Chapter 49 The Perfection of the Sharp Metal Technique

Three months have passed in the blink of an eye, and it's harvest time again.

Inside the bamboo house, cloth bags filled with spirit grains were piled up, and the faint fragrance of yellow sprout rice lingered in the room.

There was nowhere to put the tables and chairs, so Ji An threw them in a corner of the courtyard. In the room, besides the bed, there was only a futon.

The ten mu of spiritual fields yielded approximately 3,500 jin of spiritual rice. After deducting 1,000 jin to pay the land rent and for personal consumption, the rest was sold.

Inside the small courtyard, two spirit fruit trees, each three feet tall, and forty-two Fire Cloud Ginseng plants, reaching up to the calves, filled the entire courtyard, with the fruit trees at the center.

The leaves of the Fire Cloud Ginseng are palmate compound leaves with five leaflets. The leaves are dark green with dark red veins.

In sunlight, the veins of the leaves become as bright as a furnace fire.

When the Fire Cloud Ginseng reaches twenty years of age, it will produce a string of green seeds the size of soybeans. When the seeds turn deep red, the Fire Cloud Ginseng is considered fully mature and can be used to refine elixirs.

Ji An was lying on the chair, leisurely swaying back and forth.

Strands of gold thread were wrapped around his left index finger, changing with his will, like a golden silk thread.

This was a way he had devised to better train his spiritual sense. The metal element spiritual energy released by the Sharp Metal Technique transformed into a soft, yielding texture, but its sharpness remained undiminished.

The Five Elements are divided into metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, but each element also has two aspects: yin and yang.

He was pondering whether the metal elemental energy activated by the Sharp Metal Technique belonged to yin or yang, or whether yin and yang were one.

This knowledge is not something that disciples in the Qi Refining stage need to know. They only need to absorb spiritual energy to improve their cultivation. They only need to learn about it after they have established their foundation.

Ji An felt that there was no harm in knowing in advance, so he always thought about it while practicing spells and then slowly verified his guesses.

The sound of footsteps grew closer and closer, until they stopped outside the fence gate, and someone shouted:

"Fellow Daoist Ji, are you there? I am Li Changqing!"

The buyer of the spiritual rice has arrived. Ji An casually condensed the metal element spiritual energy into a beam, and a golden light disappeared into the ground.

The moment the golden light shone out, he felt something sting his eyes, and tears involuntarily welled up from the corners of his eyes, dripping down his cheeks and leaving two clear tear tracks.

My face felt like it had been scraped by something, and it burned with pain.

Ji An thought of something and focused his mind on his dantian.

[Spell: Sharp Metal Technique (Mastery 99% → Perfection 1%)]

Sure enough, with persistent effort, the Sharp Metal Technique was perfected.

He chuckled softly and whispered:

"It wasn't for nothing that I spent so much time and magic power. I can still do it even without the stone turtle!"

Li Changqing stood outside the door, puzzled. Was he not home?

But we've already collaborated many times, so the other party must be home before I arrive.

He walked around half of the courtyard, wondering why the other party had surrounded it so tightly.

The gate was also changed from a low fence gate to a wooden gate that was eight feet high, making it impossible to see what was going on inside the yard.

Li Changqing checked the nearby landmarks to make sure he was in the right place, then walked back to the entrance and shouted again:

"Fellow Daoist Ji, are you there?"

"Yes, please wait a moment while I open the door for you."

Ji An didn't have time to study the changes that had occurred in the Sharp Metal Technique. He hurriedly ran to the kitchen, fetched some water, and washed his face.

He once tried to pour the spiritual rain from the Lesser Cloud Rain Technique into a water tank for cooking, but he later discovered that the spiritual energy in the rain evaporated very quickly, and there was hardly any left by the next day.

Even though he steamed the yellow rice with fresh spiritual rain, the rice contained not much more spiritual energy than usual, and it didn't taste as good as the rice he steamed with spring water. He thought it was because the spiritual rain lacked minerals that the human body needed.

