Chapter 69, first published on Jinjiang, is titled "Shangtianxiaxin," which means "thought," and the alchemy furnace is silver...

Yao Sisi was unaware of Qi Mu's house situation. After eating some breakfast, she went out and headed straight for the famous Lingbao Pavilion. She had been here for a long time and had visited many small shops, but she had never been to such a large store. It was because her wallet was not full, and going there would only cause her more trouble than buy anything.

But things are different now. Although she still doesn't have much money, she has something rare that she wants to know about, so she has no choice but to go.

Lingbao Pavilion is magnificent from the outside, with no apparent number of floors. Stepping inside, it is spotless and opulent, just like its name suggests, like a delicate treasure pavilion, exquisite and beautiful as if held in one's hands. If magnified countless times, it is so exquisite that it seems otherworldly.

Upon entering, she found that there weren't many waiters or customers in the lobby, but people kept coming in and buying things continuously, and there were quite a few like her.

The first floor contained ordinary pills and weapons, which she didn't need, so she went straight to the second floor. The second floor seemed larger than the first, and the display cases had a wider variety of items. After walking around and not seeing any puppets for sale, she went up to the third floor.

The items on the third floor were a bit wilder than those on the first and second floors. There was a display case at the entrance selling some strange and unusual items, most of which were unique. Some of these items were sourced by Lingbao Pavilion's own staff, while others came from other channels. Yao Sisi felt that the items in the other display cases were nothing special, but the items here were really interesting.

Some of them are exquisite, some are rough, and some are made of unknown materials, waiting for someone with a discerning eye to recognize their value. Yao Sisi's knowledge is not very extensive, and she has not been in the cultivation world for long, but she has read a lot of miscellaneous books, and she has indeed discovered some good things.

She picked up a reddish-brown piece of refining material, tossed it in her hand, and asked the waiter beside her, "How much is this?"

The other party replied politely, "Everything on this counter costs five hundred spirit stones. Please take your pick."

Yao Sisi took a breath: "Five hundred spirit stones for such a broken stone? That's too expensive!"

Waiter: "It's a type of stone that even our shop's blacksmiths can't melt; it's not an ordinary stone."

Yao Sisi frowned and pretended to put the stone down without any hesitation: "I think it's just an ordinary stone. I was thinking of taking it home to play with because I felt a connection with it. If even you weapon refiners can't melt it down, then I'll be even more unable to use it. Can't this shop put some real things in it? You want to sell such an unknown stone for an exorbitant price?"

She made a complaint like any other customer, and the other customers who were selecting items also gave the stone a disapproving look. Clearly, no one thought that ugly stone was a good material. The chances of finding something good in this display case were slim, and it was more likely to result in a bad purchase. Everyone was quite cautious in their selection.

Yao Sisi continued rummaging through the display case, then asked, "Do you sell any puppets here?"

Upon hearing this, the waiter's expression changed slightly. "Which kind of puppet does the guest wish to choose?"

Yao Sisi said, "The kind of mechanical art!"

The waiter's attitude softened slightly: "We don't have the large ones, would a smaller one be okay?"

Yao Sisi was taken aback. "How small?"

The waiter picked up a small bird from the display shelf next to him and placed it in his palm. "Is this small enough? Don't underestimate it because of its size. It has excellent detection capabilities and is not easily detected by divine sense."

Yao Sisi took it and fiddled with it in her hands. This little bird was much more practical than the dolls she had casually crafted before. "How many spirit stones?"

Waiter: "Three thousand eight hundred low-grade spirit stones."

Yao Sisi: "..."

So expensive! Are things this expensive here?

She couldn't help but take Lingyun out of her spatial storage. "How many spirit stones would such a flying magic artifact cost here?"

The waiter asked, "Are you planning to sell it to our shop? Are you asking about the purchase price?"

Yao Sisi: "No, it's the normal selling price."

The waiter said, "We'll have to have an appraiser examine it to know the specifics. But I see that this is a multi-person riding magic weapon, of medium quality close to high quality. The price should be no less than three thousand spirit stones."

Yao Sisi nodded. Her magic weapon was considered a high-grade magic weapon in the small town before, but here it became a mid-grade magic weapon close to high-grade. However, hers was a low-grade magic weapon. Even if it were a high-grade magic weapon, it would only cost a maximum of five thousand spirit stones. If it were a mid-grade magic weapon, the price would immediately double.

