For several days in a row,

Chu Mu took up temporary residence on Jade Emperor Mountain.

During the day, he would enter Jade Emperor Valley, gradually broadening his understanding of the Cultivation Immortal Realm.

At night, he would stay on the mountain.

As time went on, his initial complete confusion began to fade. With his growing knowledge, Chu Mu slowly started to form a general understanding of the Cultivation Immortal Realm.

Until the tenth day...

「Yutai Mine.」

After a year had passed, Chu Mu returned to the mine once again.

However, things were different now. His status had changed from Inspector to... a miner.

His Monthly Stipend was eight Broken Spirits.

According to what Chu Mu had recently learned, Spirit Stones were the standard currency of the Cultivation Immortal Realm.

They were categorized by the intensity of the Energy they contained, ranked from lowest to highest: Broken Spirits, Lower Grade Spirit Stones, Middle Grade Spirit Stones, Upper Grade Spirit Stones, and the legendary Top Grade Spirit Stones.

Chu Mu wasn’t very clear on the specific Energy standards or how they were measured.

He had, however, managed to find out a fair bit about the purchasing power of Spirit Stones.

The rent for a house by the lake in Jade Emperor Valley was three Spirit Stones a month.

The Cultivation Immortal Technique he longed for also cost three Spirit Stones.

However, the Qi Cultivation Realm has thirteen layers, and there was a corresponding Cultivation Technique for each layer.

Three Lower Grade Spirit Stones... that was the price for the First Layer, and only for the Cultivation Method itself. If you couldn’t understand it, you’d need someone to explain it, and there were apparently special lessons that also had to be purchased with Spirit Stones.

And from what he knew, different Spirit Root Talents required different Cultivation Immortal Techniques.

In Jade Emperor Valley, there was a place for Measuring Spirit Root Talent. The cost was... one Lower Grade Spirit Stone per test.

In other words, putting everything else aside, just to truly set foot on the Immortal Path, he needed four Lower Grade Spirit Stones.

His Monthly Stipend was eight Broken Spirits, and the exchange rate between Broken Spirits and Lower Grade Spirit Stones was ten to one.

This meant he only needed to work in the mine for five months to meet this minimum requirement.

Measure his Spirit Root Talent, then buy the first layer of a Cultivation Immortal Technique that suited it.

Thinking of this, Chu Mu couldn’t help but feel a dull ache. According to Elder Li, the transition from Divine Appearance to Cultivation Immortal was supposed to be a natural progression.

’So why is it so damn hard for me!’

’How long has it been since my Divine Appearance?’

’I stayed in Jingmen for so long, wandered around for several months, and now I have to slave away in this mine for a few more...’

’My Qi and Blood Cultivation was never this difficult, no matter how much I struggled, right?’

"One hundred pounds of ore per person, per day! For every pound you’re short, you lose one Broken Spirit!"

"Chang San, take them down!"

The shouting snapped Chu Mu out of his thoughts. He glanced at the dense crowd of figures around him and subconsciously tightened his grip on the newly issued pickaxe.

At this moment, he could truly empathize with the forced laborers of Nanshan Town.

There was no real difference between his current situation and theirs.

He felt the same uncertainty, the same dread of the unknown.

’At Nanshan Iron Ore, the men performing Forced Labor had no rights to speak of. Would miners have any in the Cultivation Immortal Realm?’

His only comfort, perhaps, was that the other miners around him weren’t Cultivators either.

The steward’s earlier words had made that much clear.

According to the steward, jobs in the mine were assigned based on one’s Cultivation. Different Cultivation meant different work and a different Monthly Stipend.

Without a doubt, then, the hundred or so people around him were just like him, yet to truly set foot on the Immortal Path.

’But... I wandered around Jade Emperor Valley for so many days. How come I never ran into a single one of them?’

Chu Mu was a little puzzled. He thought for a moment but couldn’t come up with a reason. Forcing down his confusion, he began to silently survey the mine before him.

The mine’s layout wasn’t much different from the Nanshan Iron Ore mine where he had once been an Inspector.

It was just a pit that got bigger and bigger the more it was excavated. Nothing more.

But compared to the manual labor of carrying everything by hand and shoulder at Nanshan Iron Ore, this mine in the Cultivation Immortal Realm was vastly different.

A deep rumbling sound had been unceasing ever since he arrived at the mine.

With his own eyes, he could clearly see enormous Puppet Creations scattered throughout the quarry.

The Puppets were humanoid, standing dozens of feet tall. Some had arms like shovels and picks, while others were like great iron buckets, used to break apart mountainsides and load the crushed stone for transport.

Stretching from the bottom of the quarry to the top, there was even a gigantic conveyor system of carts. Ore mined by the Puppet Creations was dumped directly into these carts, which then carried it to the top of the quarry, where it was piled into mountains of raw material.

Besides these enormous Puppet Creations, many... Cultivators! could also be seen throughout the mine.

Some were unleashing Magic Techniques against the rock faces rich with Ore Materials, while others wielded... Magical Artifacts that were clearly mining tools, all of them busy at work throughout the quarry.

Chu Mu squeezed the pickaxe in his hand. His Power, which was great enough to crumple steel with his bare hands, failed to leave the slightest mark on it.

Chu Mu glanced down at the unremarkable pickaxe in his hand, then looked back at the magical scenes unfolding in the quarry. As his gaze shifted, the knowledge of Puppetry Skill, long buried deep in his mind, seemed to surface irrepressibly.

"Artifact Refining... Puppets..."

Chu Mu watched thoughtfully.

What he had obtained was just a single Jade Scroll, and that was purely by chance.

The old man from Qili Village surely hadn’t left behind just this one Jade Scroll.

From everything he had seen and heard so far, that mysterious old man from Qili Village had truly paved a grand path for that boy.

In any case, that boy certainly wouldn’t have to waste his life away in anxiety and fear like he was doing now.

"I’ll just take it one step at a time..."

Chu Mu glanced up at the sky and moved with the crowd. Soon, the bright light of day gave way to oppressive darkness.

"You’ll all be digging in this mineshaft. Find your own spots. When you’ve dug up your hundred pounds, you can come out!"

The steward in charge, Chang San, was a young man with a green face and a somewhat childish voice. But the robe he wore, faintly shimmering with the Spiritual Light of its Runes, set him worlds apart from the miners.

’A full-body Magical Artifact, and a robe no less!’

Even as a complete novice to the Cultivation Immortal Realm, Chu Mu understood how precious Magical Artifacts were.

After all, most of the screens outside the storefronts in Jade Emperor Valley displayed items and their prices.

Magical Artifacts, like Spirit Stones, were also divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper Grade, and even Top Grade.

Below Lower Grade Spiritual Artifacts, there were also Substandard Spiritual Artifacts, which were on the same tier as Broken Spirits.

The "substandard" in the name meant exactly what it implied: inferior quality.

But even for a mere Substandard Spiritual Artifact, the lowest price Chu Mu had seen during his nearly ten days in Jade Emperor Valley was almost one hundred Lower Grade Spirit Stones.

’One hundred Spirit Stones... at this rate, he’d have to toil in this mine for ten years without spending a single coin!’

’And that wasn’t even mentioning a Magical Artifact robe. It was on a completely different level from ordinary Magical Artifacts; you probably couldn’t get one even if you doubled that price.’

’It was no exaggeration to say that the Magical Artifact robe this young man wore was worth... a lifetime of earnings for many Cultivators!’

...