Chapter 211 Study Circle Before Refine Weapons
Autumn is almost gone. The fat crabs still taste perfect, yet leaves on trees have turned yellow. After a gust of wind, yellow leaves fall and cover the ground. Winter is coming.
The cyan little fox has started to pull out grass and make its own nest. However, there is not much grass in the backyard so it has to make do with bamboo leaves fallen on the island.
It’s already winter and most of the animals living in the mountains seldom go out. This makes it harder for Goldie to hunt for food. Mr. Lin has been thinking about whether he should buy some beef from the market to feed Goldie. One day, he sees Goldie grabbing a big snake. From the mud on its claws, Mr. Lin knows that Goldie has just dug into the snake’s cave.
“Pah!” Goldie throws the snake to Mr. Lin. Ms. Lin screams. In a hurry, Mr. Lin casts a “Bound Spell”. Since he is not skilled in this spell, Mr. Lin almost uses up all his wood Reiki to strap this big snake which weighs over ten pounds.
Ms. Lin is soaked in her own sweat. She is scared, “Goldie is becoming more and more cranky these days!”
Looking at the golden hawk, Mr. Lin suddenly realizes, “Don’t blame it. This snake is a gift! You should thank it!” The big snake can’t even move while being tightly strapped by the vines of the iron thorn. Mr. Lin walks to the snake and lifts it up, laughing.
“It’s cold. This is the best season to have some snake stew. This snake is so big. We shall invite Cui and his family here and share it.”
Ms. Lin has seen and cooked snakes before. She was just startled by the size of this one.
Over the phone, Fatty Cui promises to come immediately after Mr. Lin says they are going to have a snake dinner. After arriving, Fatty Cui looks at the big snake hanging on a tree and asks in amazement,
“How should we cook it?”
Ms. Lin says that she is going to stew the snake. As a foodie, Fatty Cui shakes his head and says that making a stew is such a waste of this big snake. In the end, under Cui’s recommendation, the snake is chopped into parts and made into snake stew, snake soup, and stir-fried snake.
Cui’s daughter, Lucy, is three years old. She has entered kindergarten. Wang Miao’e and Fatty Cui have moved back to downtown for Lucy. Lucy hasn’t seen Luodong for a long time. Today, she is happy to be at Lin’s house. She runs around in the front yard and then drags her mother to play with her in the back yard. Though Wang Miao’e has seen Goldie for several times, she feels creepy when Goldie stares at her.
Lucy is clearly more vigorous than other three-year-old girls. She runs in and out of Lin’s vegetable field and steps on the bridge which leads to the little island before her mother even notices.
“Cui Wanlu, stop right there!” Wang Miao’e shouts, hands on her waist.
Lucy giggles and starts to run faster. Within a few seconds, she is on the island.
That’s right, Lucy is Cui Wanlu’s nickname. Her fat and cheesy father gave her such a beautiful and elegant name. Fatty Cui loves his daughter so much that he never thinks that she is naughty. He always believes that she is just pure and innocent.
The cyan little fox acts aggressively at this little girl who just stepped onto its territory. Luch is not afraid at all. She thinks that the little fox is playing with her and she claps her hands and stamps her feet. The little fox is furious. It comes at Lucy and tries to scratch her with its paws. Then it is lifted up by the neck.
“Aunt Lin!” Lucy calls. Then she reaches out to pinch the little fox in the nose.
The cyan little fox struggles because it is in such a disgraceful position right now. However, it can’t get out of Lin’s hand.
Seeing that Lin Luoran suddenly shows up on the island, Wang Miao’e stops to worry about her daughter’s safety.
The weather is cold. Though they’ve been drinking the spirit wine for years, they put on warm clothes. Lin Luoran is the only one who still wears light clothes. Wang looks at Lin talking to Lucy under the bamboos and feels that Lin Luoran has become thinner again.
“You were in closed cultivation the last a few times I came here. What makes you come out today?”
Lin Luoran smiles. She lets go of the little fox after telling it not to hurt anybody.
“I’ve smelt the fragrance of snake stew so I come out to join the party!” Lin Luoran stands shoulder by shoulder with Wang Miao’e. Four years ago, when Lin first bought the house, Master Jia personally made some dishes and treated them in the bamboo cabin.
Lin Luoran can still remember the taste of the dish called “Fragrant Balls in the Fog”, but the four people who enjoyed the dished together now have different lives.
Back then, Lin Luoran just stepped onto the path of cultivation. She didn’t know any spells nor had any magic weapon. She couldn’t even use the Reiki inside of her body. Four years have passed and she has laid foundation.
Four years ago, Wang Miao’e was a normal businesswoman. She was over forty years old and she couldn’t bear a child. Now, she is slim and pretty, and her daughter is already in kindergarten.
