Cultivating Ambition; The Green Bamboo Pavilion

Chapter 419: Stirring Overseas; The Green Bamboo Pavilion

Han Li’s excitement was tempered by curiosity. If he continued to hasten the Divine Thunder Bamboo with the green liquid, would it undergo any further changes?

With this thought in mind, he spent several more months dripping the green liquid onto the bamboo.

As a result, the bamboo’s color and power showed no further change. Its size remained at roughly the ten-thousand-year mark, ceasing to grow any larger.

Instead, after this period of forced growth, a new, smaller shoot had emerged beside the original.

As the green liquid was applied, this new shoot grew day by day. After a few months, the new Divine Thunder Bamboo looked exactly as the original had in its early years. Naturally, this one was a complete bamboo stalk.

Seeing this, Han Li was not disappointed; on the contrary, he was overjoyed.

To be honest, a single stalk of Divine Thunder Bamboo would barely have been enough to refine a set of twelve ‘Green Bamboo Flying Swords’. Now that he knew the green liquid could produce new shoots, the problem of insufficient primary material was completely resolved.

However, this also made Han Li’s ambitions grow larger.

Since the supply of primary material was no longer a concern, he no longer limited himself to refining just twelve flying swords. A sudden inspiration struck him: he would refine the maximum number for the Green Bamboo Flying Swords—a full set of seventy-two.

Even though, with his early Core Formation cultivation, he lacked the mana to refine and control so many swords, he was in no hurry. He could slowly refine them one by one as his cultivation progressed.

After all, a complete set of flying swords could be treated as a single magic treasure absorbed into the body, or they could be used individually. There was no conflict.

Once this idea took root, Han Li’s heart burned with excitement. He began to seriously consider whether he could achieve it.

The greatest difficulty in refining a set of magic treasures was the difference in the primary materials, which made successful refinement extremely hard. But in this case, he would be using Divine Thunder Bamboo from the same root, so that problem was eliminated.

The next question was his own refining skill and the availability of auxiliary materials.

He had already prepared the auxiliary materials. After all, refining a set of seventy-two swords required the same amount of auxiliary materials as refining twelve. There was no need to search for more.

The only thing that gave him pause was his own lack of experience in refining magic treasures.

He had never had any experience in artifact refinement.

For ordinary magic treasures, there would be no such concern; the process of refining a magic treasure with one’s own true fire is relatively straightforward.

But the Green Bamboo Flying Swords were different.

Even a single one of these swords was far more complex to refine than an ordinary magic treasure.

Moreover, because they were meant to be part of a set, each individual sword’s unfinished form must be consecrated through a specific ritual formation. This required a certain level of knowledge in formation arrays. Without it, refining such a magic treasure was out of the question.

Han Li was a man of strong determination. Even faced with all these difficulties, he resolved that if he was going to refine these swords at all, he would refine the best possible version. Otherwise, he would never have been so persistent in his pursuit of the Divine Thunder Bamboo.

And so, after a full day and night of deliberation within his cave residence, Han Li finally laid out his cultivation plan for the next twenty years.

...

A few days later, in a certain corner of the Starfall City marketplace, an inconspicuous little shop suddenly changed ownership. Its new owner was an ordinary-looking young man who appeared to be in his early thirties. Aside from him, there was also a tall, broad-shouldered manservant with thick eyebrows and large eyes.

The young man took over the shop, promptly changed the old signboard—which read ‘Li’s Sundry Goods’—to ‘Green Bamboo Pavilion’, and began selling only talismans and medicinal herbs. However, a fortnight later, some crude, low-grade magic tools were added to the inventory.

What puzzled the neighboring shopkeepers was that this young man rarely stepped out of the shop. He spent the entire day reading a worn-out silk scroll with no cover, occasionally waving his arms and gesturing as if he had come across something interesting. At other times, he would disappear into the back of the shop and not show his face for most of the day.

All customers and business dealings were handled entirely by the seemingly honest, big manservant.

Most of the neighboring shopkeepers were mortals born in Starfall City, running their shops merely to make a living. Only one, a gray-haired old man surnamed He, possessed a poor-quality spiritual root and was at the third or fourth layer of Qi Condensation.

Even so, Old Man He was deeply respected by the other mortals, who constantly addressed him as ‘Immortal He’.

