Chapter 56: The Sect's Mission

  "Long time no see, Elder Song!" Shi Sheng said with a serious face.

  "Good!" Old Man Song nodded, thought for a moment, and said slowly: "It just so happens that the disciple on duty on the second floor is injured. Since you have nothing to do now, Elder Li will take you up later to clean the sanitation on the second floor. It must be spotless."

  "Master Song, your disciple is not a servant!" Shi Sheng said calmly, silently cursing in his heart but not daring to show any expression on his face.

  "Oh? In front of this elder, even a Yuanhe realm disciple wouldn't dare to disobey the task entrusted by me. Are you asking me to take you to the Law Enforcement Hall?" Song Elder said coldly, without even giving Shi Sheng a glance, as if he didn't deign to interact with such a low-ranking disciple.

  Shi Sheng clenched his fists and gritted his teeth: "I will follow Elder Song's orders!"

  "This is almost it, Elder Li, I'll leave it to you!" Elder Song said with a smile, glanced at Shi Sheng playfully, and then turned around and left.

  Li Zhang looked at Shi Sheng with an expressionless face and said, "Since Song Zhang has instructed you, it's best if you don't disobey him. After all, he is the Law Enforcement Elder."

  "This doesn't count as an insult, it's just a waste of time. Young people don't need to be afraid of getting dirty or tired. By the way, if you want to modify the dagger and add nine small holes on the back of the handle, you'll need to add two more pieces of Xuanjing Jade!"

  "Alright, thank you Elder Li!" Shi Sheng nodded and handed over the last two pieces of Xuanjing Jade on his body, following Elder Li to the second floor to clean up each alchemy room.

  The second floor is extremely large, with a long corridor, and stone gates on both sides. Some are open and some are closed. Li Changlao said: "All the cleaning tools are in this storage room. The closed stone gates indicate that someone has rented them to refine equipment or talismans, while the open stone gates indicate that no one is using them. Just clean all the unoccupied rooms!"

  "I understand!" Shi Sheng sighed helplessly, although the second floor normally didn't allow cultivators below the Hua Hai boundary to enter, but Shi Sheng also didn't want to come here in this way.

  After finding the broom and other tools, Shi Sheng started sweeping each room. The single rooms were not large, and almost all of them had similar layouts and decorations. There was a fire-red stone platform that looked like a stove, with a three-foot-tall tripod cauldron on top. The floor was littered with some disordered and damaged material residue, which seemed to be leftovers from alchemy experiments.

  When they swept to the seventh stone chamber, Shi Sheng suddenly narrowed his eyes. This stone chamber did not have any material residue, but was covered with yellow talismans, on which were drawn various strange symbols. Some of them Shi Sheng had seen before, while some he had never seen.

  "Huh? So many medical symbols? It seems that they should be more advanced than Wang Bo's, but I don't know what their function is!" After a moment of contemplation, Shi Sheng picked up all the discarded talismans and put them in his pocket, continuing to clean the room. He had encountered two rooms like this, and had also picked up quite a few discarded talismans.

  "Heh heh, I might just have to try refining it when I get back. Old Man Song inadvertently helped me out; otherwise, I really wouldn't know where to learn these talismans! Shi Sheng chuckled to himself, although he had wasted an entire morning and was feeling a bit sore in the waist and back, but at least he had gained something. After reporting to Li Long, he took the Blood Shadow Dagger and headed back to Gu Xiang Zhai!"

  ……

  "Asheng, you're back! Someone sent a message earlier that Huahaijing needs to go out on a mission. We'll gather at Tianyang Pavilion in half a month!" Lin Wan'er hastily informed him as soon as she saw Shisheng, then served the meal.

  "What task? Did I say anything about a task?" Shi Sheng asked while eating!

  "It seems like some kind of trial, but it's said to have a certain level of danger, so I'm reminding everyone to seize the opportunity within half a month to boost their strength!" Lin Wan'er recalled.

  "Experience? And danger?" Shi Sheng furrowed his brow secretly, since the sect said there was danger, it seemed that he should be more careful. However, to increase his strength, all he needed to do was cultivate the Five Elements basic techniques and familiarize himself with the Blood Shadow Dagger again.

  After eating in a hurry, Shi returned to his room and took out all the utensils such as the spiritual brush. He then looked at the talismans he had picked up again, although there were about fifty or sixty of them, but basically only three types.

  "These two are nine-character talismans, and the last one is a twelve-character talisman. The style of the talismans is so strange, forget it, let's practice with ordinary paper first. Now there are only over ten blank talisman papers in hand, can't waste them!" Shi Sheng said, and began to practice.

  Until late at night, Shi Sheng finally mastered all the talismans and immediately took out the spiritual inkstone and talisman paper. With a solemn expression, he began to refine the talismans.

  He took out a talisman paper and placed it on the table, Shi Sheng drew nine talismans according to the waste talisman, then quickly put down the spiritual pen, stretched out his hands with his index fingers, staring intently at the nine talismans.

  Whoosh!

  In the top right corner, a rune symbol flashed with a silver light. Shi Sheng's right hand had already infused his willpower into it, and his index finger instinctively tapped on it without hesitation. As soon as he withdrew his finger, he continued to infuse more willpower into it. Meanwhile, his left index finger was tapping on another lit-up rune symbol.

  In a short while, Shi's fingers rose on the last talisman, and the entire talisman lit up with a faint layer of spiritual light, looking extremely spiritual.

  "Successful? Hehe, it's not that hard, I wonder who failed so many times!" Shi Sheng thought of the discarded talismans in the stone room and couldn't help but shrug his shoulders. With a natural talent like a mole cricket, Shi Sheng found crafting talismans to be extremely easy.

