An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

After dinner, Luo Chen returned to his room and settled into his usual corner.

He began by inspecting the jade medicine bottle he had received from Mi Shuhua earlier. With the keen eye of a practiced alchemist, he took his time examining the contents. Only after confirming that there were no impurities or hidden dangers did he tilt the bottle and apply a single drop into each eye.

After applying the drops, he blinked a few times.

A brief sting was followed by a cool, refreshing sensation.

He blinked several times.

“Hm... feels cooling, soothing even,” he muttered, rotating his eyes slowly. “Other than that, nothing too noticeable.”

He pursed his lips in mild disappointment. “For all the praise this eye medicine gets, there sure aren’t any dramatic effects.”

Still, Luo Chen didn’t dismiss it outright. Runming Pearl Essence was a thoughtful gift, and more importantly, a gesture of goodwill from Mi Shuhua. He decided he would use it occasionally from now on. With moderate usage, this bottle would easily last a month.

Carefully storing the bottle away in his pouch, Luo Chen rubbed his hands and headed into the mine tunnel.

“Time to clock in,” he said with mock enthusiasm. “Gold miner shift starts now!”

Digging commenced!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Since he was deep underground, the sound of Luo Chen’s Mountain Cleaving Monument Breaking Palm wouldn’t reach Crescent Moon Valley. Especially since he had blocked the narrow tunnel, making it even more secure.

An hour passed. Covered in sweat and dust, Luo Chen finally straightened his back and let out a long sigh.

“Damn, this is deep!

He stared at the jagged wall before him, catching his breath. The spirit fluctuations ahead were growing stronger—he was close.

“But I’m almost through,” he muttered, brushing dirt from his robes. “I’ll finish it tonight!”

Later that afternoon, Luo Chen redirected his full attention to alchemy. After all the benefits he’d received from Mi Shuhua lately, he felt a rare sense of obligation to actually deliver results. Otherwise, if Mi Shuhua saw no progress, grew disheartened, and shut down the Alchemy Hall, where would he leech benefits in the future?

It must be said that having a group assisting him had spoiled him. He had no desire to return to the days of handling materials, tending the fire, and refining pills all by himself.

Moreover, even if he refined pills, he would still have to package them and sell them himself. Just thinking about it felt troublesome; it was nowhere near as easy as his current situation.

***

”It’s finally about to break through!”

Luo Chen’s eyes gleamed with excitement, unaware that it was already late into the night. He had informed his two bodyguards earlier that he would be staying overnight in the Alchemy Hall, ensuring no one would disturb him. With the entire place quiet and empty, he could finally concentrate without worry.

Luo Chen took a deep breath and unleashed a Mountain Cleaving Monument Breaking Palm that had reached Proficiency level. A surge of spirit energy condensed into a pale green translucent palm print, which descended abruptly.

Pop!

The sound was crisp and satisfying—like an eggshell cracking. The final layer of stone shattered cleanly.

In that instant, a dense wave of spirit energy surged outward from beyond the broken wall.

Startled, Luo Chen instinctively activated his enchanted robe. Defensive light rippled around him, fluttering without wind in anticipation of danger. He tensed... but nothing happened.

Cautiously, he stepped forward and descended into the newly exposed space.

The small cave he discovered was just under two meters wide. Though cramped, it was more than enough for one person. As his gaze swept the chamber, a glimmer on the floor caught his eye.

Luo Chen’s pupils contracted. ”Spirit stones!”

On the cave floor lay a patch of exposed crystalline ore, dotted with specks of silvery light. Those glistening ores were unmistakably the raw form of spirit stones.

Calling them spirit stones was incorrect.

To be precise, these were raw spirit stone ores!

In the cultivation world, circulating spirit stones were nearly identical in size, shape, and spirit energy content. It was said that spirit stones were found within spirit veins. The large sects occupying these veins mined the raw ores and, using unique methods, cut them into uniformly-sized spirit stones.

