Chapter 179: Chapter 178: This Time, We’ve Got to Eat Till We’re Stuffed

"The Fengming Mountain Black Market... the Sun Family?"

Chu Mu frowned. It wasn’t that he cared about the relationship between the Black Market and the Clans or Sects. After all, the reasoning was simple.

When the resources in the Marketplace were monopolized, there was bound to be immense, unmet demand. This unmet demand would inevitably lead to the birth of a Black Market.

It was an unavoidable law!

It was just as obvious that the various Clans and the Longevity Sect wouldn’t just let a Black Market operate unchecked.

Whether it was through regulation or by acting as a front for certain powerful figures, it was all perfectly normal.

What he was thinking about was the relationship between the Blood Killing Pavilion and the Fengming Mountain Black Market. Or rather, what was the Blood Killing Pavilion’s position in the current Great Chu Cultivation Immortal World?

As Chu Mu pondered this in silence, he had just put away the Sound Transmission Talisman when Wang Mazi’s complaints reached his ears from nearby.

Wang Mazi was cursing, "Everything was going fine, and then I almost got caught and sent to the mines."

"This was a huge loss. I ran all over the place and wasted a Storage Talisman for nothing!"

Chu Mu asked, "The Black Market was shut down. What about selling Elixirs in the future?"

"Not a big problem."

Wang Mazi shook his head, very confident. "The Longevity Sect is all bark and no bite. The Jade Emperor Black Market will just end up paying tribute to a new backer, that’s all."

"That Golden Core True Master?"

Chu Mu pointed to the sky and asked tentatively.

He had made inquiries before. When he had returned to Jade Emperor Valley, that terrifying sword light had come from a Golden Core True Master of the Longevity Sect!

And that Golden Core True Master was stationed in the current Jade Emperor Valley!

"Why would Cang Lan True Master bother with such a trivial matter? I heard it was led by his eldest disciple."

Wang Mazi waved his hand dismissively. "They’re all black-hearted. They’d pluck a feather from a passing goose!"

"Let’s go inside. Too many ears out here!"

After speaking, Wang Mazi headed into the room.

"I’ve prepared thirty furnaces’ worth of raw materials this time, over sixteen hundred Spirit Stones. I’ve bet my entire fortune on this!"

As soon as the door closed, Wang Mazi handed over a Storage Talisman.

’Over sixteen hundred Spirit Stones...’

Chu Mu was surprised. He casually took the Storage Talisman and said with a smile, "Aren’t you afraid I’ll just take it and run?"

"Afraid? Of course I’m afraid!"

Wang Mazi nodded very seriously, pointing to the pavilion across the way. "I’ve rented that building. You focus on Alchemy, and I’ll focus on watching you."

Chu Mu raised an eyebrow. Looking at Wang Mazi’s earnest expression, he couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.

"Fine, then you can focus on watching me."

Chu Mu didn’t mind. After all, this was basically Wang Mazi paying with Spirit Stones to help him accumulate Alchemy experience.

No matter what, he came out ahead.

"Alright then, you focus on your Alchemy. By the way, how long will it take this time?"

Wang Mazi was about to leave, but he turned back to ask.

"About a month. Come back in a month."

Chu Mu replied without looking up, examining the Spiritual Materials in the Storage Talisman.

"Alright."

Wang Mazi agreed and pushed the door open to leave.

Chu Mu glanced over. Wang Mazi really did go to the pavilion opposite, take out a Restriction Token, and even seemed to wave at him.

Chu Mu shook his head to himself. Then, with a shift of his Divine Sense, the already-sorted medicinal herbs in the Storage Talisman poured out and arranged themselves neatly on the ground.

Thirty furnaces’ worth of raw materials for Vein Nourishing Pills... worth over 1,600 Lower Spirit.

Based on a yield of eleven pills per furnace, thirty furnaces would mean three hundred thirty Vein Nourishing Pills.

A single Vein Nourishing Pill was worth fifteen Lower Spirit, which meant an income of at least five thousand Lower Spirit...

The profit... was terrifying!

Then, Chu Mu suddenly smiled. It wasn’t the profit that was terrifying, but the... terrifying 100% success rate in Alchemy under the effect of the Spiritual Radiance Blessing!

Without the Spiritual Radiance Blessing, the vast majority of these thirty batches of raw materials would probably just be consumed and wasted.

Forget terrifying profits; just breaking even would be a stroke of immense luck.

