[Name: Li Ye]
[Spiritual Root: Mid-grade Earth-Wood Root]
[Age: 28]
[Lifespan: 81 years]
[Skills: ]
Planting – Tier 2 Intermediate (112/15000)
Alchemy – Tier 2, Low (1124/15000)
Artifact Crafting – Not Yet Initiated (125/2000)
Talisman – Tier 2, Low (2866/8000)
Gu Arts – Tier 1, Intermediate (1325/4000)
Formations – Tier 1, High (11524/30000)
[Herbal Essences: ]
Blood Grain Rice Essence x500
Evergreen Essence x300
Earth Dragon Essence x3
Mindroot Essence x3
White Yin Essence x3
Void Realm Essence x1
[Essence Tags: ]
Vitality Lv.1
Absorption Lv.1
Wood Spirit Lv.1
Tongtian (Heaven-Piercing) Lv.1
[Experience: 500]
....
Before receiving feedback from the Void Tree, Li Ye had already completed harvesting all the spirit plants he'd cultivated over the past year.
The gains from a year of farming had earned him a considerable amount of experience. Aside from upgrading his Planting skill to Tier 2, Intermediate level, he had poured the rest of his experience into formation techniques.
After all, planting was the foundation of all his crafts, while formations were the key to securing the peace he needed for cultivation!
Improving his formation skills and upgrading the Green Vine Verdant Wood Formation and other arrays around the mountain had become a top priority.
At least until his formations reached Tier 2, Li Ye had no plans to shift his focus elsewhere.
Now that his planting skill had reached Tier 2 Intermediate, tending to the 900 foundation-grade main herbs growing across an acre of land had become second nature.
With the added effect of the [Absorption] tag, he had successfully cultivated three different types of spirit plants each with vastly different traits using mostly the same techniques.
This boosted the rate at which they accumulated vitality and medicinal power beyond the normal pace. While they had only yielded a single Spirit Essence each so far, the coming year would likely bring a significant increase in feedback and returns!
The only remaining challenge was managing their differing sunlight and moonlight requirements.
Of course, none of that was what truly mattered right now...
Li Ye's focus was on his spiritual roots!
His eyes immediately locked onto the spiritual root section of the panel and sure enough, his former Low-grade Earth-Wood Root had now been upgraded to Mid-grade.
"[Tongtian] tag…"
Li Ye murmured to himself, voice low but filled with awe, "It did open up a path to the heavens for me!"
He looked up at the clear sky, eyes shining with barely contained excitement.
"From now on, the hardest barrier on the path to Foundation Establishment has been crossed... At least at this stage, the path ahead is smooth sailing!"
.....
The transformation brought about by the improvement in spiritual root aptitude was incredibly tangible.
With the same type of pills, the effect on enhancing one's internal mana was now noticeably greater.
Ever since advancing to Tier 2 in alchemy, Li Ye could refine Greenwood Pills with ease. Not only had the pill quality improved significantly, but the effect on his cultivation also increased drastically.
Over the past two years of refining, he had gradually figured out the reason behind the occasional extra pills produced during a batch.
It all came down to the support of Spirit Essences earthfire refinement became smoother, and both the tempering and fusion processes saw significantly less medicinal loss, often even benefiting from a surplus of medicinal energy.
With that surplus blended and balanced, it wasn't surprising that extra pills would sometimes be produced!
Thanks to all these boosts, Li Ye's mana accumulation once something that required long, arduous effort now progressed rapidly after his spiritual root had advanced to mid-grade. Whether through daily cultivation or pill consumption, the pace was leagues ahead of before.
He had originally estimated that breaking through his current bottleneck would take at least another year…
But less than three months later, while cultivating as usual, he casually took a Three-Pattern Greenwood Pill to continue accumulating mana only to trigger a mana surge that directly shattered the bottleneck and pushed him into the ninth level of Qi Refinement!
"Hiss…"
Li Ye stared at his hands, quietly feeling the newly deepened flow of mana within. His expression was a mix of joy and disbelief.
"I… broke through?!"
Having long been used to the sluggish pace and cruel bottlenecks of a low-grade spiritual root, Li Ye found it hard to accept the breakthrough had come this easily.
But the power within him was real and soon, excitement replaced his initial shock.
"At this pace, I might reach peak Qi Refinement within two or three years, craft the necessary pills myself, and go straight into the Foundation Establishment trial!"
But just as that thought settled, a ridiculous worry popped into his head.
What if my cultivation reaches perfection before that acre of spirit farmland yields enough Spirit Essences to make the Foundation Establishment Pill… and it ends up holding back my progress instead?
Now that would be a joke!
.....
That day, Xiong Li was tending the fields, idly chatting with Fang Ze.
Suddenly, she glanced up at the sky, lowered her voice, and asked curiously,
"Hey, kid… don't you feel like staying inside this formation lately is getting more and more… I dunno, like it's drifting further from the outside world?"
"You noticed too, Aunt Xiong?"
Fang Ze looked a little surprised but quickly straightened up and lowered his voice.
"Maybe the lord's formation skills have improved and he's been tuning it to enhance its power…"
"This isn't something we should be speculating on. Best not to bring it up again… Just know that working inside here is getting safer by the day, and that's what matters!"
His words made Xiong Li nearly slap her muddy hands over her mouth in panic. She glanced around nervously and only relaxed when she didn't spot Li Ye nearby.
She quickly whispered, "Smart kid, you're right…"
"Oh! I also heard that the Chang family from Dengjin Mountain and the Luo family from Woyun Mountain are teaming up to open a new marketplace. They've already picked a site and started moving people in. Shouldn't be long before it opens…"
"There'll be some rare stuff there. What do you say we go take a look together?"
Given their luck working under the same mountain lord, the two were often in contact. And with a new market attracting attention, there was always the risk of bandits and rogue cultivators.
Better to travel in groups safely in numbers!
Fang Ze thought for a moment, then nodded. "Sounds good. Let's go check it out…"
....
Up on the hillside farmland, Li Ye had blended into the phantom image of the spirit tree so perfectly that he was almost invisible simply standing there, silently watching the two converse.
He nodded to himself.
"The formation's integration with weak domain power is now enough to produce realistic illusions…"
"After merging the remnants of that formation scroll into the Green Vine Verdant Wood Formation, it's truly reached Tier 2 level though it still needs the Voidrealm Tree's support."
"However, since the spirit vein here is only Tier 1, to unleash the full power of a Tier 2 array, I have to shrink the coverage significantly to concentrate the spiritual energy…"
"Still, for now, that should be sufficient."
As he thought things over, Li Ye's mind drifted to the conversation he just overheard about the marketplace being jointly opened by the Chang and Luo families. His brows furrowed slightly.
"Didn't they just get smacked down by Xu Pingyang not long ago? And already they're back to making trouble…"
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