Renyu left the inn and took some time until he arrived at the central market. Right down the main street, you could see many different stalls, mainly opened by cultivators much stronger than him. He didn’t even dare come closer to cultivators at the Foundation Building stage, so he quickly left the main road and went to the left side.

  Although there wasn’t a strict rule about what you could sell where, cultivators still preferred order and liked it if similar items were grouped together. As a result, the west side of the central market was also mainly selling auxiliary items.

  Renyu looked at the different stalls. When he found something that could help his cultivation, he smiled wryly but just moved on. When he reached the outermost circle, where barely anyone set up a stall, he took out the blanket, sat on it, and placed the talismans in front of him.

  Then, he closed his eyes, keeping only a bit of awareness on the talismans as he cultivated. His absorption speed was naturally much higher than that of ordinary people, but he only absorbed the normal amount of qi from the surroundings, while his natal talisman delivered the rest needed for his cultivation. Fortunately, it stored more than enough for him to cultivate.

  From how full it was, he guessed that he would be able to cultivate for around ten days straight without having to reveal his real absorption speed. This surprised him greatly because, with the normal cultivation from the surroundings plus the talisman, his speed was more than double that of a normal cultivator. Although he now knew he had a single root, it was still a surprise for him.

  He sat like this for two whole days before someone stopped in front of his stall and asked, “How much are you selling your talismans for?”

  Renyu opened his eyes and saw that it was a young man around fifteen years old asking. The young man gave off a strong aura, one that was battle-hardened. ‘So young but already a fighter?’

  “Four spirit stones,” he recited before closing his eyes again.

  “Four? You kid, are you trying to scam me?”

  Somewhat annoyed, he opened his eyes again. “Who are you calling a kid? Have you looked into a mirror? If you wish to buy, take out your spirit stones or go away!” This was the normal sales tactic Renyu had learned in his previous life.

  Set the price unreasonably high, and it will push the customer’s price expectation higher, regardless of whether they like it. This way, the customer will likely pay a reasonable price in the end, not an unreasonably low price like they might hope for. They might even pay a little more than necessary, but Renyu would not accept anything less than the normal market price, no matter who asked.

  The battle-hardened kid smiled somewhat wryly when he heard the rebuke. “I can’t give you four spirit stones! It’s only three talismans; how can you charge me the price of four?”

  “The price of four? Young kid, are you blind? These talismans are of good quality, and they are auxiliary talismans! You’re lucky I’m only asking for 30% more than the price of an attack talisman! Go look at the shops—who isn’t asking for 50% or even 60% more when selling auxiliary-type talismans?”

  The kid was angry at being called a kid, but the next words were indeed true. Although four spirit stones were high, it wasn’t unusual for the shops to ask for even more. Still, he refused to bend too much and offered, “Three and a half spirit stones; I won’t pay more!”

  “A half? How do you want to pay half a spirit stone? Are you trying to lie to me? Do you think I’m stupid because I’m young? Shoo away! I don’t want customers like you!”

  The kid was even angrier, but he was also irritated by the way Renyu talked. It was as if he was haggling with an old man who refused to give in no matter what. “I can give you half a liter of fish blood and three spirit stones!”

  Renyu then acted as if nothing had happened. “Young man, look at you! No wonder you give off the energy of a fighter; you have some good stuff. Okay, give me the stones, and if I like their shape, I’ll take it. You should thank me for being so generous, you know? If you look around, even if you offer a whole liter, some might not accept!”

  While Renyu was talking, he already stepped up and took the three talismans, keeping them close to his body as he stretched out his hand. The young man was greatly irritated but didn’t want to talk with this weird kid anymore, so he touched his spatial bag on the side, took out three stones and a half-full bottle, handed them over, took the talismans, and ran away.

  ‘A spatial bag, huh? I miss mine… who made them so expensive? A full hundred spirit stones for even the smallest one-cubic-meter bag! Alas, I will have to buy one in the future. I hope that my success rate returns to what it was after some more attempts. I should also use the spell a bit more, but how can I do that when replenishing my qi from a single spell might take over an hour when cultivating in that qi-starved inn? Fortunately, this time I didn’t take long, so I can use some qi from the talisman to train the spell a few times.’