After washing his face and casually wiping it with a towel hanging by the door, Ji An strode to the front door and unlatched it.

"My goodness, Fellow Daoist Ji, you actually cultivated your courtyard into a first-tier spirit field?!"

Under the sunlight, the veins of the medicinal herbs in the yard blazed like fire, and two fruit trees stretched their branches and leaves in the wind.

Old Lingnong Li Changqing pushed open the door and entered, excitedly saying:

“This is a ginseng, that is a peach tree, and that is an apricot tree.”

In the medicinal garden of the Li family of White Ape Mountain, there are many Fire Cloud Ginseng plants, and the family has also cultivated a second-grade low-quality Spirit Apricot Tree. The things in the small courtyard in front of him are not worth his attention.

But is all of this something that Ling Nong, who has only been a member of the sect for three years, could accomplish?

He knew hundreds of the most skilled spirit farmers around the Azure Lake, but only three of them had cultivated their courtyard land into first-tier spirit fields.

This valley is not built on a spiritual vein, so the land must be continuously nourished with the Thick Earth Technique at the Great Perfection level or above in order to cultivate it into a first-order spiritual field.

“Hey, Fellow Daoist Ji, if you joined Falling Maple Valley, your treatment would be much better than it is now.”

Li Changqing sighed with regret, feeling once again that the other party had joined the wrong sect.

"You must not let the sect leaders hear you say that."

Ji An smiled and extended his hand, saying:

"Fellow Daoist Li, please, let's talk about the transaction."

Although Fallen Maple Valley values ​​Spirit Farmer more, he dares not switch allegiance to them, as this is a major taboo within the sect.

He is already a disciple of the Golden Spirit Sect. Unless he is expelled, he will not return to the sect, and the sect's law enforcement hall will investigate him thoroughly.

The two arrived at the bamboo house, and Li Changqing stopped inspecting and weighed it directly.

"Yes, that's a total of 2,500 catties of yellow sprout rice. As usual, 100 spirit rice equals 105 spirit crystals, which is a total of 2,625 spirit crystals."

He packed the spirit rice, and after the money and goods were exchanged, he said goodbye and left.

Ji An saw him to the door, and he turned around and said:

"Fellow Daoist, now that you've planted so many fine goods in your courtyard, aren't you afraid of being robbed?"

"I'm scared, but I don't have enough crystals. I can only wait until I sell the spirit rice to buy a set of array plates."

Ji An nodded. Ever since he planted the spirit fruit tree and the fire cloud ginseng, he had never dared to leave the bamboo house for more than half a day.

"Yes, it's best to use a magic array to isolate the aura as soon as possible."

Li Changqing waved goodbye, and the other party understood, so there was no need for him to remind them of anything further.

He planned to meet with Li Changfeng that evening and have a good chat.

Ji An watched the other person ride away on the talisman bird, and once the person was far away, he immediately closed the door.

He squinted and released the Sharp Metal Technique, a golden light shooting out like a laser beam, and tears streamed down his face again.

Fortunately, he was prepared this time and closed his eyes in time. The pain wasn't as bad as before, and he could see the difference in the current Sharp Metal Technique.

Previously, he had seen the metal elemental energy in wisps, but now he discovered that it was in grains.

Countless densely packed golden rays formed a beam of golden light. Each ray felt like a sharp sword to him, possessing a sharp texture that could pierce through anything, thus stinging his eyes.

Now that the Sharp Metal Technique is so powerful, will the spells cast by aphids damage the plants in the Spirit Valley?

With this question in mind, Ji An once again released the Sharp Metal Technique onto a bamboo leaf by the wall.

This time, he tried his best to spread the golden light and only mobilized a small amount of magic power.

The golden light remained sharp, piercing through the bamboo leaves, but it did not cause any damage to the naked eye.

Although metal overcomes wood, there are too few metal-elemental spiritual particles, so it seems that they cannot damage the bamboo leaves.

(End of this chapter)