Free Web NovelChapter 587: Chapter 535: Refining
Having dealt with everything outside, Jiang Yuebai returned to the temporary underground stone chamber and set up eight Space Restrictions around, forming a Space Great Array to completely conceal the area where she was located.
Even if a demon accidentally entered this place, they would pass directly from one end of the stone chamber to the other, without noticing that a part was missing in between.
Moreover, she had carefully studied the map; this area had few veins, and the Demon Clan didn’t intend to occupy the veins long-term, only wanting to excavate and take away as much as possible now, so they mined only the mineral-rich places.
Jixiang and its entire family took action, with its eight little pups frantically mining in the corner of the stone chamber to open a path to the lower level of the rich mining area.
The Demon Clan mined at the upper level while she directly undercut them.
Jixiang and the little pups didn’t need to directly extract the Taixuan Gold Ore; they just needed to dig a passage.
The Flower-Furred Rat cleared away debris beside them to ensure passage was unobstructed, and two Dragonfly Little Demons, along with two Gray-Haired Spiritual Monkeys, transported the mined slag to Jiang Yuebai and Bai Jiuyou.
Jiang Yuebai divided into three clones, plus Bai Jiuyou, making five people working together to modify the Dragon Armor Puppet Soldiers.
After simply smelting the ordinary Taixuan Gold from the slag, they inscribed Armor-Breaking Runes to enhance sharpness, then refined them into mining pickaxes, attaching them to the modified Dragon Armor Puppet Soldiers, temporarily turning them into Mining Puppets.
Taixuan Gold is currently one of the top ten primary materials known in the Upper Realm for making metal-type Magic Treasures, ranking in the top five.
Taixuan Gold excels in both hardness and sharpness and has excellent Spiritual Energy Affinity, and it can be smelted with any material without considering the five elements interplay, much favored by cultivators in all circles.
It is precisely because of this characteristic that these Golden Demons can also directly devour Taixuan Gold to enhance their abilities.
Taixuan Gold is hard, needing even Foundation Establishment Stage Earth Demons to crash multiple times to smash off a piece; she solved the problem perfectly by using a Taixuan Gold mining pickaxe to dig Taixuan Gold.
Anyway, Taixuan Gold is everywhere here; even if the mining pickaxe is used up, it can be ’eaten’, not considered wasteful.
Jiang Yuebai also added Small Transposition Arrays to each Dragon Armor Puppet Soldier, allowing them to directly transmit the mined Taixuan Gold Ore to the Small Transposition Array in the stone chamber corner.
The Five Elements Lotus Platform suspended above the Small Transposition Array, and when it couldn’t hold anymore, Jiang Yuebai with a shift of Divine Sense could receive everything into the Lotus Platform.
In five days, all three hundred Dragon Armor Puppet Soldiers were completely modified, Jixiang and the others had dug to a thousand zhang deep, and the demons above wouldn’t reach her Mining Puppets’ location without one or two months at least.
"The veins here are really rich." Bai Jiuyou couldn’t help but exclaim.
Jiang Yuebai received the piled Taixuan Gold into the Lotus Platform, this vein was indeed quite rich for her personally, but not much for the needs of the entire Upper Realm.
Therefore, the Taixuan Gold outside remained a high-priced scarce material, so people from the Heavenly Spear Realm had to reclaim this mine at all costs.
"We must hurry to dig, Taixuan Pure Gold is hard to find; maybe we have to dig to the mine’s core to find a bit of it. The Divinity Transformation Stage True Demon is still eyeing the mine’s core."
"I’d better activate the second method now, refining Taixuan Pure Gold myself. From the Taixuan Gold we’ve now dug out, even refining one jin is a lot. My new spearhead requires nine hundred ninety-nine jin, nine liang, and nine qian, not a bit less."
Upon hearing this, Bai Jiuyou’s head buzzed, "Then you need to refine it yourself, wouldn’t you have to hollow this place out?"
Jiang Yuebai sighed, "There’s no helping it; Jixiang is still digging downwards to search. I can’t entirely count on it; what if there’s really no Taixuan Pure Gold here? That thing at least needs ten thousand years to form, or if it was here before, what if it got mined early?"
"So, I’ll be prepared in both ways. My main body and three clones will refine together, aiming to complete it within a month; if not, at least dig more first; if unused, it can be sold for Spirit Stones."
Bai Jiuyou stood up and yawned, "Let me go back first to feed the Spiritual Beasts and Insects. I’ve finally trained them, can’t abandon halfway, I’ll come to help after I’m done."
