Chapter 9: Refining Equipment and Vanquishing Evil

  In the depths of a vast and mysterious mountain, white snowflakes fell ceaselessly, trees were already dressed in silver attire, and the usual clear bird songs could no longer be heard. After a long while, a small squirrel cautiously poked its head out of a tree hole, then quickly leaped to another tree and vanished from sight.

  "It's actually snowing? Isn't Fuzhou a place that rarely snows?" A snowman suddenly stood up, stretched and shook off the snowflakes on his head and body, revealing a handsome young face, yes, only "handsome" can be used to describe him.

  Yu Feng was a young man who had suddenly broken through to the First Heaven Great Perfection five months ago, and now he has entered the Dao with his martial arts, entering the legendary realm of the Daoist sects. His appearance and facial features have changed more and more, and he has lost some of his former childishness.

  Five months ago he left the old lady's house, leaving ten taels of silver on her bed, bought some dry rations, and spent all the rest in that jade store buying rough jade. The owner of the jade store was planning to fleece him, but didn't know that what he bought were all the cheapest kind of rough jade, so the greedy old man had to wait for next time.

  Something happened when Yu Feng left the city, which made him decide to immediately retreat and cultivate.

  The last time I bought jade was the day a group of foreign soldiers escorted a horse-drawn carriage into the city at the gate, but they ran over and killed a child at the entrance, causing everyone to argue, the foreigners in the car ordered the soldiers to ignore this matter and continue on their way, letting them speed through the crowd.

  Witnessing this scene enraged Yu Feng greatly, he quickly snatched a set of clothes to change into and covered his face, then on the spot killed the horse driver who had collided with him and the leader of the foreigners in the middle of the street. He didn't put those twenty or so foreign soldiers in his eyes either. Although those foreigners were holding strange sticks in their hands, at first they used those sticks to chase people away, Yu Feng thought it was something like a Shaolin monk's staff.

  After killing the man, he didn't immediately walk away, but stood there, fearing that if he wasn't careful, others would be implicated. Seeing those foreign soldiers pointing their guns at him, he didn't think much of it. Suddenly, he felt an extreme sense of danger.

  He didn't know that this was a unique feeling of cultivators, who went against the heavens and had a premonition of their own fortune or misfortune in the unknown. Although it was his first time experiencing such a feeling, without any hesitation he immediately dodged to the side, because before that he noticed that the people beside him suddenly fell silent, with only one or two people letting out cold gasps.

  "Bang bang bang..." The sound of gunfire echoed for over a dozen rounds, and despite his quick reflexes, one of his hands was still injured. There were also several others around him who had been wounded. Yu Feng's anger flared up, and he reached into his pocket to grab a handful of copper coins, using the "Heavenly Flower Rain" dark technique to instantly take down all the foreigners with deadly precision. He then examined the injuries of the three wounded men and found that they were not life-threatening, none of them having been hit in vital areas.

  He took advantage of the city gate not being closed yet and rushed out, then stayed in this mountainous area for a full five months.

  In the meantime, he went out to investigate and fortunately did not implicate too many people, only some officials in Fuzhou City were involved and were dismissed due to poor law and order. It turned out that the stick was called a foreign gun, and it's likely that he was the only one who stood in front of more than a dozen foreign guns, waiting stupidly for someone to open fire. Hmm, I'd like to see how they launch their attack.

  This was Yu Feng's first confrontation with firearms, and their power left him shocked and amazed in his heart. Even the Jianghu Tangjia secret projectile that Zhang Laosheng had mentioned before did not have such great power. It is estimated that this is much more powerful than the Thunderbolt of the Jiangnan Thunderbolt Hall. Later, he was always grateful that he had never doubted his intuition about danger, which allowed him to narrowly escape death once. Because he believed that even if he had been hit by so many firearms, he would not have died on the spot, and it is estimated that he would have been seriously injured beyond recovery.

  Yu Feng left the city and began to check his injuries, fortunately, it was just a minor scratch, nothing serious, and stopping the bleeding would be fine. Later, he felt that he still didn't have much control over this firearm, because he couldn't guarantee that every time he was pointed at by the foreign gun, there would be that inexplicable feeling. Once might be okay, but if it happened twice or thrice, no one could guarantee what would happen.

  Before the closed door, he spent half a month to find a peach tree that was over 300 years old. A thousand-year-old tree is hopeless, and having one that's over 300 years old is pretty good. It wasn't hard to find the tree spirit's location. At first, he hadn't found the tree yet and still had some doubts - would he have to dig up the whole tree to look?

  But after really seeing the 300-year-old peach tree, he simply scanned it with his divine sense to confirm where the tree spirit was, because the spiritual energy contained in that small area was dozens of times more than elsewhere. Afterwards, he carefully dug out the tree spirit's part, thinking about it, taking out a piece of original jade, drawing ten or so pieces with his hand, and setting up a small gathering spirit array method in the excavated place. He worried that after the tree was taken out, the peach tree would die, which was very likely to happen according to the Jade Simple, but by adding a gathering spirit array for these plant spirits, the peach tree not only wouldn't die, but would instead live even better.

  With the three-hundred-year-old peach wood essence, Yu Feng arrived at the mountain where he was going to close his doors this time. A month later, he finally had a magic weapon made by himself, which he named Po Xie Fa Jian (Evil-destroying Magic Sword).

  Inside this Broken Evil Sword, he set up the array formations that he could use. They included the Breaking Evil Array, the Full Yang Array, the Gathering Spirit Array, the Collecting Soul Array, the Sharp Gold Array, and finally, there was also a Demon-Exterminating Array. Each of these arrays made Yu Feng expend a great deal of energy, because setting up an array with one's divine sense placed very high demands on one's spiritual cultivation.

