Chapter 107
Chapter 107
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 107
Chapter Title: Blueprint
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The hidden lair located in the outer layer of the Great Forest.
The Owl Legion moved with perfect discipline.
Ten galleons continuously disgorged treasures.
After the unloading work finished, the results came in.
The finest puppetry materials, over a dozen pieces of Millennium Five Elements Wood.
In addition, top-grade magic tools, rare ores, centuries-old spirit herbs, spirit trees, spirit fruits, and more piled up like mountains.
There were no dharma treasures, but a few fragments.
The reward for risking danger was sweet.
For this bank run operation, Seoran’s group had invested an enormous quantity of pills and spirit stones.
Without the Mermaid Church’s tribute and financial support from two giant sects, success would have been impossible.
Thanks to that, the Black Bamboo Sect and Gold Forge Sect’s spare funds had hit rock bottom.
First, they needed to replenish the spirit stones they’d used.
They planned to dispose of some unnecessary magic tools.
Ores and spirit wood could be handed to the Gold Forge Sect to process into magic tools and sell for even higher prices.
Spirit herbs and spirit fruits had to be refined into pills for primordial spirit cultivators like Seoran—they couldn’t be exchanged for spirit stones.
There was no need to pull out an abacus and calculate.
It was obviously a massive profit.
All thanks to the involuntary sponsorship from the Ten Great Sects.
Even excluding the spirit cores, it was the same.
The Ten Great Sects had hoarded five spirit cores.
Those scoundrels deserved it.
Seoran carefully opened the lid of a large wooden box.
Three Wood Spirit Cores and two Earth Spirit Cores greeted her.
Honestly, she felt a bit disappointed.
It would have been better if there were Fire or Water Spirit Cores.
Seoran already had an Earth Spirit Root.
One Wood Spirit Core was enough.
Greedily taking more wouldn’t add extra effects.
The remaining four spirit cores would probably be divided among the Black Bamboo Sect and Gold Forge Sect’s primordial spirit cultivators.
Still lingering with regret, Seoran fiddled with a Wood Spirit Core.
Of course, the three ordinary spirit cores didn’t merge into a golden spirit core like some desperate wish.
Finally, after toying with it for a while, Seoran swallowed one Wood Spirit Core and closed the wooden box lid again.
With that, Seoran became a Triple Spirit Root Holder: Wood, Metal, Earth.
This accomplished the goal of her visit to the Eastern Continent.
She’d obtained the desired Wood Spirit Root and, as a bonus, given those pesky Ten Great Sects a good thrashing.
But she didn’t return to the Western Continent right away.
Now it was time to cultivate a Wood-attribute primordial spirit method.
That was the whole reason she’d sought the Wood Spirit Core in the first place.
The Great Forest, brimming with wood spirit energy on all sides, was the perfect place to build pure wood spiritual power.
She wouldn’t need to stay long.
Roughly half a year would suffice.
She planned to head back around spring next year.
Seoran pulled a method manual from her bosom.
*****
The Wood-attribute primordial spirit method obtained by the Black Bamboo Sect through negotiations with the Herbwood Sect was called the Blossoming Prosperity Art.
It meant blooming flowers by praying for prosperity.
Its main effect was manipulating the growth of plants.
Seoran wanted to try out her new power.
So she bought a sapling.
A small apple tree.
Seoran planted the sapling in a suitable spot.
Then she circulated the Blossoming Prosperity Art.
Pure wood spiritual power began accelerating the apple tree’s growth.
The sapling, slightly taller than an adult, grew into a magnificent tree in the blink of an eye.
Soon, ripe apples rained down.
It was as if time had been fast-forwarded.
Seoran picked up a fruit that had rolled to her feet.
By smell or color, it was an ordinary apple.
She split it in half, revealing white flesh.
Seoran stuck out her tongue and licked the apple flesh.
It tasted properly sweet.
It was good enough to sell at market right away.
As she stared at the halved apple, curiosity struck.
What if she used the Blossoming Prosperity Art directly on the apple seeds?
Would it work on seeds that hadn’t sprouted yet?
Or did it only work after planting in soil?
She’d find out by trying.
Seoran immediately used the method.
Her curiosity was resolved on the spot.
The two apple halves in her hands, and the countless seeds inside, all germinated at once.
The roots sprouting from each tangled together and swallowed Seoran whole.
Seoran kept circulating the method without stopping.
The apple trees growing on her hands rapidly expanded.
Soon, countless apple fruits fell to the ground.
And immediately, the seeds inside their flesh germinated.
With each generation, the total number of apple trees increased exponentially.
In this way, theoretically, with infinite spiritual power, a single seed could fill the world.
Depending on the user’s ingenuity, it was a method with endless applications.
