Back inside his house, Xu Feng paid no more attention to the commotion outside and began to ponder his next path forward.
First, he unhooked the battered storage bag from his waist, took out the items inside, and laid them out one by one on the talisman table.
He looked around the barren room, then let his gaze sweep across the items. These things constituted almost his entire net worth.
Dharma tool: One Rank 1 Low-Grade Flying Sword, slightly damaged.
Spiritual rice: Three jin and two liang.
Monster meat: Four liang, starting to go bad.
Market town entry token: One.
Housing rental token: One.
Talisman Paper: One hundred sheets.
Talisman ink: One large bottle.
Cultivation technique: An incomplete version of the Basic Qi Condensation Formula, which could only be cultivated up to the Qi Refining 6th Layer.
Other than these, nothing else remained. Truly nothing.
Not a single medicinal pill, not a single spirit stone.
"I must be the most miserable transmigration traveler in history, right?" Xu Feng muttered, offering a bitter, self-deprecating laugh after taking stock of all his possessions.
Though the rent issue was now resolved, the remaining spiritual rice and monster meat wouldn't last for many more days.
Since he was currently only at the Qi Refining Stage, he was still incapable of complete fasting. It seemed his most pressing task was to draw talismans immediately, then sell them to buy rice and meat to sustain his livelihood.
With that thought, he directly put the unnecessary spiritual items back into his storage bag.
Then he took out a portion of the spiritual rice, used his flying sword dharma tool to shave off some of the monster meat that was about to spoil, and placed them together into the iron pot on the simple stove in the corner of the room.
Finally, he scooped some water from the adjacent bucket and poured it into the pot.
Before long, the contents of the pot began to boil, and the rich fragrance of rice mingled with a heavy aroma of meat drifted out, causing his throat to swallow repeatedly.
"Alright, it's ready to eat!"
Judging that the meal was done based on his predecessor's experience, he picked up a wooden bowl placed beside the stove.
He scooped a towering, generous bowlful of the spiritual rice and monster meat from the pot, then eagerly began to feast.
As soon as he finished eating, he instantly felt a warm current flow through his body. Having experienced this scene multiple times already, he was not overly surprised. He had long since figured out that this was the spiritual qi contained within the spiritual rice and monster meat.
Therefore, instead of washing the pot immediately after finishing his meal, he crossed his legs and sat down, beginning to circulate his cultivation technique to absorb that trace of spiritual qi within his body, converting it into mana to store in his dantian.
However, this trace of spiritual qi was far too feeble. Although it was smoothly guided into his dantian, he could not sense any increase in his mana.
"All right, now that I'm full and well-fed, it's time to draw talismans. But should I continue drawing minor fireball talismans, ice sword talismans, and wooden shield talismans, or switch to a few other kinds?"
Standing before the talisman table and flipping through the talisman-making manual left behind by his Master, he began pondering this question again.
In truth, among the twelve types of Rank 1 Low-Grade talismans recorded in the manual, there were certainly some more valuable than the wooden shield talisman. Given his extreme shortage of spirit stones, such considerations were entirely reasonable.
Yet, after thinking it over repeatedly, he abandoned the idea because it was simply too risky.
Right now, he only had the talisman-making materials for one hundred sheets of Talisman Paper that he had conned out of the shopkeeper at the Gathered Talisman Pavilion. If he failed at drawing a new type of talisman, he might never be able to make a comeback.
With this realization, he hesitated no longer, grasped the Talisman Brush directly, and began drawing the most valuable of them all: the wooden shield talisman.
Half a quarter of an hour later, a crisp synthesized electronic voice once again rang out in his mind.
【Amulet-Making experience +1】
【Amulet Master: Rank 1 Low-Grade (72/100)】
"Whew, nice. Out of three drawn, one succeeded. It seems the success rate for the wooden shield talisman has increased by another half-percent, reaching thirty percent. This is certainly good news.
However, I can't keep drawing talismans nonstop the way I did before—that was out of sheer desperation.
Now that the hardest days have passed, my cultivation cannot be neglected."
On the way back from the Gathered Talisman Pavilion, Xu Feng had already re-established a daily routine for himself, planning to spend three hours a day on cultivation and two hours on practicing spells.
His predecessor had been ambushed and severely injured without any ability to fight back precisely because he lacked self-defense spells. Understanding the malicious nature of human hearts, Xu Feng naturally had no desire to repeat past mistakes.
As for the remaining seven hours, after deducting two hours for sleep, all other time would be dedicated to making talismans and recovering mana. All twelve hours of the day were packed to the brim.
"It's time to practice the Golden Arrow Spell."
According to his schedule, it was now time to practice spells. The Golden Arrow Spell was a Rank 1 Low-Grade spell included within the Basic Qi Condensation Formula.
His Master had previously taught it to his predecessor, but his predecessor hadn't paid much attention and ultimately failed to master anything worthwhile. Even so, how to mobilize mana and pinch spell gestures remained clear in his memory.
Xu Feng pinched a spell gesture, and the mana in his dantian flowed along his meridians to his right hand, finally converging at his fingertips.
Suddenly, a wisp of flame about an inch long burst from the ring finger of his right hand, flickering with a pale yellow hue. It slowly transformed into the shape of a small arrow, then broke away from his finger and shot straight toward the wall beside him.
With a crisp "crack," a shallow arrow mark appeared on the spirit-wood wall, showing a faint whitish tinge. If one hadn't looked closely, the trace would have been completely unnoticeable.
Xu Feng's eyes lit up. Although his spellcasting looked rather unimpressive right now, he believed that as long as he persisted, there would surely come a day when a single strike could completely destroy this wooden cabin.
Far from being discouraged, his confidence only grew stronger.
Thus, after casting the spell once, he would recall the details his Master had taught him back then, make corrections, and continue practicing until the full two hours had passed.
Once his practice concluded, he went straight to bed to rest. His current cultivation was still too low to go without sleep—that was a feat that could only be achieved upon reaching the Qi Refining Late Stage.
When the Chou hour of the next day's early dawn arrived, Xu Feng woke up punctually and began cultivating the Basic Qi Condensation Formula.
This was a dime-a-dozen foundational technique and the most frequently chosen cultivation method among loose cultivators.
Its cultivation speed was excruciatingly slow, and any cultivator with even a modest amount of wealth would never choose it.
Yet, despite not being a high-grade technique, and with him practicing only an incomplete version at that, such a manual was extremely cheap and could be bought for just a few spirit stones.
With each cycle of breathing in and out spiritual qi, the ambient spiritual energy of heaven and earth slowly drew closer to him, gradually being absorbed and finally flowing through his meridians into his dantian.
Through this continuous, repeating cycle, three hours later, Xu Feng finally felt that the mist-like mana in his dantian seemed to have grown just a tiny bit stronger.