  After cleaning up the stall, he went to the Great Lake Talisman Shop and bought ten talisman papers and two liters of water monster blood.

  Having finished everything, Renyu made sure he was safe and finally went back to the inn. There, he used the Water Ball spell, an easy spell that only required him to make some movements with his hands while reciting a simple sutra, which produced a sphere of water in front of him. He commanded the Water Ball spell to clean up the whole room as he stood in the middle. After a few minutes, it began to strain him, and the ball fell down, wetting the ground.

  Renyu simply used free control of the water and pulled it together before putting it into his bottle. He pulled some qi from his natal talisman to replenish his energy before trying the spell again. It didn’t take long before his consciousness was tired, and the sphere fell. After a few more spells, he was truly tired and went back to sleep.

  The next few days, he kept the routine of casting spells until he was tired and repeated the process until there was barely any qi left in his natal talisman. Only then did he start refining the Water Ball talisman again, and it seemed that he had improved because he successfully wrote two talismans in total! That’s a 20% success rate, and it meant he didn’t make any loss. The extra blood was naturally consumed by his natal talisman, and a second drop of lifeblood formed.

  Lifeblood had many more uses than just enhancing talismans, but he wanted to wait until he had much more before he tried to do anything with it.

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  The same procedure as before happened. He went to the stall area and set up a stall with two talismans. This time, he didn’t even have to wait for a single day. After just a few hours, the young man from before came and greeted him with his still cold face. “How much do you want for these?”

  “Look at you! Can’t you greet people properly?”

  The young man was irritated, but before he could refute, he was stopped. “Didn’t I tell you my talismans were of high quality? Alright, it’s fine; I know you’re shy, so you won’t say it. I’ll be fair—this batch will cost you two spirit stones and five talisman papers. Don’t try to argue with me! I have all the time I want, but you probably waited the past few days to see me. If you wanted to buy it directly, you wouldn’t come to the stall area. I’m already selling cheap!”

  The young man was infuriated. Once again, this kid, who was probably not even ten, was speaking like an old man, scolding him while still giving him a good price. It was true that with the quality of this talisman, he would have to pay at least a bit more if he wanted to buy it directly. Instead of wasting time, he instantly took out the talisman paper and left, lest he get a headache.

  Renyu looked at the young man, satisfied, and thought to himself, ‘He’s able to endure me talking like this and still accepts the price just for the quality. That’s a good seedling. He will probably achieve a lot in the future; it’s not wrong for me to give him a good price.’

  The “good price” Renyu talked about was naturally just slightly higher than the production price. If he had a higher success rate in the future, he planned to make it slightly cheaper for this young man. After all, a repeat customer was better than a random customer.

  He used the spirit stones to buy his things. This time, he had an extra five talisman papers and the five hundred milliliters from before, so he had five extra chances to refine talismans. Although he could theoretically try creating other talismans, he wanted to wait until he had a somewhat stable income and some savings before he did so.

  The inn was cheap, and he had barely any other expenditures, as even food was served to him. Unfortunately, this also meant that he didn’t have much time to cultivate. His energy was wholly spent on crafting talismans and learning spells, which was semi-good. It would be better if he cultivated at least a bit, but if he did so, he was sure that he would lose the possible repeat customer. So, instead, he just let his natal talisman release qi into his body every time he expended it. Although it was slower than cultivating actively, you might call it passive cultivation.

  He repeated his procedure for another five times. By now, nearly half a year had passed, and his cultivation was about to enter the second stage of Qi Refining. No matter how little he cultivated, he still had an extremely rare spiritual root, so naturally, he would improve well. In addition to this, his success rate in talismans also improved from 20% to slightly over 30%. His repeat customer always seemed to be in need and would not hesitate to purchase them. One time, a different person also wanted to buy them, but Renyu decided to just give them to his repeat customer, even though the other person offered a single talisman paper more.

  On this evening, Renyu took a break and calmed his mind. He suddenly pulled the qi from the surroundings a bit more than usual, while he told his natal talisman to activate all the qi stored in it, which was as much as his full reserves in his dantian. With the double attack from outside and inside, the bottleneck that wasn’t really a bottleneck broke instantly, and he advanced. The leftover qi was used to fill his enlarged dantian and stabilize it.

