Chapter 59 Chapter 59 Part 2
Lin Xinghuo truly felt herself becoming more settled. When she first came down the mountain, she'd felt a bit adrift, but now, as a cultivator, she'd settled into a more grounded life. She joined the collective in the fields, harvested crops, and learned to spin and weave with the villagers. Now, she was even an expert at embroidery. She listened intently to news from other families. When the village children ate some fresh snacks, the whole family ate with eager anticipation. The little fox cubs, unsupervised, stole the candy, fruit, and cakes the children offered them. They'd even learned to beg for food by glancing at them, much like the caracals.
This eager stare, which usually softened Lin Xinghuo's heart, wasn't something the cat master did often anymore. He had grown a bit, and with his paws spread out, he could use them as a soft, furry blanket. Therefore, he was more and more aware of his authority as the head of the family, and when he acted coquettishly with Lin Xinghuo, he began to avoid the other children in the family.
For example, now, the whole family is in the valley behind the mountain residence. Lin Xinghuo is holding a gourd furnace and thinking about refining glass. The caracal is flying in the air with a small thundercloud under his feet, patrolling the valley with large and small spirit beasts. There is a sense of "My king is here to patrol the mountain in person today", especially since the thunderclouds surrounding its four claws occasionally emit lightning, and the faint rumbling sound enhances the momentum. It is definitely more impressive than the little monsters in Journey to the West who patrol the mountain with gongs and drums.
The gourd furnace in Lin Xinghuo's hand is not even as big as the macaque's head. It is dark green in color and covered with vine and cloud patterns. When you look closely at it, it looks like it is carved out of the finest jade. It feels heavy in the hand, but if you just take a quick look, you would think it is a beer bottle changed into a gourd shape.
The gourd furnace can be separated into two sections. The upper section is primarily used for alchemy, but the candle dragon gallbladder can be inserted into the lower section to act as the elixir fire. However, unlike alchemy, the refining process takes place within the flames, so only the lower section is required for refining. This allows alchemy and refining to proceed independently, while medicinal and spiritual energy nourish the entire furnace—a truly ingenious idea that achieves multiple goals at once.
Zhulongdan, the essence of earthly fire and imbued with a touch of spirituality, is an excellent choice for both alchemy and weapon refinement. If the gourd furnace had been refined with Zhulongdan, the furnace's grade could have been raised from lower-grade Huang to mid-grade or even higher. However, for greater control and harmony with the furnace, Lin Xinghuo deliberated and decided to use her own Dantian fire. The Dantian fire during the Qi Refining stage is still weak. Fortunately, Lin Xinghuo possesses a pure wood spiritual root, and wood generates fire, allowing her to persevere until the gourd furnace was formed. During this time, the caracal plucked a spiritual lotus petal and fed it to her daily. Even so, Lin Xinghuo nearly collapsed from the final "closing technique."
Now, only the innermost petals of the small lotus in Mirror Lake remained, pitifully thin. Lin Xinghuo glanced at it and sent a stream of pure wood spirit energy through the air. The lotus stem trembled slightly, and the lotus leaves that had been closed together to block the small lotus slightly spread out.
"Rustle," Lin Xinghuo frowned slightly, and heard the faint sound of branches rubbing against each other again. He released his spiritual sense to explore the entire valley bottom, but still could not find the source of the sound.
Thunderclouds and lightning intensified beneath the caracal's feet in mid-air for a moment, then returned to normal. However, Lin Xinghuo and the caracal had already exchanged messages, and both quietly turned their attention to the area surrounding Mirror Lake. Months earlier, they had suspected something else might be afoot in the valley, a feeling that grew more pronounced with each breakthrough. However, the entity seemed adept at concealment and harbored no ill intentions, so the two of them temporarily ignored it. But ever since Lin Xinghuo began refining the gourd furnace, the creature's movements had intensified, and it was clear they couldn't leave it alone. Instead of refining glass in her mountain retreat, Lin Xinghuo brought her family to the valley to lure out the thing.
Just when Lin Xinghuo was playing with the gourd stove, he heard the strange noise again.
"You continue to refine the glass." The caracal said in a voice transmission, leaving the rest to it.
