"Is this the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo?" Han Li asked, an uncertain look passing over his face.
Inside the box was nothing more than a short section of ordinary withered bamboo, roughly two inches long and as thick as a pinky finger, with a few visibly shrunken root fibers still attached.
No matter how he looked at it, it seemed no different from any common bamboo!
Bewildered, Han Li could not help casting an expressionless glance at Fairy Zi Ling.
The young woman clearly understood his doubts. With a soft laugh, she held the half-yellow, half-green withered bamboo between her slender fingers, then flipped her jade-like hand, and a sparkling crystalline dagger appeared in her other hand.
With a crisp ring, Fairy Zi Ling swiftly brought the dagger down hard against the bamboo. The instant the blade made contact, a fine arc of electricity rippled across the bamboo's surface, immediately knocking the dagger away.
Seeing this, Han Li's doubts vanished at once. He carefully placed the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo back into the box and stowed it away again.
Afterward, Fairy Zi Ling gave Han Li a waist tablet marking him as an elder of the Miaoyin Sect. The two chatted for a while before Han Li took his leave.
Not long after Han Li had left, Madam Fan and Zhuo Ruting returned to the inn together. After hearing Fairy Zi Ling recount what had happened, the two of them stared at each other in silence for a long while.
"Junior sister, this isn't quite what we agreed on. Aren't we getting the short end of the stick! With the reputation of this Heavenly Thunder Bamboo alone, we could easily find other Core Formation cultivators. Why are we bending over backward for this man?" Madam Fan said, unable to keep a trace of complaint out of her voice.
Though Zhuo Ruting said nothing beside her, her willow-like brows knitted slightly, and an equally puzzled look appeared on her face.
"You two senior sisters don't know. The moment I proposed making him an elder of our sect, his expression turned quite unpleasant, and from the look in his eyes I could tell at once that his will is extremely firm—he would never have agreed to this even without the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo. Besides, senior sister, you said it yourself: this man isn't the least bit afraid of our charm techniques."
"As for using the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo to recruit some other cultivator—senior sisters, you are overestimating the value of this hardly-worth-the-trouble item. You must understand, although the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo is known as one of the three great divine bamboos of the cultivation world, in reality the people who can actually make use of it are exceedingly few. Unless one intends to refine a top-grade wood-element magic treasure, who would use this as a material? And for those who do know how to refine such treasures, our tiny piece of Heavenly Thunder Bamboo is of little use anyway. You also know that Heavenly Thunder Bamboo itself comes in grades. Ours is merely a several-thousand-year White Thunder Bamboo. Even refined into a magic treasure, it would not have much power. It would be better to use this item to get on this man's good side first. What's more, since he has agreed to be an elder of our sect, so long as we sisters treat him with respect and keep sending him gifts year after year, if our sect truly runs into a powerful enemy someday, would he really have the face to refuse us a helping hand?" Fairy Zi Ling said leisurely, the very picture of calm.
"And even if someone else truly desired the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo and was willing to be an elder of our sect—would our sect dare to accept him in its present state? We would likely just be driving away a tiger at the front door while letting in a wolf at the back! Back then, my mother could only rely on the balancing strategy, keeping the Zhao and Meng elders working honestly for our sect, because she herself was a Core Formation cultivator. After all, relying solely on charm techniques and a woman's beauty to win over high-grade cultivators very easily invites backlash!" the young woman added, a faint trace of bitterness in her smile.
Hearing these words, Madam Fan and Zhuo Ruting both fell silent.
After the recent mass defection of their disciples, the two of them had indeed lost some confidence in their own charm techniques, and what this little junior sister said seemed to make a certain sense.
"For now, the affairs of the sect will be handled jointly by the three of us. We will not appoint a sect leader for the time being. Once one of the three of us, or one of the female disciples under us, can reach Core Formation, it will not be too late to appoint one then!" the young woman said resolutely.
This time, the other two women raised no objection.
"Elder Han—might he use his deep cultivation to forcibly meddle in the sect's affairs? Should we take precautions in advance?" Zhuo Ruting suddenly asked in a cold voice.
"He won't. Although I haven't had much contact with him, I could still tell from our conversation that he seems to be a devoted ascetic cultivator. Probably nothing besides cultivation could stir his heart. Otherwise, when I offered to give him one of our female disciples as a concubine, he wouldn't have shown no expression whatsoever. It's probably precisely because of this that he managed to reach the Core Formation stage!" Fairy Zi Ling shook her head and said with a trace of envy.
"Ah, who knows whether we sisters will ever have a chance to reach Core Formation ourselves?" Madam Fan sighed softly, as if she no longer held much hope of it.
