24: Chapter 24 Three Years, Leapfrog Development!

Time flies like a white horse passing a crevice; fallen leaves flutter, spring and autumn rotate. The path of cultivation does not keep track of years, rising and falling, following the rules.

Shi Jian has been in secluded cultivation for the third year.

On the huge rock at the entrance of the rear mountain Spiritual Vein, thick dust had already settled. Shi Jian was in a deep slumber of secluded cultivation in the underground cave deep within the Spiritual Vein.

Surrounded by dense demonic light, the second-grade High Grade "blood bodhi" bestowed by Zhao Qing had been completely refined by him.

The medicinal power of the blood bodhi was mellow and overbearing. After an ordinary Foundation Establishment Cultivator takes it, it takes at least five years to fully digest, but Shi Jian, as a Yao Beast, his physique was naturally the best Alchemy furnace.

In three years, the medicinal power merged into his Meridians, bones, and flesh...

His originally somewhat unstable Realm had been firmly consolidated over the past few years, as steady as a rock.

Shi Jian opened his eyes and spat out a mouthful of turbid flow. That turbid flow fell on the cave wall, actually burning a fist-sized hole directly into the rock.

He looked at his bear paws, clenched them, his joints cracking, his strength having increased once again.

Shi Jian was a very ordinary Bear Yao, the most primitive kind, without any special Bloodline, naturally knowing no Bloodline Divine Ability, nor various Five Elements techniques.

Only this body of his, polished to the limit.

"Is it almost at the end..."

Foundation Establishment Middle Stage was already almost the end for a Bear Yao.

Further on, cultivation would only get slower and slower until getting stuck at the threshold of the Late Foundation Establishment Stage. To Breakthrough again, one would have to find a way through the Bloodline.

There were only those few methods.

Either devour the flesh and blood of high-level kin, or obtain some kind of Heaven And Earth Treasure.

To complete his own transformation, thereby achieving atavism or mutation...

To put it bluntly, Shi Jian was a blank slate, needing a Bloodline boost of some Five Elements attribute, or to undergo atavism.

Using the pure Physical Body Dao or strength as the Foundation to complete the transformation.

But these Breakthroughs undoubtedly required Opportunities.

Shi Jian couldn't think about these things now; he propped himself up and stretched, his bones immediately making a series of crackling sounds.

He walked out along the Spiritual Vein passage. Just as he reached the exit, he saw Elder Rat squatting on a rock dozing off, his aura becoming deeper and deeper.

"Old Ancestor! You've come out of seclusion?"

Elder Rat was startled, his tail almost tripping himself.

"Yes, how is it outside?"

"Very good! Very good!"

Elder Rat rubbed his front paws, his two beady eyes shining: "Patriarch Sun hasn't been idle these three years. The market has expanded twofold, and four new little Cultivators have been added to the clan."

"And those two little brats are even more incredible!"

"Speak slowly."

Shi Jian stepped out of the Spiritual Vein entrance, the sunlight outside making him squint.

The scene of the rear mountain had changed a lot. On the originally bare main mountainside, there were now three more spiritual fruit orchards and a small medicinal garden.

The Bixin Fruit Trees were already bearing fruit, with fist-sized green fruits hanging from the branches.

A stone house was built next to the medicinal garden, with a faint medicinal fragrance wafting from the chimney.

"Who is performing Alchemy?"

Shi Jian sniffed and immediately identified what kind of pill fragrance it was, but the scent of the person performing Alchemy was not that old fellow Sun Changping.

"Replying to Old Ancestor, it's that kid Sun Mao."

Elder Rat chuckled: "Three years ago, just as you went into seclusion, Patriarch Sun threw him into the pill room to learn Alchemy from Sun Changping."

"As it turned out, the kid got the hang of it in two years. This year, he can already try to start the furnace for Alchemy. He is now the clan's reserve number two Alchemist."

Shi Jian's footsteps paused.

Got the hang of it?

He remembered Sun Changping's struggle to learn Alchemy, which took twenty years. Although there was interference from the Second Branch, it showed the difficulty of this path.

Shi Jian didn't speak and turned toward the stone house.

The door of the stone house was half-open, and a crisp sound of tapping the furnace came from inside.

Shi Jian peeked in and saw a boy who looked about eight years old squatting in front of the Pill Furnace. His face was focused, his fingers forming fire seals. The flames under the furnace contracted and expanded at times, controlled with great precision.

On the low table nearby, there were a dozen or so Medicinal Pills of poor quality.

Although they weren't great and were close to being failed pills.

But they were indeed edible and had some medicinal effect, just with more pill toxins.

Sun Mao suddenly wrinkled his nose, smelling a familiar scent. He turned his head and saw the huge black shadow at the door.

"Old Ancestor!"

The child jumped up and dashed out, only to be pressed back by Shi Jian's paw on his head.

"There are still pills in the furnace, why are you running?"

Sun Mao rubbed his head and hurriedly squatted back in front of the furnace, guarding the fire with a serious face.

Shi Jian's gaze fell on the Medicinal Pills on the low table. His Divine Sense swept over them, and he was slightly surprised.

beast origin pill.

