CHAPTER 243: CHAPTER 243: RANKED 3RD

"Oh, I see, thank you very much, Venerable Family, for your guidance." Hu Zhile’s face flushed slightly at the question and explained, "I don’t understand the Artifact Refining Technique, nor have I heard of the Teleportation Scrolls being able to be empowered, which must have amused the Venerable Family."

He managed to smooth things over, and Jiang Yuan gave Little Eight a Spirit Core Pill to thank her for helping with directions, then hurriedly left the Market.

After completing the first sub-task of the side quest about the apprentice’s mysterious lineage, the system would reward a material package. He was thinking of quickly completing the task and collecting the reward to see if he could upgrade the Alchemy Room to Level Three sooner.

This way, he could refine a Third Grade Antitoxic Pill, which would at least have strong efficacy to fend off the toxic gas from the Sealing Spider Web for a while.

It’s a shame that paper effigies don’t have health bars, so it’s hard to tell how intense the continuous damage is. With over a thousand health bars now, it’s unclear how long he can hold on.

Moreover, he needed to quickly upgrade the scissors.

Before, he thought scissors were only for shearing sheep, and unless the livestock pen upgraded to raise some particularly advanced and special breeds of cattle and horses, he wouldn’t need to upgrade the scissors. He hadn’t expected to use them to gather materials outside, so other tools’ upgrades would have to wait, allowing scissors to jump the line.

The Teleportation Scroll was placed in the Treasure Forging Workshop, spending five hundred Spirit Stones to start "charging," which would take six hours to fully charge.

Jiang Yuan cooked some food at the stove, completed two orders, organized the Storage Box and Storage Bag, and after breakfast, had Yun Mo send him to the Old Dragon Cave.

"Good morning, how’s your mood today?" The little elf You Meng waved her hand to greet him and then motioned for silence, reminding: "The World Tree has suddenly sprouted some odd branches for unknown reasons, wasting a lot of energy for growth. I’ll need your help to trim off the branches that shouldn’t exist."

With that, she handed over a stack of blueprints, "Here, this is how the World Tree should look; please find and eliminate all the unnecessary branches!"

Jiang Yuan: ...

An Otherworldly version of spot-the-difference?!

He took the blueprints; indeed, he needed to use his eyes to compare the differences between the World Tree in the pictures and the one in front of him, with eight angles and heights in total, until all extra branches were pruned to be considered successful.

[World Tree’s Extra Branches: As the third-ranked rare treasure, even the inconspicuous branches of the World Tree are exceptionally valuable. The leaves or branches are rare treasures, usable in medicines or for Weapon refining, and in some worlds, the leaves can even be used as high-level currency.]

Seeing the details, his eyes widened immediately.

What’s this rare treasure ranking? The World Tree occupies the third position; what about the top two treasures?

The other descriptions aside, the last point was quite interesting; in some worlds, World Tree leaves can be used as high-level currency, suggesting that there are World Trees in other worlds too, hence the circulation of leaves?

However, the World Tree leaves are indeed beautiful, pristine as jade and emitting a holy glow, appearing very valuable and noble, with abundant wood attribute energy flowing within. Based on the Cultivation Realm’s settings, it’s highly likely that they can absorb energy in some way, and due to their rarity, they are used as currency.

He cut down a superfluous branch with two or three leaves hanging from it and thought that he should leave a few leaves even if used for alchemy, just in case they could be used in the future.

After staring at it for a while, he finally cleaned up all the extra branches and hurriedly bought tools to mine in the cave.

Six hours later, he needed to go to the Treasure Forging Workshop right on time to collect the fully "charged" Teleportation Scroll, taking a stroll to East Lake Port mentioned by Old Master Wan, looking for the hill where Wan Mingchuan was found back in the day.

If all went well, he could complete Task 1 today, obtain the reward, return to upgrade the Alchemy Room, and refine Antitoxic Pills. Additionally, Jiang Yuan was a bit curious about his apprentice’s lineage; what kind of chosen one story would it be?

A child possibly not even a year old was thrown naked on a hill in the grass. It couldn’t possibly be a case of a true and false young master contest from some family?

Like what’s written in many novels or shown on TV, the biological parents can’t even recall what their child looks like, mistakenly raising or being swapped by a crooked person, still thinking joyfully they’re raising their own child.

When the biological child is finally found, they foolishly protect the cuckoo occupying the nest, saying after raising for many years they’re reluctant to part, allowing the fake young master/lady to bully their true offspring repeatedly before realizing their mistakes after countless torturous scenarios.

Jiang Yuan got angrier the more he imagined these dramatic scenarios while mining.

"No way, I not only have to help my apprentice sort out their lineage but also strictly control it. If there’s a fake or unqualified parent, with no emotional ties, why bother acknowledging their ancestors? It’s better to stay in the small courtyard!"

"Right, let’s see what task will be issued next, and then take little Bai along to help control it!"

"Clang! Clang clang!"

As he was passionately letting his imagination run wild, the Mining Pickaxe suddenly made a muffled sound, even the feel of hitting the ore was different from before.

[Ruby Ore: A special stone material that can be processed into gems]

The overly simple details had Jiang Yuan’s heart pounding with excitement—I finally found a Gemstone Mine!

He enthusiastically mined more, thinking aside from weapon embellishment, they could be sold in the real world for gems; hahaha, it’s a money-making opportunity without any cost!

Finding the first gem uplifted his spirits, and he intensified his mining efforts.

However, finding this thing truly felt like a probability-driven game, digging for a long time without success, only to unexpectedly find one or two just when discouraged, like a carrot dangling before a donkey, constantly enticing him to dig deeper.

Busy until noon, he finally excavated enough of various gems needed for embellishing the Gorgeous Flying Sword, and Jiang Yuan immediately returned to the small courtyard, diving into the Treasure Forging Workshop.

The timing was very precise, right when the Teleportation Scroll had just "charged" completely.

Since the Gorgeous Flying Sword desired by the Mermaid was merely for decoration, he selected Silver Frost Iron, the material he had the most stock of, as the main material, directly inserting the Ruby Ore and clicking for Artifact Refining, which showed it would take five hours to complete.

"Perfect for picking up the finished product after returning from East Lake Port, and when taking the Second Grade Spirit Core Pill to the grocery store for sale; while one hangs, I can go to Crescent Lake to blow the Conch Shell and summon the Mermaid!" Jiang Yuan liked having everything arranged just right, not wasting any time.

Bai Yunqi poked his head out from the Spirit Pool and asked, "Venerable Family, we need to find time to go back and complete the Array arrangement. Furthermore, the more I think about it, the more I feel I might have overreacted. It’s been so many years, it probably should be fine now... Even if that, the anger should be gone..."

"Really?" Jiang Yuan raised an eyebrow slightly, thinking to himself that when you shouted to run back then, you weren’t this calm. "How about... I find time to check it out tonight; if you go recklessly and some friends spot you, it could be trouble."

The other party’s mouth twitched, having no choice but to say, "Fine, actually I’m more eager to go looting corpses, knowing that anyone who has cultivated to a psycho’s Realm surely carries loads of treasures!"