But now he was actively running up the mountain.
He couldn't help it; with his comprehensively enhanced constitution, his eyesight was truly excellent. Even in the dead of night, he could see his surroundings with crystal clarity.
As soon as he reached the halfway point up the mountain, Lin Xiao saw Little Luan taking care of its major life business in the spirit field beside the thatched shed.
Lin Xiao and Little Luan, who was currently sticking its butt in the air and working hard by the spirit field, stared at each other in wide-eyed silence.
The scene was silent for a moment.
"Ahem." Lin Xiao put a fist to his mouth and let out two fake coughs.
As if startled by Lin Xiao's cough, two clumps of indescribable matter plopped down from Little Luan's raised rear end.
Lin Xiao felt a bit awkward, but still remembering his purpose for coming, he cut straight to the chase:
"Little Luan, do you need money?"
"Money?" Little Luan tilted its head. Then, recalling that money was the very thing Aunt Sun had used to trade it away to someone else, it immediately shook its head like a rattle-drum,
"No, no, no! Cluck cluck cluck, I don't want that unlucky stuff!"
Lin Xiao rubbed his nose:
"Alright then, what do you want?"
Little Luan tilted its head again. Suddenly, it thought of something, and its two beady little eyes lit up!
"Cluck! I want bugs! Delicious!"
Lin Xiao felt a headache coming on. In the middle of the night, where was he supposed to find bugs for it?
But he really wanted to complete that salary quest right now!
Suddenly, Lin Xiao remembered something!
He took out a spirit stone from his personal vault, held it out to Little Luan, and asked:
"Do you like this?"
Feeling the rich spiritual energy radiating from the spirit stone, Little Luan couldn't help but take a deep breath, and then immediately began nodding its chicken head so fast it became a blur,
"Want, want, want! This! I like it!"
Lin Xiao casually stuffed the spirit stone into Little Luan's opening and closing beak, letting it hold it,
"Then it's yours!"
Little Luan was overjoyed, spinning in circles on the spot with the spirit stone in its beak:
"Cluck cluck cluck! This stone is enough for me to absorb for three months!"
Hearing this, Lin Xiao was very surprised:
"You're saying this single spirit stone is enough for you to absorb for three months?"
Little Luan stopped spinning and said:
"That's right, cluck cluck cluck. I'm only at the first layer of Spirit Opening, so this stone is enough for me to absorb for three months!"
Lin Xiao suddenly thought of the spirit stones that were consumed by his idle cultivation function at a rate of one per day.
What should he do now that he suddenly felt it wasn't such a good deal?
But on second thought, although the idle cultivation function cost a lot, the effects were truly excellent!
It had only been a few days, and he was already at the fourth layer of Qi Refining!
If he had to cultivate on his own, his speed definitely wouldn't be able to compare!
Furthermore, it saved him a lot of time and spared him the troubles of cultivation!
Thinking about it this way, Lin Xiao felt balanced again.
And only now did he realize that the value of these spirit stones was actually quite high.
Little Luan was at the first layer of Spirit Opening, which was equivalent to a human's first layer of Qi Refining, yet a single spirit stone could allow a first-layer Qi Refining cultivator to absorb for three months!
Lin Xiao opened his personal vault and looked at the piece of Tier-1 Spirit Vein Fragment lying quietly inside, unable to help but look forward to the day when the fragments were fully assembled.
Putting away his daydreams, Lin Xiao looked down and said to Little Luan:
"Little Luan, this spirit stone is your salary as a member of our sect. From now on, work hard to fertilize the fields and guard our sect well. After you finish absorbing this spirit stone, I'll issue you another one!"
Hearing this, Little Luan immediately became so excited that it flapped its wings, flying and jumping around in circles.
At that moment, Lin Xiao finally heard the system notification sound ring out in his mind.
[Ding— The quest 'Sect Member Salary' has been completed. The quest rewards have been issued. Host, please check them.]
