CHAPTER 464: CHAPTER 152: [SHARPENING THE BLADE]

This woman truly has deep feelings for me, and her deliberate attempts to please me are also genuine.

I have to say...

Chu Keqing, such a beautiful woman who likes me, holds quite a status in the mundane world, yet is willing to stay by my side, like a little maid, deliberately trying to please me, and this feeling is actually...

Quite satisfying!

·

Chen Yan had lunch served by Chu Keqing, who also personally brewed a cup of fragrant tea. The aroma of the tea was refreshing, and it was evident that it must be expensive — given Chu Keqing’s humble status, the tea she offered to curry favor with Chen Yan was naturally of high quality.

Chen Yan sat there sipping tea and reading a book while Chu Keqing did not linger nearby, and soon she bid farewell and left.

An entire afternoon passed, with Chen Yan reading and drinking tea — during which Chu Keqing only returned twice to brew fresh tea for Chen Yan and didn’t stay long.

By evening, after reading all day, Chen Yan let out a long breath. He had finished several Chapters of the "Nanhua Scripture" and felt a sense of enlightenment.

Some Taoist theories resonated well with Chen Yan’s current fragile cognition, giving him a faint sense of understanding. Although it was not enough to restore his self-awareness in a single day, his originally restless mind had indeed calmed a bit.

However, upon leaving, Chen Yan did not know that after he drove away from the academy, Chu Keqing stood by the courtyard gate for a long while, her face faintly showing a touch of loss.

·

Chen Yan drove to the vicinity of the University City and arranged to have dinner with Lu Sisi. He then accompanied Lu Sisi for a stroll around the campus and sat by the school playground for a while, having a heart-to-heart conversation.

Just like many young couples at their age.

With a day of Taoist scriptures, coupled with the gentle warmth of his little girlfriend, Chen Yan wore a gentle smile on his way back home.

After driving back to his neighborhood and parking the car at home, Chen Yan jumped into the Mirror World. He then walked to the house of the little girl, the Yunqiao Great Demon, in the empty mirror world neighborhood.

"It’s good; now that you’ve come here, you at least know to knock on the door," the little girl said, opening the door and glancing at Chen Yan with a slight smile.

Chen Yan entered the living room and saw on the balcony several pots of withered plants, barely clinging to life.

"What’s up?"

"Hmm, about the transaction I promised you last time. You teach me three spells, and I’ll help you find a way to shield from the Heavenly Dao."

Chen Yan took out the "Red Center" mahjong tile and placed it on the table.

The little girl’s eyes narrowed as she picked it up for a closer look, her expression one of astonishment: "This thing..."

Chen Yan then explained the rough use of the Red Center mahjong tile in the hands of the old village chief, and the more the little girl listened, the brighter her eyes became!

She then held the mahjong tile, her fingers rubbing against it, but shook her head: "I don’t recognize the material of this thing, but..."

"I don’t know how to use it either." Chen Yan shook his head, honestly saying, "To be honest, if I knew how to use it, I probably would have used it myself and wouldn’t have taken it out to trade with you."

The little girl gave Chen Yan a look and smiled: "That makes sense, fitting your character."

She stared at the mahjong tile, pondering for a while, and said: "I can’t quite understand this thing either; I can’t even identify the material. But... I can give it a try."

Pausing, she smiled: "Rest assured, I won’t dismantle it violently. This thing is my only hope of regaining my freedom, so I will be exceedingly careful."

Chen Yan nodded, a thought suddenly occurred to him, and he took out another item to place on the table: "And this thing, do you recognize it?"

What he took out was nothing else but a piece of wood.

To be precise, a tree branch as thick as a child’s arm — a branch from the weird trees near the Fierce Beast Village in the Domain Realm!

He remembered seeing caravans trading for this wood in the Fierce Beast Village, exchanging food and tools as commodities, and the monstrous village treating logging and selling this wood as its largest source of income.

The monster tree’s wood must have value.

Upon seeing this branch, the little girl immediately let out a puzzled "hmm". She stared at the branch for a while, her eyes showing confusion, as though she’d thought of something but wasn’t quite sure.

After a moment of serious thought, she slowly said: "I think I recognize this thing — but I can’t really recall its name."

Saying this, she picked up the branch, and with her other hand gently flicked it.

Chen Yan felt a pulsation of Primordial Qi at the girl’s fingertips, causing the bark on the branch to fall off and disintegrate into powder on the table.

And the debarked timber, grayish in color, looked deeper in shade than ordinary lumber’s brownish-white, with a faint aura of decay.

"This thing has a great affinity with Primordial Qi; it’s excellent material for Artifact Creation," the little girl thought for a moment and glanced at Chen Yan: "For example, the Spirit Gathering Array made of green stone in your home — if replaced with this wood as the primary material, its energy-gathering efficiency would increase more than tenfold."

Tenfold?

Chen Yan’s eyes lit up, wouldn’t that mean his cultivation speed would increase ten...

However, Chen Yan immediately reacted, realizing his mistake.

Primordial Qi gathered increases tenfold, but his cultivation speed wouldn’t increase tenfold.

Because a cultivator’s body has a limit to how much Primordial Qi it can accommodate.

The body can only hold so much Primordial Qi; even if the external Qi concentration exceeds a certain level, it seems to provide no additional help in speeding up cultivation.