Lin Xinghuo followed suit and cast a spell, and the gourd furnace immediately became taller than a person. After all, glass is just an ordinary material, and it is a waste of material to use the refining furnace to refine it properly. Therefore, Lin Xinghuo could still allocate some of his spiritual consciousness to other places.
Glass is usually made by mixing quartz sand, limestone, feldspar, and pure alkali in a certain proportion, melting it into molten glass, and then shaping and annealing it. The purer the materials and the more stable the temperature, the better the quality of the glass.
Lin Xinghuo could instinctively remove impurities from the raw materials while emptying her mind and meditating. With Candle Dragon Dan in her hand, temperature control was a complete no-brainer. Even a glass factory would take hours to melt the raw materials into molten glass, and significant temperature fluctuations during this time would affect the quality of the glass. But in Lin Xinghuo's hands, she had a ball of crystal-clear molten glass in a matter of moments. With a flicker of Candle Dragon Dan's flame, a blanket of fire formed according to Lin Xinghuo's wishes. The molten glass, rubbed a few times by invisible hands, began to gently stretch and spread across the blanket...
Ding ding ding, the sound of the glass being knocked is crisp and pleasant. A large piece of glass is laid on the fluffy grass, flat and thin, without any flaws.
Lin Xinghuo also whispered to the caracal, "It turns out that the spell for casting embryos is also useful for refining ordinary things." Not only are the spells for casting embryos, refining, and shaping equally useful, but once the spells are cast, the step of slowly waiting for the glass to cool down is omitted.
"What if I put the basic formation of refining into the glass?" Lin Xinghuo was now in high spirits. He raised his hand and threw the newly refined glass back into the cauldron. The candle dragon gall bladder came up and almost in the next second, it turned into a ball of glass liquid again.
“Boom!” “Bang!” “Bang!”
“Bang!”
The sounds of various furnace explosions resounded throughout the valley. From time to time, sharp fragments flew out of the furnace and were then wrapped up again by Lin Xinghuo's spiritual power.
From the fox cub to Huahua, the spirit beasts in the house were frequently distracted by the noises and movements. The straight line formation instantly turned into crooked caterpillars. Especially Lin Tiyang, who loved stones the most, kept wanting to take his small basket and give it to Lin Xinghuo. The stones he carefully picked out were definitely more useful than those gray and white ones.
The only caracal still holding his post suddenly discovered that every time Lin Xinghuo's furnace exploded and debris shot towards the center of the lake, a rustling sound that seemed to spread throughout the entire valley would appear, as if it was very tense.
After reducing a ball of glass liquid as big as a human head to a tiny egg, Lin Xinghuo waved to the caracal with a smile, "Come on, throw a thunder ball."
The macaque moved his paw pads, and a purple thunderball the size of an apple emerged from the thundercloud, flying slowly and cracklingly towards Lin Xinghuo.
Lin Xinghuo caught the thunder ball in his hand like picking stars, and rubbed it. The fur on the back of the caracal that was hovering above the Mirror Lake trembled uncontrollably, and it glanced over angrily - the caracal had not disconnected its spiritual consciousness, so what was the difference between rubbing it directly on its soul? The caracal suddenly felt ashamed of being seen by Lin Xinghuo with all its fur falling off.
Lin Xinghuo quickly released the lightning ball, grasping only its protruding, sizzling, electric point. He swept it across half the gourd cauldron like a pot scrubber, sweeping away all the impurities within, all destroyed by the purple lightning. The candle dragon gallbladder touched the lightning ball, as if thanking it for quickly sweeping away all the waste it hadn't eaten. The moment the two balls collided, the lightning ball suddenly exploded, the electric shock transforming the candle dragon gallbladder's flame tail from a beautiful phoenix tail into a stinging mosquito leg.
One moment they were still playing around, and the next, the Thunder Ball and the Candle Dragon Gallbladder flew out of the cauldron, chasing each other like meteors as they rushed towards the center of Mirror Lake—whoosh! Flexible, tentacle-like leaves shot up into the sky, dangerously blocking the Little Spirit Lotus.
"It turns out that it's not because of the gourd furnace, but the spiritual lotus!" Lin Xinghuo smiled. He thought that the unusual movement caused by the gourd furnace was because he ate the spiritual lotus petals when he was refining the furnace.