With the quest completed, Lin Xiao cheerfully bid farewell to Little Luan and went down the mountain.
He sprinted back home at top speed, sneaked into his room, and began to check his rewards.
In his personal vault, the number of spirit stones had gone from 84 to 104, so it seemed the reward was 20 spirit stones.
As for other items, there were two new additions.
One was the "Sect Basic Uniform Recipe", and the other was [Spirit Plant Growth Bone Meal x50].
In Lin Xiao's eyes, both of these were excellent items!
Since the Sect Basic Uniform had the word 'Basic' in it, did that mean this uniform was some sort of magical artifact?
And the other item, Spirit Plant Growth Bone Meal!
Just looking at the literal meaning of the words, one would know what it was used for!
To accelerate the growth of spirit plants!
Suppressing his urge to run back up the mountain, Lin Xiao first opened the "Sect Basic Uniform Recipe".
He saw that there were only three things written on the recipe.
[Spirit Silkworm Silk x10] + [Spirit Stone x5] + [Cotton 1 catty] = [Sect Basic Uniform x10]
(Note: The style of the Sect Basic Uniform can be envisioned in your mind when throwing the required materials into the [Item Synthesizer]. There is a 30-second window for conceptualizing.)
With this recipe, Lin Xiao wouldn't need to fumble around to figure out how to use the [Item Synthesizer]. Instead, he could use it directly according to the recipe to accurately get exactly what he wanted!
Lin Xiao desperately wanted to try it out immediately.
However, the moon was already high in the midnight sky.
If he didn't sleep now, his dad would yank him out of bed tomorrow morning and give him an upside-down hair wash.
Thus, he had no choice but to suppress his inner desire to experiment and temporarily roll into the embrace of the Duke of Zhou.
But he never expected that before dawn the next day, he would still be yanked out of bed by his dad.
"Let me ask you, where is your new belt?"
Lin Xiao, who was still groggy from sleep, glanced at the sky outside. Seeing that it was still almost entirely dark, he mumbled in a daze:
"What belt... Dad, let me sleep a bit more..."
Lin Dayou completely ignored his plea for sleep. Instead, he shook him forcefully a couple of times to wake him up and asked again in a gruff voice:
"I'm asking you! Where is your belt! The new one I bought for you last year!"
At this point, Lin Xiao finally snapped out of it and realized what his dad was talking about.
He swallowed hard and tried his best to pacify his dad:
"Dad, don't rush, don't rush, the belt is right here..."
"Where is it! In the pile of clothes you changed out of the day before yesterday, there was only a grass rope!"
With trembling hands, Lin Xiao fished out a storage bag from his chest and handed it to Lin Dayou, saying:
"The belt is right here..."
When Lin Dayou saw the tattered pouch Lin Xiao had taken out to hold money in town yesterday, he didn't know whether to be angry or not for a moment.
No wonder he thought the color of this tattered pouch looked somewhat familiar yesterday.
It turned out he had made it out of his belt!
A belt was quite expensive. For such a large piece of fabric, even a poor-quality one would cost over a dozen copper coins!
The little money the family earned yesterday had almost all been spent on oil and salt. If they wanted to buy him a new belt, they would have to dip into the family's savings.
Lin Dayou suddenly remembered the money this kid had earned himself yesterday.
So he let go of Lin Xiao, tossed him back onto the bed, gave a cold snort, and said to him:
"The family doesn't have the money to buy you a new belt anyway. Either you keep tying your pants with a grass rope, or you go buy one yourself!"
After saying that, he turned around, picked up a basin full of clothes, and went out into the courtyard to continue doing the laundry.
Lin Xiao... Lin Xiao went back to his bed, closed his eyelids, and fell asleep again.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ver to a world of cultivation and returned invincible. Modern medicine is child's play compared to elixirs; technological might crumbles before true cultivation. My name is Qin Ning, Earth's sole cultivator!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
