Song Chen calculated that with 400 contribution points a day and no rest throughout the year, he could earn 146,000 contribution points a year, which is equivalent to 14 gold and 6 silver.
He was stunned; the income was indeed substantial.
Zhao Ziyi is already a Foundation Establishment cultivator, and he only earns about 10 gold coins a year.
For the cultivators in the mines, the registration fee of 75 gold for Immortal River Garden is something they can earn back in just five years, making it a very good mission.
However, these contribution points were still a bit too little for Song Chen.
After all, he can earn 6 million contribution points a year by planting Yuelu grass.
He came here purely to find a way to make the stone bees grow quickly.
Song Chen smiled at the enthusiastic cultivators, stopped talking to them, and started working on his own.
**
Mining ore is indeed a physically demanding job.
Song Chen had never been this tired even when farming before.
Every time he raises the pickaxe, he has to exert force from his waist, abdomen, and arms.
After mining 100 kilograms of ore, Song Chen began to experience slight soreness in his abdomen.
Eight hours had passed since Song Chen began mining 200 jin of ore, and his muscles were starting to twitch all over.
He lay on his back on the ground, panting heavily. He never expected that mining would be defeated by physical exhaustion.
At this moment, a lewd-looking cultivator ran over and started talking to Song Chen.
"Haha, are you tired, bro? Your back is killing you!"
"..."
"But it's okay. Everyone feels the same when they first arrive. Does your back hurt? But once you get used to it, the benefits will surprise you!"
"..."
"Once you build up your back strength, your wife will be screaming with pleasure, and she'll definitely dote on you. You don't look too old, are you still single? Want me to introduce you to a young man?"
"...I have a fiancée."
Song Chen's face turned bright red. He really didn't expect to hear such words in the mine.
"Oh, that's such a pity. Brother, you're so handsome. If you work out your waist, you can easily find some powerful figure, live off him, and tons of contribution points will fly to you."
Song Chen frowned. This person's values were warped; it was best to stay away from him.
He stood up, dragging his pickaxe, and walked unsteadily to a more secluded spot.
But he heard the monk's words and took them to heart.
A man's waist needs to be built!
Song Chen took out a blood-activating and stasis-removing ointment and applied it to his abdomen.
Then he took out a stove and placed it on the ground.
He threw the two kilograms of ore he had mined into the furnace.
He wanted to extract the rare minerals from the raw ore to see how much of the ore was produced.
The fire rose, illuminating Song Chen's secluded corner with a bright red glow.
When the other cultivators saw that Song Chen had taken out the furnace, they wisely and politely stopped disturbing him, allowing Song Chen to concentrate on refining the ore.
Two hours later, the sky began to brighten.
The sun rises.
Song Chen also opened his eyes.
It's a rare mineral, but the content is too low.
To extract one pound of rare ore, it would probably take 16,000 pounds of raw ore.
That's a huge expense.
16,000 jin of raw ore, converted to gold, is worth 160 gold.
In the market, rare minerals are priced at 300 gold per kilogram.
Song Chen breathed a sigh of relief; it was indeed a good deal.
Acquiring raw ore is much cheaper than buying rare minerals directly.
Song Chen now has two stone bees, one male and one female.
Each bee needs to be fed for 30 days, with one pound of feed per day, for it to mature.
Song Chen needs to prepare a total of 60 jin of rare minerals.
That's 9600 gold.
Song Chen frowned. He couldn't come up with that much money right now, but he didn't want to keep waiting either.
Suddenly, a brilliant idea struck him.
Da Zhuang's weapon was probably a product of refining raw ore.
Should he buy Dazhuang's weapons?
Song Chen rummaged through the storage bag.
Currently, he has four 200-year-old Fire-Refining Grasses in his storage bag. Each one is worth 250 gold.
More than 700 Yuelu grass plants, each worth 1 gold coin.
There were also some scattered pieces of junk, worth more than 300 gold.
All the items combined are worth around 2000 gold, which is far from 9000 gold.
Song Chen pinched his chin, trying to come up with a solution.
He had given Zhao Ziyi 2,400 gold coins before, and he didn't intend to ask for them back; they were meant to be Zhao Ziyi's pocket money.