The caracal sniffed carefully and suddenly became furious: "Stinky orchid!"
The stinking orchid's leaves, wrapped around Purple Thunder and Candle Dragon Dan, seemed to realize that the two seemingly aggressive creatures charging at the Spirit Lotus weren't aggressive at all, and were simply trying to lure it out. A harsh, baby-like scream emanated from the orchid's roots, and it raised its leaves, about to throw the two balls back.
Lin Xinghuo and the caracal's eyes glared at the same time, and the leek-like leaves of the stinking orchid instantly felt the twinkling sensation of lightning and fire. At the same time, Lin Xinghuo had already taken out his spiked rake and was digging at the roots of the stinking orchid...
"evil!"
"vomit……"
The stinking orchid is so unethical. How come the juice from its leaves is so smelly?
And it's not like the yellow fox's smell that has other functions such as defending against enemies and is both smelly and fragrant, it's just a pure, unadulterated stinky smell!
No, if she continued beating the orchid like this, and it was still barely alive, all her harvest would be in vain. Lin Xinghuo remembered the time her family had been enchanted by the smell. This smell was even better! Last time, just one leaf had caused the entire Buxian Village to be tainted with a foul smell that lasted for half a month... When the villagers ate a bite of the meat, they would describe it as "stinky and fragrant, stinky and fragrant. It smells stinky, but the more you chew, the more fragrant it becomes."
Lin Xinghuo couldn't bring himself to do it, and the caracal also stopped its claws in tacit understanding. The caracal jumped with all four paws and jumped into the big thunder ball that was summoned, only showing a pair of cat eyes to look at Lin Xinghuo.
Lin Xinghuo grabbed the fox and sniffed it, then looked back in despair: Could it be that the whole family has to go through a "thunder bath" to get rid of the smell?
The whole family was fine, but what about this area of the valley? The caracals could now control the lightning balls so that they wouldn't harm their own people, but wouldn't it be exhausted to death to cover such a large area?
The pretending dead orchid quickly retracted its tattered leaves and stretched out a hidden section of tender leaves into the lake in a wronged manner. The spiked rake in Lin Xinghuo's hand stabbed down straight and almost cut the orchid in half.
Suddenly, the piercing cry rang out again. Lin Xinghuo's face darkened as he silently raised his rake. Chou Lan instantly shut up.
The caracal, wrapped in a thunder robe, landed on Lin Xinghuo's shoulders and said, "Use the object control technique to push away the leaves above."
Lin Xinghuo didn't use any spiritual power, but used a spiked rake to not too gently rake away the messy long leaves of the stinking orchid, revealing the 'leek leaf' at the bottom that extended into the Mirror Lake. Surprisingly, the color was not so green that it turned black. What was even more surprising was that there was a white line in the middle of the green leaf, and the white line became thicker as it got closer to the tip of the leaf.
Are these leaves stolen from the golden heart spider plant?
The caracal suddenly turned around and looked at the graceful Linglian standing in the center of Mirror Lake.
"What's wrong?" Lin Xinghuo stroked the caracal out of habit, but was electrocuted by Lei Yi and made to grin. Fortunately, the caracal came back to its senses quickly, otherwise the hair that had just grown to its shoulders would have been hanging up again.
"Go to the golden ring beehive." The caracal's voice was vague and he was obviously not calm.
The queen bee who was sleeping in the hive was called out by Lin Xinghuo. As she approached happily to dance around Lin Xinghuo, her transparent little wings paused, and she fell from mid-air. After flying high again, she flew around in a big circle listlessly.
"Has it completely turned white?" Lin Xinghuo observed the queen bee. Having not noticed for two months, she realized now that she was completely different from her original black background with golden rings. Not only had the black background completely turned white, but even the golden rings seemed to be turning platinum, with no clear boundary between them and the white down. The same was true for the worker bees that followed the queen out of the hive, though the golden rings were still slightly more distinct than the queen's.
Now the two nests of golden-ringed bees have become completely different species in appearance. The golden-ringed bees on the west mountain still have black backgrounds and golden rings, but they are just getting bigger and bigger.