Baojia was a jewelry designer and her grandfather was the commander of the military district. Baojia had a rich fiancé back then, and lots of other girls were jealous of her… Now, Baojia is also a cultivator and she seldom designs jewelry. Commander Qin is retired and Liu Zheng is far away. Baojia is missing. Maybe she is somewhere, waiting for Lin to find the Soul Wood and wake her up.
Lin is not sure whether she will find the Soul Wood soon. She feels that as her cultivation grows, things in life don’t become any easier.
Perhaps everybody has to experience the gains and losses of life.
“Wang, do you know where Master Jia is?”
During the past four years, every detail of the house demonstrates that it belongs to the Lin family. Master Jia, who said he was going to visit some friends, now is nowhere to be found. Lin Luoran is worried.
Wang Miao’e shakes her head. She notices Lin’s worries and she doesn’t mention the fact that Master Jia’s family has also been looking for him for four years and they find nothing. Wang hopes that no bad news is the best situation for now.
“Forget about this. Let’s go and taste the snake meat!” Lin Luoran changes the topic. She holds Lucy in her arms and heads to the dining room. The cyan little fox is also attracted by the fragrance and it follows Lin and Wang to the dining room. It tries to take out a piece of snake meat from the boiling pot, and its paws are burnt.
Ms. Lin takes out a deep plate and puts some soup and meat inside. She gives the plate to the little fox. The little fox jumps onto the chair, sits by the dinner table and starts to eat.
Lin Luodong is back home from school and Wei Xue comes with him. The two of them have become best friends and they sometimes go to each other’s house for dinner. The Lin family is happy that Luodong goes well with Wei Xue, and Wei Xue’s parents also are glad to see their daughter grow closer with Luodong. After all, Lin Luodong’s grades at school are good.
Lucy feels that her uncle Luodong is taken away by this girl she doesn’t know, and she keeps staring at Wei Xue. Wei is not afraid of Lucy either and she stares back. The adults on the table are aware of this, yet they don’t intervene.
This warm “snake dinner” is just a break for Lin Luoran. When she returns to the basement, she becomes focused again.
Lin Luoran has drawn so many lines on the ground of the basement that she doesn’t even have a clean place to stand.
Fortunately, the results are satisfying.
Lin is holding a crystal-clear jade. This is the best protection jade pendant she made. It took her three months to figure out the structure of protective magic circles and to carve the circles on a small jade pendant.
Zeng Tian had long since delivered the bamboo sheets Lin asked for to her house. In order to focus on the magic circles, Lin Luoran hasn’t even looked through them.
It is necessary to have effective tools to do good work. Finding the Soul Wood is certainly important, but Lin Luoran has to ensure the safety of her family first. She doesn’t want to put them in danger again.
Also, Lin Luoran finds it worthwhile to spend three months on studying magic circles. After all, magic circles are important when it comes to making some armors.
Lin gathers some Reiki on her fingertip and directs them to hit the jade pendant. When the Reiki are one meter away from the jade pendant, light starts to shine on the pendant. Then, the Reiki are dissipated. Nothing else happens.
Lin Luoran makes several more attempts and the jade pendant on the ground is finally broken into dust.
Commander Qin’s jade pendant didn’t turn into dust before. It now turns out that Lin has underestimated the material of Commander Qin’s jade pendant and the crazy Taoist’s cultivation.
During the “Inception of Spirit”, pendants made from the same piece of jade may acquire different effects based on the level of cultivation of their owners.
For example, the jade pendant Lin made is able to stand any attack in the level of Training Qi, yet it only has one chance of protecting its owner from the Wakan of cultivators in the level of Laying Foundation.
Though Lin Luoran is not so skilled in weapon refining, the jade she used to make the pendant is not of the best quality… Jade can contain Reiki, which makes it the best material to carve magic circles. However, jade is not enough to serve as real weapons.
Suddenly, it comes to Lin Luoran that she once saw a large bluestone on the mountain of her native town. Back then, she only thought that the bluestone was unusual because a black epiphyllum was growing on it.
Now Lin Luoran realizes how magical the black epiphyllum is.
At that time, the flame fruit in her space helped cleanse her meridians and bone marrow. It was the best time to start to cultivate, but Lin didn’t because no one was there to teach her. Only after the black epiphyllum opened her ocean of consciousness, she officially stepped on the path of cultivation. Or else she would be an ordinary person who may make a fortune by selling the vegetable she grows in the space.
How could the bluestone be normal?
According to the Introduction of Swords, Lin believes that the bluestone can be used to make weapons, but she is not sure whether it is the right material to make protective pendants.
Looking at the scorpion shell which has become black liquid after all the boiling, Lin Luoran can’t decide whether she should go get the bluestone or not.
