Chapter 19: Mechanical Soul Core

Elder Mo's words made Lin Jing and the Pine-Needle Rat feel hot-blooded. The two of them immediately felt they should do something, so they swallowed their saliva and cooled themselves down.

"Zhi! Zhi!" However, for the Pine-Needle Rat, who grew up in the sect, the Beast-Taming Sect was its home. Now hearing that its home was doing so miserably outside, and that the hope of the whole family rested on itself, a sense of responsibility surged up.

It tugged at Lin Jing's hair, indicating that it wanted to compete with the heaven's favorites of other immortal sects.

"Calm down first, that's a matter for decades later." Lin Jing said.

"Decades, for you, is just a blink of an eye." Elder Mo was in a wonderful mood and laughed, "You've been tired from logging spirit bamboo for several days, so just have a good rest tonight. I'll go ask Elder Yu for your mission rewards and have the Heavenly Feather Crane deliver them to you later!"

"Focus on preparing for the Dragon Ascension Festival. You've been in the sect for so long, it's time to participate in some sect activities."

"Yes!" Lin Jing and the Pine-Needle Rat cupped their hands.

The Dragon Ascension Festival, huh.

If spirit bamboo can be cut, naturally bamboo dragons can be cut too!

Seven days of tempering had already made their bamboo-cutting skills unfathomable.

If the rewards were rich, naturally they had to participate.

Elder Mo left with a smile.

After the old man left, Lin Jing and the Pine-Needle Rat discovered that there was an extra package on the stone table in the courtyard.

Opening it, they saw ten spirit stones and a bag of spirit rice. It turned out that the one-month period had arrived, and since they had been doing hard labor in the bamboo forest for these days, new resources had been sent.

This bag of resources, plus the special disciple treatment for the Pine-Needle Rat promised by Elder Mo, and the spirit stones earned from completing the logging mission, Lin Jing felt that he wouldn't have to worry about spirit stones for a long time to come.

"Since Elder Mo said so, let's prepare for the Dragon Ascension Festival first." Lin Jing said, weighing the spirit stones.

"Without a good mission like logging spirit bamboo, the efficiency of relying on other missions to earn money for a storage bag will definitely slow down. But since there are large resource rewards in the Dragon Ascension Festival, if we perform outstandingly, maybe there's a chance to get a storage bag directly!"

After Lin Jing finished speaking, the Pine-Needle Rat snatched the spirit stones from Lin Jing and dragged the spirit rice away without looking back, seemingly having made some kind of resolution.

"Zhi!"

Its eyes were full of fighting spirit.

But relatively speaking, these spirit stones... it didn't want Lin Jing to touch them.

Otherwise, it would be purely throwing money into the water.

It's better to hand them over for its own cultivation. As for the Beast-Tamer, just wait for the spiritual power feedback.

Besides that... it wanted to take advantage of these few days to hoard hundreds of spiritual energy bombs and blow up the bamboo dragon!

In a flash, a few more days and nights passed.

Lin Jing naturally couldn't be truly idle; there were too many things waiting for him to do.

For example, these past few days, Lin Jing had been studying the Glazed Immortal Pupils with the Pine-Needle Rat.

Through their exploration, they discovered that they didn't know if the synthesis conditions hadn't been met, or if the Pine-Needle Rat's realm was too low and the pupil technique wasn't perfect.

The Glazed Immortal Pupils... currently seemed to only be able to synthesize resources related to plants.

Lin Jing found a pile of soil and wanted the Pine-Needle Rat to synthesize spirit soil, but failed.

Pointing to the pond, wanting it to synthesize a drop of spirit spring, failed.

Buying hundreds of ordinary cloth bags, wanting it to synthesize a spatial storage bag, naturally also didn't succeed.

Including synthesizing low-grade spirit stones, attempting to summon medium-grade spirit stones, also ended in failure.

In this situation, one possibility was that the quantity of low-grade resources wasn't enough to cause a qualitative change.

The second possibility was that the Glazed Immortal Pupils' level was too low and the Pine-Needle Rat needed to break through to be able to synthesize more things. It was also possible that the Pine-Needle Rat, currently only at the Qi Condensation stage, could only synthesize "plant objects" related to its own attributes.

Besides that, the Pine-Needle Rat might not be able to synthesize things of too high a grade at the moment.

