Time flows like a white horse passing a gap, and two years vanished in the blink of an eye.
By the winter of this year, Li Yu was already nineteen years old.
Sitting in a private room on the second floor of the Bright Moon Pavilion, Liang Jie was skillfully handling the tea set. The tea leaves slowly unfurled in the hot water, and a rich fragrance immediately filled the air.
Pouring a cup each for Li Yu and herself, Liang Jie spoke.
"If the young master needs to sell Longevity Pills in the future, please don't forget this humble concubine." Having taken a Longevity Pill, Liang Jie's appearance seemed even more youthful. Over the years, because she held a steady supply of Longevity Pills, she had become a favorite among the circle of noble ladies in Ning'an City, and her family's business had grown even more prosperous.
"Naturally, I won't forget Manager Liang." After all, immortals and mortals belonged to different worlds, and who knew when they would meet again next time.
"Then this humble concubine will use tea in place of wine to wish the young master a smooth and soaring path ahead, getting better and better with each day." Liang Jie raised her teacup and toasted Li Yu.
Though she had always wondered why Li Yu had an endless supply of Longevity Pills, a clever person knew that some reasons were better left unexplored.
"I wish the same to Manager Liang." Li Yu picked up his teacup with one hand and drained it in one gulp... Wow, that scalded his mouth!
After finishing the tea, Li Yu left a Longevity Pill for Liang Jie as compensation for these past years. Although each person could only benefit from one such pill in a lifetime and taking more was useless, Liang Jie could still make a huge profit by selling it.
Naturally, Li Yu had also secretly "tasted" one himself.
Li Yu's trip today was specifically to tell Liang Jie that he had decided to stop selling Longevity Pills for the time being.
Liang Jie had diligently sold the Youth-Preserving Pills for him for two years, handling huge sums of silver during that time without ever causing any trouble. Coming to speak with her face-to-face also brought this tie of karma to a close.
For a cultivation practitioner, one's own cultivation was paramount. Once spirit stones were earned, they naturally had to be converted into personal strength.
Leaving the Bright Moon Pavilion, Li Yu hurried toward the Cultivator Market.
Over the past years, he had refined a total of nine jin of Silver Mud. As for the silver slag left after the refinement, he had buried all of it at the very bottom of the peak where his cave dwelling was located, quietly waiting for someone destined to unearth it.
During this period, he sold the Silver Mud in batches to various shops and street stalls in the Cultivator Market, earning a total of nearly four thousand five hundred spirit stones. He believed no one would ever suspect that a minor rogue cultivator like him was carrying such a vast fortune.
Arriving at the bookstore, the book-loving talented scholar Wang Wei who usually sat behind the long table at the entrance had been replaced. While Li Yu was still refining Silver Mud, Wang Wei had informed him via a Voice Transmission Talisman that he had to return to the Wanyu Sect due to urgent matters.
Li Yu naturally told Wang Wei that his "heavenly thunder striking earthly fire" method had remarkable effects, but Wang Wei only replied that as long as it was useful, that was enough. Presumably, for someone so infatuated with books, spirit stones were of no importance at all.
Handing two spirit stones to the clerk, Li Yu walked toward the second floor. Whenever he looked at books before, he had only skimmed through the ones that caught his interest, but this time he decided to carefully read every single book on the second floor.
Of course, before coming, Li Yu had bought several bottles of Qi Refining Powder, a large amount of spirit rice, and Beast Food Spirit Liquid. Lacking no spirit stones, he had already bought another Spirit Beast Pouch during one of his previous trips to sell Silver Mud.
At this moment, Elang was fast asleep inside the Spirit Beast Pouch.
On the second floor of Wanjuan Bookstore, Li Yu spent six hours a day reading books and another six hours in seated meditation and cultivation, periodically taking Qi Refining Powder at set intervals.
From the books he had read, Li Yu knew that spiritual medicines like Qi Refining Powder could not be taken continuously. Taking too much would produce "pill toxins," but after a period of time, the body would naturally metabolize and the pill toxins would disappear, allowing one to continue taking them.
Fortunately, when he first opened the heavenly gates, there were completely no pill toxins in his body, and combined with the limited potency of the Qi Refining Powder, otherwise continuously consuming the two bottles of Qi Refining Powder "gifted" by Guo Yanlin would definitely have caused major problems.
