Positioning

Ever since Xu Henshui began sleeping a full two shichen every day, the dark circles under his eyes deepened by the day. Then he discovered that the fellow disciples of the Monastery of Creation who had accompanied him were in the same state, their spirits gradually wilting. When Xu Henshui inquired, he learned that most of these disciples had also entered the immortal's dreamscape. It was just that they had not come into contact with immortal recipes; instead, they had been teaching alchemical knowledge inside. The people in the immortal's dreamscape had little in the way of foundation, but they learned remarkably fast. Whatever was taught on the first day, when questioned again the next evening, every single one of them remembered it crystal clear. Many attended the lectures—according to some disciples of the Monastery of Creation, there were even over a thousand. When recounting this, their eyes shone, savoring the memory endlessly. If he had not had an ancient immortal recipe to research, Xu Henshui would have wanted to give it a try himself. However, after arriving in Qingming, Xu Henshui found that there was no shortage of teaching opportunities here at all. For instance, the youths in the new city and those who had originally been sacrificial offerings all required extensive instruction. Moreover, because Wei Yuan had already secured authorization for six foundational Body Casting methods, aside from the Jade Toad Gazing at the Moon Chart, tens of thousands of people were cultivating the other five. If Xu Henshui wanted to lecture, opportunities abounded, immediately making this fellow who loved playing teacher feel that he had come to the right place. Back during centralized instruction, he had been hauled away by Ji Liuli, missing out on countless lecturing chances. On this day, Wei Yuan came to visit and handed Xu Henshui a pill recipe: the Jiamu Minor Longevity Pill. Xu Henshui's alchemical attainments were profound. With a single glance, he saw that this recipe shared a common origin with the Kunyuan Longevity Pill and was likely an adaptation made by later generations based on the ancient immortal recipe. He immediately treasured it like a priceless gem. Xu Henshui had all the herbs for the Minor Longevity Pill in his medicine repository. He immediately fired up a furnace, and three days later, the first batch of Minor Longevity Pills was produced. This batch yielded nine pills, full of medicinal potency. Each could extend life by five years; a person could take up to three pills in their lifetime, with the effects of the latter two diminishing sharply, granting eight years of extended life in total. Having obtained the Minor Longevity Pills, Wei Yuan had word spread that a batch of new longevity pills had been discovered, and an auction was to be held in Qingming, extending an invitation to merchant guilds across the realm. While called an invitation to the realm, considering the travel time, it was actually only enough for people from the western commanderies of Ningzhou to rush over. So long as they came, that was enough. Half a month later, the auction went ahead smoothly, drawing over sixty merchant firms of various sizes. Because the Minor Longevity Pill was an unprecedented longevity pill and backed by the Palace of Grand Beginning, it fetched a high price of two hundred liang of immortal silver per year of life extended. A total of fifty Minor Longevity Pills were sold for fifty thousand liang of immortal silver. With so many merchant guilds present on a rare occasion, Wei Yuan naturally would not sell only pills, so he brought out numerous local specialties plundered from the Wu domain for auction. These goods had a low unit price, but they came in massive volume. Afterward, Wei Yuan auctioned off a batch of breastplates. Wei Yuan had originally set an internal reserve price of twenty liang, but driven up by the competing merchants, they actually sold for thirty liang apiece, with a staggering ten thousand suits ordered in one go. After the auction, Wei Yuan quietly sought out an acquaintance from a friendly merchant firm to inquire about the details. That person held nothing back, explaining that Western Jin had already been at war for a full year, and all kinds of military supplies were in dire shortage. Transported to the front lines, these suits of armor were inherently worth fifty liang; with the proper palms greased, they could be sold for a hundred liang! Naturally, most of that hundred liang went toward paying off various figures in high places, while a small portion was divided privately among frontline generals, leaving the merchant firm itself with only ten liang in profit. Wei Yuan was left speechless. For the military procurement price of a suit of armor to reach a hundred liang—had this been in the State of Zhao, heads would have rolled long ago. Upon learning the inside scoop, Wei Yuan immediately decided to lower the price