Chapter 334: Mining

After a brief moment of thought, the presiding judge nodded and spoke in a voice like a bronze bell: "Evidence submission is permitted."

Li Cheng did not rush into the courtroom door; instead, he removed the coconut and flower necklace outside, took out a black lawyer's robe from his backpack slot, and slipped it over his colorful beach T-shirt before stepping inside.

"Hmph, quite cautious."

Howard narrowed his eyes, slightly disappointed. In the Zuigaofa Academy—the courtroom of Yu Fa Tiangong—lawyers must wear lawyer's robes, or the presiding judge may order them to leave.

Tap-tap-tap.

Li Cheng strode confidently down the aisle, returning to the defendant's bench, glancing curiously at the overwhelmingly conspicuous Xuanlei Qilin.

"Why are you only showing up now?"

Yuan Zhixia lowered her voice and quickly summarized the situation: "The odds are heavily against us—Xiao Shui herself has already decided to surrender."

"Uh…"

Li Cheng looked at the anxious "mother and son" Xuanlei Qilin, then at Xiao Shui's ashen face, and could only reassure: "Your son is truly adorable—brilliant beyond measure, inheriting the qualities of both parents. Truly a qilin child."

Are you writing haiku here? Should I add a line about the Uragawa River too?

The Zhongtian Beiji, secretly activating his skill to amplify his hearing, nearly choked on his own saliva, cleared his throat, and declared loudly: "If the defense has evidence, present it quickly."

Don't hide it and waste everyone's time."

After the initial panic passed, Zhongtian Beiji and the others calmed down.

Indeed, Xiao Shui's theft of Master Miao Yin's genetic material to create the Xuanlei Qilin bastard was already settled fact—the DNA test report had already been released, and there was no way to overturn it.

Even if Master Pi Fu had just gone outside to dig up dirt on Master Miao Yin, it wouldn't change the outcome.

"Calm down, please."

Li Cheng organized the documents on the table, his gaze sharp: "Before I begin my statement, I'd like to ask a question: What is a spirit stone?"

Huh?

"What kind of question is that?"

Among Master Miao Yin's circle of friends, a noblewoman furrowed her brows and muttered: "Spirit stone? It's just the rock beside a spirit vein."

"Exactly!"

Li Cheng snapped his fingers, casually saying: "In my previous life, I was a mortal, unfamiliar with the ways of the Cultivation Realm, so I spent some time at the library researching. Just as gems form alongside volcanoes, spirit stones form alongside spirit veins—originally ordinary rock, gradually transformed over millions of years by infused spiritual energy, becoming translucent and crystalline, storing spiritual energy within, serving as the Cultivation Realm's currency."

"Cultivators use spirit stones in two ways: one is to hold them directly and absorb the internal spiritual energy; the other is to arrange them into arrays and absorb energy through the array."

"Once used, a spirit stone becomes transparent and brittle, unusable again."

"The question then arises: why doesn't anyone simply place rocks beside spirit veins to artificially create spirit stones?"

The little girl beside the noblewoman rolled her eyes: "Obviously because it takes too long."

"Precisely. Ordinary earthly rock requires at least a hundred thousand to a million years to transform into a spirit stone. Even for cultivators before the Heaven-Earth Separation, that's far too long. Thus, no one bothers to artificially create spirit stones."

"Throughout history, many sects have attempted to create spirit stone substitutes—but whether artifacts or secret treasures, their efficiency in absorbing spiritual energy from spirit veins is slow, and their upper limit for storing spiritual energy remains low, never fully replacing spirit stones."

Li Cheng pulled out several pages stapled together from the pile of papers: "Two thousand seven hundred years ago, the Void-Exploring cultivator Fa Bushi, after years of dedicated research, proposed a theory—that by altering the terrain and reshaping feng shui, one could increase the efficiency of spirit veins in generating spirit stones, reducing the time from a hundred thousand years to a thousand."

"Major sects took great interest in his theory, pouring massive funding into him through angelic votes—but he never produced results."

"Fa Bushi himself attempted to flee after donating funds, but was killed mid-journey when creditors rammed him with a truck-shaped flying sword."

"Yet his research papers were preserved and became a foundational pillar of today's 'Dongfu Fengshui Studies.'"

"Xiao Shui Group's real estate business uses his theory to modify cave dwellings for clients, enhancing the efficiency of spirit veins in gathering spiritual energy, thereby raising property prices."

"Wait, what are you trying to prove?"

Howard frowned. The content Li Cheng described was no secret in the current Cultivation Realm—every sect besides Xiao Shui Group had done the same.

