Chapter 24: [Technique Transmission] Buzz Point (Part 2)

“Can it be destroyed?” Captain Ye asked with a frown. Coming over every day to clear the bacteria treated the symptoms but not the root cause, and besides, what if Chen Yi had to leave for a while?

Chen Yi was also very curious. “Let’s try.”

Captain Ye pressed his headset and said a couple of things. Not long after, someone delivered an entrenching shovel.

The one poking his head over the top of the pit was a very young-looking man. He was in charge of logistics for this mission. Not only did he carry a small military base station on his back, he had also brought a lot of tools.

Chen Yi thanked him.

The young man smiled, showing a mouthful of white teeth. “You’re welcome. It’s what I should do.” Then he left happily.

Captain Ye took the entrenching shovel and dug downward. Both of them wanted to find the source of this space.

Captain Ye, at the first level of Qi Refining, was very strong. In his hands, the entrenching shovel moved as if it were an extension of his arm. The earthy smell of soil drilled into their nostrils, and in less than three minutes, he had dug one meter deep.

Suddenly, Captain Ye stopped moving. He crouched down and shone his flashlight over the ground, picking something out of the soil. After observing it for a while, he handed it to Chen Yi. “Sect Master?”

Chen Yi took it in confusion, and his expression instantly changed.

“This is…!?”

…

In the morning, after taking a short nap, Chen Yi went to the village.

Comrade Chen Jiankang cooperated with him, gathering all the villagers in the village committee courtyard and telling everyone that a precious mineral deposit had been discovered on North Mountain and had already been requisitioned by the state. From now on, the villagers should not go there anymore.

The villagers were very excited. “I knew it. So many people came to the village during this period. They must have found a mine. They even flattened a hill by the tangerine grove and are building something there. I used to work at a mine, and it was just like this. Once a mine was discovered, no one was allowed in anymore.”

Someone else’s eyes lit up. “The mine was found in our village. There should be compensation, right?”

“What compensation could there be? The back side of North Mountain is national forest park land. They won’t give you money.”

“Bah! Do you know which way the ore vein grows? What if it grows into our village?”

“Why don’t you just have it grow under your house?”

“Hey! Do you even know how to talk to people?”

Some villagers had brought their own little stools from home, while others had simply come empty-handed. Some sat, some leaned against the wall, and there was even an auntie with a handful of sunflower seeds blocking the courtyard entrance as she listened and cracked seeds.

The village committee courtyard was as lively as a vegetable market. Everyone was discussing the latest news, sentence after sentence, and no one cared anymore about having been quarantined inside their homes yesterday.

A mine had been discovered in the village, and the state was requisitioning the land. Didn’t that mean compensation?

Their chance to get rich had arrived.

“Jiankang, hurry up and explain in detail. How is it arranged from above? My family still has land on North Mountain. Let me say this first: not a single cent of compensation can be missing.”

“My husband’s grandfather is buried on North Mountain. That grave can’t be moved casually. My family’s feng shui is great.”

“What kind of mine is it? It can’t be a gold mine, can it?”

Everyone kept asking. Their little calculations were already clacking away, and no one paid attention to Chen Yi wandering among them.

Chen Yi had activated Aura Concealment. The more people there were, the more effective it became. No one noticed him, so he walked among the crowd and casually used Dust-Removal Spell.

He was too lazy to even use his divine ability. If he used that for too long, his head and eyes hurt. In any case, Dust-Removal Spell treated illness if there was illness and gave a bath if there was no illness. He could just consider it free cleaning for the villagers.

The Dust-Removal Spell he had idled to Great Accomplishment consumed more spiritual energy, but its area had also become larger, and the dust particles it could remove had also grown a little bigger.

The villagers who were excitedly fantasizing about compensation only felt a chill over their heads.

Whoa, where did the fleas I’d been raising for years go?

After sweeping back and forth twice, Chen Yi glanced at his father, who was working hard to control the situation. Unfortunately, under the effect of Aura Concealment, even his father no longer had him in his eyes. He could only leave quietly.

The bacteria on the people’s side had been dealt with. What remained were the homes of close contacts.

The investigation had already been completed yesterday. There were only twelve households in total. Some were people who had helped Wang Xiaosi outside the pit, as well as the driver and accompanying personnel who had taken him to the county. While no one was home now, Chen Yi climbed into their houses and wandered around once. With that, the entire village’s disinfection was complete.

Ding!