Now, he can only think of other solutions on his own.
He stared blankly at the ground, the smooth pebbles reminding him of alchemy.
If all the Yuelu grass were refined into elixirs, its value would increase at least fivefold.
But all of this is on the premise that he won't fail in alchemy and the furnace won't explode.
If he fails to produce even one in ten pills, he won't even be able to recoup the cost of the medicinal herbs.
"When did you become so hesitant? Failure is failure, it's only a few hundred gold coins. You can earn it back in a year by planting spirit fields."
Song Chen cheered himself up and then took out a pill furnace.
This alchemy furnace is completely red, like fire, and it was bought from the Qizhen Street in Rongcheng.
Song Chen pondered the prescriptions related to Yuelu grass.
During his assessment, the Yellow Book taught him a formula for a second-grade elixir, the main ingredient of which was Yuelu grass.
The Jianling Pill, once taken, can enhance the strength of one's spiritual root and compensate for a cultivator's innate deficiencies.
Nowadays, the cultivators in this mine are not very talented, and their spiritual roots are not strong enough.
They could sell the Jianling Pill to them in exchange for weapons.
Do what you want to do.
Song Chen took out the Yuelu Grass, held his breath and concentrated, and started refining the pill.
He kept changing the spells in his hands.
This Jianling Pill requires six different alchemy techniques to refine.
Fortunately, the previous yellow book had taught him the alchemy techniques as well.
This was Song Chen's first time refining elixirs.
Therefore, he was extremely careful and cautious.
An hour later, the entire mine was filled with the delicate fragrance of medicinal pills.
The cultivators sniffed, finding the elixir to be quite pleasant.
Song Chen opened the alchemy furnace, and a dozen round pills lay at the bottom.
It really worked!
Song Chen waved enthusiastically to the cultivators around him.
"Brother, I have a business opportunity I'd like to discuss with you."
...
A day has passed.
Ten days have passed.
Twenty days have passed.
Inside the mine, the smell of the elixir grew stronger and stronger.
All the monks in the mine knew that a very powerful newcomer had arrived at the quarry.
This newcomer is an alchemist, and his furnace never explodes when he's making pills.
Refine one batch, and it becomes one batch.
The monk was also very generous, willing to exchange his pills for their tattered and cumbersome weapons.
"This person is really strange, coming to the mine to refine pills."
"But this is too intense. It never misses a shot and never explodes."
Did you give him the weapon?
"Here you go. This weapon is too bulky; I can't even lift it. It's just that it looks impressive."
I'm so happy I can get a good price for it now!
"Haha, I sold it too. I thought I was going to be stuck with this weapon."
"Each time I mine, I get a pound of raw ore, but I don't have time to sell it. I can only make it into weapons."
Now that my weapons are gone, I feel so relieved! How many Spirit-Strengthening Pills did you exchange them for?
"I exchanged 30 pills, and I ate 16 of them myself."
I can clearly feel my spiritual root strength increase by one level. It's a pity I'm out of weapons, otherwise I'd exchange them for pills!
...
Thirty days have passed.
Song Chen opened his eyes and exhaled a breath of stale air.
He has refined all of the Yuelu grass.
A total of 8,000 Jianling Pills were produced, averaging about 10 pills per batch.
The actual yield should be around nine thousand pills, but refining pills all the time is too tedious. Sometimes he gets distracted and falls asleep, and then a few pills will be missing from the furnace.
However, Song Chen was still happy, as the matter of the stone bees had been successfully resolved!
Song Chen opened the alchemy furnace, took out a portion of the pills inside, and handed them to the person waiting beside him.
I got the last weapon.
This weapon weighed 40,000 jin (approximately 20,000 kg), but only two jin (approximately 1 kg) of rare ore the size of a fist were extracted from it.
Song Chen secretly stuffed the ore into the jade box containing the stone bees.
Today, after the stone bees finish eating the rare minerals, they will spin cocoons.
Song Chen stood up, bid farewell to the surrounding cultivators, summoned a banana leaf, and rode directly onto it to Zhao Ziyi's residence.
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