“Refine!”
Ding. System Prompt: The item has reached its maximum refining limit, unable to be further refined.
“So the materials and bloodlines can only be refined once, and you can’t keep on refining it,” Jiang Feng mumbled to himself as he looked at the ore in his hand.
In order to understand his new Refine skill, he took out a low-level iron ore for it to be transmuted.
But what he did not expect was that it became Iron Essence after one refinement. He was originally thinking of using Refine on the Iron Essence, but it failed.
That meant that Refine could only be used on a drop of bloodline or material once, and it could not be refined again.
Regardless, he was still very happy with Refine.
That was because even the lowest level Iron Essence was worth 500gp and more. It was very valuable.
The reason being that Iron Essence could be used within the creation of Divine Artifacts.
Of course, the different types of ores could be used to refine and produce different levels and types of Iron Essence.
Iron Essence could be separated into Spiritual Level, Immortal Level, and Divine Level. It could be further separated into Low-Rank, Mid-Rank, and High-Rank.
Low-rank and Mid-rank Spiritual Level Iron Essence were used to forge Dark Gold equipment, while only High-rank Iron Essence was used to create Spiritual Artifacts. Immortal-Level Low-Rank and Mid-Rank were used to forge Spiritual Artifacts. Only Immortal-level High-Rank Iron Essence could be used to forge Immortal Artifacts. The same logic applied to the Divine Level Iron Essence.
However, to refine ores into Iron Essence, it was not an easy task. He had only managed to gain one steel essence after trying it on around fifty ores.
And he noticed that while the Bloodline would remain upon failure, materials would disappear.
“That’s fine. Because regardless of what happens, the new skill from the Monster Transmutation System has helped me in the awkward situation I was in with my evolution,” Jiang Feng said as he shrugged with a smile.
Seeing that his Polymorph duration still had an hour left, he called on the Monster Cloud and headed toward the Herbal Store.
As the Ancient City of the Shifter Emperor had been fully repaired, all he needed to do was to recruit operators for all the shops, and he could open it to outsiders.
In order to open up the city, he first needed to have five different shops in operation. Otherwise, the option would not be available.
In truth, he could recruit some merchants to open the shops, but that meant that he would expose his identity and lose some profit. That was why he was going to ask Uncle Hua if he had any better ideas or solutions.
This was all because the cities by the other factions had already opened and they had very good business. He was very jealous of them and wanted to open up the city as well so he could earn some money.
At least, he wanted to earn back all the money he invested in repairing the city.
Uncle Hua could be considered as an NPC with an advanced AI, so he should have some information from the game. That was why he went to look for Uncle Hua.
At this point, Uncle Hua was sitting in the Herbal Store, placing herbs into a furnace that reached his waist in height. He was creating pills.
Perhaps because he was an NPC in the game, Hua Yan, Uncle Hua’s grandson, had grown to the size of a baby around three months old despite the fact that only one week had passed. He was swaddling and drinking from a gourd.
Seeing that Uncle Hua was creating pills, Jiang Feng did not disturb him and waited next to him as he watched.
The herbal materials from the Herbal Shop came partly from him harvesting from the mountains behind the Ancient City, and the rest came from the efforts of Uncle Fu, purchasing them through the Imperial Dragon Auction House.
At this level, many of the Crafters’ Craft-Profession skills were still in mid-level and they still could not use any high-level materials. So when some of the players received some high-level materials as their quest reward, they would often sell it, especially when they needed the money. These would be procured by the Imperial Dragon Auction house at a lower price.
After a while, Uncle Hua’s pills had been completed. He took out around fifty pills from the furnace, then put all the pills into the medicinal drawers.
“Xiao Feng, you’re here. Is the Ancient City going to open to the outsiders? My inventory is still lacking, so please put it on hold,” Uncle Hua smiled kindly as he walked over after he had stored the pills.
Jiang Feng returned a smile and said, “The Ancient City isn’t ready to be opened. I’m here to ask if you know anyone that has a secondary job?”
“People with secondary jobs?” Uncle Hua gave it a thought, then his eyes beamed. He then told Jiang Feng, “I do know a few, but why are you looking for them? Perhaps…”
“That’s right, I want them to come to the Ancient City,” Jiang Feng said.