Sword Manipulation has been upgraded to Expert level.

Chen Yi paused halfway through climbing over a wall.

Wonderful beyond words.

He jumped down from the top of the wall into the small alley and saw Da Huang, who had heard the noise and rushed over, run out from the corner, wagging his tail as he circled Chen Yi.

Chen Yi first rubbed Da Huang’s head. Then, thinking of something happy, he held Da Huang’s face and rubbed it hard.

Da Huang was delighted, panting with his tongue out, his tail wagging like a flower.

Chen Yi said cheerfully, “By noon, the Spirit Nurturing Art should be able to reach the sixth level. The mission target is the seventh level. Soon. Soon.”

The further along it went, the slower it became. For the mental cultivation method to rise from the fifth level to the sixth level, even with idling, had taken him three days. For the sixth level to rise to the seventh, even if he cultivated constantly, it would probably take about a week.

After experiencing cultivation speed like riding a rocket, the sudden feeling of slowing down was not pleasant.

However, as Sword Manipulation rose to Expert level, the last bit of spirituality in the spirit stone dissipated, turning into a pile of white foam, and Sword Manipulation’s upgrade also stopped.

Chen Yi currently still had twenty-one spirit stones left.

From completing main quests and side quests, he had obtained a total of thirty-five. Of those, five had been placed into the Mountain-Protecting Grand Array to maintain its lowest standby mode, another five had been used for idling, three had been consumed by Technique Transmission, and one had been given to Tang Qirui for research.

Now, not only had the spirit stone for Sword Manipulation been used up, the spirit stones in the other AFK slots also needed to be replaced.

All at once, that was another five.

Giving up idling was impossible. Absolutely impossible.

But with that, the number of spirit stones he held would only be seventeen.

The Mountain-Protecting Grand Array was the final bottom line. Of the spirit stones there, ten absolutely could not be used. If the mission was not completed, the spirit stones would only decrease the more he used them. For a while, this had given him a bit of a headache.

After receiving the spirit stone, the state had gone through Tang Qirui to find him, wanting more spirit stones.

It was just that Chen Yi truly had no surplus, so he could only advance the reward for the next mission.

Originally, all he had wanted was an official post, a stable life, a stable job, and to raise his children in peace. Who could have thought that now his life was unstable, and he even had to dig into his own “salary” to give resources to the state? What a mess this had become.

But now things were good.

The issue he had originally been a little worried about had been directly solved for him by the heavens.

Thinking of what they had discovered last night, he no longer had pressure, and the state was satisfied too. Pretty good.

When he walked out of the small alley with Da Huang, he arrived at his own courtyard.

Chen Yi had deliberately calculated his route for this village-wide cleaning trip. He planned to stop at home at the end, play with the children for a while, and have a meal.

Da Huang walked in front, pawed at the gate with both forelegs, and pushed open the courtyard gate.

When Chen Yi walked in, he saw Qianbao grabbing Big White Goose by the neck, trying to ride it, and Linbao obediently sitting to the side, keeping her grandmother company while shelling peas.

When they saw Chen Yi enter, the children went wild with happiness. Calling out “Daddy,” they threw themselves at him and were hugged by Chen Yi, one on each side.

Chen Yi had been a little busy lately, and the children had seen him very little. By the time he went back after finishing his work last night, the children had long since fallen asleep. They had only clung to him for a while after waking up in the morning.

Chen Yi played with them in the courtyard for a while. Once the peas were shelled, his mother Xiang Lan got up and went to the kitchen, asking, “Who’s watching the fire today?”

The children scrambled to rush into the kitchen. “Me, me, me! He did it yesterday, so today it’s me.”

In the end, the position of little Stove God fell to Linbao.

Linbao would pick very thin pieces of firewood from the woodpile and throw them into the stove, watching seriously as the wood caught fire. If it was not deep enough and could not ignite, she would even poke at it with the fire tongs.

That spot was actually quite hot, but the children liked playing with it, and there were adults watching, so they let them explore on their own.

Qianbao, with nothing to do, went to bully Big White Goose again.

But it was strange. This rural tyrant, who did not even give Chen Yi a pleasant face, had a truly good temper with the children. With Qianbao’s little hand pinching its neck, it went wherever he told it to go.

Qianbao walked in front, shaking his head and swaying, looking incredibly proud.

Chen Yi sat in the courtyard and watched the two children play, then threw a Aura Observation Spell over.

