Chapter 154: Refining Ores with Heavenly Derivation, Essence Dew Gets Ripped Off!

Black gold stone, which can be used to refine both magical instruments as well as spirit warships and spirit boats, is a rarely seen hard-textured ore.

The spirit puppet mixed among the rocks, heading deep into the earth.

The spiritual nodes in vein regions are complicated. Perhaps as a manifestation of the laws of heaven and earth, in such places, cultivators' divine sense is subjected to strong suppression and interference.

Shen Lian quietly controlled the spirit puppet to descend deep into the soil, circumventing the secretly digging miners while carefully inspecting the ores buried within the earth.

Although the time spent entering the mining area was not long, his harvest was not small, having collected no less than a hundred jun of low-grade ores.

This also gave Shen Lian another idea. In the puppet refinement techniques of the immortal cultivation world, there is a method of combined refinement.

Refining different parts with different ores, using a higher-grade ore or demon bone as the framework core, allows for the creation of puppets of higher grades.

This method could also be applied when he refined magical treasures.

The Five Elements Elixir Cauldron he had previously planned was still somewhat flawed. After giving it some thought, he decided he could add an outer layer to the cauldron, refining a small spirit warship, and let the Five Elements Elixir Cauldron serve as the energy-supplying core.

As for the Five Elements Elixir Cauldron itself, it would also differ from those ordinary alchemy furnaces; five spiritual treasures such as magical mirrors and compasses would be embedded into its exterior.

Besides scouting, the black-horned ants now had an additional task: to collect all the ore particles scattered in the soil.

Inside the cave dwelling, Shen Lian, once again affectionately holding the red crystal ore, enveloped it with the golden-white flames in his hands.

The only issue was that he needed to find a place abundant in spiritual energy, preferably with a spirit vein, so it could provide a continuous supply of spiritual energy; otherwise, the few spirit stones he kept at the bottom of his box were simply not enough to burn through.

At this very moment, Shen Lian abruptly withdrew his fire spiritual power, quickly put away the red crystal ore, and then briskly dismantled the cave dwelling.

There were too many secrets on him. Once discovered by a Golden Core cultivator, soul-searching and soul-snatching would merely be considered appetizers. Without boasting, Shen Lian's secrets were enough to warrant hanging a soul lamp for daily torture.

Draped over dozens of breaths, even the upper and lower cave dwellings used as facades were stowed into his storage magical artifact, and then he bolted toward the outer periphery of the Tianzhu Mountain mineral veins.

He brought out the Moon Spirit Essence Dew he had previously acquired at the auction.

On the outskirts of Tianzhu Mountain, in a barren mountain area where the spiritual energy seemed poor and even birds and beasts were scarce, Shen Lian re-established his camp.

At this moment, Shen Lian held the red crystal ore in his arms, embracing it as affectionately as if he were holding a fairy maiden.

At a certain spot beneath a small hill, Shen Lian looked at the shattered ant nest and a severed red pincer, and his expression turned sour once again.

However, aside from a slightly higher consumption, there were truly no other flaws.

Yet Shen Lian was breaking this common sense.

This was indeed similar to human cultivation.

The sole purpose of this pill was to replenish the essence, Qi, and spirit of a ninth-layer Foundation Establishment cultivator, accelerating their self-consummation to add a sliver of assistance during core formation.

This was a small hill in the northern part of the mining city, a place where several fierce battles between demons and humans had once broken out.

Since this item came from the Holy Spirit Palace, nine times out of ten it belonged to a certain elder of that faction.

This piece of ore could no longer be called a red crystal ore; it should instead be called a lower-grade tier-three red gold ore, falling into the category of metal-attribute spiritual items.

The crystal-clear Moon Spirit Essence Dew was placed in a jade box like a transparent pearl, emanating a faint, pleasant fragrance.

"Hum!"

Once the entire magical artifact was refined, it would be capable of self-combination and self-disassembly.

There were tiny, particle-like ore residues, ranging from the first to the third tier, and even fourth-tier ones.

"Hum!"

Shen Lian had obtained this item to temper his physique, but he was not in a hurry to refine it into his body because its fragrance was overly intense.

The qualitative transformation of an ore required absorbing the spiritual essence of heaven and earth. His Tianyan Fire Domain accelerated the transformation process, but the ore likewise required external energy to sustain that process.

His divine sense sank into the interior of the essence dew, carefully sensing the spiritual nodes emanating from it.

There is honor among thieves; even when stealing, one must leave some broth for the other thieves, lest the matter come to light...

With black-horned ant nests covering the mountains and plains, if a single nest collected just a pinch in a month, the total would still add up to dozens or hundreds of jun.

Shen Lian let out a long breath of relief. With this refining method, he didn't necessarily have to obsess over high-grade ores.

"I am going to check on the surviving clansmen."