Hearing this, a lonely look appeared on Zhuo Ruting's face as well.
It seemed these fair beauties longed for Core Formation just as deeply!
He did not busy himself with anything else, but immediately searched through the many records he had stored away.
With considerable effort, he found the method for cultivating the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo in a jade slip, and Han Li then transplanted the bamboo into his medicine garden, following the instructions step by step.
Looking at the extremely small and frail Heavenly Thunder Bamboo he had just transplanted, Han Li felt thrilled to the utmost.
He naturally knew perfectly well that the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo was divided into grades. However, he paid this no mind at all.
For the grade of a Heavenly Thunder Bamboo was determined entirely by the age of its spirituality.
Heavenly Thunder Bamboo under two thousand years old could only release ordinary white lightning; above five thousand years, its lightning turned blue and grew considerably more powerful.
And when a Heavenly Thunder Bamboo reached ten thousand years, its lightning would turn pale gold. At that point, the power of its lightning would reach an almost unimaginable level, and it held remarkable restraining effects against all manner of evil arts and demonic techniques—cultivators called it "demon-dispelling lightning."
This was also the oldest Heavenly Thunder Bamboo that could be found in the cultivation world to this day—the legendary "Gold Thunder Bamboo."
Such Gold Thunder Bamboo had appeared in the Scattered Star Seas only once, and no one could say where it had come from; it had been just a small section as well.
In the end, that item kept the Scattered Star Seas in bloodshed for decades. Numerous powers coveted it openly and schemed for it in secret, and it passed through the hands of countless cultivators.
Yet in the end, not a single person managed to keep it long enough to refine it into a magic treasure. For just as strangely as it had appeared, the bamboo inexplicably vanished once more. This enraged the many powers of the time, who continued their search for quite a long while before things gradually died down.
From this affair, one could well imagine the value of a ten-thousand-year Gold Thunder Bamboo.
As for nurturing a spirit item for over ten thousand years, Han Li had never done such a thing. For the pills he normally refined required nothing more than spirit herbs of one or two thousand years at most.
And so, while he looked forward to ripening the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo into a Gold Thunder Bamboo, he also felt a faint trace of unease.
In the days that followed, Han Li used the green liquid to accelerate the bamboo's growth while frequently wandering through the markets of Heavenly Star City.
This was because the Azure Bamboo Cloud Swords, aside from requiring spirit wood as their main ingredient, also needed to be blended with a number of auxiliary rare materials before they could finally be refined with pill fire.
Moreover, these swords were a complete set of magic treasures, so the materials they required naturally far exceeded those of comparable treasures. Although Han Li had already gathered some in the past, many were still missing, and so he naturally had to search everywhere for them.
The Scattered Star Seas were indeed far richer in resources than the Heavenly South. Only after Han Li threw handful after handful of spirit stones at the problem, bankrupting himself in the process, did he finally manage to scrape together everything he needed two years later. To do so, he had even risked drawing attention to himself by selling off the last few rare demon cores in his possession.
When Han Li looked at his many, now-empty storage pouches, he could only sigh up at the heavens.
Refining magic treasures—especially refining a good magic treasure—was truly not something an ordinary rogue cultivator could afford.
On this day, Han Li walked toward the medicine garden, anticipation he could hardly conceal written on his face.
A few days earlier, just before cultivating, he had dripped in what should have been the ten-thousand-year drop of green liquid. The Heavenly Thunder Bamboo in the garden should now have become a spirit item of ten thousand years.
Thinking of the legendary might of the Gold Thunder Bamboo, Han Li was naturally excited beyond measure.
The bamboo that had originally been about two inches long was now completely different.
Not only had it grown to about a foot tall, it was also a lush, dripping green, wreathed in a faint layer of rosy light.
Han Li studied it carefully for a moment, then flipped his hand, and a small sword magic tool appeared in his grasp. The small sword then turned into a streak of white light, shooting straight at the bamboo.
A pale-golden arc of lightning burst forth from the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo without the slightest warning.
With a muffled "puchi" sound, after being struck by that pale-golden arc, the white light dissolved into a wisp of faint blue smoke visible to the naked eye and vanished without a trace.
Han Li was startled at first, but he immediately burst out laughing—and laughed with great delight!
He now very much wanted to know what amusing expression Fairy Zi Ling would wear if she ever learned that this White Thunder Bamboo had become a Gold Thunder Bamboo.
This deal was probably the greatest bargain he had gotten since entering the world of cultivation!
A pity, though, that he would never have the chance to see that scene.