“Impossible. It would be very difficult to ask them to join us.” Uncle Hua shook his head.
“Uncle Hua, all you need to do is to tell me where they are, and I will recruit them. No matter how difficult it is, I want to give it a try,” Jiang Feng said with confidence.
Seeing Jiang Feng’s confidence, Uncle Hua agreed to it. Since there was no one else here other than the two gnomes, it was a bit dull without anyone to chat with.
If Jiang Feng could find and recruit his old friends, maybe they could drink tea and play chess together afterward.
“These old folks joined the Great Divine-Infernal War. I heard that a few have passed, but the rest are all living as hermits in the Hermit Village. The Hermit Village is located within the Kunlun Mountain Range. That is the location of the Hermit Village. They did ask me to join them as well, but I didn’t join them because I had a family. I hope you can do your best in persuading them.”
***
After obtaining the location of the Hermit Village, he then bought five more low-level Polymorph Pills from Uncle Hua.
According to Uncle Hua, since his Herbal Store was opened in the Ancient City, once the Ancient City was opened, a great number of highly-intelligent monsters would come. These Polymorph Pills were made for them.
However, the ones that were sold in large batches were only low-level Polymorph Pills. In contrast, the high-level Polymorph pill that he used last time was a Spiritual Level pill. Unfortunately, spiritual level herbs could not be found that easily, and he could not create any without the herbs.
Low-level Polymorph Pill: A monster can become anyone it wants to after consuming it. Duration of 2 hours. Cooldown of 5 hours. The selling price of 5,000gp.
He could use the Low-Level Polymorph Pill three times a day at most.
While these were only low-level, they could help him every once in a while.
After he left the Herbal Sore, he then looked for Yanhu, Heifeng, and the rest of his followers and brought them along. After putting on some disguise, he then teleported into Kunlun City.
When he reached Kunlun City, he then bought some good food and wine from the General Store. He needed to show some appreciation when trying to recruit them.
After buying the items, he then left Kunlun City and headed toward Mount Kunlun by riding on the Monster Cloud.
As it was getting a bit boring on his way there, he then opened up the lottery as he sat down on the cloud.
The lottery wheel was still the same as before and had no changes.
He gave it some thought, then pressed on the button in the middle of the wheel to make it double. He wanted to use both his lottery chances at one go.
The indicator then began to spin.
After a dozen seconds, the indicator slowly stopped at Special. Next, two treasure chests appeared in front of him.
One of them was a diamond treasure chest, while the other was a prismatic treasure chest.
“It’s a prismatic chest!”
The only time that he had a prismatic chest was when he had just obtained the Monster Transmutation System. This was the second time, and it was right after the Monster Transmutation System was upgraded.
He looked at the prismatic chest and thought to himself, ‘The prismatic chests come from lottery chances that were given to me as a bonus. Don’t tell me that I can get a prismatic chest every time I use a lottery chance given by the system?’
“Whatever, let’s see what’s inside the chest!”
He became very excited and had high expectations with the appearance of the prismatic chest. He rubbed his palms together and opened the two treasure chests.
The first treasure chest contained a pill furnace the size of his palm while the second treasure chest contained a scroll.
Evolution Pill Furnace—Specialized equipment for the Inheritor of the Shifters. It will automatically produce 2 Evolution Pills.
“A pill furnace that could produce Evolution Pills automatically!”
Seeing its stats, Jiang Feng was overjoyed.
Although there were only two of them, he was more than satisfied with it.
After the upgrade to the Monster Transmutation System, the chances of him transmuting an Evolution Pill had been increased to five percent. While he could transmute several pills within a week, he would never say that he had too many evolution pills.
“No wonder Qiu Si would have the Divine Speech Pill and Yao Qiong would have the Beast Speech Pills. They must have a similar pill furnace like this on them.” After seeing the Evolution Pill Furnace, he finally understood where Qiu Si and Yao Qiong got the pills from.
After taking out the Evolution Pill Furnace, he noticed that there were already two Evolution Pills inside. After taking out the two pills, the Pill Furnace automatically closed up and a timer appeared on top of it, entering a period of creation.
Happily, he put both the Evolution Pills and the Furnace into the Spatial Bracelet, then looked at the scroll from the Prismatic Chest.
