Although he didn't know why Principal Ma wanted to see him, Chen Yi still went to the principal's office first.

"Knock knock knock!"

"Enter!"

Chen Yi returned to this luxurious office.

Ma Guangzhi leaned back on the sofa, fiddling with a string of Buddhist prayer beads, seemingly somewhat restless...

After a long pause, he slowly spoke, "I've heard about what you did in Cangyan. You did a great job. I knew I hadn't misjudged you!"

Chen Yi paused for two seconds, then asked, "Did our Xiande also lose something in this incident?"

Ma Guangzhi seemed to be stung, covering his forehead with his palm and rubbing his temples with two fingers.

"Ugh! I should have known better than to go to that awful company," he said with a pained expression.

Chen Yi: "......"

"What were the results of your investigation into that puppetry company?" he asked curiously.

Upon hearing the company's name, Ma Guangzhi became extremely angry.

"No, when we got there, the core management team had all run away. This was just a shell company set up by the Thief of Heaven Sect to deceive people. Their qualifications, puppetry skills, and certificates were all fake! The reason those puppets were so hard to kill was because they used some unorthodox technology and ruthless techniques..."

Chen Yi clicked his tongue in amazement, "Can't he catch a single person?"

"Hehe! Not really. We detained many relevant employees, but the investigation showed that they were all outsourced or temporary workers..."

Ma Guangzhi lay back on the sofa, his expression somewhat blank.

Chen Yi finally understood why the other party had seemed so dazed at the beginning...

"Ahem! The reason I called you here today is to ask how you helped Cangyan find those thieves?"

Ma Guangzhi looked at Chen Yi, a glimmer of hope rising in his eyes.

"Uh... to be honest, Cangyan Wangbian deserves a lot of credit for finding the people from the Thief Heaven Sect. He tracked them down by following the smell of smoke; I only helped break the formation where they were hiding," Chen Yi said honestly.

He deliberately exaggerated Wang Bian's role while downplaying his own, all to avoid getting into trouble.

Is it something a senior high school student like me should do to find the lost Foundation Establishment artifact?

Seeing that Principal Ma was visibly weakening, Chen Yi tentatively asked:

"What do the people from the Thief of Heaven Sect who invaded our Immortal Virtue look like?"

Ma Guangzhi sighed: "I don't know. One was wearing a fox mask, so I don't know if it was a man or a woman, and the other was a man wearing a black mask."

Chen Yi shook his head: "Sorry, I don't remember, I can't help."

The hope in Ma Guangzhi's eyes gradually dimmed, and his face almost wore a mask of pain.

"Oh well, it's fate. I'll never leave the office so easily again."

Chen Yi glanced at him. Judging from his expression, the Foundation Establishment spiritual item he lost was probably not as valuable as the Azure Flame Seed, and was likely his personal possession.

Personal belongings are much harder to search for with a large workforce, unless the person is willing to spend the money...

"Principal Ma, if there's nothing else, I'll be leaving now."

Chen Yi was about to leave when Ma Guangzhi called him back.

"Wait, there's something I forgot to mention."

He sat up straight on the sofa.

"The individual rankings for the five-school joint exam are out. You're number one, so you have the right to choose your prizes first."

"Tell me, which one do you want?"

Chen Yi stopped in his tracks, somewhat surprised. The rankings were announced so quickly?

He took a deep breath. If he remembered correctly, the five prizes were: Nine Nether Grass, Medicine Cauldron, Azure Flame Eye Flesh, White Bone Treasure Mirror, and Kan Water Treasure Jade.

He definitely wouldn't choose the Nine Nether Grass, since it was originally brought back by him for Principal Ma.

The medicine cauldron, being a top-grade magical artifact, would probably cost over 100,000.

Considering that he might have to learn alchemy later, he was indeed somewhat tempted...

He wasn't too concerned about the Azure Flame Eye Flesh, which could accelerate the cultivation of fire-based techniques and pure yang-type body-refining methods.

The White Bone Treasure Mirror is a book that students who enjoy crafting would likely be happy to choose. Chen Yi guessed that the bone whistle that Manli gave him came from this book.

