Refining Treasures and Enchanting Farm Tools

By the time Lin Xu returned to Peach Tree Village, the sun had reached its zenith, and the supplies brought from Xuanwei Monastery had yet to be put in storage.

Lin Xu glanced at them, then hurried back to the quiet room to cultivate.

He sat cross-legged and entered a meditative trance. Scriptures flowed through his sea of consciousness as diagrams of spirit patterns unfolded layer upon layer.

Under Thought Overclocking, every rune line and every layer of the formation's foundation was taken apart, reconstructed, and analyzed in his spiritual consciousness.

These techniques, which would ordinarily take a cultivator months of study and years of hard practice to master, were swiftly analyzed and integrated in his sea of consciousness.

An hour later, Lin Xu emerged from his trance. Three new expert-level skills had appeared in the skill section of his personal panel: artifact refining, formations, and talismans.

When Lin Xu opened his eyes, runes seemed to flow through them, then vanished in an instant.

He rose and left the quiet room. His lunch was a bowl of crystal-clear spirit rice and a steamed Azure-Patterned Spirit Fish. Their delicate fragrance lingered on his palate, transforming into a warm current that nourished his meridians. Simple as the meal was, it held spiritual essence.

The meal not only filled his stomach but also nourished his cultivation.

A short while after eating, Lin Xu summoned the village craftsmen. "Bring me every implement you've made."

The craftsmen brought over iron plows, wooden rakes, stone mills, and other implements. They were all ordinary farm tools, with no trace of engraved spirit patterns.

In fact, magic items such as artifacts were the exclusive preserve of cultivators. Mortals rarely caught a glimpse of them, much less used them to till and plow fields.

No one knew when this incomplete volume of the Azure Earth Artifact Refining Manual had been passed down from the Spirit Realm. It had been left to gather dust in a corner of the scripture repository, and if Lin Xu hadn't happened upon it, there was no telling how much longer it would have remained buried.

Lin Xu examined the implements one by one, brushing his fingertips over their surfaces. His spiritual sense penetrated them, detecting minute flaws in their materials and textures, as well as structural defects.

He immediately took out an engraving knife and carved seal script along the edge of an iron plow. Then he ground spiritual materials into ink, traced formation patterns along the lines of the plowshare, and infused them with a wisp of spiritual power.

In an instant, the iron plow trembled faintly. A dim azure light spread over its surface, and a spiritual gleam flickered along its edge. The gleam then vanished into the implement, becoming a hidden pattern barely discernible to the naked eye.

Item: Earth-Breaking Plow (imitation)

Type: Artifact

Grade: Azure, common

Effect: Plowing speed +300%

Durability: 100/100

Description: A farmer's iron plow, enhanced with an Earth-Breaking Pattern to greatly increase tilling efficiency

Lin Xu nodded. According to the Azure Earth Artifact Refining Manual, a genuine Earth-Breaking Plow was made primarily from azure steel or Earth Vein refined iron. Spiritual fire was used to refine the artifact blank, and the Earth-Breaking Spirit Pattern was engraved with spiritual sense during the refining process.

A cultivator could then control it with spiritual sense, its blade breaking through the earth like a dragon coursing through the fields. It could plow a thousand mu of wasteland in a day.

But resources were limited for now, so he had to make do with what was available. Lin Xu had thoroughly mastered the essence of the Artifact Refining Manual and radically modified it into a simple enchanting method suited to ordinary iron farm tools.

Spiritual materials were ground into ink and used to draw formation patterns on an implement's surface that could hold a faint amount of spiritual power. These were then activated with his own spiritual power. Though the result fell far short of orthodox artifact refining, it was cheap and simple to carry out.

Lin Xu was the only one who could engrave the seal-script formations, so he found an outer disciple skilled in talismans to assist him and began enchanting the village's farm tools one by one.

Only now did Lin Xu realize how impoverished Peach Tree Village was. Aside from carpenters and masons, the village didn't have a single full-time blacksmith. Even its handful of iron farm tools had been purchased from other villages in the past.

