Chapter 436: Due for Slaughter

Before he set out, he discovered something rather interesting: The sinkcrystal seed crystal he had brought over from Skysource actually rather enjoyed the environment around terrestrial veins. Seed crystals were cores of ore veins and mines. Planting it into suitable spirit veins just like how one would plant top-grade spirit stones caused it to grow into a full crystal cave that continued to produce more sinkcrystals.

In a world with qi, even metal, wood, earth and stones could turn into sprites. Ores and minerals weren't necessarily lifeless objects. They were simply inanimate most of the time. Only across a long window of time would they appear to behave like living things that propagated themselves. The same applied to seed crystals. During the short time An Jing took it out while he was forging the dragonhoard bottle, it reacted in a way that implied it greatly favored the terrestrial veins of Void Embrace, much to his surprise.

When he gave it more thought, it seemed reasonable. Void Embrace's terrestrial veins were far more potent than Skysource's to the point that ore veins from the foreign world would be pleasantly surprised after being brought to a much better environment. Still, Riverside wasn't the place where he would plant his roots for the long term, so he put the seed crystal away.

"The seed crystal doesn't just get nourishment from terrestrial veins, it also feeds back into them," Yvelbane said. "That makes it similar to divine armaments in a way. I believe that divine-armament refinement techniques are based on these spirit-ore properties to some extent. That also means that this crystal would make for a rather good material for a divine armament."

An Jing nodded his agreement. "True, but I think we'll stand to gain more in the long run if we find a proper place to plant it and get it to grow more crystals."

"Senior Disciple, what just happened?" Bai Qinghan asked after rushing over. She knew that he was up to something, but wasn't aware of the specifics, so she worried that his cultivation had somehow gone astray. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw how well he was doing. Clearly, he had made yet another breakthrough, and while she didn't know how An Jing made progress almost on the daily, she was already used to it.

"You came just in time," he said, eyes brightening. "This is for you."

He handed her the black-iron longsword that he forged the day before as an experiment.

"Oh? This sword... Is... is it for me?" She looked at the black sword with some bewilderment.

"It's an unexpected bonus from my artifact refinement practice. It's only an arcane artifact with two spell seals, but it's a decent piece for my first attempt if I do say so myself. It should serve well as a tool for practice." An Jing didn't want it to go to waste since he would no doubt wreck the sword in a single fight. He couldn't bear to let the first arcane artifact he forged suffer such a fate, yet he didn't want it to gather dust either.

He originally thought of giving it to Xu Tai or some other helpful martialist in Riverside, but Xu Tai already had a decent artifact weapon. The other martialists also hadn't performed any particular meritorious acts to warrant such a gift. When he thought of Bai Qinghan, who had been quite a huge help lately and didn't have a special weapon, he decided that she would be the one to get it.

"The Qiblade enchantment allows you to unleash piercing sword qi by infusing it with aura. Firmness makes the artifact quite resilient. I know you must have some kind of arcane artifact to protect yourself with, but it can't hurt to wear the sword with you to pass yourself off as a normal martialist. It should serve as a good disguise."

"Indeed... It is good for that..." She hadn't expected An Jing to give her a sword out of nowhere and left in a daze. She even forgot to ask what An Jing was up to with that large formation array.

Xu Tai, on the other hand, was no fool. Despite his good relationship with An Jing, he knew better than to pry about things he didn't understand. Who knew what the rebellious disciple siblings were up to again? He also made sure to keep the curious citizens from forming a crowd to look.

With the dragonhoard bottle forged, An Jing proceeded to make preparations for battle. Time was definitely of essence, but he was still going up against four Clearing fiendspawns, so rushing it wouldn't do. An Jing wasn't afraid of them, but if he failed to take them down properly, the fiendspawns could end up rampaging in the vicinity, destroying the spirit farms. It would be quite a huge loss. So, he gave himself twenty days to prepare, time enough to gather more data on the fiendspawns and to harvest as much spirit crop as he could.

He used the automata he bought from Skysource to fertilize the plots around the mountain range. He would have Xu Tai and some trustworthy martialists harvest them once they ripened.

Meanwhile, Shen Mubai reestablished contact with some traders who used to have dealings with the An clan by leveraging An Jing's reputation. They had almost forgotten the An clan completely and never even associated the divine-arc bearer with the tiny clan that had suddenly vanished from the northern frontier. Through those channels, word that An Jing was in Riverside gradually spread.

An Jing placed the five remaining longevity sprouts into boxes and handed them to five different merchant convoys for them to use as protective talismans. They signaled to the migrating beasts that the convoys were protected by mountain rulers. Having their safety finally guaranteed, the convoys transported the harvested spirit plants southward. Just like that, the city that had gone under lockdown from the snow calamity and beast tide grew lively once more. In a short ten days, the city began to produce another thread of dragon qi, which An Jing stored in the dragonhoard bottle.

