder than ascending to heaven.
In the Demon Realm, on the other hand, the concentration of Spiritual Qi was roughly three times that of the Human Realm. Cultivators followed the Qi Refinement Dao, breathing in and absorbing Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi. Its cultivation realms, from lowest to highest, were Qi Refinement, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, Spirit Transformation, and Return to Origin...
In the Demon Realm, both humans and the Demon Race could cultivate.
There, strands of Spiritual Qi were not swallowed, but used to refine pills.
The Demon Realm's Spiritual Qi was denser, but it had a problem too: five thousand years ago, the bright white moon had turned blue, and later it had turned red.
Although its brightness had changed little, the moon had almost entirely lost its moonlight radiance.
That moonlight radiance belonged to supreme yin, and when it disappeared, half the varieties of Spiritual Qi in the Demon Realm disappeared with it.
The loss of moonlight radiance had greatly affected human cultivators, but its impact on cultivating beasts was catastrophic: beasts needed to absorb moonlight radiance to awaken their intelligence, become Demons, and take human form.
To make up for the lack of yin-attributed Spiritual Qi, Qi forgers had emerged among cultivators, though no one knew whether humans or the Demon Race had started it. They added cold Qi and Sha Qi to certain kinds of Spiritual Qi to create yin-attributed Spiritual Qi.
Tang Yuan was happy for two reasons. First, although the concentration of Spiritual Qi in the Human Realm, where he now lived, was only thirty percent of that in the Demon Realm, its moon was normal and it had no shortage of moonlight radiance. He already had forty bottles, or forty strands, of Moon Jade Radiance.
That meant he could resell the Human Realm's Moon Jade Radiance in the Demon Realm.
Moon Jade Radiance should fetch a sky-high price in the Demon Realm!
Second, his monkey master had been a Qi forger, and Tang Yuan, as a snake Demon, had studied the art of Qi forging under him for nearly a hundred years.
There were also bound to be methods for forging certain kinds of Spiritual Qi among the belongings in Monkey Master's Storage Bag.
So, if he was afraid of attracting attention and chose not to resell Moon Jade Radiance, he could still resell Spiritual Qi between the two realms. Tang Yuan had discovered that some kinds of Spiritual Qi differed between the two realms, as did their rarity.
As long as it was scarce, it would surely bring in piles of Spirit Stones...
In the days that followed, Tang Yuan went about his work as a spirit fisherman as usual: he spent twenty days each month fishing at sea and ten days cultivating in seclusion...
More than twenty days later, Monkey Master's beast-hide Storage Bag could be opened. Inside were one bottle, or one strand, of Ghost Moon Gold Gang Spiritual Qi, nine Human Transformation Pills, a Jade Slip containing a Qi-forging Cultivation Method, an alchemy Jade Slip, six spirit crystals, and several miscellaneous books and travelogues...
Two months later, the eight runic characters on the Mystic Spoon glowed red again.
One should make a name while young and cultivate immortality without delay. Tang Yuan was unwilling to wait another year or two before returning to the Demon Realm.
First, he was poor: after ten years of fishing for the Xi Household, not only had he failed to save a single Spirit Stone, he actually owed the Xi Household fifty.
Second, he had learned something from Monkey Master's travelogues: in the Demon Realm, humans and the Demon Race lived together in relative harmony.
He had also confirmed that he could not resell Moon Jade Radiance Spiritual Qi. It was not as though there was not a single trace of Moon Jade Radiance in the Demon Realm; it did exist, but it was far too precious. If he offered any for sale, he would surely invite a fatal disaster.
At the same time, Tang Yuan discovered that his Mystic Spoon no longer gathered Moon Jade Radiance, so he had to use his remaining forty strands sparingly.
But he had also found another business opportunity in Monkey Master's travelogues: he could now resell red spirit eels.
In the Human Realm, one Spirit Stone equaled ten spirit sands; in the Demon Realm, one Spirit Stone equaled ten spirit crystals.
A Spirit Stone from the Human Realm contained about the same amount of Spiritual Qi as one from the Demon Realm.
The Xi Household in the Human Realm bought red spirit eels at ten for one Spirit Stone, while in Loulan City in the Demon Realm, they sold for one Spirit Stone apiece!
Later, once he learned the art of Qi forging, became a Qi forger, and made Spiritual Qi, he could also resell it between the Human and Demon Realms.
For example, a strand of the Demon Realm's water-attribute Thunder Water Sha Spiritual Qi cost one hundred and fifty Spirit Stones.
One strand of Spiritual Qi was divided into ten threads, and one thread into ten filaments.
When forged by a Qi forger, one strand of Thunder Water Sha combined with one thread of Moon Jade Radiance would become one strand of water-attribute Moon Xin Stream Tide Spiritual Qi.
In the Human Realm, Moon Xin Stream Tide was upper fifth-grade Spiritual Qi, with a market price of three hundred Spirit Stones per strand.
He currently had forty free strands of Moon Jade Radiance, enough to make four hundred strands of Moon Xin Stream Tide and earn sixty thousand Spirit Stones.
Those Spirit Stones should be enough to buy the Cultivation Methods, Spiritual Qi, and pills he needed for the Qi Refinement realm, perhaps even all the way to Foundation Establishment.
Haha, just thinking about it made him happy...
As the moonlight first appeared, Tang Yuan was in the cellar beneath his bed.
With a thought, Tang Yuan vanished from the spot and crossed over to the Demon Realm...