She put Lingyun away and picked out a few items from the display case. "Isn't there any discount for my first visit? Look at all the things I bought. How about you give me that broken stone as a free gift? Anyway, no one will care about it here, and it might just end up being thrown away."

After all, merchants need to change their products frequently; otherwise, customers will always see old goods when they come to shop here, and they will eventually stop coming.

Waiter: "That won't do. I don't have the authority to make such a big decision. But I can give you a discount. How about I charge you three hundred for this stone?"

Yao Sisi glanced at the stone with disdain, seemingly about to change her mind and not want it anymore. The waiter, who had been observing her expression closely, saw that she was about to leave and took the initiative to lower the price, "How about this, since this is your first time here, I'll charge you two hundred spirit stones for this piece of stone!"

Yao Sisi nodded with a hint of disdain, as if reluctantly accepting the stone, "Then that's settled!"

She finally paid the bill and left, only to realize that she had almost run out of spirit stones again. Half of the money had been given to her by Qi Mu, who was worried that she wouldn't be able to buy anything outside. But they were running a small business, and they needed to raise money for the boat fare, rent a blessed land with spiritual energy, and cover daily expenses, so their costs were quite high...

"I always feel like Qi Mu and the others give me most of the money they earn! Do I look like someone who loves to spend money? Could it be that they think crafting weapons is hard work, so they give me a larger share of the profits?"

Yao Sisi took a walk outside and returned to the rented courtyard. Liu Yuan was practicing swordsmanship in the courtyard, while Qi Mu was meditating under the shade of a tree. The two of them, one active and one still, created a rather atmospheric scene.

They stopped when they saw her return.

Yao Sisi waved her hand: "Don't worry about me, you guys practice. I just found a good thing outside. Young master, didn't you want to refine pills? How can you be without a pill refining furnace!"

Qi Mu: "I'm still in the stage of identifying herbs, so there's no rush to refine pills. I can refine them after I've established my foundation."

Yao Sisi disagreed, saying, "That's because you feel too much pressure in life right now and want to postpone it. You've already dealt with herbs before, why would you need to learn from scratch? Don't worry, I'll definitely send you a decent alchemy furnace tomorrow!"

Before Qi Mu could say anything more, Yao Sisi had already turned around and gone into the weapon-refining room. A moment later, the clanging sound of her rummaging through materials could be heard inside.

Liu Yuan, who was not far away, thought to himself: This young lady cares about my young master quite a bit. She even knew to make a pill furnace for him. In this way, my young master's efforts were not in vain.

Qi Mu then took out the little doll she had given her earlier from her sleeve. The little doll had two expressions; it was usually smiling, but if you hit it, it would cry, though it wouldn't shed tears. At this moment, it was laughing carefree.

Qi Muxin thought, "Since you love to laugh so much, why not just call me Tianxin?" The character Tianxin is composed of the radical for "thinking" (思).

But...wouldn't that be too obvious? Or should we just call her Tian Tian?

Yao Sisi rummaged through the refining room and found several materials, two of which she had bought that day. In particular, the reddish-brown stone needed to be smelted with a different kind of fire, as ordinary earth fire was useless to it. It was suitable for use as a material inside an alchemy furnace, information she had found in a miscellaneous book about different kinds of fire.

After preparing the materials, Yao Sisi directly entered the space and activated the time array. The time required to refine a good pill furnace would certainly not be short. "This time I want to refine a mid-grade pill furnace, which will be enough for the young master to use until he reaches the Golden Core stage!"

She laid out the materials in front of her, more than forty kinds in total, and the purification alone would take several days...

If I weren't worried about the space being exposed, I would really like to find an apprentice, but even if I did, it seems useless, since they don't have any different flames!

Time passed slowly. Yao Sisi swallowed a fasting pill and focused her mind on the materials in front of her. Only after they were purified one by one did she begin the second step of smelting. She needed to melt these materials together according to the proportions and slowly hammer them into the shape of a furnace. Because she had been training her spiritual sense, she used her spiritual sense to guide the furnace in the hammering process, which would make the finished product even more perfect.

The ore she had previously scavenged was the most perfect part of this alchemy furnace. It was evenly tempered on the furnace wall, a thin layer, yet it had the ability to maintain a uniform furnace fire. This determined that the quality of the refined pills would be more stable, and the success rate would also be higher.

