Chapter 70 – War Preparations (7)

“The war between the sects should be happening soon. Should any island be heavily attacked, the island disciples can quickly return to Xuan Qi Island for safety.”

After receiving the message, Lu Ping thought things over. It seemed like the war between sects was inevitable. Moreover, Xuan Ling Sect’s attack would likely be aggressive this time, or Master Immortal Liu wouldn’t have included his latter sentence.

It seemed like the sect was well-informed about Xuan Ling Sect!

Lu Ping replied to the message and returned to his cultivation room. He checked the interspatial pouches of the two Xuan Ling Sect disciples and smiled wryly. After all, not every Blood Refining Realm disciple was wealthy like him.

Lu Ping pocketed 500 spirit stones, several spirit herbs, a mid-grade mystic instrument, and three low-grade mystic instruments together. The rest of the items were some low-grade spirit materials and a few bottles of Blood Essence Pellets.

Frankly speaking, these two disciples weren’t poor at all. They were quite wealthy compared to normal Zhen Ling Sect Blood Refining Realm disciples. After all, Xuan Ling Sect had been the strongest sect in the North Ocean Alliance for more than 3,000 years. Their wealth and foundation was incomparable.

Two days later, Lu Ping received another message sword from Master Immortal Liu. This time, the message was only for him: “Two days ago, Xuan Ling Sect’s patrolling disciples were killed near the waters around Huang Li Island. Stay vigilant and be aware that Xuan Ling Sect may blame it on us and take revenge on Huang Li Island.”

Lu Ping was naturally moved to hear his message. Master Immortal Liu was strict on the surface, but he was actually gentle and took good care of Lu Ping.

However, Lu Ping, the culprit who actually murdered the disciples, was also shocked by the speed of this news. It seemed like Xuan Ling Sect was also well-informed about Zhen Ling Sect!

In the following period, the situation turned calm and quiet again as if the two sects never had any conflicts before. However, the cultivators stationed near Xuan Qi Island could feel the tense atmosphere lurking beneath the unusual peace.

After his breakthrough, Lu Ping’s little charm-crafting tricks weren’t as useful anymore. However, he had built a solid foundation thanks to those little tricks.

In the Blood Condensation Realm, the first thing to do in charm-crafting was to use quality charm paper. They must at least be made from the skins of Late Blood Refining Realm monsters or spirit materials of an equivalent grade.

The spirit inks must also be made from the blood of Blood Condensation Realm monsters or spirit liquids of an equivalent grade. The charm brush must be specifically made to craft Blood Condensation Realm charms.

Fortunately, Lu Ping was prepared.

He had an intact and complete piece of monster skin from the Late Blood Refining Realm big fish and also the skin of the Emerald Sea Spirit Snake—both could be used as charm papers.

He also collected more than fifteen pounds of blood from the first Emerald Sea Spirit Snake he killed. He could use that for the spirit ink.

Lastly, he bought a charm brush made from the fur of a Silver Moon Rabbit at the Third Layer Blood Condensation Realm. He obtained this from the previous auction.

Lu Ping took the big fish’s skin and made it into ten charm papers. He first wanted to craft an Invisibility Charm. He’d been embarrassed that a Blood Refining Realm monster fish had seen through him back at the lair’s entrance. Hence, he chose an Invisibility Charm as his first Blood Condensation Realm charm.

Crafting Blood Condensation Realm charms were much more complicated compared to those at the Blood Refining Realm. Although Lu Ping’s abnormally strong divine sense was almost equivalent to that of a Second Layer Blood Condensation Realm cultivator, he still failed his first five attempts.

At the sixth try, Lu Ping who had been learning from his failures, finally succeeded in crafting an Invisibility Charm. However, judging from its dim lights, Lu Ping doubted whether the charm’s effect could last more than ten minutes.

Among his remaining attempts, Lu Ping could only craft one more Invisibility Charm. This time, the lights were brighter on and Lu Ping estimated its effect could last fifteen minutes.

The Emerald Sea Spirit Snake’s skin was made into 40 pieces of charm paper. After all, Blood Condensation Realm monsters were usually bigger in size and their skin quality was higher. Naturally, the charm papers made from their skin would be of higher quality.

Initially, Lu Ping wasn’t planning to use these high-quality charm papers. He planned to hunt some Blood Refining Realm monsters in their territory and use their skins to train his charm-crafting first. However, he gave this up after considering the tense situation between the sects.

Perhaps it was due to the high-quality charm papers; three out of ten charm papers were successfully crafted into Invisibility Charms. They were also much stronger than the first two Invisibility Charms.

Lu Ping naturally wouldn’t use all his charm papers on Invisibility Charms. Lu Ping took twenty pieces and successfully crafted four Water Escape Charms. Then, he used the remaining twenty to craft Water Shield Charms.

After cultivating the [Sea Coast Wave Listening Scripture], Lu Ping’s arcane energy was fully converted into a pure water element. As a result, he couldn’t unleash the full power of the earth-element pagoda mystic instrument anymore. Although the pagoda’s defense power was stronger thanks to his increase in cultivation base, his opponents weren’t Blood Refining Realm cultivators anymore.

In the end, only five out of the twenty charm papers were successfully crafted into Water Shield Charms. Ten days had passed since he started crafting charms. The difficulty of crafting Blood Condensation Realm charms was much harder than he thought.

Lu Ping could only attempt to craft five charms a day as it required a lot of time and energy. Since he also needed to train his alchemy, Lu Ping wasn’t willing to spend all his time on charm-crafting.

Alchemy was conventionally practiced by fire and wood element cultivators, but Lu Ping was of the water element. Despite this, he insisted on practicing alchemy due to an alchemy method that was proposed by Alchemist Sheng Tao in [Sheng Tao’s Book of Alchemy].

In the book, Sheng Tao believed that not just fire and wood cultivators could become top alchemists. His reason was simple—the cultivators’ divine sense.

Conventionally, an alchemist’s divine sense was used to oversee the overall situation inside the cauldron. This was supplemented with fire element arcane energy to control the flames, and wood element arcane energy to monitor the medicinal pellets’ condition.

However, Sheng Tao believed that if a cultivator’s divine sense was strong enough, he could replace the fire and wood arcane energy with his divine sense. The divine sense could be used to control and monitor.

This method was not just theorized by Alchemist Sheng Tao, but by a lot of other alchemists. They all agreed that the divine sense was useful to alchemy. There were also alchemists who weren’t fire and wood cultivators, but most of them were just low-level alchemists.

Alchemists were assigned into five classes, starting from the trainees, apprentices, alchemists, master alchemists, and lastly grandmaster alchemists. Most high-level alchemists were fire and wood cultivators. Even when the non-fire, non-wood alchemists had a strong divine sense, they were mostly just ordinary alchemists.

But the same could not be said for Lu Ping’s case. His divine sense wasn’t just strong, it was extraordinarily so. He hadn’t practised a cultivation art to strengthen his divine sense, yet it was still twice as strong as his peers from the beginning!

Thus, Lu Ping was determined to become an alchemist, and was confident that he would become a better alchemist than the rest!

In fact, the outcome was determined after Lu Ping concocted his first cauldron of Blood Condensation Realm medicinal pellets.

Back in the Blood Refining Realm, Lu Ping had tried to concoct Mid Blood Refining Realm medicinal pellets. With the help of an abundant supply of spirit herbs, Lu Ping was able to hone his alchemy and maintain a 30% success rate.

But now, after entering the Blood Condensation Realm and mastering the divine sense, Lu Ping’s success rate had improved to 40% for the first time. Lu Ping couldn’t help feeling overjoyed!