Chapter 129: Tasks and Rewards

The players were accustomed to Lin Bai's bizarre behavior, yet they still cooperated with him to complete the tasks.

After all.

Lin Bai was their big financier, and besides, the one thing Beggar Sect disciples did not lack was money; spending three hundred wen to curry favor with Shopkeeper Lin and also obtaining his exclusive engraved weapons was quite a good deal.

One side performed awkwardly, the other side cooperated.

Lin Bai's Craftsman God System tasks progressed rapidly.

【Sell ten weapons at three times the market price... (Completed); Reward: Blacksmith's Bellows】

【Craft a set of combined boutique weapons... (Completed); Reward: Blacksmith's Furnace】

【The recognition of the masses, repeat customers for the Weapon Shop... (Completed); Reward: Blacksmith's Whetstone】

A play performed with give and take.

By evening, Lin Bai had collected a full set of blacksmithing gear, and his success rate for Weapon Refinement had increased to sixty percent.

That is to say.

Using the blacksmithing set to upgrade weapons, he possessed at least a greater than half success rate.

This success rate was actually quite high.

The key was that Lin Bai had the Luck bonus of a lucky person; using the blacksmithing combination set for Weapon Refinement, the success rate was highly likely to be higher than sixty percent.

Of course, the bonus of Luck to Lin Bai depended on whether he wanted to refine the weapon successfully or refine it into scrap?

Luck took effect on Lin Bai, not on the owner of the implement.

If Lin Bai wanted to smash a weapon to pieces and Luck caused the weapon to be refined successfully, then what kind of Luck was that...

【Sell one hundred weapons marked with a sign and win the unanimous praise of customers; Reward: Wuji Junke Zhenfa Jichu】

Having collected the Weapon Refinement set, the Craftsman God System gave out more practical rewards.

At this moment, Lin Bai had nothing else to do, and other tasks were in a state of stagnation; he was happy to continue doing tasks, but the players were somewhat tired of playing house with him, and one by one they found excuses to slip away.

Without the players' cooperation, Lin Bai could not really forge one hundred weapons to sell to strangers and win their praise...

That might allow him to train solid basic skills, but Lin Bai's goal was not to become a Craftsman God; all he wanted was the system rewards.

With so many systems, how could he have the time and energy to train every Skill to mastery...

A day's work.

The little white fox, having practiced its speech for a day, could already fluently say "Black fertilizer volatilizing will turn gray."

Lin Bai habitually fed the little white fox a Zhangdu Pill and turned to the 【Weapon Refinement Master】 who was focused on crafting standard bows and arrows: "Laolian, deal with the bows and arrows later; help me forge one hundred kitchen knife blanks, and that Broken Wind Sword will be yours."

"Really?" The 【Weapon Refinement Master】's eyes lit up.

Compared to the neglectful Lin Bai, he was the one truly obsessed with Weapon Refinement; whether it was refining kitchen knives or crafting bows and arrows, he was keen on making the objects perfect to improve his forging proficiency.

Especially after seeing the amplification array inlaid on the Broken Wind Sword, his desire to become a true Weapon Refinement master grew more urgent.

But at the current stage, with the 【Weapon Refinement Master】's ability, he could not understand the array on the sword at all.

"Of course it's real," Lin Bai said. "After your forging level comes up, I will teach you the basics of arrays; after you master them, you can engrave the arrays you want onto weapons yourself."

Before even receiving the reward, Lin Bai had already advanced it.

"Shopkeeper Lin, you also understand how to engrave arrays on weapons?" The 【Weapon Refinement Master】 looked astonished.

"There is nothing in the world I do not understand." Naturally accepting the Positive Emotion provided by the 【Weapon Refinement Master】, Lin Bai smiled and said, "Every disciple of the Righteous Sect is an all-rounder. Back then, if the Righteous Sect ancestor hadn't been uninterested in contending for the world, how could there be any talk of the Seven Righteous Sects!"

"Bragging!" Jiang Qingqin's figure appeared at the entrance, smiling as she leaned against the door frame and peered inside.

Before the person arrived, the emotion arrived first.

The natives of the Xianxia World were much more sensitive than the players.

By the time Jiang Qingqin walked into the courtyard, Lin Bai had already begun to receive a continuous stream of the pleasant Positive Emotion she provided; he had known she was coming.

