Over these past five weeks, Lan Xin has not wasted all her time only running errands for Li Hao.
After the surprise attack from three Foundation Establishment Illusory Demons, her mindset has shifted even more.
With her 12th level of qi refinement and mid-stage innate spirit grade physique, she is capable of fighting on their level.
Even so, her full strength is still not being utilized.
Her serpent severely injured itself during the wedding conflict in order to prematurely advance their shared physique, to the point where it needs a long dormant rest in her soul with a tier 2 firestone to heal.
Every weapon she's used to battle foundational cultivators shatters, not holding up to her own flames or the caliber of her enemies' weapons.
Now, after claiming the belongings of one of the Ye Clan demons, she has almost a full hundred foundational crystals to use herself.
It is enough to purchase two well-made low-grade tier 2 weapons, or even a poor-quality mid-grade artifact.
However, the thought of using either of these options just results in them breaking too. She can't trust artifacts as much as she can her own physique.
This is what she contemplates at times while sitting above the WangMu Peak's Tier 2 vein.
There are arrays set up to disperse the dense qi flow, making it easily absorbable for qi refiners.
This vein supported the cultivation of dozens of late stage qi refiners and multiple foundational elders of the Jiang Family in the past.
Now, only Wang Ruze and Mu Zhiheng come by to cultivate sporadically when checking up on the property to prepare it for when the young heirs move in.
Lan Xin has it almost entirely to herself. It releases the equivalent qi output of sitting on top of over 20 high-grade tier 1 veins at once.
It is more than enough to support her 12th level qi refining cultivation, but it still does not feel quite like the perfect-grade veins that Li Hao rejuvenated. There is a difference in the sharpness of the qi that she cannot quite understand.
For many nights, she pulls out the small piece of white jade with a golden enlightenment character on its front to contemplate what it should be used for.
Li Hao said it could help her break through bottlenecks or understand things about her physique… but also kept saying that it could answer any question or even help focus her more on her passion.
Every time Lan Xin thinks of this word, passion, or purpose, her old mindset still tries to reject it.
She would often make fun of cultivators romanticizing their crafts, speaking about some growing spark in their souls, or an obsession that drew them back to a path no matter how much they tried to keep their minds off it.
Now, she's starting to doubt her past beliefs.
She thinks about her time inside that Hidden Realm every day.
For some reason, it feels like her entire life was covered in a veil of fog before it.
She felt like she was blind, directionless, and filled with anger for no reason at all. She was just mindlessly following the status quo of the sect around her, letting years of life pass by without even realizing it.
It is like a cold bucket of ice water has been dropped on her head.
She was kidnapped by that black-haired teen, restrained in a prison of gold against her will, and forced to think about how she tried to treat him like everyone else.
For all 10 years she's been in the sect, Lan Xin has teased and manipulated men to siphon resources out of their clans before throwing them to the side without even letting them lay a finger on her skin.
Now, someone actually did, and she enjoyed it.
Lan Xin's cultivation concentration is not perfect, as she's constantly replaying the moment of her first kiss.
It feels so much different than she thought it would.
The flash of raw emotions she felt from Li Hao in that golden burst of light are ingrained in her mind.
Throughout her entire life, she has never felt as though someone actually understood her.
She's overheard hundreds of women in Lingshi City and the Outer Sect talk of their experiences with men, doing far more than this, but none of them have ever spoken of a connection so deep and visceral.
She recalls the few times Li Hao has asked her about souls, and his obsession with soul-based items.
The fact that he owns an extremely rare spirit fox with a soul affinity makes all of this even more strange.
His words right after their lips separated, saying that his situation is even more complicated than it seems keeps resurfacing in her thoughts.
She wonders if that golden light was the product of some artifact his family left behind to keep him safe, or if it was something he activated himself.
In that moment there was also a very cold presence inside him very different to the warm, empathetic soul that tried to give itself to her. Whatever it was didn't dislike her… it simply looked at her with indifference, as a valuable asset containing benefits and flaws.
Every time Lan Xin tries to understand these feelings, she becomes more confused, but it makes her far more infatuated and intrigued with the young man that she's tied herself to.
She contemplates using this enlightenment talisman on this problem but holds herself back from doing so. She believes Li Hao would call it a waste, and she doesn't want to disappoint him now.
She wants to be useful to him, as a pillar of influence in the sect, and someone he can rely on in battle. So far, he's always been the one to save her.
After a few days of contemplation, Lan Xin decides to try and follow in Meng Ruo's footsteps and learn a useful skill.
What she lacks most keeps tying back to her weapons.
Lan Xin prepares by buying up large amounts of raw metal ores, finds one of the Jiang Clan's now abandoned forges, and purchases every booklet and guide there is on Artifact Forging in Lingshi City.
She skims over the booklets once before, then taps the white jade to her forehead, only expecting to be able to recall information faster at first.