It wasn't the original second-grade beast origin pill Pill Formula, but a first-grade version improved after downgrading.

"Who modified this formula?"

"Great-uncle Sun Changping and I modified it together!" Sun Mao said without looking back, staring at the fire: "The ingredients for the second-grade beast origin pill are too expensive; we can't afford to refine them."

"So we replaced the main ingredient from 'Demon Bone Marrow Essence' with the blood condensed crystals of the spirit rats, and all the auxiliary ingredients were replaced with common first-grade Spiritual Plants..."

"The effect is more than ninety percent weaker, but the advantage is that it's cheap and the output is good. One furnace can produce four to five pills, and the cost is only a dozen or so Spirit Stones."

"Giving three to five pills to a Pseudo-Spirit Seeking Rat can ensure that the Spirit Seeking Rat advances from a Pseudo-Yao to the ranks of a true Level 1 Yao Beast within two years."

"It's barely a first-grade Medium Grade Medicinal Pill. The clan named it: Lesser Beast Essence Pill."

Shi Jian was silent for a moment.

When he bought that beast origin pill Pill Formula back then, he only thought of leaving it for a future second-grade Alchemist. He didn't expect this grandfather and grandson duo to be so good at tinkering.

They directly gave him a downscaled improvement, although the modification was indeed not great.

But for cultivating Pseudo-Yao or Level 1 Yao Beasts, it was indeed not bad. With further refined improvements in the future, it could truly become a good Legacy.

However, the difficulty involved was naturally not small.

Sun Changping could think of it because of experience.

Sun Mao could do it because of talent.

"Not bad."

Shi Jian spat out two words, his tone as flat as if he were saying the weather today was okay, but Elder Rat, standing by, saw it clearly.

The tip of the Old Ancestor's tail actually twitched slightly.

That was happiness!

...

Shi Jian left the pill room and walked all the way down the mountain.

The Hongtian City market at the foot of the mountain had completely changed its appearance.

The scale of two and a half streets three years ago had now expanded to four streets and thirty-two storefronts. The streets were paved with bluestone slabs, clean and tidy.

At the entrance stood a stone tablet with the four large characters "Hongtian Market" carved on it. The handwriting was vigorous and sharp, obviously carved by a Cultivator with Sword Qi.

There was also an additional first-grade High Grade grand array. One was to protect the market, and the other was to restrain the Spiritual Qi guided from the Spiritual Vein.

Shi Jian did not go in but went to the west side of the mountain.

That was once the mountain of the Lin Clan, and now it had become the Sun Clan's Martial Arts Field.

From afar, he heard a burst of noise.

More than a dozen Cultivators stood on the Martial Arts Field, all of them Sun Clan Disciples, ranging in age from six or seven to eleven or twelve.

Each had a Spirit Beast squatting on their shoulder, held in their arms, or following at their heels.

They were all spirit rats of various coat colors, some pure white, some grayish-black and shiny. They were two sizes larger than Spirit Seeking Rats, and their eyes were agile and spirited.

There were also a few black dogs, descendants of the litter of Dao-protecting Hounds from back then. Their bodies were also wrapped in a bit of Demonic Qi, and their intelligence had already been awakened.

It seemed that in just a few short years, the Sun Clan had already gotten on the right track in the path of beast-taming.

Sun Boan stood by the field, no longer pursuing the so-called Great Dao, but earnestly teaching the Disciples to Cultivate:

"Sun Yao, your spirit rat has poked out too far; pull it back three zhang! The core of the Beast-Taming Incantation is 'resonance,' not 'flying a kite'!"

A seven-year-old girl pouted and formed a hand seal. The white spirit rat on her shoulder immediately scurried back to her feet, sat upright, and even politely folded its two front paws, which was quite cute.

Shi Jian's gaze swept across the field.

Thirteen Cultivators, nine Spirit Seeking Rats, and four Spirit Hounds.

In everyone's aura, there was a faint trace of beast-like fluctuations, which was the mark of having Cultivated the improved version of the "Beast Attraction Incantation."

Between humans and beasts, there was a fine line of spiritual power invisible to the naked eye, connecting each other.

The beast moves, the human knows.

The human commands, the beast acts.

Not slavery, but symbiosis.

Shi Jian nodded secretly. The seed planted three years ago had now sprouted.

Walking and looking all the way, it was like patrolling his territory.

The mountain originally occupied by the Ye Clan had now become the Sun Clan's Talisman Academy. Sun Wanqing, the newly promoted Talisman master, was drawing new Talismans.

Shi Jian took a look from afar. The Talisman Academy was filled with various Talisman-making materials.

Two eight or nine-year-old boys were busy studying behind the counter, their wrists steady and their brushstrokes smooth as they wrote. They were the apprentices Sun Wanqing had trained.

Sun Caiya's medicinal garden had also expanded threefold.

Her skill in cultivating Spiritual Plants had improved a lot. Every year or two, she could stably mass-produce a batch of first-grade low-to-Medium Grade Spiritual Plants and Spirit Medicines.

Everything was so peaceful and comfortable.