"Jiang Shimei, what brings you to my Beggar Sect?" Lin Bai looked at Jiang Qingqin and waved to greet her.

"I came to cultivate a relationship with you," Jiang Qingqin said with a grin. "My master said that even if I have to pay to do it, I must pull you into the Hundred Flowers Valley."

【Pleasure from Jiang Qingqin; +1+1+1】

The little white fox cast a look of disdain at Jiang Qingqin.

The 【Weapon Refinement Master】 shook his head and searched around for iron ingots to start refining kitchen knife blanks; he had no interest in the romantic affairs of NPCs.

Unless Shopkeeper Lin could woo a girl from the Spirit Tool Pavilion...

"Is that so?" Lin Bai said. "Then you must work hard. Righteous Sect disciples are all geniuses of the world; unless it is an exceptionally outstanding girl, she cannot enter my eyes."

"Tch!" Jiang Qingqin rolled her eyes at him. "I won't joke with you anymore. Tomorrow, the Five Great Sects will join the Immortal Supervision Bureau to open up the main traffic routes between the Si Da Jiben Cheng and He Gan Cheng. My master asked me to invite you to go together."

"Not going," Lin Bai refused decisively.

He did not live off experience points; going out to fight bandits was a complete waste of time.

However, the fact that things were progressing step by step according to his requirements did surprise him a little.

It seemed Xu Longyun had put in a lot of effort; otherwise, the City Lord would not have been so cooperative. Having a County Princess with a background as a friend was much better than an insignificant disciple from the Hundred Flowers Valley.

"Really not going?" A trace of disappointment flashed in Jiang Qingqin's eyes; she had always thought she had a place in Lin Bai's heart, but now she was somewhat shaken.

"The Beggar Sect just arrived in Qian City, and there are a pile of things to deal with; I can't get away," Lin Bai keenly sensed the change in Jiang Qingqin's emotions and smiled. "But as a friend, I can host a barbecue feast at the Beggar Sect to see you off."

The task the Kitchen God System was currently carrying out was to host a perfect barbecue, and the task reward was the Zaitixie Zhi Shu.

With nothing else to do.

It would be better to complete this task and incidentally farm the favorability of NPCs and players.

The Kitchen God System had rewarded Lin Bai with all sorts of messy things like ingredient identification, knife skills, and heat control; nowadays, his cooking was no longer that hard to swallow.

Combined with the control over seasonings he gained when refining the Zhangdu Pill, the food Lin Bai made could even be called delicious.

"Alright!" Jiang Qingqin's emotions were instantly stirred up again, and she beamed with joy.

Because he needed to refine medicinal pills, the ingredients and medicinal herbs were all ready at hand.

Lin Bai's knife skills were exquisite; a kitchen knife danced up and down in his hands, and in a moment's time, he had processed a large pile of ingredients until they were spotlessly clean.

After the Beggar Sect Disciples returned one after another, Lin Bai personally made them a barbecue, harvesting a large amount of Positive Emotion and also obtaining the Zaitixie Zhi Shu rewarded by the Chef God System.

Zaitixie Zhi Shu!

Wherever the blade passed, skinning and bone-chopping, meat-slicing and tendon-gouging, it was as easy as turning over one's hand...

Jiang Qingqin's face was illuminated red by the firelight, and she secretly watched Lin Bai.

But Lin Bai's thoughts were not on her; after the Zaitixie Zhi Shu was bestowed, his mind was flooded with a great deal of butchery experience.

Looking at his surroundings again, his gaze was already different from before; all knowledge related to being a chef seemed to have been thoroughly mastered at this moment.

He could easily judge from everyone's standing posture, sitting posture, or even while they were walking, exactly where to strike with a knife to make the opponent bleed incessantly, or to sever the opponent's arm, or to excise a specific muscle from their body...

Even for the little fox beside him, who was holding a skewer and eating until its mouth was full of grease, Lin Bai could judge with a single glance exactly what knife technique to use and how many strikes it would take to neatly separate its bones from its meat.

Hiss!

Lin Bai subconsciously drew a cold breath and began to rethink the Chef God System he hadn't taken seriously before.

If this thing were learned well, it didn't seem much weaker than a Martial Art!

He wondered if the Zaitixie Zhi Shu could be combined with the Six Colors of Cold Pride...