Jiang Yuebai nodded, sending Bai Jiuyou back to the Lotus Platform Cave Heaven; fortunately, Bai Jiuyou inherited her nature—diligent, eager to learn, and always helpful in critical moments.
Jiang Yuebai and her three clones all took out a piece of black Taixuan Gold the size of a head, placing their right hands below the Taixuan Gold in unison, directly urging Phoenix True Fire and Netherworld Ghost Fire to burn together.
Although Taixuan Gold doesn’t belong to the Five Elements, its essence is metal; as long as the fire is strong enough, it can be burned.
Taixuan Pure Gold has an exceedingly powerful characteristic of being ’unburnable’. Jiang Yuebai didn’t know if it was true, but books say the world’s strongest fires, the Sun God Fire and Taiyin Divine Fire, also cannot burn Taixuan Pure Gold.
Taixuan Pure Gold overcomes the weaknesses of metal, and can be called the world’s strongest metal material.
Therefore, the method for refining Taixuan Pure Gold is simple: burn it. The stronger the fire, the higher the refining efficiency and purity extracted.
The Phoenix True Fire and Netherworld Ghost Fire on her body, one yin and one yang, combined with great power, burned a head-sized lump of Taixuan Gold into liquid within just two breaths.
As the two fires continued to output, the liquid Taixuan Gold kept volatilizing, becoming less and less.
The Mouse pups resting in the corner smelled the Taixuan Gold aroma, squeaked, and raised their noses, began to inhale the vaporized Taixuan Gold, incorporating it into their bodies without waste.
Moments later, the Taixuan Gold in the hands of her main body and three clones were completely burned away, without refining any Taixuan Pure Gold.
Jiang Yuebai held her forehead, her mood rising and falling, just like when she used Beast Souls to refine Essence before.
Full of confidence before refining, held breath during refining, and utterly miserable after!
"Continue!"
At this moment, a frantic Divine Sense voice transmission from Bai Jiuyou came through from the Lotus Platform Cave Heaven.
"Jiang Yuebai, come in quick! Something big happened!"
Jiang Yuebai’s heart skipped a beat, and she hurried into the Lotus Platform Cave Heaven.
She saw a gale howling around the Hidden Immortal Mountain, and at the foot of the mountain, Demonic Qi poured in, the original beast pens and insect sheds were all destroyed, a massive Green Armor Bee Swarm converged into an azure cloud, fiercely battling those Demon Octopuses on the ground.
Bai Jiuyou expelled the affected Spiritual Beasts, clutching the irritable, tooth-baring, full of electric arcs Little Thunder Hound, stood afar in mid-air watching the Green Armor Bee Swarm and Demon Octopuses clashing, with insect corpses everywhere.
Jiang Yuebai widened her eyes in surprise; didn’t she detain those Demon Octopuses on the outermost edge of the Grotto Heaven, and even used Spirit Stones to set an array to separate them?
She scouted the original area with Divine Thought and saw devastation; the Great Array was forcibly damaged, and there were some black little granular objects remaining on the ground, looking like...
Mouse droppings?!
Jiang Yuebai wrapped a pitch-black mouse dropping with Divine Sense; she could tell without thinking it was Jixiang’s, as she had him guarding the Demon Octopuses before.
However, these droppings were unusual, with extremely high Muddy Qi concentration; merely wrapping it with Divine Sense and suspending it before her, the Muddy Qi already relentlessly corroded her Divine Sense, letting her sense an exceedingly violent and murderous emotion from it.
Jiang Yuebai suddenly realized, seeing the frenzied Demon Octopuses, guessing they were driven here after eating Jixiang’s droppings and breaking her array.
Jiang Yuebai rushed over, summoning the Primordial Magnetic Ruler, using Primordial Magnetic Black Sand to forcibly separate the Demon Octopuses and Green Armor Bee Swarm.
In just this brief moment, in her Lotus Platform Cave Heaven, almost the entire Green Armor Bee population of over a hundred thousand was decimated, the original three Queen Bees now down to one, with a few hundred remnants.
Those slimy, liquid-like Demon Octopuses rapidly devoured insect corpses on the ground, and when two of them wrapped Queen Bee corpses into Dragon-eye sized spheres, they suddenly quieted down, beginning to swallow Demonic Qi around.
Bai Jiuyou approached with the Little Thunder Hound, her eyes brightening upon seeing the two peculiar spheres.
"Jiang Yuebai, these are new insect eggs!"