Even while merely prowling the periphery for over a month, Shen Lian had harvested dozens of tier-two ores. Although small in size, added together they were of considerable value.

In any random place, the soil contained fine, particle-like ore slag—some caused by earth movements, and some dropped after extraction.

This black gold stone was as dark as ink, its entire body inside and out dotted with tiny golden specks. Even in the dim light, the star-like golden dots could not be concealed.

Such cultivators often had a higher probability of advancing.

Realizing this, Shen Lian's expression grew even gloomier.

An inch-thick pale golden light overflowed from the ore, its luster fierce, its surface carrying a crystal-clear sensation.

For a moment, Shen Lian's expression turned somewhat gloomy.

As for the Moon Spirit Essence Dew before him, Shen Lian did not dare to use it.

The black-horned ant colony proved to be truly useful; of course, the main reason was that the minerals in the Tianzhu Mountain mining area were far too abundant.

At the same time, Shen Lian also used his divine sense to thoroughly investigate the destroyed nests; most of the black-horned ants had been bitten to death, and the collected ore particles had been thoroughly scavenged.

Shen Lian mobilized his golden-white fire spiritual power, surging it toward the red crystal ore.

"So big... so big..."

Dahai, lying to one side, used its pincers to gesture at the changes in the ore before and after, its black eyes revealing a look of utter amazement.

The faint fragrance emanating from the essence dew indicated that the cultivator who had nurtured this essence dew was a female Golden Core master.

When an artifact refiner refines a magical instrument, the very first step is to refine the ore, extracting the impurities within the ore to the greatest extent possible.

To achieve this goal, a vast quantity of various ores was required.

Currently, given his strength, he could only purify up to the lower-grade tier-three level, and moreover, when refining the prototype of a magical artifact, it wasn't necessarily true that higher ore grades were always better.

"Master, a swarm of red crystal fire ants attacked this place and carried away the collected ores."

This spiritual item required a Golden Core cultivator to nurture it in their dantian for thirty to fifty years before it could be used by cultivators to refine pills.

The power of Tianyan could even purify the bloodlines of spirit beasts; there was no reason it couldn't purify ores. This purification was not about removing impurities, but about elevating quality.

It wasn't that Shen Lian was overthinking, but the Holy Spirit Palace's relationships across various domains—to put it nicely, were intricately linked; to put it bluntly, it was nothing more than a pimping network.

After circulating for several major cycles, the red fire spiritual power began to show traces of gold, and after a short while longer, white appeared amidst the gold.

Seeing this, Shen Lian quickly understood.

Damn it, the immortal cultivation world is riddled with traps everywhere.

After sniffing the red pincer, Dahai quickly identified the bloodline aura of a homologous race...

Sounds of quenching echoed from the golden-white flames and the ore, accompanied by rising black smoke. Under the shroud of golden light, the ore was shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Just as he had anticipated, the internal structure of the ore had altered, representing a qualitative advancement akin to evolution, rather than the ordinary purification performed by conventional artifact refiners.

He picked up the ore and held it in his arms once more, constantly shrinking it under the refinement of the golden-white flame while forming a vortex that drew in spiritual energy.

Inside the cave dwelling.

Some small pieces were left inside; he hadn't stowed them all away.

The ores produced abundantly in this region of Red Crystal Mining City leaned heavily toward the fire attribute. Once he gathered enough ore fragments, he would need to move to a mining city rich in ores of a different attribute.

This was Shen Lian's cave dwelling within the city.

Half a day later, the spirit puppet discovered a piece of black gold stone resembling a withered tree trunk at a depth of five hundred paces underground.

"Master, right here."

Inside the transparent essence dew, there were extremely minute particles. Shen Lian gently picked one out and found it similar to powder.

This time, he released puppet paper dolls to patrol a radius of twenty miles, and even dispatched the Five Elements Spirit Puppets.

Having lost his mood for cultivation, he headed outside the city to begin collecting the ore particles found by the black-horned ants.

He had witnessed firsthand the scene of Holy Spirit Palace cultivators capturing male concubines.

This made his expression somewhat ugly.

Aside from the contribution of the black-horned ants, the credit here also belonged to the spirit puppets.

After another round of breath adjustment, the stabilized fire spiritual power consisted of seventy percent red, twenty percent gold, and ten percent white.

Once fully completed, it would evolve in the direction of a soaring city in the sky.

He had to steal and search at the same time.

Further down beneath this cave dwelling, Shen Lian sat cross-legged on a rush mat, examining the ore in his hand.

The Tianzhu Mountain mining area had been a renowned tier-five spirit vein region since the medieval era. Through the vicissitudes of time and the changing of the world, it had now become the largest mining area in the Southern Continent.

Using his own spirit stones to handle someone else's business.

Normally, cultivators seeking to purchase Moon Spirit Essence Dew did so to refine tier-two upper-grade Moon-Radiance Completion Pills.