No, if it were just close-quarters combat, in this Xianxia World where one could fly through the sky upon reaching the Golden Core realm, it didn't seem to have much use.

"Hey, Lin Bai, what's wrong with you?" Jiang Qingqin lightly bumped Lin Bai's shoulder, "Your eyes look so scary!"

"Scary?" Lin Bai smiled and pulled back his scattered thoughts, "I was just thinking about how to cook; you know, besides Pill Refinement and Weapon Refinement, I am also a chef."

As he spoke.

The Chef God System issued a new mission: 【Congratulations on mastering all the basic skills of a chef. But the title of Chef God is earned through effort, not by waiting. Next: Use your culinary skills to convince the restaurant chefs on a street; Reward: Lu Xi Caipu and preparation methods.】

Fine!

Another freebie mission.

What culinary skills?

Just find a street with few restaurants and spend some money to have the chefs cooperate, and it could be completed.

The moment he saw the mission, Lin Bai had already thought of a way to complete it.

Jiang Qingqin looked at Lin Bai, wanting to speak but hesitating; after a long while, she finally gathered her courage and said, "Lin Bai, I think you should give up some things."

"What?" Lin Bai asked.

"Greed for too much leads to poor digestion. Nowadays, you do Pill Refinement and Weapon Refinement, and you're still pondering culinary arts—do you even have time to practice your Martial Art?" Jiang Qingqin said earnestly, "A person's energy is limited; you can't be good at everything. If you want to learn everything, I'm afraid you won't learn anything well in the end! Where in the world is there a polymath?"

"For example, culinary arts, in my opinion, don't have much use. After forming a Golden Core, my master rarely eats; even if they eat something occasionally, it's just to satisfy a craving. No matter how good your culinary skills are, who will you cook for in the future? With the time you spend practicing culinary arts, if you practiced your Martial Art more, perhaps you wouldn't even need to eat yourself. Even Pill Refinement would be better!"

Before obtaining the Zaitixie Zhi Shu, Lin Bai might have agreed with Jiang Qingqin's view, but now he didn't think so.

The system would not provide him with a Chef God System for no reason.

In the Xianxia World, learning to cook seemed, just as Jiang Qingqin said, to have no great use.

However, when performing Pill Refinement, the analysis of ingredient properties and ingredient identification had given him immense help, allowing him to refine the Zhangdu Pill and, later, various Rejuvenation Pills.

Now, the Zaitixie Zhi Shu seemed to be able to combine with his Blade Technique.

Don't look at how the Chef God System only rewards various cooking methods now; who knows, in the future, there might be rewards like medicinal diets that nourish the body, or strange things like detoxification, or how to process divine beasts!

It's not like only medicinal pills can increase one's cultivation...

At this moment, most of Lin Bai's achievements were brought about by the initial four systems.

Back then, the four systems suppressed all other systems and were the ones that remained; Lin Bai did not believe the Chef God System would hold the other three systems back.

Therefore, Lin Bai decided to take a gamble; perhaps there would be some surprises in the future!

Besides.

He didn't really need to practice any Martial Art, did he?

Lin Bai smiled at Jiang Qingqin and said earnestly, "Mm, I will consider it."

After eating, Lin Bai used the excuse of practicing his Martial Art to send away Jiang Qingqin, who wanted to stay and practice "Words Manifesting into Reality," and focused on forging kitchen knives and discussing pill formulas with Huayishen.

At midnight, he experimented with using the Zaitixie Zhi Shu while employing the cultivation method of the Six Colors of Cold Pride.

Sure enough.

The two successfully combined; he accurately sliced a rooster from ten meters away using colorful Blade Qi.

Of course.

It was limited to slicing and could not process ingredients as cleanly as real cooking.

After all, Lin Bai's hands were not that long, and he could not control the ingredients purely with Blade Qi.

But this feat still stunned many Beggar Sect Disciples.

Especially Deng Li Buduo, who was diligently practicing the "Xianglong Shipi Zhang," realized the importance of knife skills and, in his spare time, started using a kitchen knife to peel potatoes again.

And the Beggar Sect Disciples finally understood why Shopkeeper Lin liked to use a kitchen knife as a weapon; it turned out that the Righteous Sect had truly researched a set of techniques from culinary arts.

Nothing happened that night.

The next day.

