Cultivating Immortality: Starting from Ferrying Passengers

Chapter 157 Big Harvest
On the deserted island, Tuoyuan was tearing at his robe, which had several large holes in it.

Beneath the robe was a wisp of fine white ash, which was constantly scattered by the sea breeze as Tuoyuan moved, and disappeared into the vast sea after a moment.

Fang Jingxuan sat cross-legged to one side, holding a ten-square storage bag in his hand, and was constantly using his divine sense to cleanse and erase the mark left by Chen Heichan above it.

Under Fang Jingxuan's precise control, the Black Demon Fire only burned away Chen Hei Chan's physical body, without causing any damage to the precious storage bag.

At this moment, the white mist surrounding the deserted island completely disappeared, which also meant that the people from the Black Hand had all withdrawn.

Their deal with Fang Jingxuan has officially come to an end.

Now is Fang Jingxuan's time to reap the rewards. He had previously invested all his wealth to hire the mastermind.

Now he's counting on this storage bag to recover his losses, otherwise Fang Jingxuan might really go bankrupt.

During the process of erasing the mark from his soul, Fang Jingxuan multitasked, reviewing his battle experience.

In fact, Chen Hei Chan's combat power is indeed very strong, and he is a dominant force in the surrounding sea area spanning thousands of miles.

As a Qi Refining Ninth Level Perfected cultivator, he is already the ceiling below Foundation Establishment cultivators. Four or five ordinary cultivators of the same level can defeat him, but they cannot capture him.

Especially since he stayed indoors and hid under his own protective formation, it was even safer.

However, he still couldn't escape death despite his own secret scheming. Of course, this was also due to his carelessness, as he didn't expect Fang Jingxuan to still be thinking about him after three years.

Fang Jingxuan recalled the battle just now and found that the two magical artifacts in his hands had lost their original functions.

Neither the [Bronze Ancient Bell] nor the [Zhenyue Mace] has any room to maneuver in this level of combat.

Among them, the [Bronze Ancient Bell] was bought when I first entered the mid-stage of Qi Refining, and it can no longer keep up with my progress.

The Zhenyue Mace has a single function; while it's still usable, it can no longer shoulder the main task of offense.

Therefore, when the time came, they still had to rely on Liu Gu's supernatural powers to solve the problem. With the three [Black Demon Fire] being activated, it was like solidified lard meeting a hot knife, instantly breaking through Chen Hei Chan's defense and burning him into a clump of white ash.

In fact, the corpse of a late-stage Qi Refining cultivator is quite valuable; if it could be sold, it could fetch several thousand low-grade spirit stones.

Fang Jingxuan was worried about potential problems. What if Chen Heichan had a chance to be resurrected from the dead? Wouldn't he be shooting himself in the foot and asking for trouble?

Or perhaps it could be used to make use of the waste, letting Tuoyuan eat it, or at worst, adding nutrients to the Enlightenment Vine. But for Fang Jingxuan, none of these were worthwhile.

Tuoyuan cannot eat people; this is Fang Jingxuan's experience in controlling beasts. Now, Tuoyuan's intelligence is getting higher and higher, and its intelligence is no less than that of a thirteen or fourteen-year-old child, almost approaching that of an adult.

So, how does Tuoyuan, with such high intelligence, perceive himself?

Am I just a beast? Or am I also a human cultivator?
Tuoyuan sees itself as a human being just like Fang Jingxuan. It believes that it is only different in appearance, but in reality, it also has its own thoughts.

It was integrating into Fang Jingxuan's world, and in Fang Jingxuan's moral view, cannibalism was wrong.

Fang Jingxuan is neither a demonic cultivator nor a ghost cultivator or a corpse cultivator, so he naturally does not have such fetishes or needs. If Fang Jingxuan sets an example, then Tuoyuan will act this way and revert to his previous bestial nature.

In short, the benefits gained from feeding Tuoyuan with cultivator corpses far outweigh the negative impacts, especially since it is detrimental to the growth of his intelligence. Fang Jingxuan naturally forbade Tuoyuan from doing so.

After pondering for a moment, Fang Jingxuan had a preliminary plan for what he would do next.