Guided by Dahai, he successively gathered several jun of multicolored ore particles from multiple nests, which improved Shen Lian's mood considerably.

This was common sense in the immortal cultivation world; even low-level practitioners in Qi Condensation knew that ores were the essence of heaven and earth, requiring the nourishment of heaven and earth's spiritual nodes to gradually enhance their quality.

Fire Crane Mountain, cave dwelling.

After all that effort, it turned out he was merely part of the process.

"Lower-grade tier-three."

This was a lower-grade tier-two red crystal ore, about the size of his skull.

One preliminary positioning, one precise search—looking across the entire Tianzhu Mountain mining area, probably no one else possessed such capability.

Of course, he wouldn't search personally; the numerous black-horned ants under his command weren't kept for nothing.

Shen Lian was not surprised by the wonders of the Tianyan Fire Domain; what made him frown was that this piece of ore had absorbed five thousand lower-grade spirit stones of his.

"Upper-grade tier-two."

Yet this was seventeen thousand spirit stones; it was simply too wasteful.

Two days later.

When he won the bid previously, he had inspected it and detected no powder.

During this refining process, impurities were merely removed; the grade of the ore could not be elevated.

"Sizzle..."

The array rotated slowly, shrouding the figure cultivating within.

During this process, Shen Lian's divine sense was sensing the transforming ore.

"Middle-grade tier-two now."

He naturally dared not use things beyond his control.

Five-element spiritual power surged from his hands; soon, the other types of spiritual power were drawn back into his body, leaving only the red fire spiritual power.

The spirit puppet returned to Shen Lian's side, having dug out more than thirty pieces of black gold stone ores of varying sizes from below, along with one quasi-third-tier piece.

Half a month later.

Buried Bone Mountain.

With his new idea, gathering the residual, shattered ore slag scattered across the mountains and fields became the second path he prepared.

From then on, it would be one man and one warship, one warship and one city, capable of even masquerading as a large immortal cultivation sect.

Furthermore, the black-horned ants were diligent workers; collecting one or two jun of ore particles per nest in a month was hardly a problem.

Having assigned the task to the black-horned ants, Shen Lian returned to Red Crystal Mining City. Of late, the number of fierce beasts in the wilderness outside the mining city had decreased significantly, clearly having been mostly cleared out by cultivators.

Beneath a certain nameless hill.

Soon, Shen Lian had a rough draft in mind. Next, he needed to find a place abundant in spiritual energy to supply his ore refinement. This location had to be secluded, with no Golden Core cultivators passing through.

Temporarily halting his actions, Shen Lian set up a spirit-gathering array inside the cave dwelling and crushed a large handful of spirit stones, creating a small blessed cave dwelling.

Yet this ten percent of white fire spiritual power emitted an aura more blazing than the twenty percent of gold, and the thirty percent of golden-white fire spiritual power was more blazing than the remaining seventy percent of red fire spiritual power.

Before long, Dahai swept through the air and arrived.

When the ore had shrunk by half, Shen Lian perceived that the ore's grade had advanced by a small tier.

Inside the cave dwelling, Shen Lian grasped a gold-and-red intertwined ore the size of an infant's fist, weighing it up and down in his hand.

When the golden-white fire spiritual power landed on the red crystal ore, after a dozen breaths, a dazzling golden light burst forth, accompanied by sizzling sounds.

In short, a mining area truly lived up to its name.

The originally red ore, in the process of shrinking, saw its structure grow compact while its surface began to emit a fierce golden luster.

"Hoo..."

Yet when the ore shrank by another circle, the speed of the red crystal ore's transformation began to slow, and the sparse spiritual energy around it was stirred, drawing into the ore.

"Master, these are red crystal fire ants."

The history of mining here was even more ancient. Over the countless years, countless fine, fragmented ore residues had been left behind between the mountain ranges and deep within the soil.

If he used it, he would end up having to grovel too; just thinking about it was perverted... truly white...

It could be said that any cultivator using the Moon-Radiance Completion Pill, regardless of whether they had the opportunity to advance to Golden Core, at least harbored the ambition to strive for Golden Core advancement.

"To speak or not to speak... to speak or not to speak..."

He was the sole resident of the entire mountain peak.

His method of collecting ores needed to change; he couldn't just keep stealing. That wasn't right; immortal cultivation required adherence to moral virtue.

"Spiritual energy?"

This indicated that these red crystal fire ants were artificially cultivated; otherwise, it would have been impossible for them to bite the black-horned ants to death, destroy the nests, and carry away the ore fragments.

This was the first time he had encountered a cultivator cultivating ant colonies, showing that clever people in the immortal cultivation world were not limited to him alone.

"Master, these red crystal fire ants have all been demonized, and my clansmen were no match for them. I am going to go bite them to death!"