The Five Great Sects set out to clear the mountains and wilderness of bandits and fierce beasts.

Lin Bai held the little white fox, activated Morning Flight, arrived outside the city, and taught it the tongue twister of Cui Cutui.

After the little white fox recited the mantra at the slowest speed, it triggered the powerful Palm Thunder.

Looking at the trees split by the lightning, the little fox was overjoyed.

The Pet System additionally granted Lin Bai 99 points of Fox Affinity.

Afterward, a line of description appeared behind the little white fox's name: 【Congratulations, you possess a pet that can give its life for you; please cherish it well.】

The pet's daily training task disappeared, replaced by new task content: 【Fight side-by-side with your pet once; Reward: Enlightenment Pill (can enable ordinary creatures to awaken their intelligence).】

The Peerless Divine Doctor System hadn't produced a pill formula yet, but the Pet System had actually rewarded a pill first; Lin Bai was speechless.

If things continued at this rate, since other systems were still rewarding pills, it wouldn't matter whether he did the Divine Doctor System's tasks or not.

Finding a leopard in the mountains, he had the little white fox chant a spell and use Palm Thunder to blast it into black ash; Lin Bai easily completed the task of fighting side-by-side with the little fox and harvested one Enlightenment Pill.

But the little white fox, which had already awakened its intelligence, was clearly not interested in the Enlightenment Pill, and its siblings did not need this thing either.

【Fight against an evenly matched enemy to cultivate combat rapport between you and your pet; Reward: 10 Enlightenment Pills.】

Perhaps the Pet System did not want Lin Bai to easily farm pills from it, so it immediately increased the task's difficulty level, cutting off Lin Bai's means of farming tasks and also giving the wild beasts in the mountains a way to survive.

From the Card System, Lin Bai knew that his strength was equivalent to a Golden Core True Person.

Therefore, Lin Bai could only temporarily abandon the Pet System's tasks.

Fortunately, it was just fighting together, so the Pet System's tasks were easy enough to do; as the little white fox served as a warning device and combat assistant, it was impossible for Lin Bai to be separated from it.

And enemies?

Lin Bai felt he was not lacking in that department.

……

The next three days.

People from the Five Great Sects were out suppressing bandits.

Lin Bai spent most of his time staying in the Lianqi Gongfang and the Alchemy Room.

The tasks for the Craftsman God System, the Kitchen God System, and the Peerless Divine Doctor System were advancing simultaneously...

Lin Bai had progressed to the "Renowned in One City" stage for the Craftsman God System, which required his fame as a Weapon Refinement master to be known by ten thousand people; the reward was Earth Heart Fire.

This temporarily stumped Lin Bai.

The Kitchen God System's tasks were the simplest; he just had to throw money at them. In three days, Lin Bai challenged the chefs of three streets and easily harvested recipes for three major cuisines.

And with the help of 【Huayishen】, Lin Bai successfully obtained a new pill formula: 【Poisonous Rejuvenation Pill: Identical in appearance to a Rejuvenation Pill; after consumption, it causes the user's abdomen to ache as if twisted, returning to normal after half an hour, with no benefit to injuries whatsoever.】

The effect of the poison was completely neutralized by the Rejuvenation Pill.

For players without a sense of pain, this was a useless pill, but for the natives, it was a torturous pill, and it could also be used on Rejuvenation Arrows...

Combined with the Rejuvenation Pill, the number of "unserious" pills Lin Bai researched was growing more and more.

……

Three days of Lin Bai frantically farming tasks.

Whether it was players or the natives of the world, no one was idle.

The people of Qian City had grown accustomed to the suddenly emerged Beggar Sect, and they were exceptionally welcoming to this group of lavish, strangely behaving beggars.

After all.

The Beggar Sect Disciples were burdened with advertising tasks.

They scattered money in handfuls, and in just three days, they had plastered the sponsors' advertisements all over the streets and alleys of Qian City.

The newly recruited disciples from Jiamu City had not yet arrived, but under the offensive of money, the scale of the Beggar Sect in Qian City had already reached one thousand people, all of whom were recruited local natives.

Players were very happy to use these high-quality, low-cost natives to do odd jobs for them.

And the players' actions invisibly spread the fame of the Beggar Sect, pushing Lin Bai's Qi Luck Value up by another large margin; this counted as earning while lying down...

(End of chapter)