A small vein of spirit stones can produce 100,000 spirit stones a year. In theory, if left undiscovered for hundreds of years, it could yield tens of millions; if left for thousands of years, hundreds of millions.
However, imagination is beautiful, but reality is cruel. A small spirit stone vein that has gone undiscovered for ten thousand years is worth exactly the same as one that has been undiscovered for a hundred years. This is because spirit stones cannot be preserved in their natural state for long periods; within a few decades, they naturally dissipate into spiritual energy. This, in fact, is the fundamental source of the spiritual energy found throughout the cultivation world.
The pouches that cultivators use to store spirit stones possess special properties that prevent them from dissipating into spiritual energy. In this central region, where the spiritual energy is so dense, a massive amount of spirit stones must be dissipating every single day. Of course, most of these dissipate deep underground, even beneath the magma layers, at depths that even high-level cultivators cannot reach. Almost every cultivator in the world of immortality knows that there are great horrors deep within the earth; even a Nascent Soul Ancestor would not dare to exhaust their dharma power to dig toward the earth's core.
Chapter 116