to twenty-five liang while offering an additional ten thousand sets. Just like that, five hundred and fifty thousand liang of immortal silver entered his account. Together with the other goods sold, this round of auctions brought in over eight hundred thousand liang. In contrast, the calculated cost was less than fifty thousand liang—mainly because the Shaman supplies cost nothing. When the merchant firms departed, Wei Yuan agreed with them to hold a second auction in six months, and thereafter hold a similar auction every quarter. According to the standard prices of the Monastery of Creation, the herbs for a Minor Longevity Pill cost about thirty liang each. Pills made by Xu Henshui's hands were potent and full; once mass-produced in the future, the standard price could still reach five hundred liang, while right now they went for a thousand. Pills concocted by ordinary disciples of the Monastery of Creation could extend life by three to five years, worth at least three hundred liang of immortal silver at normal prices. That was to say, even for the most ordinary disciple concocting the worst pill, they could only tearfully make a tenfold profit. At this point, Wei Yuan finally gained a firsthand appreciation of the money-making prowess of the Monastery of Creation's disciples. After the auction concluded, Wei Yuan began seeking instruction from Xu Henshui on the alchemical dao. Having nearly become Wei Yuan's teacher back then, Xu Henshui naturally held nothing back, imparting everything he knew. After teaching him for several days, Xu Henshui was surprised to discover that although Wei Yuan had virtually no foundation in alchemy, he learned with astonishing speed, advancing by leaps and bounds. What was more, he frequently offered remarkably profound insights that seemed entirely mismatched with his alchemical level. Some insights were things Xu Henshui had only just comprehended a day or two earlier while pondering the ancient immortal recipe, yet Wei Yuan already understood them too! Thus time slipped by, and in the blink of an eye, autumn arrived. Having made great progress in the alchemical dao during this period, Wei Yuan planned to find time to fire up a furnace himself and practice his skills. Aside from delving into alchemy, he had not neglected other matters either. The top priority was naturally his cultivation. Wei Yuan was currently in the Spirit Nurturing Realm, but he had no clue what it would take for his dharma idol, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, to achieve complete spirituality. The tens of thousands of mortals showed improvements almost every so often. There were already five Dao Foundation cultivators who had advanced from among the mortals, and over a dozen more had reached perfection in Body Casting, ready to advance at any moment. Once mortals cast a Dao Foundation, their spirituality naturally increased dramatically, and they continued to cultivate. There seemed no end to this. Could it be that every single mortal had to cultivate a Dao Foundation, or even a dharma idol, for his spirituality to be considered complete? And mortals were only one part of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World; the lion's share actually rested with the Yin-Yang Maiden. Right now, she could only be considered newly awakened in spirituality, still a hundred and eight thousand li away from completion. As for feeding her to satisfaction, who knew when that would ever happen? In addition, there were the three dragon guards. Wei Yuan felt there was still immense potential to tap within them. They could function as information-processing nodes just like the immortal plants, and they could also act independently in the outside world, no different from real cultivators. This trait alone made the dragon guards infinitely useful. Therefore, the offer made by the True Dragon dharma idol back then to provide three more True Dragon scions had truly been a lavish gesture; it would not only have propelled Wei Yuan straight into the mid-dharma idol Myriad Transformations Realm, but also granted him three dharma idol helpers. Fortunately, every sentient being within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was a node inhaling and exhaling the origin qi of heaven and earth. Coupled with being in Qingming, where the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains also breathed in and out the origin qi of heaven and earth, Wei Yuan had no need to worry about dharmic power. Even without meditating, his dharmic power naturally grew at a steady pace. Having attained a dharma idol, dharmic power was no longer the primary concern—spirituality was. However, the mortals within his dharma idol heaven and earth had now formed an initial self-sustaining cycle, operating on their own. In the terminology of the otherworldly realm, all Wei Yuan could do right now was maintain and upgrade the hardware, acting like a maintenance engineer.