Li Yu walked inward for half a quarter of an hour and took another step. The gate talisman in his hand flashed slightly, the white mist completely dispersed, and the view suddenly opened up before him.
The spiritual Qi here was somewhat denser than under the stone archway, and Li Yu looked out into the distance.
He saw a three-li-long grand avenue cutting straight through the valley. On both sides of the avenue, pavilions of various shapes stood in an orderly distribution. The crowd on the street bustled, all exuding fluctuations of spiritual power, and various shops saw a constant stream of people coming and going, bustling with life.
Seeing so many cultivators for the first time, Li Yu was momentarily stunned.
From Huaian City all the way to Wanan Workshop, Li Yu had spent nearly a year and a half, encountering only Guo Yanlin, that "delivery boy of wealth," along the way.
This had led Li Yu to mistakenly believe that the marketplace could not be very large, nor would there be many cultivators.
Yet a second thought made the reason clear to Li Yu: the spiritual Qi in the secular world was far too thin for cultivators to practice, and in his shoes, he would never be willing to return to the mortal realm either.
Walking along the grand avenue of the marketplace, Li Yu looked left and right, filled with curiosity about everything.
"Brother, looking for a room? Our humble inn offers fresh silver-spotted deer, and the rooms come with low-grade spirit-gathering arrays. Cultivating in your room after eating spiritual meat yields twice the result with half the effort." As Li Yu passed an inn named "Tongfu Inn," a waiter at the entrance extended a hand and called out.
"Another time, definitely." Li Yu cupped his fists in salute and replied.
Along the way, people called out to Li Yu from time to time, selling either spiritual herbs or spirit tools, full of the lively mundane atmosphere.
After walking about ali, Li Yu found Wanjuan Bookstore. Using "bookstore" as the name for this structure was obviously quite inappropriate.
This was a three-story pavilion covering a vast area, with white walls and black tiles, solemn and antique. The wooden pillars on both sides of the main entrance were at least thick enough for two people to embrace.
Li Yu stepped inside. Behind a long table at the entrance sat a man who was reading a book with great relish. He was around thirty years of age, handsome in appearance, dressed in a scholar's robe and cap, and looked cultivated and gentle.
"Pleased to meet you, Fellow Daoist. Which floor are you heading to?" Seeing that Li Yu had an unfamiliar face, the man spoke up to ask.
"This is my first time here. Is there a difference?" Li Yu asked in confusion.
"The first floor contains secular literature of the hundred schools, ancient and modern works, poetry and songs, odd tales, and strange stories; the second floor holds various theoretical knowledge of the cultivation world, the hundred arts of cultivation, secret realms, and dangerous places, covering a wide variety of subjects; the third floor is a place for buying and selling cultivation techniques, pill recipes, formation diagrams, and manuals for identifying spiritual beasts and herbs." The man put down his book and answered earnestly.
"How many spirit stones does it cost to go to the first and second floors?" Li Yu knew that gold and silver from the mortal world were definitely useless here.
"The first floor does not require any expense, as long as you give priority to our shop whenever you need to buy or sell cultivation techniques in the future. Entering the second floor costs two spirit stones each time, and if Fellow Daoist requires a copied edition, it costs one spirit stone per book." The man answered again.
"Many thanks for informing me, Fellow Daoist. May I ask if going to the second floor only costs two spirit stones for a single entry, regardless of how long one stays?"
Li Yu possessed only seven spirit stones in total. Though he was thirsty for knowledge, his purse was truly shy. If he could keep reading by just spending two spirit stones, he decided he would stay for at least ten days to half a month before coming out.
"Naturally. The shop's revenue relies entirely on the third floor; the first and second floors are merely a minor accompaniment." The man replied with a smile. He loved to read and felt a natural fondness for anyone willing to spend a great deal of time reading.
Before embarking on cultivation, the man had been a well-known rising star in the literary world of Chu Country, and by his twenties, his essays were circulated throughout the various regions of Chu.
Grand masters of literature had all declared that he would surely become a great Confucian scholar in the future. Later, he was discovered by the Wanyu Sect and brought into the fold. His spiritual root aptitude was exceptionally fine—an exceptional wind-type spiritual root—and he even possessed the "Light Cloud Dao Body."
With an aptitude like his, the man should have remained in the core territory of the sect to cultivate, but he insisted that "in books there are roads to immortality; cultivation and reading are both fulfilled," preferring to give up immortal cultivation rather than abandon reading.
The Wanyu Sect could not win against him and simply arranged for him to be stationed here. Later, seeing that his cultivation progress had not fallen behind either, they stopped pushing him further.
Li Yu handed two spirit stones to the man, thanked him once more, and walked up to the second floor.
Arriving at the second floor, numerous bookshelves were arranged across the spacious room, holding various categories of books. Li Yu's eyes glowed with light as he excitedly plunged into the ocean of knowledge.
The books on the shelves covered talisman crafting, spiritual vein cultivation, spiritual ore identification, array basics, elixir usage, detoxification methods, spirit tool forging, spiritual fire and water identification, and so on.
Naturally, the books on the second floor contained only basic knowledge, and all the contents merely scratched the surface. For deeper and more detailed information, one had to go to the third floor to purchase it.
Yet for Li Yu, these happened to be precisely the things he needed most at present.