During that time, he synthesized all the insights he had gained from studying fey cores and artifact refinement into something he could use for Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal, harmonizing and mastering his Firm White Attestation ability fully. He also generously shared those insights with Bai Qinghan and You Ruhui and also taught them Sword of Tranquility. Bai Qinghan also received tutelage from him on the Imperial Sky and Earth Arts; she was such a serious student that she took three booklets' worth of notes. An Jing wondered if he even lectured that much content to begin with.

Meanwhile in Skysource, Nian Quan's injuries had mostly healed up. Recently, he focused on his cultivation apart from the times he needed to show up to fulfill his promotional sponsor obligations. Huo Qing, on the other hand, reached a bottleneck in his formation theory studies and was working hard to pad his foundations.

An Jing figured that he might as well teach Sword of Tranquility to these two too, calling it a secret meditation arcanum. Huo Qing wasn't that familiar with something like this and wasn't a sword cultivator either, so his only takeaway was that it was a good technique to hone the mind and soul. Nian Quan, on the other hand, was a sword cultivator with high affinity for related techniques and a bearer of water celestial spirit roots which made it easy for him to meditate. He immediately shot An Jing a look of someone whom had just been taken as a disciple of an immortal. As expected, An Jing's faction must've picked up some pre-grand-calamity primordial deity's legacy!

That aside, An Jing also shared his opinions on the four major phases of cultivation, giving them quite a bit of food for thought. They realized that the spells and techniques, spirit arts, initiation and mastery paradigm had its parallels in Skysource too. For instance, the transmission of spells or basic techniques were completely unrestricted. Any spell could be spread through libraries, the spirit net or even private tuition classes. More powerful spells or techniques with amazing effects could be learned at a fee.

But starting from the level of arts, they were simply not being distributed on any platform whatsoever. Even if some miraculously showed up, they would be claimed immediately. Arts were classified treasures of all cultivator factions. Textbooks would only contain the shadow of a full art, only ever fragments rendered in cryptic sayings.

Pentaorgan Lifeforce Nourishment, the nourishment art passed down in the Huo clan, was considered a rather decent art that contained five separate nourishment techniques, namely, Flora Sustenance, Fauna Subsistence, Innate Qi Conversion, Lung Fortification and Visceral Augmentation. Nian Quan's True Spirit Eyes was a spirit art that came with a few practical ocular techniques. While it wasn't strictly better than the Huo clan's spirit art, the legacy of True Spirit Eyes descended from much further back in the past, complete with special spell formulations developed by previous users.

As for dao-initiation classics, Nian Quan and Huo Qing believed that only the most powerful of clans and the four dao academies possessed techniques of that caliber. In Skysource, spirit qi and spirit stones weren't the only things that were monopolized.

"Now this is what injustice looks like!" Though the three rebels felt really indignant about this state of affairs, their energy was better directed at cultivating than lamenting their unlucky stars. It was a rare opportunity for all three of them to share their cultivation experiences, so they engaged in deep discussions on swords, formations and techniques, particularly where they converged and diverged.

Since An Jing had just learned artifact refinement and understood how the myriad cultivation disciplines were related, he was able to understand their deep conversations about formation and pillmaking theory by analogy. He could even contribute to the conversation and further hone his understanding.

Granted, Huo Qing and Nian Quan had never doubted whether An Jing understood their discussions. They simply thought that he was too busy on other things to participate in the conversation, and now that he had dealt with more pressing affairs, he joined them and shared his rather deep artifact refinement insights. They got the impression that he must have trained in artifact refinement for years.

"And there I was wondering why you knew how to use all kinds of weapons, An Jing. You seem to handle machine-gun sword cases even better than I do," Huo Qing said.

Nian Quan nodded in agreement. "Not to mention, you are one with your sword. Your achievements on the path of the sword are nothing to scoff at, and you're also accomplished at artifact refinement too."

An Jing couldn't exactly tell them that he hadn't refined artifacts for longer than a month, not that they would believe him anyway, so he simply glossed over the explanation. He also bought a few lightning talismans with Nian Quan as his proxy and leveraged Huo Qing and Rustfeather's connections to stock up on drones and firepower. He didn't want to rely on them and risk damaging the treasures in Palespirit Cave if possible, but if he could lure the fiendmolts out of there, he wouldn't hesitate to rain hell on them.

Twenty days passed quickly. He was certain that he would no longer make any significant progress in the short term, having reached the peak of his potential for the moment.

The harvest of the spirit farms was complete, filling up a good amount of space in Riverside's warehouses. Most of the crop were low-quality spirit plants to be sold for cheap, but they were still spirit plants at the end of the day. The proceeds would go far in procuring food and all sorts of daily necessities for Riverside, restoring life back to the city despite the snow calamity's ongoing presence. There was also no longer any risk of the fiendmolts destroying those resources, so their slaughter was finally due.