However, Gu Yan felt that he was still far from breaking through, and it seemed that relying on these stones would not allow him to cultivate for long, as they were not enough to sustain his cultivation.

We can't give up on raising insects; every little bit helps. Gu Yan thought to himself.

So he continued refining them until he had absorbed five hundred, when he felt a bang inside his body.

Gu Yan breathed a sigh of relief.

"It should be the third level of heaven now, but why are these spirit stones so easily used up?" Gu Yan muttered to himself.

He stopped cultivating and instead took out the book of techniques to read. It was a fire control technique, which he had always longed for since he learned about it, because if he learned it, he could refine pills.

It is said that during the pre-Qin period, Qin Shi Huang wanted to refine immortality and sent his minister Xu Fu to Penglai Island to seek the elixir of immortality.

Gu Yan thought that if he could refine those elixirs, wouldn't he also be able to become an immortal?

So he began to study the art of fire control, and after trying the methods for more than five hours, he finally mastered the first wisp of true fire.

He breathed a sigh of relief; he had finally succeeded. Looking at the palm-sized flame in his palm, he moved his thoughts, and the flame changed shape at will.

He then looked at the basics of alchemy again, flipped through it casually, and suddenly felt that it seemed even simpler. His spiritual sense range increased by another ten meters.

He figured the first few prescriptions were probably quite simple, even though he didn't recognize any of the herbs...

When he looked at the last few options, he suddenly felt a headache and stopped looking at them altogether.

He studied the appearance of those medicinal herbs and found that some of them looked similar to ginseng, so he thought he should be able to buy them.

After having the idea, I studied the book on the basics of weapon crafting, and I really liked it. This book allows you to extract the purest parts of rare ores that still contain special energy, and then refine them into the weapons you want.

The first thing that came to mind when thinking about ancient stories was a flying sword. What man wouldn't want to fly on a sword and soar through the sky? Unfortunately, there weren't enough materials, so he had to give up on that idea for the time being.

But then I thought about it again: are those jade stones considered rare minerals?

"I guess so," he thought to himself.

It was indeed quite rare, so Gu Yan decided to find some jade to practice his skills. Looking at the darkening sky, he decided to rest for a while. He was indeed very tired, and then fell into a deep sleep.

Around 3 a.m., Gu Yan left through the window.

No one noticed; the area was quite underdeveloped, and there wasn't a single surveillance camera. He ran quickly toward the mine, and as he approached, he noticed that there were many more patrols there, presumably because they had also discovered something amiss.

However, he didn't care. As long as there were no heavy weapons, killing them would be as easy as chopping vegetables or cutting melons. Within his sight, as long as he locked onto them with his divine sense, their movements would be as slow as snails.

After surveying the surroundings and finding no heavy weapons, Gu Yan grabbed some small pebbles, silently approached, and threw them, accurately hitting twenty people, who instantly fell to the ground. Before the others could fire, he threw pebbles again, killing them all and leaving them lying on the ground.

He then took out the Soul-Summoning Banner and waved it, collecting their souls inside. He then sent forty or fifty more corpses into the insect-raising space.

He felt that those feed worms seemed to grow much faster than the pigs after eating human corpses.

Although human corpses are not large, their nutrients are significantly better than those of livestock.

So Gu Yan quietly headed deeper into the mine, towards the furthest one, since the further away it was, the slower the discovery would be.

He spread his divine sense and probed the ground. Whenever a piece of jade appeared, he would stop and dig it out. When he reached the deepest part, his divine sense suddenly jolted, as if he had encountered something.

The feeling was like an animal smelling fresh blood. It then directed its divine sense in one direction and discovered a piece of emerald green jade about eight meters underground, which was emitting a faint light.

Gu Yan started digging, and it took him about half an hour to dig out the jade. He examined the color and concluded that it was imperial green.

A piece of imperial green jade he had never heard of before, radiating a faint spiritual aura. He felt that this one piece was worth a thousand spirit stones in his storage ring; it was definitely a cultivation material.

So he quickly put it away and continued digging for more than an hour. Only when he saw the mountain of jade in his storage ring did Gu Yan leave satisfied.

When he reached the exit, he found that several hundred soldiers had surrounded it. They released their divine sense and discovered that one of the officers seemed to be saying that someone had come to steal the jade and had killed several squads of soldiers.

The soldiers, who had been running lazily, split into small teams and rushed toward the mine entrances.

So Gu Yan quickly found an opening and left.

With his skills, as long as he doesn't make a sound, those people won't be able to find him.

Back at the hotel, we inventoried the jade we had just dug up. Apart from the large piece of imperial green jade, the rest of the jade came in various colors—blue, black, white…

There were about a hundred pieces, and Gu Yan took one out. Then he activated the true fire and began to burn it. After a few minutes, he successfully burned the jade to ashes.

"Ugh, it's too difficult, it's hard to control."

He rubbed his temples; this was really a brain-teasing matter.

He took out another piece, and it turned to ash in no time. Each piece could have been sold for hundreds of thousands, but he wasn't bothered. There was no shortage of jade here.

So he began spending a lot of money on practice, and after failing dozens of times, he finally produced an embryo.

My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!