Chapter 11: Fragmented Map

Five or six days passed in the blink of an eye. The Song family searched the vicinity several times for the gang of bandits but found nothing. They had no choice but to report the matter to the Huang family, a nearby Foundation Establishment clan. Unexpectedly, the Huang family did not take the matter to heart, merely offering a few words of verbal comfort to the Song family members.

To everyone's surprise, half a month later, a major incident occurred in Qinghe County: a Qi Refining cultivator from the Huang family was killed in an ambush by bandits from Eagle Nest Ridge outside Qinghe Market.

This was like poking a hornet's nest. The Huang family was a long-established Foundation Establishment clan in Qinghe County, boasting three Foundation Establishment cultivators within their ranks, and had been the largest cultivation family in the county for the past hundred years.

In the following days, several major Foundation Establishment families in Qinghe County, led by the Huang family, mobilized dozens of law enforcement cultivators in a massive, large-scale sweep for any unfamiliar cultivators within the county. Seeing that their cover was blown, the bandits from Eagle Nest Ridge chose to flee in disarray.

For outside forces to kill and rob people outside Qinghe Market was a matter that would severely damage the market's reputation. Qinghe Market was the foundation of many cultivation forces in Qinghe County, and every cultivation family, large or small, held some assets within it.

Faced with shared interests, the major cultivation families showed unusual unity. This operation not only captured and killed over a dozen notorious bandits but also unexpectedly uncovered a shop within Qinghe Market that had been colluding with the Eagle Nest Ridge bandits for years.

This shop was jointly operated by several veteran rogue cultivators of Qinghe County. Driven by profit, they had been selling customer information to the Eagle Nest Ridge bandits for over a year.

This infuriated the major Foundation Establishment families. They once again joined forces with the resident cultivators of the Xiaoyao Sect to conduct a thorough search of every shop in the market. It kept Qinghe Market in a state of chaos for half a month before it slowly returned to its former prosperity.

Deep in Lingyuan Mountain, Song Qingming, who had fully recovered, knew nothing of what was happening outside. Having spent over ten days recuperating at home without needing to go out for daily patrols of the mines, he enjoyed a rare moment of leisure.

At this moment, he was in the small room where he usually practiced, staring thoughtfully at a piece of gray, ancient-looking animal hide in his hand. Not far away sat an exquisite cyan jade box.

The hide was no more than four or five inches in diameter. The front was painted with patterns of mountains and rivers, but it was so badly damaged that it was impossible to make sense of it. The back was decorated with images of celestial clouds and engraved with several nameless incantations, which were also incomplete.

As for the origin of this fragmented map, it went back to the cave where Song Qingming had nearly lost his life a few days prior.

That day, in order to deceive Zhu Wu, Song Qingming had hidden in the debris of the cave, and his body had happened to press down on this jade box. After Zhu Wu left, Song Qingming crawled out of the dirt and dug up the small object that had been bothering him for so long. Seeing that the jade box was quite exquisite, he had casually tossed it into his storage bag and brought it back.

It wasn't until over ten days later, when he was feeling bored, that Song Qingming remembered it. He had thought the box might contain some treasure, but he was truly disappointed to find it held only a broken, incomprehensible drawing.

"The jade box is quite pretty, at least. I could take it to my second sister to trade for a few Qi Refining Pills, or just keep it to store things."

"As for this broken map..."

Song Qingming raised his hand and tossed the map into the air, casting a Fireball Technique with his left hand.

After a burst of flames, to his surprise, the animal hide remained completely intact, without a single change.

Could this map not be an ordinary object, but a spiritual item? Even if it were a spiritual item, it shouldn't remain completely unchanged in such flames. Could it be a high-grade magical tool?

"Forget it, I'll ask Ninth Uncle about it tomorrow."

Filled with wonder, Song Qingming carefully put the map away and placed it back into the jade box.

The next morning, after patrolling the mines, Song Qingming went to Song Changxin's small building.

Song Changxin looked at the gray fragment for a long time before speaking

"This looks like a fragment of a damaged Dharma treasure. I saw something similar in a nearby market when I was training at Ziyun Mountain. Dharma treasures are powerful artifacts that only Foundation Establishment cultivators can refine; even a fragment is much tougher than an ordinary magical tool."

"Such damaged items can be traded for a few spirit stones, as they can be used as high-grade materials to be refined into new tools. As for these patterns, I am certain someone drew them deliberately to disguise it as a treasure map left by a predecessor. People in the markets often use these to swindle naive newcomers like you."

Leaving Song Changxin's residence, Song Qingming felt calm. He had picked the item up by accident, and even if it wasn't a high-grade tool, getting a few spirit stones for it would be a great outcome.

He didn't intend to sell it at the market. After experiencing life and death, Song Qingming felt an urgent need to arm himself.

"Even if this map has no other use, it is very tough. I'll sew it into a vital spot on my Dharma robe; it might just save my life at a critical moment. In this day and age of cultivation, survival methods are the most important."

