A World Worth Protecting

Zhao Hailin’s withdrawal, while causing a huge commotion, also thoroughly built up the reputation of the Crossed Dharmic Artifacts. Combined with the small number of them, they soon became rare items.

Even though this scuffle had come to an end and it was no longer trending, the three words ‘Crossed Dharmic Artifact’ were deeply ingrained in the hearts of people. One could say that almost everyone knew about them. Naturally, many people started guessing the identity of the Crossed Dharmic Artifact creator.

However, Wang Baole was full of regret. Zhao Hailin’s withdrawal made him extremely dejected—he felt that he had learned a lot from this friendly exchange of ideas with Zhao Hailin.

Not only did he gain a deeper understanding of Numinous Treasures, he was also more confident about his capabilities in creating them. Previously, he had no confidence in creating a Numinous Treasure, but now, Wang Baole felt like he could start refining Numinous Treasures.

As for exposing himself as the creator of the Crossed Dharmic Artifacts, Wang Baole thought for a while and felt it inappropriate to do so. On one hand, the Crossed Dharmic Artifacts did indeed have problems. On the other hand, Wang Baole personally enjoyed the feeling that he had his own brand on the light side and the Crossed Dharmic Artifacts on the dark side. Having these two brands on the light and dark side made him feel like he was really powerful.

The high officials’ autobiographies once said that, in one’s glorious life, people used many titles to describe them. Right now… I can be considered to have met that criteria.

Although he might have misunderstood the meaning of the quote, he felt that he was very extraordinary at that moment.

With a prideful smile, Wang Baole started officially researching and refining third-grade Numinous Treasures. Combined with the various methods that he understood from Zhao Hailin’s videos, other than his fixed daily routine of refining Armament Sand, he spent almost all his attention on refining third-grade Numinous Treasures in the days that followed.

At that point in time, his list of rewards from the Spirit Breath Village was finally recorded and sent to him. Wang Baole took a rough look, and even he got a shock.

Over 13,600 items…

Wang Baole had not counted the specific number of items when he ransacked the Spirit Breath Village. Now that he saw the items, he finally understood why the Dao College had taken so long to record down the items.

This number was way too large. That was especially so because all of the items had to be entered into the Dao College’s records. Hence, it had taken a longer time for them to be sent to Wang Baole.

In fact, there were over three thousand items with effects unknown even to the Dao College. These items were specially marked in the list.

After checking, Wang Baole discovered that he could choose over one thousand items from the list of the items. However, for items such as corpses and pills, he could not take everything. He could only choose at most one item from each category.

After contemplation, Wang Baole chose to keep half of his right to choose the items and gave the other half back to the Dao College in exchange for Spirit Stones of equal value. Immediately, the number of Spirit Stones that he had grew to an alarming amount.

Seeing the massive number of Spirit Stones that he had in his account, Wang Baole was extremely excited. He took a deep breath after a long while.

I’m rich!

His eyes glowed. Seeing how he suddenly had so many Spirit Stones, he bought many ingredients he could not bear to buy in the past few months in one shot and started refining new third-grade Numinous Treasures.

But the difficulty of refining third-grade Numinous Treasures was still immense even though Wang Baole had already come to understand a lot more.

Two months passed, and Wang Baole had accumulated seven thousand pieces of Armament Sand after a lot of effort. Finally, he succeeded once after going through countless failures.

He had refined his first Numinous Treasure!

This Numinous Treasure was nothing special. It was a flying sword named Heaven Wave Sword.

Once released, this sword could conjure waves. While its aura was alarming, its offensive power was also impressive. Although it could only be considered ordinary among third-grade Numinous Treasures, and it could not cleave through perfect second-grade Dharmic Artifacts per se, it could still cause them to break into fragments.

Wang Baole was extremely excited after experiencing the Heaven Wave Sword’s power, but he understood that to become an Armament Soldier, it was not enough for him to only know how to refine a Heaven Wave Sword.

After all, the Armament Soldier test in the Dharmic Armament Pavilion was a huge deal. After asking around, he understood the rules clearly and knew that every Armament Soldier test required the examinees to prepare a Numinous Treasure for the test.

The main point of the test was the excellence level of the Numinous Treasure. A third-grade Numinous Treasure was just the most basic requirement. It was possible to become an Armament Soldier by randomly refining a Numinous Treasure, but it depended very much on luck!

So, for a conventional Armament Soldier test, one would always try their best to prepare the best Numinous Treasure that they could refine with their abilities. Once they were done with their preparation, they could apply for the test. Once the Dharmic Armament Pavilion approved their application, they would be given a test date.

When that day came, the four Deputy Pavilion Heads and the Pavilion Head of the Dharmic Armament Pavilion would make an appearance at the Armament Soldier test’s designated area. As examiners, they would decide whether the examinees could become Armament Soldiers. Meanwhile, they would also require examinees to answer various questions on the refinement of Numinous Treasures.