Seoran wanted to escape the tree roots now.
So she circulated the Blossoming Prosperity Art in reverse.
The apple trees withered and crumbled to dust.
A truly enlightening time.
*****
After countless experiments, Seoran realized.
The Blossoming Prosperity Art was undoubtedly the finest method.
But it wasn’t without limits.
The first thing Seoran thought of was food production.
Mass-producing crops with the Blossoming Prosperity Art could drastically save labor.
Then she understood why the Herbwood Sect hadn’t done it.
The food duplication plan itself succeeded.
But whether it was worth a primordial spirit cultivator’s time and massive spiritual power was questionable.
Major sects were structured to concentrate investments on promising talents for mutual benefit.
There was no reason for primordial spirit cultivators to slack off and play around just to give condensation cultivators free time.
The Black Bamboo Sect’s current method was more efficient.
Use earth-attribute fertilizer spells, then water-attribute spells to make rain, and done.
Just wait, and the earth would do the rest.
Thanks to Seoran’s animal farm, even condensation cultivators didn’t need to cut grass themselves.
For those reasons, Seoran abandoned the food duplication plan.
Next, she thought of the spirit herb duplication plan.
Like the previous one, it failed.
Spirit herbs, spirit trees, and spirit fruits—plants rich in spirit energy—had clear limits on growth acceleration, unlike apple trees.
For plants with almost no spirit energy, growth speed could be accelerated near-infinitely.
But spirit herbs, trees, and fruits could only be sped up a few times, no matter how hard she tried.
For spirit herbs that took a thousand years to mature, it was just shortening to six or seven hundred years at best.
In the end, Seoran’s best use was growing decades-old spirit herbs for condensation pills.
For reference, the Herbwood Sect was already doing that.
It was literally reinventing the wheel.
But Seoran didn’t give up.
She endlessly pondered ways to use the Blossoming Prosperity Art.
And finally achieved what she wanted.
A brilliant inspiration had struck.
*****
Flashes of inspiration tend to come in unexpected places rather than labs.
Archimedes figured out how to check if our king’s crown was pure gold while sitting in a bathtub.
Then he ran out naked shouting “Eureka!”
Isaac Newton supposedly discovered the law of universal gravitation from an apple falling from a tree.
Whether true or not, who cares.
Seoran’s case was roughly similar.
The inspiration came at Straight Trunk’s house.
She called it a house, but it was just an open clearing.
Seoran was hanging out with her friend Straight Trunk and his friend’s friend Burning Branch.
Meaning, enjoying fertile soil and nutrients.
It was a trendy cultural activity among the Five Elements Treefolk.
With roots buried in fertile soil loaded with nutrients, Straight Trunk asked.
“Is it really true that you, Seoran, closed the Great Rift?”
Seoran, with her feet likewise buried in the fertile soil, replied.
“Yeah, that’s right. It was an awesome adventure that saved the Eastern Continent.”
She wiggled her toes.
Straight Trunk and Burning Branch had urged her to try it, but aside from feeling cool, she didn’t see the appeal.
Of course, since Seoran was human, not a tree.
To a species that absorbed nutrients through roots, wasn’t this basically an indirect kiss? Useless thoughts like that popped up.
Burning Branch said.
“Then the erosion zones stopping their expansion in the last ten years must be thanks to you too? That’s saving Five Elements Treefolk society as a whole.”
Straight Trunk followed up.
“Indeed. Come to think of it, the doomsayers predicting our entire Five Elements Treefolk territory turning into erosion zones have decreased a lot.”
Seoran asked.
“There were doomsayers too?”
Straight Trunk answered.
“Yes, tons of them. Whenever they had a chance, they’d go outside the Great Forest yelling that humans had to be driven out to secure land for future saplings.”
“Ah, yeah. Five Elements Treefolk can’t enter the Great Forest’s depths, right? Because of that netherworld attraction or whatever.”
Burning Branch replied.
“Exactly. It steals all the spiritual power in our bodies. In the end, we lose our spirit energy and collapse under our own weight. As you know, Five Elements Treefolk are huge.”
Seoran asked.
“So spiritual power supports your massive bodies. But can you handle the consumption? I know a gigantification spell too, and when my cultivation was lower, maintaining it was really tough.”
Burning Branch shook her elegant branches and said.
“Five Elements Treefolk bodies are innately excellent at generating and storing spiritual power. Plus, until adulthood, our recovery and storage capacity only increase with age. Unless it’s something special like netherworld attraction, we never lack spiritual power in our lifetime.”
Hearing that, Seoran got an inspiration.
If she used those dozens of Millennium Five Elements Wood pieces right, maybe she could complete a true giant puppet.