  Shi Sheng had a good plan, with a total of twelve talismans, three types of talismans each refined into four pieces. The first two types were easily refined, but the last type of talisman made Shi Sheng concentrate, because it was his first time refining a talisman with twelve talisman characters.

  After drawing the talisman, Shi Sheng put down the spiritual brush and focused his attention on the incantation. With a concentrated mind, he stared at the talisman's characters. Suddenly, one of the characters in the upper left corner lit up, and Shi Sheng instinctively reached out to touch it.

  A loud humming noise.

  "Not good!" Just as his fingertips touched the symbol, Shi Sheng suddenly felt a slight tremor in the entire spiritual realm, and nearly one-third of his spiritual energy was absorbed by the symbol. Shi Sheng's eyes immediately turned black, and he felt dizzy.

  Bang!

  Before Sheng could react, the talisman suddenly burst into flames and was reduced to ashes in an instant. Sheng hastily withdrew his hands, staring blankly at what had just happened, seemingly struggling to comprehend it all.

  "This is strange, what's going on? Refining a talisman shouldn't be so exhausting for my mental energy. And it even self-ignites?" Shi Sheng was somewhat bewildered and tried again with some skepticism, the second talisman paper also turned to ashes. Finally, Shi Sheng's mind shook, his mental energy was too depleted, and he stumbled, almost unable to stand steady.

  "Never mind, it's a waste anyway. I'll ask other fellow disciples if I have the chance!" Shi Sheng had refined the last two talismans into the first two types of talismans and sat down to meditate.

  In the next few days, Shi Sheng almost never left his door, except for having meals with Lin Wan'er and chatting with her for a while. The rest of the time was spent practicing the Five Elements Spell and the Blood Shadow Dagger control method, which he became more and more proficient in.

  Three days later, Shi Sheng waved his hand in the quiet room, and a thin blade about one foot long, almost semi-transparent, shot out with a whooshing sound, finally cutting into the ground with a plop, sinking more than half a foot deep, and then dispersing.

  "This is the Wind Blade? It can actually condense the power of the Five Elements' wind to create an attack effect comparable to a knife blade, it's truly mysterious!" As he spoke, Shí Shēng made a single stroke with one hand.

  Whoosh!

  A foot-long, cone-shaped ice block shot out and finally fell to the ground, almost half a foot deep in the earth. However, the hard ice did not melt, but instead flashed white and turned into a burst of gas that dispersed into the air.

  "The water attribute spell, Ice Cone Technique. This kind of attack is somewhat interesting, it can condense into solid ice. If it were on Earth, it would be quite remarkable, but here, it's really not worth mentioning!" Shi Sheng shook his head and continued to cultivate other five-element spells.

  ……

  Half a month's time passed in the blink of an eye, and on this day, almost all the disciples who participated in the trial gathered in front of the Tianyang Pavilion, with more than 50 people present.

  Liu Zhang stood before the crowd, slowly opening his mouth to say: "All of you disciples have now advanced to the Hua Hai realm, which can be said to be entering the threshold of a cultivator.

  But don't think that the world of cultivators is so carefree, in fact, cultivating is a path that is more brutal than the mortal world's storms and blood rains, death and injury are everyday occurrences. So, don't think that just because you have the protection of a sect, you can live a life of leisure and ease within the sect.

  Every year, the disciples of Huahaijing have to go out and perform many tasks, such as killing evil cultivators, which is actually a kind of test for you. Although there are some dangers, it can also be considered a kind of experience.

  If the halfway collapse 'erased', it can only be blamed on you that your fate is so, even if you are alive without strength and no significance, only those who survive in the tempering process are strong, and only such people can go higher and higher.

  Of course, you don't have to worry, you are all newcomers who have advanced within three years, and you are considered to be of the same batch of disciples. The older disciples will go out to kill evil cultivators, while you newcomers have it much easier, just surrounding and annihilating some mountain bandits and robbers.

  However, everyone can't be careless, because among the mountain bandits and robbers, there are also some martial arts masters. They may not have the mysterious mind power of cultivators, but they have skills that ordinary people can't compare to. Some even surpass those who have reached the Sea-Calming stage in cultivation.

  You as newcomers, I may not have believed what I said before, but those who saw Shi Sheng's match half a month ago should have a preliminary understanding of the people in the martial arts world. In short, be careful with everything, even if the opponent is just an ordinary person!

  "Are we going to kill all the robbers?" a female disciple asked timidly, looking like she was sixteen or seventeen years old. The rest of them were no more than twenty years old at most, with the youngest being fifteen or sixteen years old.

  For these people, it's probably rare to have seen a murder, let alone commit one themselves. Even thinking about it is somewhat frightening, especially for some girls who may not have even seen a dead person before.

  "Heh heh, obedient ones, you can take them to the yamen, but those who resist, if you don't kill them, they will escape and kill even more people, maybe even you. So, even if it means killing, everyone mustn't have a psychological burden, because that is someone who deserves to be killed. If you are too kind-hearted and can't bring yourself to do it, then the ones who might die are yourselves!" Liu Zhang warned solemnly.

  Finally, Liu Chang gave the crowd five teams, each with about ten people. There were several good players in each team. Shi Sheng's team had Guan Ping and Hei Yan, as well as three female disciples, totaling twelve people!

  "Alright, the captain of the fifth team is Guan Ping. After all, he has been in the Sea Boundary for over two years and has more experience than you guys. He's also a steady person, so it's reassuring to have him lead the team. As for where you're going, it's Wulongsan!" Old Man Liu finished speaking, and Shi Sheng's expression changed immediately, with a hint of anger in his eyes! (End of this chapter, next chapter is even more exciting!)

  (PS: Another extended version, a wonderful downhill practice is about to unfold, asking for votes, asking for collection, asking for various assists!!!)