The Aura Observation Spell could read cultivation levels. It was something Chen Yi had temporarily idled out so he could make do with it.

Now that there were more people in the sect, sometimes he wanted to check their cultivation.

Chen Yi’s cultivation level was high now, so even if his Aura Observation Spell was not profound enough, it was accurate every time when looking at lower cultivation levels.

The Watchmen Special Action Team members who had joined the sect the day before yesterday had all entered Qi Refining. Captain Ye and Xun Shiming were already at the first level of Qi Refining.

Wang Xiaosi had very good talent and had even caught up from behind. After cultivating for another day or two, once he reached the first level of Qi Refining, the bacteria inside his body would be dissolved by his own spiritual power, and the hidden danger would be eliminated.

Aside from that, Pang Xiaolei and a few of the other team members who had joined the sect earlier were also close to breaking through. It should happen around the same time as Wang Xiaosi.

The team members were rising upward at lightning speed, but when he looked at his parents and children, even with his own Technique Transmission, there still had not been much improvement.

Although he could sense that the two children were very healthy and comparatively strong, they still had not entered Qi Refining.

Could it be that entering the door required personal comprehension?

Then what about children so young?

Chen Yi’s attention shifted to the water mirror, and he tapped back and forth across the function menu.

After he learned the Aura Observation Spell, Disciple Aptitude Inquiry had undergone a subtle change.

What Chen Yi could see was now also reflected on the system panel.

Name: Chen Jiankang

Age: 48

Aptitude: Completely Ordinary

Cultivation: Entered Qi Refining

Name: Xiang Lan

Age: 45

Aptitude: Congenitally Deficient

Cultivation: Entered Qi Refining

For his parents, first, they were older and had been busy for half their lives. Suddenly asking them to meditate every day only made them feel unaccustomed to it. Second, they really were busy.

His mother took care of the children, and his father was busy with village matters. At night, after they returned to the sect, if Chen Yi was not around, the two elders also had to help coax the children to sleep.

Although Qianbao and Linbao were well-behaved, they were children after all, and two of them at that. They needed people around them everywhere, which was very tiring.

Name: Unknown

Age: 8

Aptitude: Unknown

This was Da Huang’s information. It still did not show, probably because Chen Yi’s experience was insufficient, or because his Aura Observation Spell level was too low.

But as for what cultivation Da Huang had, what species he was, and what kind of cultivation technique suited him, Chen Yi would know sooner or later.

Now, every time he used Technique Transmission, Chen Yi would bring Da Huang along. Da Huang also kept growing bigger. A pure infusion of spiritual energy into the body could not be a bad thing.

Next were the two children.

Name: Chen Yiqian

Age: 3

Aptitude: Dragon and Phoenix Among Men

Cultivation: Ordinary Person

Name: Chen Yilin

Age: 3

Aptitude: As Rare as Phoenix Feathers and Unicorn Horns

Cultivation: Ordinary Person

Looking at the evaluation of the two as “ordinary people,” Chen Yi could not say he was especially anxious. Three-year-old children should just play happily.

But to say he was not anxious at all would not be true either.

After all, as their father, he always had to think about the road his children would take in the future. If he could help them find the cultivation method most suited to them, even if they were not in a hurry to cultivate now, there would at least be a method, which would put him at ease.

One moment, Chen Yi was thinking that it was time to arrange for the children to go to kindergarten. The next moment, he wondered whether he should force them to at least enter Qi Refining. Then he thought, What if they really step onto the path of cultivation, and children who still don’t understand things suddenly become several times stronger? If they went to kindergarten and fought with other kids, wouldn’t they send someone else’s child flying?

The key was, there were two of them!

The two kindergarten tyrants?!

The picture was too beautiful. He did not dare imagine it.

As his thoughts wandered, something on the water mirror suddenly attracted Chen Yi’s attention.

When he focused and looked carefully, he abruptly straightened where he sat.

It turned out even he did not know how he had tapped around, but in the end, under the Sect Disciple directory, not only had he tapped into the Outer Disciple and Inner Disciple directories, he had also seen the title Personal Disciple.

Most importantly, under the Personal Disciple directory, he saw the familiar Technique Transmission button.

“Hiss…”

He sucked in a breath of cold air.

Chen Yi discovered that he had found the buzz point.

The reason Technique Transmission was not very efficient, the reason even Tang Qirui had disdained it and not asked much about it—could it be, was it possible, that the Technique Transmission function required a master-disciple relationship?

Next Chapter >