"People focused on Fa Bushi's bizarre death and his first paper, but few noticed that before he fled, he left half a paper unfinished."

Li Cheng pulled out a second stack of papers, his smile fading: "In this unfinished paper, he proposed a second hypothesis—that a spirit vein is, in fact, a naturally formed artifact."

"A spirit vein has no will—it functions like a casting mold, transforming flowing heavenly and earthly spiritual energy into spirit stones."

"The more refined the artifact, the higher its efficiency—and thus the greater its rate of spirit stone production."

"Is it possible, then, to bury a high-level cultivator directly into a spirit vein, using his dantian, soul, and meridians to replace the spirit vein and generate spirit stones?"

Before Zhongtian Beiji could object, a young judge on the bench shook his head: "Impossible. The cost-benefit ratio is far too low."

"Correct. Whether Fa Bushi's unfinished paper or countless later experiments, all prove that at least a Nascent Soul cultivator must spend a full month to generate a single spirit stone."

"The cost-benefit ratio is so abysmally low that almost no one attempts it."

"I just took a flying sword trip to visit several destitute minor sects. Their sect leaders were barely Golden Core level, devout followers of Fa Bushi's theory, whose cultivation methods were entirely focused on generating spirit stones—completely ignoring combat or longevity."

"The leader lies daily on a low-grade spirit vein, producing one spirit stone every three months—his entire sect survives on that income."

Li Cheng's expression was strange—half-smile, half-sneer—as he said: "I spent some money to read their sect's cultivation methods, then lay down on a spirit vein myself and experienced it firsthand—and discovered a critical blind spot."

I just rode my flying sword and visited a few very down-on-their-luck minor sects; their sect masters were only at Core Formation level, and they subscribed to the theory of dharma-generosity, with all their sect techniques aimed at hastening the birth of spirit stones, completely disregarding combat or longevity.

"But in my observation, a spirit vein is more like a dynamic instrument—it alters its output based on the input it receives."

Li Cheng's expression was strange, somewhere between a smile and a cold smirk, and he said, "I took out some money, read through their sect techniques, and lay down inside a spirit vein to experience it firsthand, and discovered a critically important blind spot.

In the theory of dharma-generosity, a spirit vein is like a casting mold.

The courtroom fell silent. The bald judge on the bench slowly spoke: "Could you explain that in more detail?"

"Certainly."

Li Cheng nodded: "The reason spirit stones are so difficult to produce is because a single strand of spiritual energy carries immense information."

"It first passes through deep-sea spirit veins, acquiring trace amounts of Xuanming attributes. Then it flows through famous mountains and great rivers, acquiring trace amounts of earth and wood attributes."

"As spiritual energy freely flows through heaven and earth, each passage through a spirit vein makes it slightly more complex."

"Until, finally, it flows through a spirit vein with the perfect environment—where the energy is intercepted, transformed, and solidified, becoming a spirit stone."

It first passes through deep-sea spirit veins, picking up trace amounts of the Profound Dark attribute. Then it passes through famous mountains and great rivers, picking up trace amounts of the Earth and Wood attributes.

Spiritual energy flows freely through the world, and each time it passes a spirit vein, it becomes slightly more complex.

Until it happens to flow past a spirit vein in a suitable environment, where the spiritual energy is intercepted, transformed, and solidified, ultimately becoming a spirit stone.

What the spirit veins actually do is a bundled-computation function. They compute every spirit vein that a wisp of spiritual energy has passed through, and selectively strip away the chaotic attributes within it, transforming it into a spirit stone that cultivators can absorb with ease.

And because there are countless spirit veins between heaven and earth, with spiritual energy flowing in random directions, no two wisps of spiritual energy are ever identical — and so there is no technique that can mass-produce the same kind of spirit stone."

Wait.

The more Zhong Tian and Bei Ji listened, the stranger the expressions on their faces became.

Distributed nodes, bundled computation, tamper-proof and unforgeable — why does this sound so much like…

"A blockchain. The flow trajectories of spiritual energy between heaven and earth are the transaction records; the distribution of spirit veins is the blocks; the spirit veins themselves are the mining rigs; and spirit stones are the mining output."

Li Cheng said, "I'm saying all this not because I want Miaoyin Ju Shi to give up the divorce, but to demonstrate a brand-new business model that can benefit the entire Cultivation Realm.

In this business model, from Foundation Establishment newbies at the bottom all the way up to Mahayana-stage ancestors at the top, everyone in the Cultivation Realm can mine and everyone can get rich."