Yao Sisi stayed in the space for half a month, and finally the perfect alchemy furnace in her mind was completed. It was small and silver in appearance, with a shimmering light. When shrunk down and placed in the palm of her hand, it looked like an exquisite toy.

"The intermediate-level alchemy furnace is complete!"

She happily carried the alchemy furnace around several times before her excitement subsided.

There was still plenty of time left in the formation, and she thought it would be a waste to go out like this. So she simply refined the square basin inside. Refining the square basin was much simpler than refining a graded alchemy furnace, and she could refine several at once.

However, she didn't have many square basin materials stored on hand; these were all bought by Qi Mu from outside. She would buy more after selling one batch, avoiding excessive inventory.

She used up all the materials for the square basin in one day. By then, she was not in good spirits, so she simply lay down on the big bed in the cabin and took a nap.

When she woke up, she sat on the bed thinking about the space. She could feel the weakening of the artifact spirit and the spiritual energy in the space was not as good as before. Logically, since she had come to a place with a higher concentration of spiritual energy, the concentration of spiritual energy in the space should also be higher, but it was obviously not the case now.

"Spirit, why is the spiritual energy in this space so poor? You still want to help me cultivate spiritual plants?"

The spirit's voice rang out: "Master, there's nothing I can do. My body is damaged and can't be repaired. The spiritual energy concentration in this space was originally higher than where you are, but due to the lack of a spiritual spring, the space can't circulate and is forced to draw energy from the outside..."

Yao Sisi: "Has your ability to ask for things decreased a lot?"

Spirit: "Waaah, yes, because I spend most of my time sleeping."

Yao Sisi keenly noticed something: it was somewhat illogical for the artifact spirit to be asleep. Unless the artifact spirit had a soul, there was no need for it to be asleep. She had heard that high-level magic weapons could capture souls and use them as artifact spirits, a cruel method. However, the magic weapon in this case was not as powerful as one that naturally developed intelligence.

So what type of spatial artifact spirit is it?

She lowered her eyes to hide her emotions and began to make promises: "Don't worry, I'll help you find a spiritual spring. Look, I'm now in a place with a higher concentration of spiritual energy, so there are naturally many more rare and precious materials than before. If you're smart, finding a spiritual spring won't be difficult."

Yao Sisi got out of bed and casually strolled around the house. She hadn't upgraded the cabin in a long time, and the interior was still the same as before. She went to the bookshelf and searched for records about puppetry among the various books on weapon crafting.

Yao Sisi flipped through the basic books repeatedly, but the records about puppetry were all just a few words, which made her unsatisfied.

This was the thing that interested her most after arriving in Maoling City, but unfortunately, she lacked knowledge in this area.

The little dolls I made before were too rudimentary to be considered puppetry.

Yao Sisi took out a handful of irregularly shaped spirit stones from her storage bag. These were raw ores she had collected herself, with varying purity. She threw a handful down, but the bookshelf showed no sign of upgrading.

"Since we can't spend these spirit stone mines anyway, we might as well use them to upgrade."

She moved batches of spirit stone ore from her storage bag and turned them into dust in front of the bookshelf. However, the bookshelf was quite selective; the rocks mixed in with the spirit stone ore were left intact, while only the spirit stones full of spiritual energy were absorbed into dust.

After several large pieces of spiritually rich raw stones were placed down, a series of air fluctuations appeared in front of the bookshelf. Unlike before, Yao Sisi was not a complete novice. She keenly sensed that there were traces of the seal being broken.

Soon the bookshelf in front of her changed, becoming more exquisite, and it also contained many jade slips with a wild and primitive feel, the age of which was unknown.

The books were tucked away in a corner, completely inconspicuous.

"Jade slips..."

It contains far more information than books, and some even include interactive teaching methods...

Yao Si thought about it and realized that it was similar to moving from textbook teaching to video teaching.

She picked up a jade slip, placed it on her forehead, and probed it with her divine sense. A large amount of information autonomously entered her mind, causing her whole body to sway.

She was wrong. This wasn't video instruction; it was "cramming."

It feels somewhat like a passing down of the torch. I wonder if Ri Jiu will feel the same way when he receives the torch.

A vast system of knowledge was crammed into her mind, but that didn't mean she immediately understood or learned it. She sat on the meditation cushion, and the knowledge in her mind was gradually absorbed and understood by her.

It took her several days to sort out the contents of this jade slip. The most interesting thing was that it was relatively easy for her to memorize information, but it took her much longer to understand things.

