readbooksol Chapter 162 - 140: Establishing a Scripture Academy
Chapter 162 - 140: Establishing a Scripture Academy
The lone surviving Mutated Iron-Seeking Rat wasn’t the largest of the bunch. Its entire body was a solid white, making it look like a fine silver statuette. It sat quietly in its cage, watching Fang Qingyuan.
Fang Qingyuan stepped forward, opened the cage, and lifted out the Iron-Seeking Rat.
"You’re a lucky one," he said to it. "Out of thousands of Iron-Seeking Rats, you’re the only anomaly to emerge. The life that awaits you will be well worth what you’ve endured."
Fang Qingyuan planned to keep this Iron-Seeking Rat as a stud. In the days to come, its only job would be to take many "wives and concubines" and sire as many little Iron-Seeking Rat pups as possible.
Through such selective breeding, generation after generation, Fang Qingyuan was confident that the Iron-Seeking Rat colony would evolve more and more toward his desired vision.
Fang Qingyuan carried the Iron-Seeking Rat to the far edge of the Immortal Mansion, to a place he had converted into a breeding facility. Just like a bamboo rat farm, hundreds, even thousands, of Iron-Seeking Rats were raised here. From birth to maturity, then to the final infusion of Gold Spirit Power before their teeth and pelts were harvested, it had all become an assembly-line-like industry.
He placed the rat among a group of females, filled their food container to the brim, and then closed up the enclosure and activated the Array.
With the Small Five Elements Inversion Illusion Array in place, they couldn’t hope to escape even if their numbers multiplied several times over.
After settling the new Mutated Rat King, Fang Qingyuan went to clean up the mess from earlier. The few Iron-Seeking Rats that had exploded at the end sent blood and flesh flying, and it took him a good while to get everything tidy.
He had also lost several high-quality pelts in the process. If sold, they could have fetched him over a hundred Spirit Stones.
Fortunately, this batch was high-quality, and the spiritual materials they produced were more valuable. The twenty-odd Mutated Iron-Seeking Rats would bring in over a thousand Low-grade Spirit Stones.
Once he finished cleaning, Fang Qingyuan went over to the patch of Black Land. He opened several boxes of Gold Fire Spirit Ore and began pouring them onto the dark soil.
He stopped after emptying three boxes. A single box of Gold Fire Spirit Ore was worth five hundred Low-grade Spirit Stones, meaning in just a few moments, he had poured out a total of 1,500 Spirit Stones.
There was no other way. Fang Qingyuan infused the Gold Spirit Power from within the Immortal Mansion into the Iron-Seeking Rats. If the rats died inside the Immortal Mansion and their bodies were absorbed by it, then it would be a simple case of dust to dust; everything would remain within the cycle.
However, since Fang Qingyuan was taking the spiritual materials from the Iron-Seeking Rats and selling them in the outside world, he had to replenish the Gold Spirit Power that was being used up. If he didn’t, and the Gold Spirit Power continued to be depleted, his own Spirit Root would begin to degrade.
Over the past year, Fang Qingyuan had purchased at least twenty thousand Low-grade Spirit Stones’ worth of Gold-Fire Ore, which was just enough to replenish the Gold Spirit Power he had consumed. Meanwhile, selling the spiritual materials produced by the Iron-Seeking Rats had only recouped about seventeen or eighteen thousand Low-grade Spirit Stones.
Even so, Fang Qingyuan continued the operation tirelessly. This was because, in the process, he could use the souls of the Iron-Seeking Rats to practice his Soul Dao Technique, and on top of that, his Fire Spirit Root was constantly growing.
After a year of constantly replenishing with Fire Ore, Fang Qingyuan’s Fire Spirit Root had now reached a mid-grade aptitude of twenty-two. His Metal Spirit Root had also grown a little, reaching a high-grade aptitude of thirty-three. Unfortunately, the Gold Spirit Power that Jinbao’s mother had sealed within his body had been completely absorbed. ’I’m afraid my Metal Spirit Root won’t grow so quickly from now on,’ he thought.
When the Gold Spirit Power within his body was finally depleted by the Immortal Mansion, Fang Qingyuan couldn’t help but think with a twinge of regret, ’If only I had been more aggressive back then, maybe she would have sealed even more Gold Spirit Power inside me.’
Furthermore, there were other benefits. Thanks to the nearly two thousand stalks of bamboo in the Purple Bamboo Forest and the seven or eight acres of Spirit Plants—the ginseng, Mu Kui, Black-stemmed Ophipogon, and Ice Cup Flower, all constantly exuding Wood Spirit Power—his Wood Spirit Root had also improved. After consuming the Tier Three Spiritual Material, Sea Purple Agarwood, it had taken three years, but his Wood Spirit Root’s aptitude had finally increased by a point.
Currently, the aptitudes of Fang Qingyuan’s Five Elements Spirit Root were: Metal at thirty-three, Wood at thirty-one, Earth at thirty, Fire at twenty-two, and Water at eighteen.
Shaking off these stray thoughts, Fang Qingyuan turned and headed to the beehive in the Purple Bamboo Forest. Inside, he observed that the little Bee Queen was in a deep slumber. ’When she wakes up,’ he figured, ’she’ll have advanced to a Tier One Upper Grade Spirit Beast.’
After checking on the Bee Queen, Fang Qingyuan took the day’s harvest and left the Immortal Mansion. Once in the outside world, he placed the new batch of spiritual materials into a box and began practicing *The True Explanation of the Five Spirits’ Baleful Transformation and Form Refinement*.
After four hours of meditation and circulating his energy, Fang Qingyuan went to a quiet corner of Yuanling Mountain. He began to practice his Wood Spirit Dragon Form Magic, and by the time he finished, another three hours had gone by. He didn’t rest even then, instead heading to the Yuanling Square Marketplace to take care of various errands.
The days flew by in a flurry of activity for Fang Qingyuan. During that year’s Ascension Ceremony, the Jiang Clan once again produced a Cultivation Immortal Seedling. Even though it was only a Lower-grade Spirit Root, it was enough to make the Jiang Clan overjoyed, and the whole clan celebrated jubilantly.
The Liao Family, on the other hand, produced no Immortal Seedlings and came up empty-handed for the year. The surprising news was that the Nong family, with its thousand-plus members, actually produced a cultivation seed. What’s more, it was a mid-grade Earth Spirit Root. This sent the old man, Nong Shouyuan, into a state of ecstasy, and he repeatedly exclaimed that his family finally had a successor.
After the Grand Ascension Ceremony concluded, an urgent matter landed before Fang Qingyuan. The Instructor on Yuanling Mountain was gravely ill and wished to retire and return to his hometown of Qi Yun to live out his final days, like a falling leaf returning to its roots.