Over the next few days, Fu Anwen hired a male schor and recruited four young boys for the sect. Fortunately, the first batch of boys he'd tested proved to have been an anomaly, as about a third of the children who passed the test at the second orphanage had been boys.

  He also hired two cooks and two assistants, which was more than enough to feed the small sect. Eventually, the number of cooks would greatly increase, since many of the recipes for high quality spiritual food were extremely complex. Mortal food didn't take nearly as much effort to prepare.

  While he waited for the various orders for clothes, tools, and so on that he'd pced to be completed, Fu Anwen spent most of his time exploring notable locations around the Fu Kingdom.

  According to legend, the Dragonback Mountains in the nearby Azure Kingdom had formed from the remains of an ancient dragon countless years in the past.

  When viewed from the right angle and distance, Fu Anwen felt that the mountain range did, in fact, look sort of dragony. That said, it could also be said to look a bit like a snake, a dog, or a sheep with about the same level of accuracy, so he didn't get his hopes up.

  After a thorough search, he was sure that even if a dragon had died at this mountain range, it hadn't turned into any mountains. They were just pin old rocks and dirt.

  He did find a huge amount of raw gemstones, however, which his ability made quick work of processing into polished gems.

  The Ancient Battlefield was a massive expanse of grassnd where warring kingdoms had historically met to wage war under the watch of the ruling empire. According to legend, it was haunted by the souls of countless dead soldiers.

  Fu Anwen didn't know whether any haunting was taking pce in the grassnd. All he'd found were the buried remains of broken weapons and some mass graves full of bones.

  Bordering the Fu Kingdom and a handful of others was the Empty Forest. Fu Anwen didn't know why it was named that, as the forest was filled with a huge number of beasts. This forest had been the source of many beast tides in the past.

  While he badly wanted to go exploring in there to look for spiritual pnts, he knew that there were many powerful spirit beasts inside, especially in the center of the forest where the beast king lived.

  Fu Anwen knew that his ability was extremely powerful, but he had no idea if it would work on strong martial artists, cultivators, or spirit beasts. Going there simply wasn't worth the risk at this time.

  However, once he became a Grandmaster martial artist, he would definitely check it out.

  He explored many locations, both famous and unknown, over the next few months. Valuable finds were stacking up so fast that he had to make a number of underground storage rooms deep below the sect.

  Two iron deposits and one silver deposit were highlights from the first week. While his ability wasn't very helpful when it came to processing them, they would be useful in the future.

  After exploring a huge number of normal forests, Fu Anwen had found all of the pnts required to make a variety of different medicinal pills, pastes, baths, and soups. While there were only a few of each type of pnt for now, he was a top farming and gardening expert. Those few pnts would soon expand in number to cover several fields.

  While not all of the pnts he was pnning to cultivate were spiritual pnts, all of them at least had spiritual pnts in their ancestry.

  For every wild spiritual pnt found, one could find countless mortal pnts of that same species. This was the key reason why spiritual pnts had never been harvested into extinction by humans or eaten into extinction by beasts.

  This effect was especially exaggerated due to the sparse spiritual energy in a remote location like the Fu Kingdom, where it was extremely rare for a wild pnt to turn into a spiritual pnt.

  In truth, Fu Anwen had found a rge number of spiritual pnts, but very few of them had been valuable ones like ginseng or frog's tongue. The vast majority of spiritual pnts could barely be counted as more than weeds.

  His best find among these low-level spiritual pnts had been an especially rge potato, which had been brought back and repnted.

  All of this is not to say that wild spiritual pnts aren't any more special than their mortal brethren, however. The difference between them isn't something as simple as one having more spiritual energy than the other. Far from it.

  Pnts that are able to become spiritual pnts tend to be the most exceptional members of their species. Starting a farm or medicine garden with pnts like these would lead to much higher quality crops from the beginning.

  While mortal-level pnts could be developed into spiritual pnts and could even be cultivated into a far superior breed in the future, their starting point was far worse. The process of improving them would take a great deal of time.

  While the rare pnts were extremely useful, Fu Anwen's greatest find was something completely unexpected.

  While exploring deep underground for gems and ores, he found a small enclosed cave with stactites growing from the ceiling. One especially rge stactite had a rge drop of liquid forming at its point. The bottom of the cave was filled with about three inches of liquid that had presumably dripped down from the stactite.

  Ordinarily, Fu Anwen wouldn't care about finding something like this. However, this liquid was one that he didn't recognize. He could sense a pocket of water above the cave, which was presumably what was dripping down in the cave below, but the process seemed to be turning the water into something else.

  When he blinked a little of the liquid into a cup, he noticed that it had a rather pleasant smell, sort of like flowers.

  While Fu Anwen didn't have much of a reaction to the liquid, Queen Fluffytail, who had been resting peacefully by his side, seemed to go crazy as soon as she smelled it.

  "Maaaaaaah!"

  She immediately lifted her head and smashed it into the cup, knocking it out of his hand and causing the liquid to sptter all over the ground. She then started licking up the liquid as quickly as possible in a crazed state. She even tried swallowing a mouthful of dirt that the liquid had soaked into, but Fu Anwen blinked the dirt out of her mouth before she could.

  After blinking the little deer to a different piece of nd inside the space so that she wouldn't keep trying to eat dirt, Fu Anwen quickly made a stone container and blinked all of the liquid from the cave into it. He didn't know exactly what it was, but this liquid was clearly something good.

  While ignoring Queen Fluffytail's tragic cries in the background, he began a deeper inspection of the area around the tiny cave. In the end, he didn't find anything unusual. The whole situation with the mysterious liquid was very strange.

  Suddenly, the crying deer stopped racing around frantically. She staggered drunkenly for a moment, then toppled to the ground unconscious. Fu Anwen could tell that she was simply sleeping, so he didn't interfere and let her rest. He was looking forward to finding out the liquid's effects when she woke up.

  With the speed of his thoughts, Fu Anwen obviously could have stopped the fawn from drinking the liquid. However, he didn't think she would be so intent on drinking it if it wasn't good for her.

  He blinked out some of the liquid again and gave it another sniff, but still couldn't detect anything other than its pleasant flowery fragrance.

  With a shrug, he blinked the liquid back into its container, then went back to exploring while waiting for his friend to wake up.