However, upon activation, she completely loses touch with the outside world for an entire day.
Bright flames burst from the back mountain of the WangMu Peak over the following few days, as a new Artifact Forger enters the cultivation world.
She only manages to craft low- and mid-grade swords and daggers, but as a novice that didn't know a single thing about this craft days ago, this is an unbelievable feat.
There are many cultivators from talented late-stage qi refining clans that spent decades before finally creating their first mid-grade tier 1 artifact.
Lan Xin is quite impressed herself, but after the shock of a Hidden Realm, a Tier 3 Golden Sword Artifact, the ability to rejuvenate spirit veins, and the countless other mysteries Li Hao is hiding, this doesn't surprise her much.
She's convinced she simply underestimated this talisman's memorization ability and should have focused harder if she wanted to become better.
The fiery woman leaves the WangMu Peak to collect spirit stones to bring back to the sect, as an entire week has already passed by.
She falls into a consistent routine of collecting stones, attending Spirit Herb Peak auctions whenever they appear, and returning to the WangMu Peak to practice her qi cultivation and occasionally forge a few weapons to maintain the strange skill she's learned.
It becomes quite the calming process.
She wasn't well-read at all on forging before trying the talisman, so the majority of her knowledge of flames comes from her own physique.
She does not require a flame talisman, or firestone, or even a complex forge to complete a craft.
A unique self-taught forging technique was created, allowing her to use her natural physique's flames to heat up the raw metal she wants to craft with. With enough focus on some attempts, the hot metal becomes a pseudo limb of her innate physique, allowing her to perfectly manipulate its temperature and shape internally rather than relying on outside artifacts as most tier 1 forgers would.
Lan Xin doesn't bother to double-check if this method is correct or common; she simply practices it when she can and begins to consistently produce mid-grade artifacts without a single crafting failure.
It allows her to use this time to process her thoughts, a moment for reflection and introspection in her weekly routine.
She has visited over twenty minor foundational clans; half are associated with the four nearby outer peaks of the Alchemy, Forging, Beast Mastery, and Combat Peaks. The other half are further east, associated with the Spirit Herb, Array Formation, and Ore Refinement Peaks.
All of these initial stage foundational cultivators know her name and show respect in her presence.
Before the WangMu wedding, families like this all knew her name, but none of them lowered their heads or invited her into their family mountains with such cordial attitudes like they do now.
She buys out all of their soul metal fragments and often stays for a cup of tea to get more information out of them to hear of other leads.
These clan patriarchs would have brought out their sons or grandsons in the past and offered marriage in aggressive manners. Many would look at her with unrestrained lust themselves and offer to take her as a concubine.
However, eyewitness reports of her killing five foundational cultivators at once have spread far and wide.
In her presence, many 1st and 2nd level foundational cultivators even feel their natural auras being suppressed.
None of these minor foundational clans wish to get on her bad side, so they act as they should, lesser clans in her presence.
Once reaching the edge of these foreign three peaks' border, she stops pushing her luck and does not manage to find as much soul metal in the last few weeks that Li Hao trains.
Her focus returns to practicing her forging and stopping in Lingshi City from time to time to buy out all of the high-grade herbs and pill supplies as requested. Occasionally, she'll purchase more black flag harvesting arrays from the Lin Clan.
A few hundred thousand spirit stones have flooded into the economy in just over a month, and at the same time, over a dozen powerful late qi refining clans have decided to permanently make their home in Lingshi City, filling in the shops where the Fu, Tang, and other Jiang Clan allies were.
The Wang Patriarch rejects all foundational clans that request to settle in the city, as they have full control over most of the property rights.
With the influx of spirit stones, many of the shop prices in the city have risen far faster than usual to keep up.
There has been a minor inflation, artificially manufactured by Lan Xin's spending habits.
Rumors that she's selfishly overstrained all of the veins granted to her as gifts for helping in the wedding assault spread, but she does not confirm or deny them.
After naturally cultivating one to two heavenly grade firestones every week, and having constant access to a low grade tier 2 vein, she already feels the bottleneck of the mid stage of the 12th level of qi refining starting to budge. She just needs a little more time to mature and push it over the edge.
When not cultivating qi, Lan Xin spends the rest of her time in the old tier 1 forge of a deceased Jiang Clan Elder.
Near the end of her fifth week, she excitedly yells out while alone atop the WangMu Peak, holding a still-warm black and orange blade up in the air.
It barely classifies as a high-grade tier 1 weapon based on the materials used and the quality of the craftsmanship. However, there is a heavy innate vibrating fiery strength coursing through this blade that is far from normal.
Improving so much over the past month has built her confidence in a far different way than winning battles of strength ever have.
She decides she will leave a message behind to ask Li Hao for another enlightenment talisman when she gets back to the sect later this week.
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Author's Note:
One chapter of Five Element Overlord will be posted every weekday: M,T,W,TH,F.
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