Kays Translations

Chapter 169: Treasures

Li Xian immediately froze like a statue!

The next moment, he burst into laughter. “This is impossible, absolutely impossible, no way. Hehe, it’s impossible. That… hehe… is there a way to reverse it?”

Xu Ren also laughed, “Yes, yes, impossible, absolutely impossible.”

Li Yuanming grinned but said nothing.

Hearing Xu Ren agree, Li Xian was brimming with confidence. “It’s definitely impossible. Uh… Sir, which part are you referring to?”

“I mean reversing this arrangement is impossible! When the heavens initiate killing intent, it signifies that the overall situation is set and cannot be altered. If we were to ask the young master to abandon Anyang now, he absolutely wouldn’t do it. Similarly, asking others to give up everything they’ve gained is also impossible; so, it cannot be changed.”

Li Xian’s face darkened, and he walked away with a flick of his sleeve. “Hmph, let’s wait until Ling Zhifeng performs the sacrificial divination before discussing further.”

Throughout the day, Li Xian seemed somewhat distracted—it was inevitable. The impact was immense! First, he discovered strange phenomena, seemingly visible only to him. Then, he learned that the current Emperor of the Great Xia Kingdom intended to bury the entire empire with him. Later, he found out that the Emperor had a poison scholar by his side, and there was a significant chance that this scholar was none other than—Li Yulong!

All these revelations had a profound impact on Li Xian. By the end of the day, he still felt unsettled.

That evening, Li Xian suddenly felt a stirring in his heart—a sense of déjà vu swept over him. Bits of spiritual light began to flow from all directions, converging into his body. His cultivation realm advanced rapidly; within moments, he broke through from the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment to the late stage, and eventually to the mid-level of the late stage.

Afterward, the spiritual light that had accumulated in Li Xian’s body gradually began to flow toward others.

“Yan Ze’an has taken complete control of Anyang!” Li Xian understood clearly. Yan Ze’an was indeed a prime minister-level talent; within a month, he had fully taken control of the former Zhongshan County!

A small Anyang had swallowed Zhongshan County, a territory 50 to 60 times its size, in one go, transforming overnight into “Anyang County.” This expansion brought immense benefits to Li Xian.

The advancement in his cultivation level eased the panic in Li Xian’s heart. Greedily inhaling the fragrance of Xia Qingqing’s hair, he drifted into a hazy sleep—planning to refine a few more spirit stones to enhance his cultivation tomorrow.

The next morning, the high-level officials of Anyang collectively entered seclusion. With the expanded territory, covering an entire county’s area, their abundant fortune enabled Xu Ren and others to break through one after another. By mid-morning, Li Xian had distributed over 800 spirit stones!

This filled Li Xian with emotion—how regrettable it is to lack money when you need it! Spirit stones, there simply weren’t enough! As his stock of spirit stones dwindled, Li Xian grew increasingly anxious. This was only the first collective upgrade, and his reserves were nearly exhausted. How would he handle future upgrades? He couldn’t possibly owe spirit stones, as that would demoralize people.

Debts could be tolerated, but not when it came to spirit stones! Every advancement in cultivation is a rare opportunity, and no one can guarantee that such chances won’t gradually disappear. If the opportunity were to vanish, Li Xian would bear the stigma of “destroying someone’s chance.”

In the world of cultivation, nothing is hated more than sabotaging another’s opportunity—it is an unrelenting enmity.

If such a situation were to occur even once, all of Li Xian’s past efforts could vanish overnight.

During this upgrade, all mid- and high-level personnel below the late stage of Foundation Establishment experienced significant advancements. Many who were close to breaking through also succeeded, including numerous soldiers and others.

This breakthrough brought Li Xian numerous benefits, especially for those who were busy with research. Upon discovering their cultivation had improved, they became even more diligent in their studies. Since research could lead to breakthroughs in cultivation, and even seemed to have better results than meditation, it was only natural that they would dive into research passionately.

Only Ling Zhifeng remained seated at the altar, performing the sacrificial rites and offering prayers to the heavens. He sat there for three full days without eating, drinking, or sleeping. After three days, Ling Zhifeng finally opened his eyes and slowly uttered four sentences, sixteen words: “The Seven Stars Shine Together, the Emperor Star Will Fade; the Sun Rises in the East, the Stars Stretch Across the Four Corners.”

“The Seven Stars Shine Together?!” Li Xian’s eyes flashed, recalling something similar said by Ge Zhengfeng back at Yun Ding Mountain: “The Seven Stars Shine Together, the Emperor Star Fading.” The difference was that Ling Zhifeng’s divination result was “the Emperor Star Will Fade.”

Moreover, two additional sentences followed: “The Sun Rises in the East, the Stars Stretch Across the Four Corners.”

On the surface, this seemed to suggest that a new emperor would rise from the east, dominating all directions.

Xu Ren suddenly asked, “The Sun Rises in the East, do you know specifically which location this refers to?”

Ling Zhifeng shook his head. “The heavenly secrets are elusive. To be able to predict these four sentences is already my limit. From what I see, the prince who has recently arrived from the east cannot be overlooked! Also, the Yuan family in the south seems to have many capable individuals.

Of course, one thing must be clarified—there is a phrase in divination that goes, ‘Heaven’s will is not constant.’

