Chapter 142: Refining
By the shores of the Lingsource Marsh, in the Flame Mist Mountain Range. Within a southern valley.
A stream babbled, and echoes rang through the empty valley. The place was remote and deserted, and at this moment it was completely empty.
It was spring, and a few spirit bees flitted about the valley.
These spirit bees were no larger than a thumb, their entire bodies a pale blue-green.
Several bees flew among the flowers in the valley like fleeting clouds and passing shadows.
One bee climbed to the center of a flower, folded its wings, and leisurely gathered nectar.
After a moment, having taken its fill of nectar, it also collected a small ball of pollen on its hind legs.
It was time to return to the hive.
The little bee began to flap its wings, trembling unsteadily, just about to lift off from the flower.
At that very moment, a sudden change occurred.
A palm descended from the sky. The bee darted upward but was abruptly halted by the spiritual energy flowing from that palm.
Below, another palm was seen lifting a sphere of spiritual energy to meet the palm above.
The two spheres of spiritual energy circled around the bee, gradually forming a spherical transparent barrier that trapped the bee within.
The sudden turn of events terrified the bee. It struggled and flew within the dense spiritual energy but could not break through.
The young cultivator concealed every trace of his aura. To an ordinary divine sense scan, he would be indistinguishable from a mortal.
“Cloud-Winged Bees, hmm… valuable.”
Song Yan murmured.
First-rank low-level spirit beasts, known for their speed.
He slowly lifted the small sphere of spiritual power and examined the spirit bee closely.
Its wings were as thin as cicada wings, and its stinger was slender, long, and transparent.
If this little creature fought a cultivator in earnest, a single sting would wound even a mid-stage Qi Refining cultivator.
Moreover, the bee flapped its wings at an extremely high frequency, flying like a streak of blue-green light—ordinary late-stage Qi Refining cultivators would struggle to catch it by hand.
However, Cloud-Winged Bees typically gathered in groups of dozens, nesting on cliffs abundant with spirit flowers and feeding on nectar.
If a lone bee from the swarm was attacked…
Song Yan raised his eyes slightly. The few scattered bees he had seen earlier had now gathered into a swarm of over a dozen in the air.
At this moment, they were slowly converging.
It seemed that the next instant, they would all attack him at once.
“Do not panic, little one.” Song Yan placed the bee into a special spirit insect pouch. “I know a wonderful place where you’ll find inexhaustible spirit flower nectar.”
With that, he blinked.
Golden eyes appeared in an instant, a petal-like golden lotus pattern suspended within.
Above the valley, threads of pale blue-green spiritual energy were converging toward the swarm in the air.
In one instant, it was about to reach its peak.
Song Yan’s gaze locked onto the swarm as sword qi surged throughout his body.
Bzzz—
In a flash, the swarm descended upon him in the blink of an eye.
But to their bewilderment, Song Yan was no longer where he had been.
Only a lingering wisp of sword qi remained, which gently deflected the incoming swarm, scattering them in all directions.
At the edge of the swarm, one bee was deflected too far.
It was struggling to flap its wings again when a pair of large hands appeared, blotting out the clouds and sky.
Spiritual power surged and flowed, and another poor little bee was kidnapped by him.
In that brief blink of an eye, the sword qi surrounding his body had propelled him about ten feet toward the edge of the valley.
This was the basic movement technique recorded in the Sword Planting Technique, practiced by the disciples of the Sword Sect.
“Lingyun Yi.”
Bzzz—
From within the swarm, a bee fluttered its wings and shot straight toward his face.
Its stinger pointed directly at him, sworn to perish together with Song Yan.
In truth, he could simply have used the Cloud Sword to slay these bees one by one.
But that would waste too many spirit stones, and besides…
Using these creatures to practice his newly mastered movement technique was also a fine choice.
Song Yan stood perfectly still. In his field of vision, at the very instant the blue-green streak of light glinted, he shifted like a phantom one foot to the left front.
He turned back, palms meeting.
Another bee was captured.
Then, throughout the entire valley, the buzzing of the swarm echoed alongside the clear ring of sword qi.
But the sound belonging to the swarm grew smaller and smaller. After a moment.
The last bee wavered in the air. Song Yan raised his eyes slightly to see spiritual energy slowly gathering above.
But it was not coming toward him.
He raised an eyebrow. “Trying to escape?”
Channeling his spiritual power, wind surged beneath Song Yan’s feet. Before the spiritual energy in the air could coalesce, he leapt upward.
Sword qi surged, and in an instant, he had already leapt into the air.
His hands met.
He trapped the bee between his palms with ease.
He descended swiftly.
Song Yan sat cross-legged in the center of the valley and patted the Cosmos Bag he used specifically for housing spirit insects.
A bountiful harvest, a bountiful harvest.
“Hmm… no need to find an auction house. I’ll sell them directly to the sect.”
“This spirit insect pouch must be the lowest grade. The little bees won’t last long in it.”
He could not remember where he had acquired this spirit insect pouch.
“If they suffocate in there, I’ll lose quite a few spirit stones.”
A great sect like the Eastern Abyss Sect had every kind of industry imaginable.
Spirit rice and grain, spirit flowers and plants.
If there were spirit flowers, there naturally had to be nectar. Without these little bees, how could it operate?
These were all tasks that the sect required year-round.
There was no worry about finding buyers.
However…
This trip to Flame Mist Mountain had not been for these Cloud-Winged Bees.
The swarm was merely a pleasant surprise.
Song Yan slowly stood and walked out of the valley.
Over the past half year, apart from cultivating his spiritual energy realm and honing his divine sense, Song Yan had devoted nearly all his spare time to practicing movement techniques and eye techniques.
His movement technique had achieved initial mastery, and his eye technique was progressing steadily.
However, recently he had often felt his eyes were dry, sometimes even aching and itchy.
It was probably overexertion, and he needed to slow down.
The Sword Planting Technique stated that when first cultivating the Void-Viewing Sword Pupil, one could supplement it with certain spirit-clearing and eye-brightening medicinal liquids.
These could alleviate a considerable portion of the discomfort.
After some research, Song Yan had set his sights on a spirit herb called Seven-Leaf Yang Yellow.
It required no compounding—simply condense the leaves into liquid with spiritual power, filter out the impurities, and it could be used directly as eye medicine.
It was crude, to be sure, but its advantage lay in being natural.
And doing it himself was more reassuring.
After all, they were his own eyes—better to be safe.
However, even among the spirit herbs used for cultivating eye techniques, Seven-Leaf Yang Yellow was not widely circulated in the market.
Its price was high, but the profit was too low.
Song Yan had visited several apothecaries in the Lingsource Marsh, but none had it in stock at the moment.
In a pinch like this, it was also unlikely to appear at exchange fairs.
However, one apothecary owner he asked mentioned that his apprentice had once found a few stalks of Seven-Leaf Yang Yellow by chance in the southern part of the Flame Mist Mountain Range.
So he asked the apprentice for a general direction, then informed the owner to notify him if they got any in stock.
He went to the Taiping Peak Mission Hall, took on a few missions, and came to the mountains to try his luck.
If he could find some, it would save him quite a few spirit stones.
Unfortunately, he had nearly completed all the missions.
He had also caught a round of Cloud-Winged Bees as a pleasant surprise, but still had not spotted a trace of Seven-Leaf Yang Yellow.
But he was not discouraged. If it came to it, he could temporarily put the eye technique cultivation on hold.
“Hm? Where is this?”
Song Yan looked up slightly. Before him stood a rather towering mountain peak.
Through the mist and clouds, a Daoist temple could faintly be seen.