Of course, there are different types of knowledge points that can be memorized by rote. Some of them she can't even understand, let alone comprehend.

"This thing is amazing!" No wonder mortals are so eager to cultivate immortality!

Yao Sisi roughly calculated that the contents of the jade slips she had previously compiled were roughly equivalent to dozens of books. In fact, jade slips could hold even more content, but this one mainly focused on refining materials. It was a work by a master craftsman named Tianlan, who ended the book after explaining his own system.

It's amazing that she could read so much material in just a few days and remember it so well. In the past, she would have struggled to even finish reading it, let alone remember it.

To give an analogy, reading with one's divine sense is like looking in all directions with one's eyes, like a camera that can see a lot in a single glance. Divine sense is the same; almost instantly, so much information is collected, which is a very mysterious feeling.

Having learned from her previous experience, she was more discreet when examining other jade slips. Among the many jade slips, she found the puppetry technique, but as she continued reading, she realized something was amiss.

"This doesn't seem like the techniques of evil cultivators. Instead of creating mechanical puppets, it involves refining living beings or the dead into puppets?"

This is considered rough processing and remanufacturing, which is somewhat unethical.

Yao Sisi frowned and locked the jade slip in the bottom drawer. "This junk," she thought, "if someone with ill intentions reads it, who knows how many tragedies they might cause."

She actually wanted to destroy it, but then she thought about all the jade slips in the room, which were all orthodox cultivation manuals. The owner must not be some evil cultivator. So why would the other party collect such things?

She didn't quite understand why, so she locked up the cultivation technique for the time being.

She searched through all the jade slips but found no mechanical techniques she was looking for. Yao Sisi sighed helplessly, "The mechanical birds from the Lingbao Pavilion are so expensive, I'm really envious of that technology."

Fortunately, they didn't find the puppetry technique, but they did find the jade slip of "Talisman Dao".

She pressed her forehead against the jade slip, slowly absorbing its contents.

When Yao Sisi came out of the space again, a day had passed in the outside world. She pushed open her bedroom door and missed her usual meals.

For Qi Mu, she had only disappeared for a day, which was nothing to cultivators. However, they were used to living together, and since she stayed in her room, he wasn't in the mood to cook anything.

The only one unaffected was Liu Yuan, who continued his life as usual without any discomfort.

When Yao Sisi went out, she saw Qi Mu sitting cross-legged in the courtyard, just like before she entered the space. Even the position hadn't changed, which made her feel a little dazed, as if time had frozen.

Qi Mu asked, "Are you done with your work? Would you like something to eat?"

Yao Sisi: "Is there any more food? I'm so hungry!"

Since they started cultivating, they have basically eaten two meals a day, sometimes one meal a day. Since they eat demon beast meat or spirit rice, it doesn't put much strain on their bodies. The good combination can also nourish their meridians, so the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, and they haven't learned to abstain from grains.

Food was slowly laid out on the stone table in the courtyard, its aroma tempting everyone's mouths. Before picking up her chopsticks, Yao Sisi took out a small alchemy furnace the size of her palm from her storage bag. "I put a lot of effort into refining this. You're really lucky. I happened to find some top-quality materials outside, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to refine something so good!"

Qi Mu used his unused chopsticks to serve her food. Seeing a small silver alchemy furnace appear in her palm, which looked very exquisite, he paused and said, "This is... a mid-grade alchemy furnace?" Then he added, "Did you use all your spirit stones to buy materials?"

A low-grade high-quality alchemy furnace can cost seven or eight thousand spirit stones, and a mid-grade alchemy furnace has a starting price of thirteen thousand. He had naturally gone out to look around before he wanted to refine pills. He originally only wanted to find a low-grade alchemy furnace to use as a temporary measure, but he never expected that she would directly tell him to use a mid-grade alchemy furnace to practice.

Where would she get so much money to buy materials? She must be penniless.

Yao Sisi: "I don't have much money left, but such good materials are always hard to come by. How can I easily let go of them when I find them? Besides, I bought them in a very simple way."

Qi Mu didn't speak, his gaze swept over her palm, looking at her rounded nails, her fair wrist, looking at everything but ignoring the alchemy furnace. He didn't understand why he suddenly became awkward, but an indescribable feeling was pressing on his chest, making it hard for him to breathe.