So, only the most precious Kan Shui gemstone remains.

I have a feeling that this thing is related to Chu Qi. It's probably something that the Thief Heaven Sect gave to Shan Hai Middle School as a prize in order to get more people to participate in the Five Schools Joint Examination.

After all, the more people participate, the more chaotic the school will become, and they can take advantage of the chaos to commit theft.

"The medicine cauldron can be bought with money, but this Kan Shui precious jade is a foundation-building material, and high-quality ones are hard to come by," Chen Yi murmured to himself.

After thinking it through, he decisively said, "I choose the Kan Water Jade."

"Just as I thought." Ma Guangzhi nodded. "The things will be delivered to you tomorrow. Go back and wait."

A glimmer of expectation flashed in Chen Yi's eyes.

He has already refined the Nine Nether Grass and the Earth Phosphorous Fire. Now, this Kan Water Jade is the third Foundation Establishment material. He still needs two more to meet the requirements for Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment...

As for true spiritual energy, he has also developed new techniques.

Once I have mastered the "True Explanation of Earth Element Subduing" to perfection, I can then find a way to condense a second strand of true spiritual energy.

However, if you want to condense a third strand of true spiritual energy, you will need to raise your cultivation level to the twelfth level of Qi Refining.

After all, at most, one can only condense two kinds of true spiritual energy at the eleventh level of Qi Refining. This is a condition for the Foundation Establishment of the True Path, and also a kind of rule constraint.

Of course, there are no restrictions on the foundation-building materials. As long as the physical body or divine sense can withstand them, even someone at the tenth level of Qi Refining can refine three types of foundation-building materials.

However, true spiritual energy is different. If one's cultivation level has not reached the twelfth level of Qi Refining, but one forcibly condenses the third type of true spiritual energy, the spiritual power in the body will be completely disordered, leading to damaged meridians, loss of control of power, and ultimately death by explosion.

Chen Yi only learned about these things by asking the system.

Therefore, it seems that learning alchemy and collecting the ingredients for the Twelve-Story Jade Elixir formula should be put on the agenda.

"These days are incredibly fulfilling!"

......

After leaving the principal's office, Chen Yi did not wander around but went straight back to his dormitory.

The first thing he did upon returning to his dormitory was to take out the battle flag that Wang Lin had given him.

"Thump! Thump! Thump!"

He planted the array flags in various corners of the dormitory, and then took out a talisman brush to draw some array patterns on the surrounding walls.

"Buzz!"

A simple spirit-gathering array was thus formed.

Although it wasn't as large and complex as the quiet room in the school, it was more than enough for him alone.

The spirit-gathering array in the school's meditation room is essentially a honeycomb arrangement of numerous level 1-2 spirit-gathering arrays to create a super-large integrated array system.

The difficulty of a single spirit-gathering array is no challenge for Chen Yi, whose skill is now at level 2...

"That way, I won't have to compete with others for the quiet room anymore. It will also save some time getting back to the dorm from the quiet room..."

Before long, the spiritual energy in the dormitory became quite strong.

"Phew~"

Chen Yi took a deep breath, his eyes filled with rapture. Who would waste money going to the meditation room now!

However, he soon thought about what would happen if the school found out and asked him to pay a fine for illegally gathering spiritual energy.

So he set up a concealment array to hide the fact that spiritual energy was gathering.

With his mastery of formations, probably very few people in the entire Immortal Virtue would be able to detect anything unusual.

Mission accomplished!

He first sat on the futon to temper his Dao heart for a while, and then it was time to sleep.

He hadn't slept for two days and was indeed feeling a bit tired.

After falling asleep, he once again entered that dream space.

The minor supernatural power has already been comprehended, so his only purpose in coming here is to extract the magic!

After all, Principal Ma just said that he was the top scorer in this joint exam of the five schools.

Even before the actual results were released, the system had already determined that he had completed the plan.

Once he falls asleep now, it'll be time for that awful, or rather, the classic reward distribution...