These spirit stones were then circulated as currency in the cultivation world, used to buy and gather resources from others. The spirit energy contained within those spirit stones was impure and chaotic.

As a result, ordinary cultivators couldn’t directly absorb it and could only use the stones as currency for trading. Only some large sect cultivators possessed the techniques to craft spirit stones and extract their pure spirit energy.

Even if they weren’t located near spirit veins, they could extract spirit energy from the spirit stones they carried for cultivation. Luo Chen lacked such skills, so the spirit stones he earned could only be spent on expensive qi-nourishing pills.

But things were different now!

In front of him lay a natural spirit vein!

The raw spirit stone ores buried deep within a natural spirit vein radiated energy that could be directly absorbed by cultivators. It was no wonder that all the major sects in the cultivation world built their headquarters atop spirit veins of varying grades—wherever spirit energy gathered, power followed.

Now, Luo Chen had discovered one of his own.

It was only a small one, of course—an insignificant offshoot of the first-tier spirit vein that ran beneath Dahe Market. But that didn’t matter. It didn’t need to support a sect or even a team of cultivators.

But it didn’t need to support the cultivation of many people! It only needed to support himself.

“Sure enough, my guess was correct,” Luo Chen murmured to himself, his voice echoing softly in the narrow cave.

He inhaled deeply, sensing the spirit energy in the air. It was dense and vibrant, far purer than what one normally encountered in the open. He could already feel the energy within his body growing active, stirred by the ambient power around him. The spirit energy he had expended using the Mountain Cleaving Monument Breaking Palm to break through the underground seemed mostly restored.

“This place isn’t large, and the amount of raw spirit stone ore isn’t much,” he admitted. “But it’s enough... enough to sustain my cultivation for quite a while.”

Luo Chen had no intention of mining the raw spirit stone ore to sell it.

First, he lacked the techniques to refine raw ores into standardized spirit stones. And even if he did manage to sell it off—say, to the Jade Cauldron Sword Sect—the spirit stones he received would just go straight back into buying pills and resources for cultivation. That kind of trade came with a hefty markup, and all that profit would end up in the hands of unscrupulous merchants.

Second, and more importantly, raw spirit stone ores acted much like miniature spirit-gathering arrays. They attracted ambient energy and concentrated it within a localized area. If left untouched, the ores would continue to absorb and condense spirit energy—possibly even drawing power directly from the source of the spirit vein itself.

That was precisely why major sects built their mountain gates atop these veins. Spirit veins, when not over-harvested, could regenerate over time. Cultivators who knew what they were doing didn’t just mine spirit stones—they cultivated with the land.

Leaving the raw ore undisturbed would serve Luo Chen far better than mining it for short-term profit. It could even siphon some energy from the source of the spirit vein.

He sat down cross-legged, a grin slowly creeping across his face.

“I’ve been living off Old Man Mi’s generosity for long enough,” he mused. “Time to ease up a bit.”

He chuckled to himself, eyes gleaming.

“Leeching off the Jade Cauldron Sword Sect’s spirit vein? That sounds much more sustainable.”

But then he paused, shaking his head as he corrected himself.

“Leeching”?

What nonsense.

This was rightfully his to begin with.

He paid rent to live in the inner city—paid good spirit stones every month. And yet, what benefit did he receive from the so-called first-tier spirit vein running beneath Dahe Market?

All the spirit energy had been siphoned off by the major shops and even the Jade Cauldron Sword Pavilion using their formation arrays. What was left for ordinary residents like Luo Chen was just a meager amount. The spirit energy concentration in this cave truly belonged to the domain of a first-tier spirit vein!

Having realized this, Luo Chen no longer felt constrained by morality—not that he ever had in the first place.

”Let me see how much spirit power I can increase by cultivating the Long Spring Art here!”

He sat cross-legged, with his palms facing upward and his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth.

The Grandmaster level Long Spring Art had begun to circulate.