Chapter 320 – One Step at a Time (1/2)

“Did you really write this?” Liu Chuanfeng held the thick draft and said in disbelief. Even at a minimum, there were a few hundred thousand words there, but Li Qingshan had only used a few days.

“Don’t tell me you copied it from somewhere?”

Li Qingshan said with no confidence at all, “How can you say that? Have you ever read something remotely similar to this?”

Liu Chuanfeng said, “Plagiarism won’t net you the slightest power of belief, no matter how well you’ve copied it.”

Taking the Divine Talisman of Merit as an example, the merit would never misidentify its target no matter how far the cultivator who did the good deeds were, even if there were people who shared the same name and appearance as them. This was the wonders of divine talismans.

Li Qingshan became uncertain. He had copied something from his past life, which belonged to another world. In this world, it should be an original work.

“Alright, then allow your master to take a look and edit it for you.” Liu Chuanfeng leaned over the table and began reading.

Li Qingshan strode away. In the past few days, he had been either copying or editing. Even with Xiao An’s help, it still made him dizzy.

After editing this “maiden work” of his, the One Thought master sent someone to call Xiao An back to the Anāsravāṃ temple. Apparently, she had to make preparations for the upcoming assembly of dharma.

Xiao An only said she would find a way to get some more pills before leaving in a hurry.

This instead made Li Qingshan rather apologetic. After dealing with the matter regarding the school of Novels, it was time for him to properly gather some resources and prepare for that final step.

Although he called it the final step, Li Qingshan refused to underestimate it. It was very likely that this step would be even more difficult to take than any other steps of the past.

There were many living examples around him of the difficulty. Liu Chuanfeng, Hua Chengzan, Ru Xin, and so on were all at the tenth layer.

There was a dangerous heavenly tribulation involved too. He could not afford to be careless at all.

There were still quite a lot of resources left from his massacre underground, but getting rid of the spiritual artifacts and talismans would be rather difficult, even if the spiritual stones were easier to deal with.

After arriving in the academy, he had once asked Sun Fubai about the school of Miscellany that focused on this business. As it turned out, rarely did they ever purchase these items, and even if they did, they would only pay extremely low prices for them.

And, Li Qingshan had quite a lot of qualms over these items too. He had not exactly obtained them legitimately. If he sold them en-mass, he would probably attract the attention of observant people.

Through his contact with people like Qian Rongzhi and Hua Chengzan, Li Qingshan deeply understood that there were many clever people in the world. Deducing facts from small clues was basically a form of instinct for certain people. He personally believed he did not have this ability. All he could do was be as careful as possible, without leaving behind anything that might give him away.

After a while of thought, Li Qingshan’s gaze gradually became determined. I’ll take one step at a time!

The first step were the missions issued in the Missions hall on Contention island.

Li Qingshan’s eyes constantly darted around the bulletin board. Very soon, he locked onto a mission. It came from the school of Agriculture. It was a mission for watering their fields of wheat. It sounded simple, but it clearly stated towards the end that it required the Spiritual Rain technique.

The Spiritual Rain technique was a wide range healing technique. Not only could it heal injuries, but it could also allow people to recover their true qi. In battle, it was something that could play a decisive role. Due to how difficult it was to learn, rarely were there any people who knew it in this day and age.

If it were not for the Spirit Turtle’s Method of Sea Suppression, which allowed him to master any water element technique with ease, he probably would have never bothered with this technique either. Perhaps it was exactly because of this reason that the rewards for the mission were quite plentiful.

It was clearly winter, but Longevity island of the school of Agriculture was brimming with life.

Earth elder Huang sat on a ridge in the fields, smoking his pipe. He circled out a region in the vast fields of golden wheat before him.

“Give me 3.9 centimeters of rain in this region. I’ll deduct a spiritual stone for every millimeter you miss, understand?” He did not give Li Qingshan any special treatment, even with his outstanding performance lately.

Li Qingshan said politely, “Understood.” He closed his eyes and prepared for a moment. A streak of light rose up from his hands and flew into the air, turning into a large region of spiritual drizzle that fell from the sky. The slightly droopy wheat immediately straightened out, as if it was absorbing the spiritual rain.

Earth elder Huang was slightly surprised. Originally, he thought Li Qingshan would have to use the Spiritual Rain technique several times to water such a larger region, but Li Qingshan only used it once. The area he covered was simply startling. And, at a closer glance, the spiritual rain was not off by a single millimeter. It was 3.9 centimeters exactly.

“Well done.”

Li Qingshan smiled and accepted the spiritual stones. It sure had been easy for him to make spiritual stones. All he had to do was use a technique once. Apart from watering the wheat fields, there seemed to be missions for watering the medicinal gardens of the school of Medicine too in the Missions hall.

“You want to learn alchemy from me?” Ru Xin studied Li Qingshan with a strange gaze. His face was filled with sincerity, and he even held a watermelon in his hand.

“This is just a gift for taking me on as a student. If you agree, I can pay you spiritual stones too. Of course, you can’t go overboard with the price.”

This was Li Qingshan’s second step, grasping alchemy as quickly as possible. As for the watermelon, earth elder Huang had picked it from a neighbouring melon field and given it to him for completing the mission perfectly.

“The school of Medicine has classes for alchemy. It won’t cost you a single spiritual stone.”

“It takes too long.” Li Qingshan shook his head. The classes held by the professors were nice, but in consideration of every single disciple’s ability, they purposefully slowed down the process. They explained complicated concepts in simple words. While it was interesting, it would take too much time. And, the ability of the professors probably paled in comparison to the person before him.