This means that fate is not fixed and can change over time. Therefore, the result of the divination only reflects the current heavenly will and fate, not the final outcome.

Although changing fate is difficult, there are countless capable people in the world, and who knows, perhaps someone can change fate!”

Li Xian nodded slightly, accepting this advice. Ling Zhifeng quickly took two spirit stones and went into seclusion.

A few days later, Li Xian finally received good news—the news he had been waiting for—the oil extraction was successful! More precisely, it was a preliminary success, confirming Li Xian’s hypothesis that oil was indeed a valuable resource!

Once the news arrived, Li Xian couldn’t wait and immediately set off for the valley where the oil was discovered.

Li Xian traveled by flying machine. In just one month, a makeshift residential area and a simple factory had been established next to the valley.

Zhou Likun, wearing a bright smile, led everyone in a proud manner to welcome Li Xian. Basically, all the senior leaders of the Brilliant Stars Group were there.

Li Xian walked up to Zhou Likun, laughing, “Congratulations! You’ve found a new resource for the cultivation world!”

At this moment, Zhou Likun stopped smiling and, with great seriousness, bowed to Li Xian. “Zhou Likun, on behalf of the Zhou family’s ancestors, thank you, young master, for the opportunity.”

“I accept your gratitude. From now on, the oil department will be under your management. Now, let’s go and see your achievements.”

“Please.” Zhou Likun led the way, with Li Xian, Xu Ren, Li Yuanming, Fang Shijing, Ling Zhifeng, Xia Qingqing, and others following behind. They walked toward the back of the makeshift factory.

As they walked, Zhou Likun explained, “For safety, we’ve set up the factory outside the oil valley, one kilometer away from the oil source.

We transport the oil using iron pipes and pumps.

At present, we’ve solved the initial separation of the oil. The methods we have are centrifugal and distillation, which can only perform a preliminary separation. However, we’ve already separated several useful substances, and the young master will understand once you see them.”

Soon, they arrived at the back of the factory. The most obvious feature was a series of complex pipes, equipment, and other items that Li Xian was quite unfamiliar with, which made the setup starkly different from the oil refineries he had imagined. The use of formations had made many things quite different.

A three-foot-wide iron pipe extended into the distant valley’s oil, with three pump machines for pressurizing along the pipe.

Standing at the valley’s edge, Zhou Likun pointed to the pipe. “Young master, please observe. We use a flame formation and a water bath heating method to raise the oil temperature between 80 to 90 degrees. This helps make the residual souls in the oil more active. The water bath heating method is also thanks to the help of the chemical division.”

“Next, the heated oil enters a cement-sealed corridor, where there are 18 sets of discharge devices capable of fully eliminating all residual souls. We are also able to collect quite a number of weak residual souls. This is our first harvest. Just this alone makes it all worthwhile. As for how to utilize these residual souls, we are still researching.”

“Next, the oil enters the first centrifugal separation device, where it is divided into light and heavy portions.”

“The liquid spiritual energy is in the light oil section.”

“The second step involves the separated oil entering a sealed, heated, distilled, and repeatedly separated process. This will yield dozens of different products, but we are currently unable to identify them. The liquid spiritual energy also separates during this process. We have discovered that the liquid spiritual energy seems very stable, as it rarely evaporates even at high temperatures.”

“Besides the liquid spiritual energy, we attempted to separate the ethereal spirit energy from the gases in the distillation, but it was too little and disappeared directly.”

“Additionally, we found that spiritual energy, death energy, and demonic energy, etc., seem very similar and are all tangled together. There is simply no way to separate them.”

As he spoke, they arrived at the warehouse.

A row of transparent glass bottles contained a dozen different substances.

Li Xian slowly walked over and began observing each one. The first bottle seemed to contain asphalt, the residue of oil. But this asphalt clearly had other substances mixed in.

Zhou Likun explained, “Young master, this viscous substance is likely the undigested remnants, and those differently colored fragments should be preserved remains. There are so many of these, too small and complicated to effectively differentiate. We are experimenting with the bacterial cultivation method you mentioned.”

“Good! Proceed with it. If you encounter any problems, come to me.”

Next came the heavy oil. Li Xian pointed to the heavy oil. “This oil should be difficult to burn, right?”

“Yes, young master, your wisdom is unparalleled,” Zhou Likun responded.

Li Xian chuckled, “Heavy oil can be used as a lubricant for machinery. In the past, we used animal fats like lard, but now we can replace that with heavy oil—cheaper and more effective.”

Next, a series of more than ten bottles contained various oils. The initial oils were black and yellow, thick and sticky. The later oils gradually became clearer, and the last few bottles looked almost like water.

“Not bad. With these, we can start researching internal combustion engines.”

Finally, a bottle containing a milky, satin-like translucent liquid appeared.

“Liquid spiritual energy!” Li Xian felt a surge of excitement. They had indeed extracted liquid spiritual energy from the world’s oil.

However, reality quickly dampened Li Xian’s enthusiasm. Zhou Likun sighed in resignation. “Young master, this liquid spiritual energy can’t be used. We found that it contains many strange substances that we can’t even investigate. I suspect it contains demonic energy, death energy, and even true essence and essence of spirit herbs refined by powerful individuals. Everything is entangled together, and with our current technology, we cannot separate them.

This liquid spiritual energy is essentially a toxic soup.”

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