  ‘It’s so much easier than before… a single spirit root is really strong. There isn’t any proper bottleneck in the minor stages, and only the major stages would bring forth a bottleneck, and even they aren’t as strong as those of others. It’s no wonder people say that a single root is the gift of heaven, telling you to achieve more.’

  Then, Renyu checked his talisman. ‘Six drops of lifeblood. If I get four more, I can advance my natal talisman to the second realm in the Qi Refining stage too. Luckily, the water side cultivates along with me; as long as the lifeblood is enough, it will automatically advance.

  Alas, a two-sided natal talisman naturally needs much more effort to advance than a normal one. I suspect that when I try to enlarge it, it will probably be so expensive… I will either have to draw talismans for hundreds of years or gather my materials on my own. It’s time to learn the Water Blade and Water Shield spells.’

  Although you couldn’t change your natal talisman without taking a lot of damage, enlarging it or adding something to it was possible. It was a big strain on the spiritual consciousness of the cultivator, as well as on the talisman, but if you were well prepared, then it was possible. The only real difficult step was learning the different talisman techniques.

  Renyu learned how to draw double-sided talismans after over ten years in the dream of the future, combined with his knowledge from his previous life. Otherwise, he would have taken much longer, and double-sided talismans are actually one of the easiest techniques to learn.

  To learn more about the other two spells he could cast, Renyu didn’t start drawing them at all but just cast them to train. Training was a huge drain on his spiritual consciousness and qi, especially with his method of training, but it was worth it.

  He would cast a Water Ball, then a Water Shield around the ball, then a Water Blade. At first, the Water Ball would have to fully block the damage, and the amount of water lost would be counted as the amount of injuries taken. From 50%, it was a fatal injury; less than 10% was a minor injury; anything in between was naturally average; and anything above 70% water loss was life-threatening.

  The drawing of his main talisman, Water Ball, became much more flexible with time, even though it wasn’t the main focus of his cultivation. Improvement brought more people to buy his talismans. He heightened his prices steadily but never for the young kid who initially paid too much for the products of a newbie. Slowly, the kid got every bit of his unintentional investment back and also began to make a profit from it.

  Just a year later, a few months short of Renyu’s eleventh birthday, he had finally advanced to the third stage of Qi Refining. Again, it was very much just passive advancement. The reason he was so happy was that with the enhancement of his consciousness and qi, he had reached a stable 50% success rate for his Water Ball spell, as well as the previous 30% for his Blade and Shield spells! In truth, he thought that if he had the same time to practice in his previous imaginary life, he would have reached much more.

  But over ten years of theory built an extremely strong foundation and creative mind. He was sure that as long as he advanced steadily and had enough resources and time, he would be able to achieve great things.

  Fortunately, he already knew that the lifespan of a cultivator was extremely long. Lifespan was very difficult to define. Not only would you gain a lot of it with every major stage, but even minor ones would give you some of it, though it was hard to calculate. On average, Qi Refining cultivators could live for around 150 years, while Foundation Establishment cultivators lived around 300 years. Basically, it was guaranteed that with each major stage, you would at least double your lifespan. With special techniques, items, or consumables, living longer was also possible.

  As long as he progressed steadily, Renyu was extremely sure that with his foundation in the creation arts, he would gain a lot of feedback when he tried to advance. With the addition of his spiritual root, it would be no issue to advance at least to the peak stage of Foundation Establishment! Going further was a different story altogether.

  After all, spiritual roots weren’t all-powerful.

  People such as those in his clan might think that a peak Foundation Establishment expert would be a lot, but after such a long time in the city, he was still not spoken to by any cultivator in the Core Formation stage. There were several Foundation Establishment cultivators trying to invite him, but the Core Formation experts knew better of the difficulties of reaching such a high stage. Instead, they took a wait-and-see attitude—not that Renyu knew of any; he was simply too isolated!

  While cultivating and using his spells, Renyu had long since restarted deducing a suitable cultivation art. In the first place, all cultivation arts are made for a person’s specific situation. Later, they would be adjusted to be more general-oriented, but if you were making one for yourself, that was the easiest option of deducing a cultivation art.