Of course, they would sometimes ask an examinee to refine another piece of the same Numinous Treasure in front of them. There were even times when a Deputy Pavilion Head asked an examinee to refine a different Numinous Treasure on the spot!

Once there was a mistake in the process, they would fail to become an Armament Soldier. If they were caught cheating, the consequences were pretty serious. It was enough to get one expelled from Upper Academy Island, and Upper Academy Island would take back everything that they had learned. As a result, there were still people who dared cheat in the Armament Soldier test, but those cases were extremely rare, and they faced extremely severe consequences.

Realizing this, Wang Baole understood deeply that his current standard was still not enough. Meanwhile, he also had not prepared the Numinous Treasure required for the test.

Besides, my target is to get to a level where I could refine perfect third-grade Numinous Treasures like how I refined second-grade Dharmic Artifacts without much effort. That way, even if someone makes things difficult for me, no one will be able to stop me from becoming an Armament Soldier!

This was the requirement that Wang Baole had set for himself. He had a decisive look in his eyes and went into seclusion again, refining third-grade Numinous Treasures with greater intensity.

As time passed and Wang Baole refined his seventh Numinous Treasure, he could feel that his proficiency level in refining Numinous Treasures increased as the days went by. It was at this time that he finished refining his ten thousand pieces of Armament Sand.

Looking at the Armament Sand and feeling the scabbard within him, Wang Baole pondered. He was at a loss as to whether he should stick to his plan and continue familiarizing himself with third-grade Numinous Treasures or refine his scabbard first.

The former took a long time, and Wang Baole felt that he had to keep experimenting. Although he was not very confident about the latter, he had already gathered the key ingredients, and he could get the remaining ingredients on Upper Academy Island.

Moments later, Wang Baole made his decision. The Armament Sand and scabbard were too precious, and Wang Baole did not have enough confidence to try refining them. Hence, he continued immersing himself in refining third-grade Numinous Treasures.

Time trickled by. When he went into seclusion this time, Wang Baole steeled his heart and even ate fewer snacks. He lost some weight and seemed a lot more handsome.

Finally, after three months with the support of enough Spirit Stones, Wang Baole became more proficient in the refinement of third-grade Numinous Treasures through countless failures. He could finally refine perfect third-grade Numinous Treasures. Although they were of the type that were easy to refine, Wang Baole was already very motivated.

At the same time, he also upgraded all of his perfect second-grade Dharmic Artifacts. He even upgraded some of his Crossed Dharmic Artifacts. With his tremendous wealth, they all became third-grade.

Under the brave experimentation of Wang Baole and supported by his skill and a little bit of luck, Wang Baole succeeded in one try. Although not perfect, the scabbard also became a third-grade Numinous Treasure.

However, as the extremely excited Wang Baole waved the scabbard around excitedly and expected sword aura needles to appear within it, something happened to make his jaw drop.

Buzzing sounds spread from within the scabbard. Wang Baole was shocked. He stared while in a daze as nine mosquitoes flew out from the scabbard. His gaze momentarily lost its focus, and his head buzzed.

“What the heck?”

Wang Baole rubbed his eyes in disbelief and felt that what had just happened was too unbelievable. After coming to his senses moments later, he became anxious and immediately checked the inscriptions on the scabbard.

Upon closer inspection, he finally found the reason. Because there were problems with his technique, an accident happened when upgrading the scabbard to the third grade. While the Armament Sand was being infused into the scabbard, it had caused the inscriptions to change and caused an unusual transformation that Wang Baole could not understand at that moment. Hence, this unknown effect appeared.

To a certain degree, this scabbard… was both a success and a failure!

But it was different from a typical Crossed Dharmic Artifact. The transformations for those Crossed Dharmic Artifacts were caused by a grain of Armament Sand. However, the scabbard… had ten thousand grains of Armament Sand infused into it!

“No way…” Wang Baole felt like crying, but no tears appeared. He regretted having itchy hands and refining the scabbard so early. As though someone had thrown cold water on him, Wang Baole’s expectations and excitement disappeared completely. That was especially so when he saw the nine mosquitoes flying in front of him. He almost raised his hand to kill one of them, but when he thought of how he had spent ten thousand grains of Armament Sand and countless ingredients to refine this Dharmic Artifact, he could not bear to do so.

“Mosquitoes… can also be very powerful!” Wang Baole cried and comforted himself. He thought of the horrifying giant mosquito that he had encountered in the Pond Cloud Rainforest.

Thus, he gathered his courage with a grimace and walked out of his cave abode. He decided to test just how strong these mosquitoes were…

“Fatso Forefathers and the grandfathers in the high officials’ autobiographies, please bless me. These mosquitoes must have some uses; they must at least be worth my Armament Sand. After all… I spent ten thousand grains of Armament Sand!”