’Fifty percent...’

Chu Mu silently set this number in his mind.

This time, since Wang Mazi had been so generous, he would go with a fifty percent success rate.

A fifty percent Alchemy success rate would still yield a profit of around one thousand Lower Spirit. Adding a few Pill-Patterned Vein Nourishing Pills would be more than enough to satisfy Wang Mazi.

As for the other fifty percent...

’Alchemy failures are perfectly normal for a novice Alchemist like me.’

’This time, I’m going to eat until I’m stuffed!’

The corners of Chu Mu’s mouth lifted; he was clearly in an excellent mood.

He sorted the herbs batch by batch, ignited the piled-up Spiritual Charcoal, and under his control, the Refining of Vein Nourishing Pills began once more.

Refining thirty furnaces of Vein Nourishing Pills took more than half a month.

The Alchemy process itself wasn’t long. The most time-consuming part was recovering his Magical Power and resting his Divine Sense after each batch.

If he became too exhausted, even with the Spiritual Radiance Blessing, failures would be unavoidable. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

One furnace of raw materials was worth several dozen Spirit Stones. Chu Mu certainly wouldn’t waste them on practice like he did with the Grain Avoidance Pills in the beginning.

In the end, after refining thirty furnaces’ worth, what appeared before him were three hundred thirty-nine Vein Nourishing Pills, an average yield of about eleven pills per furnace.

Moreover, among them were twelve One-Patterned pills.

Calculated out, their total value was over five thousand two hundred and eighty Lower Spirit.

And the value of the raw materials was only a little over sixteen hundred Lower Spirit.

Although he had already predicted it accurately, at this moment, gazing at the dense array of Vein Nourishing Pills before him, Chu Mu couldn’t help but flush, his excitement hard to conceal.

Over five thousand Lower Spirit!

A Top Grade Spiritual Artifact Grade Pill Furnace only cost around three thousand Lower Spirit.

A certain Upper Grade Spiritual Artifact Long Saber he had been eyeing in the Longevity Sect’s Divine Weapon Pavilion only cost a little over one thousand Lower Spirit.

At the last Ten Thousand Treasures Pavilion auction, a Foundation Establishment Pill that had been bid up to a sky-high price by all parties only sold for four thousand eight hundred Lower Spirit.

If he had continued to waste his time, earning three or four Spirit Stones a month... no, at his current level, he could probably earn seven or eight Spirit Stones a month now.

Earning seven or eight Spirit Stones a month... it would take him forever to make this much...

After a long, long time, he finally calmed his turbulent emotions and silently sorted the hundreds of Vein Nourishing Pills.

A fifty percent Alchemy success rate meant splitting them in half.

One hundred and seventy Vein Nourishing Pills, with three One-Patterned Vein Nourishing Pills added in.

As for the remaining one hundred and sixty-nine Vein Nourishing Pills, they were now Chu Mu’s... property.

He spent the better part of a month in Cultivation, consuming several Vein Nourishing Pills, and only opened his door after the one-month period was over.

Producing one hundred and seventy Vein Nourishing Pills was, for Wang Mazi, a completely unexpected and pleasant surprise.

With one hundred and seventy Vein Nourishing Pills in his hand, Wang Mazi’s back seemed to bend a little lower, and his attitude toward Chu Mu became a bit more fawning.

After a long while of cheerful flattery and patting his chest with assurances, Wang Mazi finally took his leave.

Chu Mu stood at the door, watching Wang Mazi depart. He then glanced at the pavilion directly opposite before stepping back inside.

The next few months seemed to be a return to the time when he was Refining Grain Avoidance Pills.

However, gathering the Spirit Medicine for Vein Nourishing Pills was clearly much more troublesome.

He basically maintained a cycle of one month for Refining, and one month for selling and gathering Spirit Medicine.

Chu Mu also gradually increased the apparent success rate of his Refining, stopping only when he reached seventy percent.

Spring turned to autumn, and the bleak desolation of early winter arrived. Half a year had passed.

「Jade Emperor Valley, Magic Proving Grounds.」

Inside a private Magic Laboratory, Fireballs shot out like a barrage of cannonballs. In the blink of an eye, several Fireballs were launched in quick succession.

A continuous roar, like saturation bombing, echoed through the isolated Magic Laboratory.