That meant first taking over Black Toad Island, paying respects to the surrounding cultivators, gaining their approval, then transforming Black Toad Island, and finally exchanging for magical artifacts, fellow cultivators, and planning for Foundation Establishment Pills. Just as Fang Jingxuan was pondering this, his divine soul paused, and the storage bag in his hand was completely unguarded.

As a local tyrant who had wreaked havoc for decades, Chen Heichan was quite wealthy. Moreover, he also secretly collaborated with others, occasionally acting as a pirate to rob cargo ships, naturally accumulating even more wealth.

Now that he has died, everything benefits Fang Jingxuan, and Fang Jingxuan is very much looking forward to it.

Fang Jingxuan slowly probed into it with his divine sense. Shi Fang's storage bag was very large and contained a lot of things. Fang Jingxuan tried to take it all out, and it poured out a small mountain on the ground.

A moment later, Fang Jingxuan sorted all the valuable items into categories and put them together.

As for the other seven or eight out of ten items, such as women's underwear and other items that added sensuality, Fang Jingxuan simply burned them all to ashes, letting them go with their master.

After simplifying the process, there were still many items on the ground. Fang Jingxuan examined them one by one and estimated their value.

There weren't many pills among them. As a cultivator at the ninth level of Qi Refining, Chen Hei Chan's cultivation hadn't progressed for a long time, so he only had a few bottles of pills for cultivation. Most of the rest were pills for healing injuries, detoxifying, warding off evil spirits, and nourishing the spirit.

In addition, he doesn't have many talismans. At his level of cultivation, many talismans are not as good as his casual strikes, so he naturally doesn't care about them.

He has quite a few spiritual herbs, medicines, materials, and items, all of which he has collected over the years.

But the most abundant item is still spirit stones. It seems that Chen Hei Chan believes that nothing holds its value as well as spirit stones, so the storage bag is filled with spirit stones the most.

Among them, after Fang Jingxuan counted them carefully, there was one high-grade water-attribute spirit stone, sixty-seven mid-grade spirit stones, and more than three thousand low-grade spirit stones.

These spirit stones alone made Fang Jingxuan feel that he had made his money back. Including the pills and talismans, the total was 25,000 to 26,000 low-grade spirit stones.

That wasn't all. There were also three jade boxes of extraordinary material, of different sizes, all carefully sealed with talismans by Chen Heichan. Clearly, the contents inside were extremely precious to him.

Fang Jingxuan carefully untied the talisman and opened the first box, inside which lay a spiritual plant resembling ginseng.

"This is 'Earth Origin Grass'? It's one of the three main ingredients for refining Foundation Establishment Pills. Judging by its age, it's about three hundred years old."

Fang Jingxuan was immediately pleasantly surprised. Refining the Foundation Establishment Pill required three main ingredients: 'Mysterious Spirit Fruit', 'Earth Origin Grass', and 'Purple Sun Flower'.

Of the three spiritual materials, the 'Mysterious Spirit Fruit' is the most difficult to obtain, followed by the 'Earth Element Grass', while the 'Purple Sun Flower' is relatively less valuable because many can grow on a single Purple Sun Vine.

When refining Foundation Establishment Pills, the 'Mysterious Spirit Fruit' and 'Earth Origin Grass' are best when they are 500 years old. This 300-year-old 'Earth Origin Grass' is quite valuable, worth 8,000 low-grade spirit stones.

Fang Jingxuan guessed that this was something Chen Heichan had prepared for him to build his foundation, but he didn't expect it to benefit him now.

Fang Jingxuan carefully put away the 'Earth Origin Grass'. With this, he only needed to collect the remaining two spiritual materials to hire an alchemist to customize a Foundation Establishment Pill.

Next, Fang Jingxuan opened the second box, and inside was a blood-red ore, about the size of a head, with blood-red patterns on it shimmering slightly, as if it were breathing.

After studying it for a while, Fang Jingxuan could only conclude that it should be a second-tier material used for refining weapons, but he really didn't know what it was called or how to use it.

Fang Jingxuan decided to put that item aside for the time being and immediately opened the last jade box.

Upon opening the box, a perfectly round pill lay quietly inside. Seeing it, Fang Jingxuan's pupils constricted, and he instinctively whispered its name:
"Foundation Pill!"

(End of this chapter)