Chapter 71: Three Years of Hard Training

Chapter 71: Three years of bitter cultivation
Three spirit stones per day, although not much, day after day and month after year, is more than a thousand.

In the eyes of other outer disciples, this is already an extremely generous income, but in the eyes of Xu Chuniang, really not much.

After all, she once relied on the condensation of spirit dew to earn spirit stones, and was able to get eight spirit stones for an hour of hard work.

In comparison, drawing talismans was laborious and unprofitable.

However, Xu Chuniang made talismans not to make money, but to learn the art of talismanic seals. Being able to achieve such results, she was already very content.

Before the newly acquired eighteen spirit stones were even warmed up, Xu Chuniang spent them all, exchanging them for one hundred and twenty copies of paper and ink for talisman making.

These materials would be refined into more Water Binding Talismans, which would eventually be exchanged for Spirit Stones and more talisman materials.

Ever since she started making talismans, apart from tending to the spiritual fields every day, Xu Chuniang spent more time practicing her talismanic seals.

With such intense practice, her technique of drawing runes became more and more stable, her proficiency increased, and her success rate steadily increased.

From thirty percent in the beginning, it reached the final fifty percent.

On average, for every two Water Binding Runes she refined, one would be successful.

It was just that the success rate did not continue to increase since it reached fifty percent.

Xu Chuniang guessed in her heart that perhaps it was because the talisman brush she was using was of too poor a quality.

A success rate of fifty percent was a watershed.

Theoretically speaking, if one could have such a success rate in refining a Grade 1 lower-grade talisman, one would be able to try and refine a Grade 1 middle-grade talisman.

But for the time being, Xu Chuniang had no thoughts of refining mid-grade talisman seals.

After all, just starting to refine mid-grade talisman seals would definitely require burning spirit stones, and she didn’t have that many spirit stones to throw into it yet.

After the success rate of the Water Binding Talisman reached fifty percent, Xu Chuniang, in addition to drawing the Water Binding Talisman every day to earn a certain amount of spirit stones, began to draw a new talisman: the Spirit Rain Talisman.

With the rich experience of refining the Water Binding Talisman, it only took a short four days for her to successfully refine her first Spirit Rain Talisman.

The Spirit Rain Talisman was rather ribald, it could only be used to water spiritual plants, and its utility was not as good as the Spirit Rain Technique that was directly cast.

There were no Spiritual Rain Talismans on the market at all, and Xu Chuniang’s Spiritual Rain Talisman in her hand was naturally unsellable.

After refining it for a few days, she stopped refining the Spiritual Rain Talisman and instead made a trip to the Transmission Pavilion, where she spent a huge amount of money to buy a number of commonly used attack and defense spells.

The Spring Life Technique and the Moist Earth Technique she knew were similar to the Spirit Rain Technique, both of which were auxiliary techniques that were not suitable for refining into talisman seals.

Even if they were barely refined, they would only be smashed in her hands, wasting spirit stones and materials for nothing.

Looking at the pile of lower-grade Spirit Rain Talismans in front of her, Xu Chuniang revealed a look of fleshly pain, having known that she wouldn’t have refined so many of them.

After the success rate of the Water Binding Talisman was raised to fifty percent, she didn’t get rid of all of them, but kept a portion of them in her hand.

Xu Chuniang didn’t want people to know that her true success rate in crafting talismans would draw attention bringing trouble.

That was why over the past month, excluding the spirit stones used to buy the materials, Xu Chuniang really didn’t earn much.

These spirit stones, however, had all been spent on these spells.

Alas, it seems that the plan to replace the talisman pen will have to be postponed again.

Shaking her head helplessly, Xu Chuniang put away the Spirit Rain Talisman and looked towards the pile of spells on the table.

So many arts, which one to start with?
Forget it, she had the best water spirit root, so she might as well start with the Water Arrow technique.

Anyway, the commission for the spirit field cultivation totaled five years, and there were still almost three years left, so long enough for her to slowly finish learning the spells.

Three years was really fast for a cultivator.

The spiritual rice on the Spirit Plant Peak grew season after season, and every year there were new disciples who took over the commission and went up the mountain, and there were also old disciples who finished the commission and went down the mountain.