Meanwhile, Chu Mu stood in the Magic Laboratory, instantly forming one Fireball after another. Flames swirled around his body as he stacked layers of Flame Barriers. At a glance, it looked as if he were standing in a sea of fire, completely unscathed.

’Returning to the Essence, the Skill follows the will...’

Finally, the roaring stopped and the firelight dissipated. As Chu Mu murmured to himself, the Light Curtain Panel in his vision froze.

[Name: Chu Mu.]

[Skill:

Basic Blade Technique (Peak of Perfection) 9999/10000.

Fireball Skill (Returning to the Essence) 1130/10000.

Flame Barrier (Returning to the Essence) 23/10000.

Fire Snake Skill (Refined Skill) 3589/5000.

Cleaning Skill (Beginner’s Practice) 156/1000.]

[Flame Decision Seventh Layer (2896/3000)]

[Alchemy:

Grain Avoidance Pill: Peak of Perfection (8953/10000).

Vein Nourishing Pill: Peak of Perfection (5383/10000).]

[Spiritual Radiance Value: 103.3%]

In over seven months, his Basic Blade Technique seemed to have hit a bottleneck, stuck at the threshold for more than a month without any change.

Meanwhile, his Fireball Skill and Flame Barrier, one for Attack and one for Defense, had both reached the Realm of Returning to the Essence.

And since entering this realm, the two Magic Skills had undergone an earth-shattering transformation.

The Skill followed his will, forming with a single thought. The word "instant-cast" was now a true description.

As for the Magic’s power, take the Fireball Skill for example. It was originally Tier One Lower Grade, but now, at the Realm of Returning to the Essence, its power far exceeded that of a Tier One Lower Grade skill.

When cast instantly, its power had increased from around 0.3 degrees at the beginning to nearly 2.0 degrees now!

And his current Flame Barrier Defense Magic, at the Realm of Returning to the Essence, could only defend against an Attack of about 1.0 degree without stacking layers.

In other words, if he were fighting an ordinary Cultivator who had no Magical Artifact for Defense, a single Fireball would be an instant kill!

If that wasn’t enough, with a single thought, he could condense several Fireballs. As long as he had enough Magical Power, he could even fire off Fireball Skills with the feeling of a machine gun!

He had just experimented with this. In less than three seconds, twelve Fireballs had carpet-bombed the target!

And he had done this while distracted with maintaining a six-layer stacked Flame Barrier.

The Fire Snake Skill was a new Magic he had learned. It was a Fire Attribute Support Magic used for control, either by condensing one or more fire snakes to entangle and restrain an enemy, or by detonating them directly to produce a Fire Attribute Spiritual Power Attack.

He had only been learning it for a few months, but with these costly experiments, his progress was extremely fast.

The Cleaning Skill was a purely Support Magic. Chu Mu couldn’t be bothered to waste time practicing it, so after learning the basics, he set it aside.

As for his Vein Nourishing Pill Refining, by refining thirty furnaces of Vein Nourishing Pills every two months, he had easily reached the Peak of Perfection realm.

As for his Qi Cultivation, in just over half a year, practically eating Elixirs like candy, he had advanced from the Qi Cultivation Fifth Layer to the Qi Cultivation Eighth Layer!

One must understand that after entering the Middle Stage of Qi Cultivation, which was the Qi Cultivation Fourth Layer, the Skill Level value for the Flame Decision had increased from one thousand to two thousand.

And now, upon entering what the Cultivation Immortal Realm defined as the Late Stage of Qi Cultivation, the Qi Cultivation Seventh Layer, the Skill Level value for the Flame Decision had increased again to three thousand!

A single Vein Nourishing Pill provided about fifty Skill Level points, and this amount decreased by about six or seven points for each layer his Cultivation increased.

One could only imagine what a massive amount of resources had been consumed in just half a year to cross several Cultivation layers in succession!

However, although the consumption was enormous, with the Vein Nourishing Pill acting as his Treasure Basin, his wealth seemed to be growing ever more substantial.

Take this private Magic Laboratory, for instance—a place he would never have even dreamed of before. For the past six months, he had become a regular!

Perhaps because he was such a major customer, the Steward of the Magic Experiment Hall had even taken the initiative to give him a card similar to the VIP cards from his previous life.

With the card, besides getting a certain discount, he could also receive three vouchers for the public magic experiment area every month.

To his current self, these things were rather insignificant. The monthly vouchers, along with the Vein Nourishing Pills he sent over, all ended up in Xu Yuan’s hands...

...