Chapter 19: Mechanical Soul Core

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

"Zhi! Zhi!" However, while Lin Jing was fine, for the Pine-Needle Mouse, which had grown up in the sect, the Beast Taming Sect was its home. Now hearing that its home was doing so poorly 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 it wanted to go and clash with the prodigies of other immortal sects.

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

"Decades, for you, is the blink of an eye." Elder Mo was in a wonderful mood and laughed. "You've been tired from harvesting spirit bamboo for days, so just rest well for the night. I'll go ask Elder Yu for your mission rewards and have the Heavenly Feather Crane send 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 Mouse cupped their hands.

The Dragon Ascension Festival, huh.

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

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

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

Elder Mo left with a smile.

After the old man left, Lin Jing and the Pine-Needle Mouse discovered a package on the stone table in the courtyard.

Opening it, they saw ten spirit stones and a bag of spirit rice. It turned out 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.

With this bag of resources, plus the special disciple benefits for the Pine-Needle Mouse promised by Elder Mo, and the spirit stones earned from completing the harvesting mission, Lin Jing felt 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 harvesting spirit bamboo, the efficiency of earning money for storage bags through other missions will definitely slow down. But since we can get a large amount of resource rewards at the Dragon Ascension Festival, if we perform outstandingly, maybe we'll have a chance to get a storage bag directly!"

After Lin Jing finished speaking, the Pine-Needle Mouse snatched the spirit stones from him and dragged the spirit rice away, not looking back, as if it had made up its mind.

"Zhi!"

Its eyes were full of fighting spirit.

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

Otherwise, it would be pure money down the drain.

Better to hand them over for its 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 to blow up the bamboo dragon!

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

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

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

Through their exploration, they discovered that perhaps the synthesis conditions weren't met, or the Pine-Needle Mouse'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 brought a pile of dirt and wanted the Pine-Needle Mouse to synthesize spirit soil; it failed.

He pointed to the pond, wanting it to synthesize a drop of spirit spring; it failed.

He bought over a hundred ordinary cloth bags, wanting it to synthesize a spatial storage bag; naturally, it didn't succeed either.

Including synthesizing low-grade spirit stones in an attempt to summon mid-grade spirit stones, it also ended in failure.

In this situation, one possibility was that the quantity of low-level 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 Mouse needed to break through to synthesize more things. It was currently only in the Qi Refining stage, so it was possible it could only synthesize "plant-based items" related to its own attributes.

Besides that, things of too high a grade might also be beyond the Pine-Needle Mouse's current ability to synthesize.

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

Lin Jing tried to have the Pine-Needle Mouse synthesize Spirit-Replenishing Pills made from plant materials, but there was no reaction at all.

After several attempts, since the Glazed Immortal Pupils couldn't be activated for resources other than basic plants, they stopped trying. They figured that secondary synthesis and biological synthesis probably wouldn't work for now. Fortunately, with white rice, golden 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 Mouse was cultivating in the courtyard, while Lin Jing went to the Scripture Library to borrow and return books as usual. He found that in just a few days, many buildings in the outer sect were already covered in dragon-head lanterns. There were only a few days left until the Dragon Ascension Festival.

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

The librarian brother at the Scripture Library had changed; Lin Jing didn't know him and had no interaction with him, as he only borrowed some free books from the first floor.

Through several days of reading, he learned more about cultivation knowledge. For example, the true qi cultivated by each cultivation method has different properties. The true qi cultivated by the Beast Taming Sect's Beast Taming Technique not only allows cultivators to form blood contracts with spirit beasts, but special beast-taming true qi also has an additive effect on cultivators nourishing the bones and bloodlines of their pets.

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

The difference in cultivation methods and true qi determines which spells a cultivator is suitable for practicing during the Qi Refining stage and also determines a cultivator's combat power during the Qi Refining stage.

And reaching Qi Refining Level 9 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 make future cultivation twice as effective with half the effort. The Ancient Imperial Prince Elder Mo mentioned was one who, on the basis of an innate physique, cultivated two postnatal physiques that complemented each other.

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

"Let's go, hurry to the Central Plaza to see!"

As Lin Jing was preparing to go back, several conversations from the roadside entered his ears.

Hearing this, he changed his pace and also walked toward the Outer Sect Central Plaza.

After arriving there, the plaza was already gathered with over a hundred outer sect disciples. Although it couldn't be called a sea of people, it was very crowded facing the same bulletin board.

"Senior Brother Ziran was right. This Dragon Ascension Festival, whether it's the outer or inner sect, the core activity is still 'Dragon-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, there was a gasp.

[Dragon-Beast Fight] (Outer Sect)

Activity Rules: Any outer sect disciple of the Beast Taming Sect can challenge the "Mechanical Bamboo Dragon (Qi Refining Level 7 cultivation)" 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 at white, with purple being the highest.

When the dragon pearl color reaches red, you can obtain the first tier of rewards.

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

Lin Jing looked over. The highest-level purple reward was actually...

Huh? Not a storage bag?

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

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

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

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