Since Zhou Cang led the few Spiritual Planters who had completed their commissions, Xu Chuniang’s life had completely returned to peace, and no more ungrateful people came to disturb her.

Her daily life was very fulfilling, apart from farming, she was learning magic and making talismans. After spending two years, she finally finished learning all of these basic arts and successfully refined the corresponding talismans.

In the final year, in order to be able to make a breakthrough in the path of talismanic seals, Xu Chuniang spent a huge amount of money to buy a mid-grade talisman pen.

That lower-grade talisman pen, which had almost gone bald, also finally saw its retirement.

Xu Chuniang had been refining grade one lower-grade talisman seals for only two years, but she persisted every day and refined enough of them so that she had refined grade one mid-grade talisman seals shortly after changing talisman pens.

Currently, there were only six types of mid-grade talisman seals that she was able to refine, which were the Sprinting Talisman, Fireball Talisman, Water Arrow Talisman, Earth Shield Talisman, Wooden Shield Talisman, and Ice Burst Talisman.

Among them, the Water Arrow Talisman and Sprinting Talisman had the highest success rate, being able to reach 40%.

The Fireball Talisman, Earth Shield Talisman, and Wood Shield Talisman were much closer, with something like 30%.

The Ice Blast Talisman was even worse, barely managing a 20%.

The success rate of the Ice Explosion Talisman was so low, apart from the fact that Xu Chuniang had less time to practice, there was also another reason why she didn’t have a foreign spirit root, and transforming the three types of auras, wind, thunder and ice, slowed down her progress.

As for the gold and fire techniques, they weren’t too difficult to control.

The five elements of aura were originally mutually exclusive and could be transformed into each other.

If Xu Chuniang was given some more time, she might be able to increase the success rate of the Ice Burst Talisman by 10%.

Just as she saw that the spirit rice was about to ripen, she could only temporarily stop practicing the talisman seals and devote herself to the spirit field.

The harvest from the spirit field, as always, did not disappoint, maintaining a steady yield. After Xu Chuniang put away the new spirit rice and crescent moon rice, she went to check on the new rice that she had focused on taking care of.

The habit of cultivating new varieties was something she was still holding on to, and over the past few years, the new rice that had been cultivated had failed to live up to her expectations, even though it contained more spiritual qi.

Perhaps it was because of the Spiritual Fields, which contained a limited amount of Spiritual Qi.

That was why although Xu Chuniang was still persevering, she no longer held much hope.

At the back, other than setting aside some to use as seeds each time, the new rice she harvested was all for her to eat.

This time, however, things seemed a little different.

Looking at the new rice with full grains in her hands, Xu Chuniang’s eyes lit up.

The rice grains were almost twice as small compared to the crescent moon rice, but the spiritual qi contained within was almost twice as much as the crescent moon rice.

It actually worked this time!
Xu Chuniang was a bit surprised, compared to the careful care and cultivation of the previous years, in the past half year, she had not been as attentive as before, but she did not expect to reap the rewards.

The small grains of rice are round and full, like a small pearl, Xu Chuniang named it “pearl rice”, in order to distinguish.

After collecting the pearl rice, Xu Chuniang disposed of all the spirit rice cleanly before returning to the wooden house, using the tools already prepared to start digging.

Within these three years, the spiritual soil in the wooden house had increased by a few more pieces, reaching as many as ten.

Preparing to leave, Xu Chuniang naturally wanted to take these spirit soils with her.

Not only the spirit soil, but even the soil in the circle around the spirit soil, she was prepared to replace it and restore it to the way it was when she moved in.

Xu Chuniang took out the soil that had been prepared long ago from her storage bag and put it aside for backup.

These clays were secretly dug by her a few nights ago, when it was dark and no one was around, she went to the other side of the Spirit Plant Peak.

Only after emptying the soil in her storage bag did she start shoveling the spirit soil.

The spiritual soil was rich in spiritual qi and the soil was very soft, without much effort, Xu Chuniang easily shoveled out the spiritual soil, leaving only a small pit on the ground.

After shoveling out all ten pieces of spiritual soil, Xu Chunniang put them into a storage bag that was specially designed to hold miscellaneous items, and used a cloth bag to collect the surrounding soil before starting to fill in the pit.

While filling, she stepped on the soil tightly, trying to keep them hidden from view.

(End of chapter)