After erasing the black-robed cultivator's divine sense imprint, Qi Ping opened the storage bag with excitement and was immediately stunned.
986 low-grade spirit stones!
1 mid-grade spirit stone!
This was the first time Qi Ping had seen a mid-grade spirit stone. One must know that a hundred low-grade spirit stones were needed to exchange for one mid-grade spirit stone. In practice, they often couldn't be exchanged easily and required a twenty to thirty percent markup.
'Now, even without selling the Blood Ginseng, I have enough to buy a powerful spirit beast!'
Animal companions were of great significance to Qi Ping, so he wanted to contract the best ones possible.
Now that he had acquired the Wild Shape skill and could transform into a bee, his survival capabilities had significantly increased. Even if he were pursued by a Foundation Establishment stage cultivator, he had a chance to escape. Thus, he could act a bit more boldly and choose a better spirit beast.
However, more than the spirit stones, what surprised Qi Ping most was a pill formula and a cultivation manual.
[Pill Formula: Fire Spirit Tempering Pill]
[Grade: First-tier, Mid-rank Pill]
[Ingredients: Fire Spirit Grass, Spirit-Storing Fruit]
[Refining Method: Fire-Refinement]
[Effect: Strengthens the physical body, stabilizes the foundation, and slightly increases the body's spiritual energy affinity. Works better when paired with a Fire-attribute cultivation technique.]
[Manual Name: Wood-Flame Manual (Levels 1 to 9 of Qi Refinement)]
[Grade: High-tier]
[Characteristics: A dual Wood-Fire attribute technique. It uses Wood to generate Fire, giving the spiritual energy the gentle characteristics of the Wood attribute while concealing the Fire attribute within. Upon release, the Wood-to-Fire generation allows for an extremely powerful burst of combat strength.]
'Fire Spirit Tempering Pill and the Wood-Flame Manual!'
Upon seeing these two items, Qi Ping's heart was filled with delight.
The item that made him the happiest was naturally the Fire Spirit Tempering Pill!
In the Qi Refinement realm, consuming pills that enhanced physical strength was very beneficial for breaking through boundaries. In every stage of cultivation, the physical body was the foundation. If the foundation was poor, breaking through later stages would become increasingly difficult.
Not to mention the Fire Spirit Tempering Pill's effect of improving spiritual energy affinity and stabilizing the foundation.
'Sister Nan has Spirit-Storing Fruits; I can just buy two fruit trees from her. Aside from the Fire Spirit Grass, the other ingredients aren't hard to get. For the Fire Spirit Grass, I'll need to find a way to buy a batch of seeds or some that are still viable...'
'However, if I want to refine pills, a cauldron is a problem. Even the lowest-grade cauldron costs over a thousand spirit stones.'
'Furthermore, I don't understand fire-refining methods, and spiritual fire is another issue.'
Thinking it through, Qi Ping felt that being an alchemist was a bottomless pit. Precious fire-refining techniques, medicinal essence extraction methods, fusion techniques... all sorts of manuals and knowledge were simply beyond what he could afford right now.
Thus, Qi Ping had never considered successfully refining pills at this stage.
What he wanted now was simply to use the proportioning knowledge from the formula, his Grand Brewer talent, and his sensitivity as a Forest Druid to experiment with and refine the Fire Spirit Tempering Pill into a Fire Spirit Tempering Liquid.
Even if it only had half the efficacy of the pill, it would be quite good for him. If the effect wasn't enough, he could just use more!
Ideally, once he researched it, he could have the Brewer Pot-bellied Bees brew honey. That way, he could mass-produce the Fire Spirit Tempering Pill (Honey Version). As long as he cultivated enough Fire Spirit Grass, he would have a continuous supply of the honey version.
'Besides, if the age and quality of the Fire Spirit Grass and Spirit-Storing Fruit are high enough, the effect might not necessarily be lower than the pill itself; it might even surpass it.'
Qi Ping had a clear understanding of his situation. Before Foundation Establishment, obtaining even the most basic set of alchemy techniques was impossible.
His goal had always been to use pill formulas and basic alchemy knowledge as a foundation to try and brew honey with special effects. This Fire Spirit Tempering Pill was a great experimental opportunity.
The pill not only showed him a direction but also happened to be one that would be very useful to him.
This put Qi Ping in an excellent mood.
'Not bad, not bad!'
After studying the Fire Spirit Tempering Pill formula, Qi Ping turned his attention to the Wood-Flame Manual.
Compared to the pill formula, he was more conflicted about the manual.
If he didn't have a Fire spiritual root, it would be fine, but he did—though it was so low that it had almost gone undetected. Originally, his Wood spiritual root talent was already extremely low, and his Fire root was something Old Man Zhou had only seen after careful observation.
'With my sliver of Fire spiritual root talent and the Wood-generating-Fire characteristic, practicing the Wood-Flame Manual isn't impossible.'
'And this is a high-tier Qi Refinement technique. The Wood Shield technique is only a mid-tier one.'
Qi Refinement techniques were generally divided into high, mid, and low tiers. Low-tier techniques often had flaws, making it nearly impossible to reach Foundation Establishment; most rogue cultivators practiced these. Mid-tier techniques were generally unremarkable but sufficient to support one's cultivation until breaking through to Foundation Establishment; however, they were much harder to obtain. High-tier techniques were a level above, possessing stronger characteristics. For example, the Wood-Flame Manual not only provided solid and abundant spiritual energy but also had extreme explosive power.
There might be even more powerful techniques, but Qi Ping didn't know about them. Mid-tier techniques were enough to break through subsequent realms, and those mythical divine-tier techniques weren't things he could even imagine.
'Should I switch my cultivation to the Wood-Flame Manual?' Qi Ping felt conflicted.
Both techniques had their own benefits. After much deliberation, he decided to wait until he had contracted his second or third animal companion.
Given his current talent, even with plenty of Golden Marrow Honey, reaching the late stage of Qi Refinement would become very difficult unless he piled on a lot of first-tier high-grade spirit herbs.
But cultivation built purely on spirit herbs had many drawbacks—this was something Qi Ping couldn't ignore. Otherwise, the major sects wouldn't have such strict talent requirements for disciples.
Therefore, no matter what, he wanted to build a more solid foundation for himself.
'I'll wait until I contract a second or third animal companion and obtain a talent that helps with cultivation.'
'I'll try to choose Wood- or Fire-attribute animal companions and then decide based on the shared talent!'
'Since the Golden Marrow Bees and mutated bee species are here, and I can transform into a bee to escape, the combat requirements for my next animal companions aren't that high for now.'
'So, the next animal companions should either have extremely high potential or a chance to share a suitable talent with me.'
In a few more days, Qi Ping was confident he could break through to the fourth level of Qi Refinement. Once the number of High-speed Ring-cutter Bees had increased further, he planned to go to the Bluestone Market to ask Boss Gao about spirit beasts and see if he had found any suitable sellers.
At this point, there were no more high-value items in the black-robed cultivator's storage bag. It was mostly miscellaneous stuff of low value.
Except for one token that caught Qi Ping's attention.
It was a bronze-colored, strange metal token with a mysterious "Favored" character engraved on it. A very eerie and peculiar aura radiated from the word.