When the young man first arrived, the others had asked Old Man He about him. He told them that the young man showed no sign of magical power and was clearly a mortal.

This emboldened them. From time to time, they would visit the shop and chat about trivial matters with the young man, who called himself ‘Han’.

After all, the location was out of the way, business was slow, and visiting each other was a way to pass the time.

The arrival of this unfamiliar face naturally gave them something new to talk about.

But the young man seemed unskilled at socializing. He spoke slowly and deliberately, spending most of his time cooped up inside the shop. Even when other shopkeepers came to call, he mostly just listened without saying much. He was truly dull.

Moreover, he never mentioned his own background. When asked, he would only smile and remain silent. Naturally, the others could not press him too hard.

After a few such encounters, the others gradually lost interest and stopped visiting the ‘Green Bamboo Pavilion’.

This, in fact, was a relief to the young man.

The young man and the big manservant were, of course, Han Li and Qu Hun in disguise.

Though it was merely the most basic mortal-world technique for altering one’s appearance, it was more than enough to fool a few mortals and a single low-grade cultivator.

Han Li’s decision to open a shop here was not motivated by the meager profit of spirit stones.

Rather, it was a chosen location for tempering his worldly state of mind and for studying the Dao of artifact refinement and formation arrays.

In the past, Han Li had never ventured into these two fields because his time in Foundation Establishment had been too short, leaving no room for such pursuits.

But now that he had formed his Core, and the next step—refining his own magic treasure—required both knowledge and experience in these areas, he naturally intended to make use of this period of cultivating the Divine Thunder Bamboo to study the Cloud Soaring Insights and the formation array texts gifted by Xin Ruyin.

Deep down, Han Li was genuinely interested in the arts of artifact refinement and formations.

With only twenty years to study both simultaneously, he did not dare to hope that he could reach the level of those two geniuses. But if he could acquire even a portion of their skills, he would be satisfied.

At the very least, he hoped to be able to refine simple formation flags and formation plates on his own!

But studying these things was not simply a matter of reading books. He had to practice with his own hands, to refine and experiment.

This, however, produced a large pile of worthless, low-grade magic tools. They were difficult to dispose of.

Throwing them away was a waste, and keeping them was pointless—a classic instance of a chicken rib.

Furthermore, in the heat of practice, he would often have sudden inspirations requiring him to buy various strange materials on the spot. He could not very well run to the marketplace every day.

Coincidentally, the fourth layer of the Great Derivative Art required a specific tempering of the worldly mind as a prerequisite. Without it, one would be unable to withstand the inner demon backlash during the fourth layer’s cultivation, making success nearly impossible.

After some thought, Han Li decided to kill several birds with one stone and purchased this shop.

The location was neither too noisy—it would not disturb his daily study of artifact refinement and formations—nor too isolated from the world. It allowed him to witness the ordinary lives of mortals firsthand. Materials for his practice could be purchased promptly, and the small items he crafted could be offered for sale. If he sold a few, so much the better.

Watching low-grade cultivators buy the magic tools he had personally refined brought a certain satisfaction.

Of course, every few days, he had to return to his cave residence on time to hasten the Divine Thunder Bamboo, check on the Gold Devourer Beetles, and—since the two Bloodjade Spiders had been left to guard the cave—ensure everything was in order.

But before long, a surprising sight appeared in the medicine garden.

The first stalk of Divine Thunder Bamboo, when the second stalk reached about five or six thousand years of spiritual nature, inexplicably detached itself from the root and fell. The few leaves remaining on it fell off and turned into brilliant, pure-gold leaves the moment they touched the ground.

Though he had no idea what the golden leaves were for, Han Li was unwilling to discard them casually. He gathered them all and stored them in his storage pouch. The still-emerald stalk itself was carefully placed in a box made of fine jade.

He intended to begin refining the Green Bamboo Flying Swords only when he had gathered six or seven such stalks.

And so, with his magic power concealed, Han Li blended into the mortal world. On this secluded corner of the marketplace, he began his journey of worldly cultivation.

Every day, aside from concentrating on the silk scroll copied from a jade slip, he silently observed the complex expressions of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness of the people around him, slowly recalling and savoring them.

(The End)