Sharpening the Pickaxe

Lin Xiao was extremely curious. He immediately called out to Fuzi and Baldy to speed up their pace toward the village.

When the villagers at the village entrance saw the three of them return, their discussions quieted down a lot. Once they walked far away, the villagers started discussing again, their voices even louder than before.

It was already afternoon, and the sunlight after the Start of Summer had become increasingly intense.

After cultivating for the entire morning, Lin Dayou had lunch and went straight to the fields.

For the past few days, apart from sleeping, his two newly accepted disciples practically followed him day and night.

To be precise, it was actually Mo Yuanjiao who stuck to him, while the other person mainly just followed Mo Yuanjiao.

Following him was one thing, but upon seeing him work, they insisted on joining in and working together.

On the first day, they essentially just caused trouble for him. These two, who could not even tell the difference between young crops and weeds, nearly ruined three-tenths of an acre of his land.

Fortunately, he discovered it in time.

After trying to persuade them for a long time to no avail, as the two insisted on working with him, Lin Dayou had no choice but to teach them how to farm step by step.

However, it had to be said that this young lad was quite gifted in farming. After being taught for a day, he worked with decent form.

His guard, on the other hand, could not compare to him; he was not even as agile at farm work as his own young master.

When Lin Xiao passed by his family's fields, he saw the three of them busy working in the dirt.

He was somewhat surprised. So the master these two wanted to acknowledge was a farming master? He had thought they wanted to cultivate.

Beside Lin Xiao, Jiang Youfu and Liu Yunan did not notice the situation in the Lin family's fields, nor did they know Mo Yuanjiao and Guard Mo.

Having been away from home for many days, the two were eager to return. When they reached the fork in the road, they parted ways with Lin Xiao and each headed back to their own homes.

Lin Xiao did not go over to disturb the three who were burying their heads in hard work in the fields. After parting with Fuzi and Baldy, he silently went up the mountain alone.

It seemed that, without realizing it, the people of the Lingxian Sect had formed a routine of cultivating in the morning and having free time in the afternoon.

At this moment, the cultivation room was completely empty.

In the spirit fields not far away, Little Luan was leading its three little disciples on a patrol, flying up to swallow any bugs they spotted in a single gulp.

Lin Xiao did not see Senior Liao, guessing that he was probably sitting in his room drinking tea again.

In a clearing behind the sect's main hall, a pile of dirt had been heaped into a small hill, and next to it was a neatly stacked pile of wood.

Presumably, these were all Tietou's masterpieces.

Looking around the entire sect, it seemed that many wildflowers had been planted all around.

Over by the thatched shed, there were even morning glories climbing onto the roof.

This was all done in recent days by Tietou, who had led the two little girls, Liu Shengsheng and Lin Ying.

At the very bottom of the Returning Garden Mountain Residence, a small doorless hut had been built. Inside, a low stove had been constructed, bearing black soot marks from smoke and fire, looking as though it had been used for several days.

Beside the small mountain spring next to the mountain residence, there were two brand new wooden buckets. With one look at the craftsmanship of those buckets, Lin Xiao knew they were made by his own grandfather.

Seeing the sect gradually become more cozy and warm, a sense of warmth rose in Lin Xiao's heart.

Returning after being away for ten days, coming back to the sect actually felt like coming home.

He did not disturb Little Luan, who was busy walking its disciples, nor Senior Liao, who was tasting tea. He went alone to the very back of the halfway point up the mountain.

Not far away were the terraced fields he had created earlier.

The location of the Lingxian Sect was the flat land halfway up the mountain, and where the terraced fields rested was the end of this flat land. Further up was the peak of this mountain.

Behind this mountain peak was the continuous Northern Mountain Range.

Following the location provided by the system, Lin Xiao circled to the back of the mountain peak and leaped down to the very bottom.

This was a small valley surrounded by mountains. Although it was called a valley, it was almost entirely covered by dense forests and vegetation.

As soon as Lin Xiao landed, he startled a foraging roe deer, which ran away.

Lin Xiao had never come down here before.

Because the mountain path down to the valley was too steep, if they had come down in the past, they most likely would not have been able to get back up.

In the past, he had only heard the villagers say that there were many wild beasts in the Northern Mountains. Now that he had encountered a roe deer right after coming down, it seemed what they said was true.

It seemed that even if they did not have livestock farming for the time being, they would not have to worry about the source of meat in the future.

However, he was not here to hunt right now.

Lin Xiao walked forward a few steps and arrived in front of a mountain wall.

He reached out to touch this mountain wall, only to see that his hand seemed to not touch anything at all, unexpectedly reaching directly inside the mountain wall!

He simply walked his entire body straight inside.

Once inside, it was the spirit stone mine that Lin Xiao was very familiar with, the one he had encountered in Liaoju Prefecture.

It had to be said that the system was truly considerate. It had even copied the Spirit Locking Array and the Concealment Array from the original entrance of the spirit stone mine and placed them at the new entrance.

Seeing this spirit stone mine glowing with fluorescence, Lin Xiao was thoroughly satisfied.

He immediately sat down, took out a small hoe he had bought in the county town and a spirit stone from his private storage, and opened the item synthesizer.

Tossing the two items into the synthesizer, Lin Xiao began to wait quietly for good news.

In just a short while, the synthesis was complete, and the synthesizer spat out a brand new small hoe for him.

The original wooden handle and iron head of the small hoe now gleamed with a layer of glaze on the surface, as if they had turned into jade.

Lin Xiao opened the appraisal function to take a look.

[Small Spirit Hoe. Can be infused with spiritual power to use. Using it to hoe the ground can better protect the roots of spirit plants.]

Seeing that a spirit hoe had indeed been synthesized, Lin Xiao felt relieved. He immediately took an iron pickaxe out of his private storage.

This was something he had quietly taken earlier when the blacksmith shop owner was not paying attention. Of course, he had left the money behind.

He followed the exact same method, throwing the iron pickaxe and a spirit stone inside. Because this iron pickaxe was quite a bit larger than the small hoe, he specifically added an extra spirit stone.

After another short while, Lin Xiao got his wish and obtained a spirit pickaxe.

The appraisal function activated.

[Spirit Pickaxe. The texture is extremely hard. It is a good tool for excavating low-tier spirit mines.]

Lin Xiao decisively swung the spirit pickaxe and walked excitedly toward the spirit stone mine, which was brimming with stones.

However, with Lin Xiao's current cultivation at the early Foundation Establishment stage, even after infusing spiritual power into the spirit pickaxe to chisel the spirit stone mine, it was just like an ordinary person chiseling rocks. The speed was not very fast.

The hardness of the spirit stones exceeded his expectations.

Therefore, after busying himself for half an hour, he only managed to chisel out over five hundred spirit stones.

But a few hundred stones were enough for his recent expenses.

He could not just hollow out the entire mine all at once, right?

Moreover, now that this spirit stone mine was connected to the low-tier spirit vein within their sect, as long as the spirit vein remained intact, it could continuously generate spirit stones in the future.

Thinking of this, Lin Xiao stopped. Half an hour yielded a few hundred spirit stones; wasn't this much more than in the past, when he had to spend several days completing a mission just to obtain fifty to a hundred spirit stones?

He had to be content.