"What's causing this?" Lin Xinghuo wondered. "The aura of the golden-ringed bees here is purer. The entire colony is almost transforming into semi-spiritual bees."
And it wasn't just the golden ringed bees; the changes were also quite noticeable in the moose and the rhubarb. The head deer, "Big Buddy," seemed to be transforming into an albino moose, and Rhubarb's brown-black fur had become much lighter. The spirit beasts, however, didn't experience any such changes; at most, their fur had become a little brighter.
The caracal raised its furry paw and pointed at Linglian: "Remember the Qingshuizhi I mentioned?"
Qingshuizhi is a natural treasure that can "purify evil spirits and transform them into pure spiritual energy. Even the lowest-level spirit beasts in the Spirit Gathering Stage can transform into humans after eating it."
The Linglian is at most a high-grade spiritual plant of the Yellow Rank, and it cannot even compare to the Xuan Rank treasure gourd vine. How can it be compared to the Heaven Rank treasure Qingshuizhi?
The caracal said, "Legend has it that the five types of Heavenly Grade Sacred Lotuses all emerged from ordinary Spiritual Lotuses. Perhaps only one will appear among the billions of Spiritual Lotuses that grow."
Lin Xinghuo looked at the pitiful little spiritual lotus on the huge Mirror Lake. Suddenly, an idea flashed in his mind. He stared at the pale yellow lotus platform that was exposed between the lotus petals: "Seeds?" The caracal did not pick all the petals of the spiritual lotus so that the lotus platform in the middle could continue to produce lotus seeds.
Spiritual lotuses bear seeds, and so do holy lotuses. While holy lotus seeds may not necessarily produce holy lotuses, they nonetheless carry a hint of their characteristics. This is true of many spiritual herbs of the same family that have similar effects but vastly different potencies. From the lowest yellow-grade to high-grade precious medicines of the earth-grade and heaven-grade categories, they all share a common "ancestor." Cultivating a high-grade spiritual herb from seeds doesn't necessarily guarantee a high-grade product. This depends on the spiritual planter's abilities. It's possible that a painstakingly obtained high-grade spiritual seed will degrade in quality after it's grown.
It is not easy for the spiritual lotus seed to retain the last bit of life after experiencing the ups and downs of spiritual energy depletion, not to mention that the person who planted it is Lin Xinghuo, who is not even a spiritual plant master. It is normal for it to drop to the yellow level.
If Lin Xinghuo didn't have pure wood spiritual roots, he wouldn't be able to grow the spiritual lotus and gourd vine at all.
The caracal quickly dug through the complex and cumbersome inherited memories and finally determined the species of the spiritual lotus: Jinglian. It was the lowest-grade variant of Qingshuizhi, and it also had a slight ability to cleanse the soul.
The lotus heart water of Jinglian is rich in spiritual energy, and the extracted essence is "Jing", hence the name.
"If they are taken care of well, the spiritual plants can all be upgraded." Lin Xinghuo happily took out the white jade basin he had obtained from Huangpizi earlier, and wanted to move the small spiritual lotus into the basin to take good care of it. This was a major matter related to the cultivation path of all the spiritual beasts in the family, big and small.
There is a world of its own in the white jade basin, and there is also a thin layer of Xuan-grade spiritual soil at the bottom of the basin that was not used up by Lin Xinghuo's refining furnace. It is really suitable for the growth of the little Jinglian.
Not daring to use the object control technique, Lin Xinghuo practiced the water-avoidance technique and jumped into the Mirror Lake himself. He discovered that the Jinglian was not rooted in the mud at all. Two white lotus nodes the size of fingertips were suspended in the water, emitting a faint glow.
There was no need to pick them. After Lin Xinghuo lifted up the white jade basin, the still water around Jinglian began to ripple, and she couldn't wait to jump into the jade basin.
"Sizzle--" The stinking orchid, which was lying in a mess like seaweed on the edge of Mirror Lake, began to scream again, and there were actually several more types of sounds.
The caracal stepped on the stinking orchid, and the lightning that struck it became weaker and weaker, and finally left a smelly and strange green smoke before completely dissipating.
After a while, the cat's furry face twisted, and he said strangely, "Did it ask you to let go of its beloved grass?"
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