On the second day after Elder Mo left, Big Brother Crane delivered the Pine-Needle Rat's extra resources, twenty low-grade spirit stones and a bottle of Spirit-Replenishing Pills.

Lin Jing tried to have the Pine-Needle Rat synthesize Spirit-Replenishing Pills refined from plant materials, but there was no reaction either.

After several attempts, since the Glazed Immortal Pupils couldn't be activated for resources other than basic plants, they stopped trying. They estimated that secondary synthesis and biological synthesis were also temporarily impossible. Fortunately, with white and golden spirit rice, red flying leaves, and spirit bean bombs, these four items were enough for them to prepare for the Dragon Ascension Festival.

"It's getting more and more 'dragon-flavored'..."

The Pine-Needle Rat was cultivating in the courtyard by itself, while Lin Jing went to the Scripture Library to borrow and return books as usual. He discovered that after just a few days, many buildings in the Outer Sect were already hung with dragon-head lanterns, and there were only a few days left until the Dragon Ascension Festival.

"I wonder how Senior Brother Ouyang is doing recently. I suppose he is also preparing for the Dragon Ascension Festival. He is about to reach Foundation Establishment, so he needs even more resources."

The Senior Brother guarding the Scripture Library had changed, and Lin Jing didn't know him and had no interaction with him. After all, he only borrowed some free books on the first floor.

Through several days of reading, he learned more cultivation knowledge. For example, the nature of the true qi cultivated by each cultivation method is different. The true qi cultivated by the Beast-Taming Sect's Beast-Taming Art not only allows cultivators to sign bloodline contracts with spirit beasts, but special beast-taming true qi also has an additive effect on cultivators nourishing the roots and bloodlines of their pet beasts.

In other words, some fire-type cultivation methods might give the cultivator's true qi a burning effect, and some sword canons might make the cultivator's true qi as sharp as sword qi!

The difference in cultivation methods and the difference in true qi determine which spells a cultivator is suitable to practice during the Qi Condensation stage, and also determine the cultivator's combat power during the Qi Condensation stage.

And reaching the ninth layer of Qi Condensation allows for Foundation Establishment... This process is also particularly important, especially for mortal-body cultivators. If there is a good Foundation Establishment method, one can cultivate into a postnatal spirit body. Although postnatal cultivation physiques are not as good as innate physiques, they can also make future cultivation twice as effective with half the effort. And the Ancient Imperial Prince Elder Mo spoke of was one who, on the basis of having an innate physique, cultivated two more postnatal physiques that complemented each other.

"The activity announcement for the Dragon Ascension Festival is out!"

"Let's go, let's go to the Central Plaza to take a look!"

Just as Lin Jing was preparing to go back, several conversations by the roadside entered his ears.

Upon hearing this, he changed his pace and also walked towards the Outer Sect Central Plaza.

After arriving here, the plaza had already gathered hundreds of Outer Sect disciples. Although it couldn't be called a sea of people, facing the same bulletin board, it appeared very crowded.

"Senior Brother Ziran was right. This Dragon Ascension Festival, whether it's the Outer Sect or the Inner Sect, the core activity is still 'Dragon Struggle, Beast Fight'!"

"This time, Elder Yu used spirit bamboo as the core to create a mechanical bamboo dragon to celebrate the festival!"

The disciples discussed constantly, all quite expectant, especially... when they saw the rewards, they gasped even more.

【Dragon Struggle, Beast Fight】 (Outer Sect)

Activity Rules: Any Outer Sect disciple of the Beast-Taming Sect can challenge the "Mechanical Bamboo Dragon (Seventh Layer Qi Condensation cultivation)" at the Central Plaza during the festival. The mechanical bamboo dragon possesses a dragon pearl, which has eight colors: white, red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple. During the battle, the mechanical bamboo dragon will display different colors based on the damage it receives and its own consumption. It starts as white, and purple is the highest.

If the dragon pearl color reaches red, one can obtain the first-tier reward.

The higher the color level, the richer and more precious the reward!

Lin Jing looked over, and the highest-level purple reward was actually...

Hmm? Not a storage bag?

It's over, the squirrel is going to be angry!

Moreover, it doesn't look like something that can be resold!

The highest-level purple reward is actually "Mechanical Soul Core" and "Mechanical Art (Mechanical Beast Manufacturing · Basic Chapter)."

The Mechanical Soul Core is the core material for manufacturing mechanical beasts. Elder Yu... is hiding private goods here. ===== CHAPTER 20 =====