Chapter 202: Agarwood

Chapter 202: Chapter 202: Agarwood

After entering the Demon Communication Workshop, Jiang Xu told Zong Ziqi,

"The Demon Communication Workshop has a Golden Core Cultivator stationed here, so there shouldn’t be any major chaos. Don’t worry too much about those three Demon Cultivators causing problems. Let’s part ways here for now. Go see if anything catches your eye."

Zong Ziqi understood what Jiang Xu meant.

No matter how close they were, some things had to be kept hidden. This was a lesson every Immortal Cultivator had to learn.

Jiang Xu was off to acquire a new trump card. And a trump card, by definition, must never be revealed easily; it could only be played at the most critical moment.

"Alright. So, when should we meet up again?"

"About that..."

Jiang Xu wasn’t sure how long it would take to achieve his goal. If things went smoothly, he could be done within a day. If not, it could take a month and still be up in the air.

"Let’s make it seven days. We’ll meet back here. If something happens and I can’t make it, leave the city. We’ll meet in half a month at the spot where we were in seclusion before. If something happens to you, I’ll use the Seeking Technique to find you."

As Jiang Xu and Zong Ziqi were discussing contingency plans, a group suddenly appeared up ahead. They wore matching robes with seven stars embroidered on the chest. Their leader was also a Foundation Establishment Cultivator.

Jiang Xu stopped mid-sentence when he saw them, but his expression remained unchanged, showing no sign of being flustered.

Once the group had stormed past, Jiang Xu gave Zong Ziqi a few final instructions before they parted ways.

After they separated, Jiang Xu watched the backs of the departing Seven Stars Association Cultivators, his mind turning to a peculiar piece of Agarwood in his Storage Bag.

’This thing seems pretty important to the Seven Stars Association. They have so many people looking for it... they even found my seclusion spot.’

’But if it’s so important, why did a clumsy, low-level thief manage to steal it?’

’Could there be more to this story? Did I ruin some-kind-of-plan by stumbling into it?’

Jiang Xu recalled the last time he had visited the Demon Communication Workshop.

At the time, he had just been passing by and decided to take a quick look. He hadn’t planned to stay long, as his seclusion spot was a great distance from the Demon Communication Workshop.

But as he was passing through a crowded street, a petty thief had tried to snatch the Storage Bag from his waist. Jiang Xu, ever watchful of his belongings, naturally didn’t let the thief succeed.

But since they were in a public place, Jiang Xu didn’t make a scene. Even as the petty thief swaggered off, Jiang Xu didn’t make a move on the street.

After all, Jiang Xu was out on a reconnaissance mission.

No scout would deliberately stir up trouble and reveal their position—not unless they could kill every single person who saw them.

So Jiang Xu walked away without a word.

He simply concealed his presence, secretly followed the petty thief, and then proceeded to steal the man’s Storage Bag and everything else he owned from his home. That was all.

But right after Jiang Xu had secretly taken the thief’s belongings, a squad of Seven Stars Association guards showed up and blasted the man’s door open. They immediately started interrogating him, demanding to know if he had stolen a piece of Agarwood.

The petty thief insisted he hadn’t, but the guard didn’t listen and attacked immediately, beating the man half to death.

That made him talk. But after frantically searching his own person and turning his entire house upside down, he couldn’t produce a single thing, much less the Agarwood.

In the end, the petty thief wasn’t killed, just taken away. His house was searched again and again, but nothing was ever found.

Because the item was already in the hands of Jiang Xu, who was watching from afar.

In fact, Jiang Xu hadn’t known what the item was at first. He only learned the name "Agarwood" from listening to the guard.

Jiang Xu spent a long time rummaging through the thief’s pile of stolen goods.

The thief stole anything and everything, so the collection of items in his house was incredibly diverse. Jiang Xu suspected even the thief himself didn’t know what half of it was.

It took Jiang Xu a great deal of effort to find the Agarwood, and his method was clumsy. He used a process of elimination. Based on his own knowledge, he identified and stored away every item he was certain was not the Agarwood. The object the guard spoke of had to be among the few remaining items.

The piece of Agarwood was about the size of a fist, and its appearance was vastly different from the woody agarwood commonly seen on the market.

It wasn’t made of wood. Instead, it seemed to be the hardened, time-fused blend of some special oil and a rare resin.

Its surface was unusually smooth, lacking the rough texture of natural wood. It looked more like a meticulously refined or specially processed artifact.

Jiang Xu gently picked up the strange Agarwood. Its color was deep and subtle, as if it had been condensing for a millennium. He cautiously touched its surface, which felt delicate, sleek, and pleasant to the touch.

Unlike the rich aroma of typical agarwood, this piece’s scent was extremely subtle. It was so faint as to be barely there, carrying a hard-to-detect coppery tang. Overall, it was not a pleasant fragrance.

With his limited knowledge, Jiang Xu couldn’t figure out what the Agarwood was made of or what it could be used for. He only knew it was no simple object and seemed to be quite valuable.

But once a valuable item entered Jiang Xu’s Storage Bag, it wasn’t something others could easily take back.

So Jiang Xu had immediately left the Demon Communication Workshop and returned to his seclusion spot.

What he hadn’t expected, however, was that a month later, those guys had actually found his place of seclusion and were preparing to break his defensive array by force.

Peering at them with his Spiritual Eye Technique, Jiang Xu saw that the ones trying to break his array all had Magical Power that was predominantly of the Water Element. This meant not only that they practiced Water Element Techniques, but also that they must live and practice their Cultivation in an environment rich in Water Spiritual Power.

The balance of the Five Elements Spiritual Qi in any given place was usually determined by the nature of the environment itself.

In places with a lot of ore, like mines and mineral veins, Gold Attribute Spiritual Qi would be dominant.

In places with dense forests, Wood Attribute would be dominant.

By the same token, in the ocean, the sheer abundance of Water Attribute Spiritual Qi crowded out the other elements, leaving them almost no room to exist.

Water conquers Fire and nourishes Wood.

Thus, in the ocean, Fire Attribute Spiritual Qi is the scarcest. Gold and Earth are slightly more abundant, Wood even more so, and Water is the most plentiful of all.

If a Cultivator who practiced a Fire Attribute Cultivation Method were to go to the ocean, their Cultivation speed would slow to a crawl. The power of their Magic and the recovery rate of their Magical Power would also be drastically weakened.