When hungry, dry rations washed down with plain water; when tired, sleeping on the floor.
Thus, Li Yu remained for a full month before reluctantly walking back down the stairs.
Had the little fellow inside the Spirit Beast Pouch not sent out a sense, telling Li Yu that it was about to starve to death, Li Yu would not even have wished to come out.
Giving the name of the book to the man, Li Yu wanted to copy one and take it away.
Having read the relevant books, he understood that one only needed to know the title of the book, use the master jade slip of that book, and employ a special spirit tool to print out a copy.
The man's spiritual sense swept across a huge cabinet behind him, and a jade slip flew out. The man then took out a rectangular box from his Storage Bag, placed the jade slip onto the groove on the surface of the box, and a short moment later, the man opened the box, revealing a brand-new, successfully copied book.
Holding the book titled *Outline of Spirit Tool Usage*, Li Yu left the bookstore under the man's gratified gaze.
Upon leaving the door, Li Yu headed straight for the Spirit Beast Pavilion in the marketplace. Through his reading, Li Yu knew that mortal-grade primary-stage spirit beasts only needed to consume spiritual liquid rich in spiritual Qi.
Spending a single spirit stone, Li Yu purchased a small half-bottle of spiritual liquid at the Spirit Beast Pavilion. With limited financial resources, he had no choice but to buy a little first.
In a place where no one else was around, Li Yu used his spiritual sense to control the spiritual liquid, dropping a few drops into the Spirit Beast Pouch. The Little Armadillo happily absorbed them all and indicated that it was still not enough, prompting Li Yu to drip a few more drops inside, whereupon the Little Armadillo finally fell fast asleep in contentment.
He knew that while such low-grade spiritual liquid was cheap, its spiritual Qi was extremely scarce, utterly incomparable to the spiritual liquid he had previously concocted using Qi Refining Powder.
Yet you get what you pay for; a bottle of Qi Refining Powder cost twenty spirit stones, whereas a bottle of beast-food spiritual liquid sold for only three spirit stones.
The spiritual liquid concocted from a single bottle of Qi Refining Powder previously had lasted the Little Armadillo half a year, but the small half-bottle of beast-food spiritual liquid in his hands now would probably only suffice for the Little Armadillo for a month.
Li Yu's original seven spirit stones had seen three spent at the bookstore and one spent on the beast-food spiritual liquid, leaving him with only three.
Li Yu knew in his heart that unless he found a way to earn spirit stones, his subsequent path of immortal cultivation would be fraught with difficulty. With his fivefold Spiritual Root aptitude, it would be even harder to improve his cultivation without a large quantity of spiritual pills.
Although the spiritual Qi in the marketplace was dense, Li Yu had tried it: improving cultivation by relying on seated meditation was only slightly faster than the method of directly absorbing spiritual Qi from spirit stones.
With a pseudo-spiritual root aptitude, spiritual Qi conversion was too slow through seated meditation, making the Mid-Stage Qi Refining a distant prospect.
How to earn spirit stones had become his most urgent matter at present. The remaining three spirit stones were only enough for one more trip to the bookstore; where should he go from there once that was done? For now, the matter of reading books had to be set aside.
Through his reading, Li Yu had learned that the most important things for a cultivator in the realm of cultivation were "wealth, companions, method, and land." Wealth: various cultivation resources; companions: interpersonal relationships favorable to immortal cultivation; method: various cultivation techniques convenient for practice; land: a safe and spirit-rich place for practice.
Among "wealth, companions, method, and land," wealth came first. Cultivators relied on the hundred arts of cultivation to gather wealth, among which the five best methods were "pills, tools, talismans, arrays, and botany," namely alchemy, weapon forging, talisman making, formations, and spiritual planting.
Yet wanting to master these five fields without a complete set of theoretical knowledge or qualified teachers—learning them purely on one's own—was exceedingly difficult.
He understood now that a cultivator like him, lacking both a family and a sect, was called a "rogue cultivator."
The advantage of a "rogue cultivator" was having no constraints from a family or sect, personal freedom, and uninhibited actions.
Equally, the disadvantage was the lack of various cultivation resources, suitable techniques, teacher guidance, and safe spiritual vein cultivation sites provided by families or sects.
Therefore, barring great fortuitous encounters, the future of a "rogue cultivator" was utterly bleak.
At present, Li Yu was quite "bleak."
The pressing task of the moment was to earn spirit stones, because the Little Armadillo's belly would soon be growling.
He could endure a bit of hardship and eat dry rations, although he now knew that Qi Refining Stage cultivators generally ate "spirit rice"—just a small handful placed in a bowl, with a little clear water added, and cooked using a fireball spell to yield a bowl of fragrant rice rich in spiritual Qi.
He already had a plan in mind for earning spirit stones, but whether it would succeed or fail depended on a trip to Ning'an City to find out.
Most importantly, he needed to test whether that man in the bookstore was truly knowledgeable.
The origin of this was that during Li Yu's month in the bookstore, the scholar-robed man had frequently gone upstairs to change books, and through this back-and-forth, they had grown somewhat familiar with each other.
Li Yu knew his name was Wang Wei, a great talent, and among the bookshelf belonging to "ancient and modern works" on the first floor of the bookstore, several books were written by him.