He felt like he had truly fallen into a net she had casually woven, knowing full well that the road ahead was full of pitfalls, yet he still jumped in without hesitation. He... was actually being pampered by her, wasn't he...?

Will Sisi always treat me like this?

He dared not ask.

Yao Sisi: "What are you thinking about?" She placed the small alchemy furnace in front of him: "Give it a name!"

Qi Mu's fingertips touched the alchemy furnace in front of her. It was cool to the touch, a rare and fine object. "What name do you think, Miss Sisi?"

Yao Sisi choked up. Who didn't know she was terrible at naming things?

She gave an awkward laugh, looking at the shimmering silver alchemy furnace, and tentatively asked, "Should I call you Dan Dan? Or Yin Yin, or Little Silver?"

Qi Mu replied earnestly, "I think 'Little Silver' sounds nice."

Liu Yuan, standing to the side, picked up his rice bowl to make himself less noticeable. His young master really had no morals; how could he say such a name sounded good?

Yao Sisi looked at her with distrust: "Really? I feel like you're just trying to fool me?"

Qi Mu: "No, I really think it's great. Then I'll trouble Miss Sisi to help me engrave a name on it."

Yao Sisi took a breath: "You should think of another one!"

Qi Mu: "Then let's engrave it as 'Yin·Re'. You give me the character 'Yin' and I'll give you the character 'Re', how about that?"

Yao Sisi thought to herself: So what?

She took the alchemy furnace, and thin flames emerged from her palm. In no time, she had carved a name into the bottom of the furnace.

"Hey, what does the word '惹' mean? How did you come up with such a word?"

Qi Mu glanced at her face casually, concealing his true thoughts: "What suddenly came to mind is probably fate!"

Yao Sisi nodded: "Okay then, I'm going to eat. Right now, only delicious food is something I'm destined to have."

After the meal, Qi Mu stuffed a large handful of spirit stones into his hand, but Yao Sisi repeatedly refused, saying, "You should keep them and help me save up for the fare!"

Qi Mu: "I'm planning to refine pills now, so I won't be too short of money. I'll definitely be able to save up enough for the fare. How can you travel outside without carrying spirit stones?"

Yao Sisi looked him up and down, then patted him on the shoulder, "Not bad, you've got confidence!"

Qi Mu paused, his body tensing slightly. He coughed lightly and said, "So, you should still take the spirit stones with you when you go out!"

This time, Yao Sisi did not refuse. "Alright, I'll go buy some talisman paper while I'm at it. Otherwise, the communication talisman won't have a long enough range, and it will be troublesome to send a message to Ri Jiu."

Qi Mu's breathing changed for a moment, but the change was so subtle that ordinary people wouldn't notice it. He suddenly felt a little reluctant to give her the spirit stone, but in the end, he handed it over without hesitation.

Even at night, Maoling City remained bustling, with streetlights as bright as day. Yao Sisi bought some high-quality talisman paper outside and also selected some blood from third-tier demon beasts to draw talismans.

"To contact Ri Jiu, we need a long-distance communication talisman, but I don't know if it can be successfully crafted."

Yao Sisi wasn't very confident. She returned to the training room to begin practicing the Divine Refining Technique. The technique she had was only five levels, each level was divided into three stages, and she was currently only on the second level. In the past, she had always been in the wild, where danger could come at any time, and she had no opportunity to cultivate. If she wanted to refine a high-level Thousand-Mile Communication Talisman, it would be best to have a stronger divine sense.

"Perhaps I could try drawing some teleportation talismans. Teleportation talismans can save lives and are also expensive. I need to have some income."

Teleportation talismans are more difficult to draw, but they are graded. Short-distance teleportation talismans are not too difficult. Yao Sisi tried to draw short-distance teleportation talismans, which she had successfully drawn before, but the distance was too small to be effective except for surprise attacks.

This time, she tried something a little further, like a 100-mile teleportation talisman, which could sell for nearly 100 spirit stones on the market.

After drawing several pictures, the results were not ideal. Apart from failures, most of them were of poor quality. At this time, her spiritual consciousness also felt tired. She sat cross-legged on the futon and began to temper her spiritual consciousness.

She continued to cultivate and draw talismans, not sticking to one type of talisman. She even drew several Thousand-Mile Teleportation Talismans, but she failed to get the Ten-Thousand-Mile Teleportation Talisman she wanted.

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Author's note: Wow, my readership dropped as soon as I updated! LOL!

Looks like I need to finish this soon!