Returning to his room, Song Qingming dug out an old, worn-out Dharma robe and sewed the fragment onto the chest area, wearing it as an undershirt beneath his robe.

Night fell, and it was time for another day of tedious cultivation. Song Qingming sat cross-legged as usual and began to practice the "Kunyuan Technique."

Song Qingming had only broken through to the fourth level of Qi Refining half a year ago. With his four-element spiritual root aptitude, he was still a long way from the fifth level. He couldn't afford pills to save time, as he only had a dozen spirit stones to his name and still owed Uncle Thirteen and the others over twenty.

Just as he was halfway through his practice, a feeling of overflowing spiritual energy surged through his body, leaving him instantly bewildered.

"Usually, it takes three or four hours of meditation to fully recover my spiritual energy. How is it that after only one hour today, my dantian is already overflowing?"

Sensing something strange, Song Qingming quickly entered a meditative state and used his divine sense to inspect his body.

"I haven't broken through to a new level, so why has my absorption speed increased so much? What is going on?"

"Could it be..."

Song Qingming took off his outer robe and began to circulate the "Kunyuan Technique" to absorb the surrounding spiritual energy. At that moment, his chest emitted a faint white light, and the flow of spiritual energy within his body was several times faster than usual.

After some repeated testing, Song Qingming finally confirmed the cause of the anomaly: it was the fragment he had sewn onto his chest that day.

"This fragment can actually influence the speed at which I absorb spiritual energy? This is truly astonishing."

It seemed this object was not the Dharma treasure fragment Ninth Uncle had described. He had no idea what it actually was.

A month later, Song Qingming, holed up in his room, was looking with satisfaction at two complete sets of low-grade formations in his hands.

The inexplicably increased speed of spiritual energy recovery meant that his injuries, which should have taken a month to heal, were basically recovered in less than half that time. This was far beyond Song Qingming's expectations.

In particular, the damage to his divine sense caused by excessive energy consumption—which had previously caused him intermittent headaches and which Song Changxin said would take half a year to recover—had already healed by more than half in just a few days. He had tried using several spells that consumed a lot of spiritual power, and the stinging pain had not returned.

Only then did Song Qingming begin to feel a sense of alarm. This fragment was likely a treasure of no small significance. Aside from certain pills that aided in recovery, he had never heard of any spiritual item that could accelerate the recovery of spiritual energy.

If other cultivators discovered its utility, the Song family would certainly be unable to protect him; even those high-and-mighty Foundation Establishment cultivators would likely covet it.

Although Song Qingming stayed in his room all day, he dared not use the fragment for cultivation too often. Fortunately, when the fragment was in use, it didn't cause much of a stir, emitting only a faint white light that any ordinary magical tool might produce. Sewn onto his undershirt, it wouldn't look unusual when he wore his Dharma robe, so it was unlikely to attract attention.

Recovering spiritual energy at several times the normal speed meant that while it used to take him three months to craft a set of formations, he could now complete one in a month. If he had sufficient materials, at this rate, he could pay off his debt to Uncle Thirteen and the others this year.

After pondering for over a month, Song Qingming gradually saw a business opportunity. Although the fragment didn't increase his cultivation speed much, it helped him save a great deal of time on meditation, allowing him to focus on crafting formations.

Normal cultivators had to spend four or five hours a day meditating to recover their energy; he could now do it in about an hour. The spiritual power consumed by crafting formations could be recovered several times faster than usual.

The key was that he had no materials left. The seven or eight spirit stones he had left were barely enough for his daily cultivation, and aside from the mid-grade flying sword he had purchased last time, these two sets of formations were the only things of value in his storage bag. He had to find a way to go to the market again to trade these formations for spirit stones to buy new materials.

Song Qingming understood that the biggest disadvantage of a formation master was the time consumed. To craft a low-grade formation without delaying one's cultivation, it usually took about three months.

After deducting material costs, a low-grade formation only netted four or five spirit stones. Fortunately, crafting formations rarely wasted materials, so compared to the higher risks of talisman-making, alchemy, or weapon refining, the income was relatively stable.

However, after the previous ambush, the clan elders had instructed that Song Qingming was not to travel far alone for a year. This posed a major obstacle to his wealth-gathering plan. The materials for the formations he currently held had been purchased by Song Changxin on his behalf during a trip to the market.

When he was injured last time, the clan elders were worried that his divine sense had not fully recovered and that he might face trouble if he went out alone. For a weak cultivation family like the Song clan, every cultivator was important. They couldn't let low-level cultivators take too many risks; only by ensuring the growth of the young cultivators could they contribute more to the family.

They didn't know that Song Qingming's divine sense had long since recovered. Song Qingming dared not reveal the fragment's special ability, nor could he explain his recovery to them, so he could only wait patiently for another opportunity to head to the market.