  If Yu Feng hadn't tempered his will under the waterfall for a few years, he would have been unable to withstand the backlash of the demon-slaying array in the final arrangement and his three souls and seven spirits would have collapsed instantly.

  The formation is not comparable to others, let alone using divine thought to set up the formation. If one's cultivation is not good enough, once they start setting up the formation with divine thought, they cannot stop. Either the formation will be successfully completed, or the person's spirit will collapse, and they will become a fool at best, or their soul will scatter at worst.

  Not to mention the formation of the Taoist family law, some martial arts moves can't be stopped once they're started, and trying to stop halfway through may even backfire on oneself. What's more, it's said that cultivating the Tao is thousands of times more dangerous than learning martial arts.

  Yu Feng suffered a great loss and his spirit almost collapsed, but he couldn't remember this lesson, only secretly feeling lucky in his heart.

  After the formation was completed, when his cultivation was fully restored, he began to start the Ling for the formation method. These formations are connected together and can only be successfully opened once. If not, the entire Taomu Jing will disappear completely. Yu Feng recited all the names of the great gods that he could remember in his heart, and then slowly poured in his true yuan, allowing the true yuan to flow through the well-arranged formation method, breaking the evil formation, the whole gang formation, the gathering spirit formation, and the sharp gold formation. These three formations were successfully started one after another, and the three-color light ring on the sword also lit up. However, at this time, Yu Feng's true yuan in his body had almost been consumed by half, and according to the Jade Simplification, the Demon-Slaying Formation was the largest among these basic formations, so the corresponding consumption of spiritual energy must be the greatest.

  At that time, I was a bit worried that my true yuan wouldn't be enough, but thinking again, it's the brave who get to eat their fill, and the timid who starve, or else I would have just eaten the bitter white food from when I was carving the divine seal array. This demon-slaying array won't wait for me to recover my true yuan before using it again.

  After thinking for a moment, with more than half of the thousand-year-old ginseng still bulging in his mouth, he felt slightly reassured and decided to go all out.

  This decision made Yu Feng never dare to underestimate the importance of array arrangement again, and finally understood that array arrangement is not only about making people feel at ease, but also about destroying people. The array method had only been operating for half a cycle when his remaining true wu was consumed by two-thirds, and with one closed eye, Yu Feng crushed and swallowed the thousand-year-old ginseng.

  Hundreds of taels of silver! Yu Feng thought to himself, but he immediately abandoned this stingy idea, because after the old ginseng entered his throat and was slowly converted into true yuan, the array's activation was nearing its end, and suddenly the demand for true yuan increased greatly. At this time, Yu Feng could no longer control the flow of true yuan in his body, and in just a moment, the true yuan in his body had been completely drained, leaving him empty. If it weren't for the old ginseng slowly converting into true yuan to barely hold on, he was certain that he would have been sucked dry by this damned Demon-Slaying Array.

  At the last moment, Yu Feng suddenly realized that his vital energy was constantly flowing out and pouring into the various formations within the sword body of the Exterminating Evil Sword. Just as he wondered what it would be like to become a human dry corpse, the sword body of the Exterminating Evil Sword flashed with four-colored light rings before disappearing.

  It's alright, I finally succeeded in refining the equipment for the first time, and this damned formation has finally stopped sucking me dry! The last thought that rose up was of Yu Feng, and then I fainted.

  When he woke up, he didn't know how long it had been, anyway it was already evening. He touched the magic sword in his hand, and it was still there. After slightly infusing some true yuan into it, the sword emitted a four-colored light halo, with spiritual energy circulating within. With a gentle swing of the sword, the sword flowers shook, and a stone more than ten zhang away from him silently split into two halves. Yu Feng touched his nose, indeed worthy of having risked his life to obtain this result. Joining the Demon-Slaying Array Method was truly as Yu Jian said, its power increased by more than one fold.

  In the following months, Yu Feng continuously used his true yuan to temper the Po Xie Sword, and after a month, he was able to store it in his body, allowing his true yuan to refine it on its own.

  He spent the rest of his days using the remaining materials from refining the sword to create over a dozen peach wood talismans, and turned all the original jade into arrays for future use. During this time, Yu Feng continuously studied and practiced the array methods and seals, familiarizing himself with the ways of array deployment and restriction, or else he was practicing the spells that could be learned from the Jade Annals, such as the Heart's Desire Transmission Method, the Soul Searching Great Method, the Concealment Method, and so on. Unfortunately, the Sword Controlling Technique within was still unlearnable at this point, let alone the Cloud Riding Wind Controlling Technique which he didn't even dare to think about.

  The jade slip contains more than just the sect's Daoist techniques of Song Lingzi's master, as it includes several different types of gongfa. In fact, he didn't know that Song Lingzi was obsessed with array formations and restrictive methods all his life, doing things both righteously and wickedly, as long as he thought they were useful, all the techniques were recorded in the jade slip.

  Orthodox spells are often easy to learn but difficult to master, while demonic spells and artifacts have readily available materials, and once mastered, their power far surpasses that of ordinary spells, except that some spells harm the heavens. Although orthodox methods progress slowly, as long as one's innate talent is not lacking and they have time to accumulate experience, they will eventually reach a corresponding height. In contrast, demonic methods may progress rapidly at first but become extremely difficult later on, and most people who practice demonic arts are entangled in numerous karmic debts, making it hard for them to transcend heavenly tribulations.

  Yu Feng stood up after finishing his meditation, using magic to clear the snow from his body, and began to descend the mountain. Compared to before he went up the mountain, he was now greatly different. If his martial arts value were ten before going up the mountain, it had now exceeded eighty. The current him was what people called a true master of the Light Body Technique, leaving no trace behind. With the Stealth Technique already applied to his body, he disappeared once again into the mountains and forests.

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