Li Yu was left with lingering fear: if too many pill toxins accumulated in the body, at best the meridians would be damaged and his cultivation would regress instead of advancing; at worst, his dantian would wither and his path to the Dao would be completely severed.
Thus, Li Yu poured his heart and soul into reading, sitting in meditation, and practicing cultivation, only coming out a few times during this period to buy more Qi Refining Powder and spirit rice.
In the blink of an eye, a year passed. Li Yu's cultivation broke through to the 2nd Layer of Qi Refining, and the Little Armadillo's cultivation also rose to the Mortal Grade Initial Peak.
He had just turned twenty years old this year.
In the span of a year, Li Yu had finished reading all the collected texts on the second floor. A newcomer to the cultivation world had finally become an old hand; although his understanding remained shallow, he could now casually handle all sorts of knowledge.
Li Yu went up to the third floor of the bookstore. This was his first time coming here; the layout of the third floor was vastly different from the first and second floors. There was a large hall with several counters, behind each of which stood a clerk, and apart from that, there were rows of numbered rooms.
Li Yu walked up to the counter marked for the "Miscellaneous" section and asked, "Do you have maps of the 'Tianhen Island' and the 'Hengduan Mountains'?"
"We certainly do, but the maps sold in our shop are only abridged versions, recording only the general situation of the countries on the island and the Hengduan Mountains."
"How many spirit stones for the abridged versions?"
Li Yu knew that a detailed map should include the locations of cultivation families within the countries, population numbers of affiliated cities, the number of high-tier cultivators in those families, and so on.
As for the Hengduan Mountains, it should specify the types and strengths of Monster Beasts in each region, the growth areas of spiritual herbs, the safety levels of secret realms and perilous sites, and more.
Such detailed maps belonged to strategic intelligence bought with human lives, and their prices were bound to be exorbitant.
"Both maps cost one hundred spirit stones each," the clerk replied.
"Then I'll take one of each."
"Very well, guest, please go to private room number six to rest for a moment while I go make the Jade Slips for you."
Items sold on the third floor were precious goods, all copied onto each other using Jade Slips. Naturally, the refinement method Wang Wei had given away for free did not count as a precious item.
After Li Yu waited in private room number six for half an hour, the clerk finally brought over the two copied Jade Slips. Li Yu took two hundred spirit stones from his Storage Bag to settle the bill, and the clerk left the private room.
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Li Yu first picked up the *Map of Tianhen Island*, focused his Spiritual Sense, and looked inside. Although he had read books describing the general terrain of Tianhen Island on the second floor, when Li Yu actually saw the map of Tianhen Island, he could not help exclaiming in wonder.
"This Tianhen Island is actually so vast! I wonder if a cultivator could walk through the whole thing in a lifetime?"
The place where Li Yu currently resided was a landmass called "Tianhen Island." Its area was immeasurably vast, and there were a total of seven countries on the island. Meanwhile, the Hengduan Mountains cut Tianhen Island in two like a massive scar.
On both sides of the mountains, seven countries were distributed across the island—four on the left and three on the right—and all of them connected to the Hengduan Mountains. The other end of each country also connected to the vast ocean, and Chu Country was precisely one of the four countries on the left side of the mountain range.
Tianhen Island was already this vast, yet in the upper left corner of the map, the corner of a certain continent was revealed, hinting at the origin of the word "Island" in Tianhen Island's name.
Compared to that continent, Tianhen Island was like a seed inside an orange, showing just how enormous this world was—far beyond what Li Yu could currently imagine.
Commiting the map of Tianhen Island to memory, Li Yu picked up the *Map of Hengduan Mountains*. As for the length of the Hengduan Mountains, it went without saying—it ran straight through Tianhen Island, and its width in the middle was broader than any of the seven countries.
The entire mountain range was shaped like a giant shuttle, bulging in the middle and slowly narrowing at both ends where it connected to the sea.
As for the "Wanan Workshop," it was located in the outer periphery of Chu Country where it connected to the Hengduan Mountains—to be precise, the outer periphery of the outer periphery, because the Hengduan Mountains were simply far too vast.
Suppressing the turbulent emotions in his heart, Li Yu put away the Jade Slips and walked out of the bookstore.
"The world is so vast; although my heart yearns for it, my own cultivation is far too weak right now, so insignificant as to not be worth mentioning. I had better focus on improving myself first."
Li Yu gathered his scattered thoughts and merged back into the bustling crowd of the Cultivator Market.