He had no choice but to summon the village chief, who was already run off his feet. An outer disciple led a squad of militia to escort the chief as he drove a fully loaded ox cart toward the other villages to barter for iron farm tools.

The completed enchanted farm tools were distributed among the households, and the villagers tried them out in the fields.

Lin Xu stood on a ridge between the fields and watched. With the enchanted tools, the pace of land reclamation had visibly increased.

The oxen brought in at short notice were especially impressive. Driven by the farmers, they dragged enchanted plowshares through the earth, turning up rolling waves of soil at nearly three times their usual speed.

"Once we have all the tools we need, the village's development and construction can move several times faster~"

His gaze fell on the lush green rice paddies outside the village. Spiritual Qi, denser than before, hung over the fields. The drooping heads of rice rolled like golden waves, each stalk glimmering faintly, as though it contained the essence of heaven and earth.

This was the Spirit Gathering Formation Wang Yue had set up. It sacrificed the efficiency of Spiritual Qi gathering in exchange for a greatly expanded range, enveloping the entire village and its fields.

Nourished by the spiritual essence, the rice grew rapidly, and the yield per mu was expected to reach twice that of previous years.

"In the Spirit Realm, magic is a productive force," Lin Xu murmured. This was only a preliminary application of the Spirit Gathering Formation. If talisman formations were further integrated with farming, they could encourage the growth of spirit plants, improve the soil, and even summon favorable weather and rain.

And if enchanted farm tools were widely adopted, the productivity of mortal villages as a whole would increase severalfold.

This showed just how crude Xuanwei Monastery's methods of governance were. If the lands of the five villages were placed in his hands, he could double their current spirit rice output within a month or two!

"For now, I still need to lie low and wait for the right moment." He put his thoughts aside and looked toward the afterglow of dusk, which illuminated the ambition hidden deep in his eyes.

The evening breeze brushed over the field ridges, stirring ripples of rice fragrance and spiritual light.

Early the next morning, Lin Xu personally led ten Dao soldiers toward the front lines, with thirty militia leading three ox carts.

Walking once more through the dim mist, Lin Xu felt different again.

To ensure the convoy's safety, he had brought all the other Dharma Protectors with him this time, including the four Evil Eyes. Only Chen A'niu and the two dark mages who had just surrendered remained in the village to cultivate.

With Dharma Protector Qiuqiu leading them, the long-range vision of these giant eyeballs could see one or two kilometers away, even through the obscuring mist.

"The ogre camp..."

Through an Evil Eye's vision, Lin Xu looked at the camp a kilometer away, where a bonfire burned.

Three savage monsters over three meters tall sat or lay beside the fire.

On the roasting rack, the prey licked by the flames had a faintly discernible humanoid outline.

With no intention of approaching, Lin Xu directed the supply convoy to give the camp a wide berth.

There was little to gain from killing monsters like these, and doing so would risk casualties.

Beyond the camp, five wild wolves prowled the wilderness a few hundred meters away.

A wild monster party made up of just a few beasts was undoubtedly among the weakest presences in this area.

The next instant, several Evil Eyes fixed their gaze on the pack.

"Crackle~"

The Evil Eye Dharma Protectors concentrated their spiritual senses, and the illusory force actually took shape as tangible lightning.

In the flash of a spark, Mind Beams shot like arrows into the distant wolves.

"Awoo~"

A wild wolf let out a piercing, wretched cry, then crashed heavily to the ground. Its limbs twitched, and it never stood again.

Several successive Mind Blasts swept through like a gale scattering fallen leaves, wiping out all five wolves in an instant.

The supply convoy passed by two hundred meters away. Lin Xu glanced at the five tiny Source Fire Fragments streaking toward him and nodded in satisfaction.

Although his level of authority meant he still didn't know what this resource was used for, that didn't stop him from putting in a little effort to collect more.