Chapter 167: The Four Arts of Immortal Cultivation, Riding a Crane to the West

The four arts of immortal cultivation: alchemy, artifact-crafting, arrays, and talismans.

With such a grand title, the lofty status of these four crafts within the Immortal Gate was self-evident. Anyone looking to make a fortune couldn't bypass them.

Correspondingly, however, mastering these four crafts was exceedingly difficult. Almost all of them demanded extraordinarily high comprehension. It wasn't something you could learn simply by wanting to. More often than not, you could study hard and rack your brains, but if you couldn't grasp it, you never would. In the end, you would only waste time and energy.

How did Wang Ping know this?

Because during his third entry into the Immortal Gate, Pingjiangzi's memories included his attempts to learn the Talisman Water technique—and the results could only be described as disastrous.

And that was only talismans, just one of the four arts.

Drawing talismans was already the simplest of the four crafts; otherwise, it wouldn't be ranked last. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, Pingjiangzi simply couldn't learn it.

This was despite the fact that drawing talismans was incredibly cheap.

You could draw the most garbage talismans on a random piece of paper or a leaf. If you couldn't afford spiritual ink, you could substitute it with spiritual sense. The cost was infinitely close to zero.

For the higher-ranked artifact-crafting, arrays, and alchemy, however, the costs soared right alongside the difficulty. The scrap materials used for artifact-crafting could be reused repeatedly without fear of ruining them. Even if an array was set up incorrectly, it could just be adjusted—at most, you lost the resources spent drawing the array patterns.

Alchemy was the sole exception.

This craft not only required a top-tier furnace, but every practice session also demanded the purchase of new materials. If a refinement failed, you lost your entire investment.

Even more fatal were furnace explosions.

Often, when a refinement reached its final stage, you might feel you'd done a good job and prepare to open the furnace to check the quality. Yet, the moment you opened the lid—boom. It would explode.

Among the hundreds of millions of independent cultivators in the Immortal Gate, quite a few who rashly tried to learn alchemy were blown to death by such explosions. Even formal disciples were no exception.

Because the better the pill being refined, the more powerful the explosion.

As a result, there were cases of sudden death from furnace explosions among outer sect disciples, inner sect disciples, and even true transmission disciples. It was undoubtedly the most dangerous craft among the four arts of immortal cultivation.

So far, the only one that absolutely will not explode is the Immortal Gate's Divine Farmer Cauldron. It should be a realm similar to the Great Shun's Eight Trigrams Furnace, using countless Human Firewood to refine pills... But even so, the Immortal Prescription Courtyard in charge of the Divine Farmer Cauldron still seemed to cause a massive disaster.

At this thought, memories surfaced in Wang Ping's mind.

That was during his first death, when he used the Taiping Sutra to transmigrate and become an Immortal Gate strongman. He had unexpectedly overheard this news from a few Immortal Gate disciples.

"I wonder if I'll have a chance to go take a look in the future."

Gathering his thoughts, Wang Ping returned his gaze to the jade slip before him. As his spiritual sense swept over it, a massive amount of information instantly flooded his sea of consciousness.

The Pill Manipulation art.

In the Immortal Gate, this was merely the most superficial alchemy art. Above it were Yellow and White and Stone Boiling, both of which were far more profound alchemical arts.

"The Dao of Heaven reduces the surplus to make up for the deficient."

"We cultivators follow heaven and comply with the Dao. Gathering qi and refining pills is to refine the surplus essence of heaven and earth to make up for the deficiencies of the human body, thereby seeking the true perfection of life..."

Wang Ping reviewed it earnestly, his eyes gradually brightening.

The alchemy method recorded in the Pill Manipulation art was completely different from what he had imagined. It wasn't about collecting various precious materials and then refining them.

That was alchemy for ordinary Mortals.

Why would a cultivator need to collect so many so-called worldly treasures to refine pills? All things originated from heaven and earth. Whatever you wanted, you could extract directly from the essence of heaven and earth!

Simply put, if I were to refine the most ordinary Body Tempering Pill, I would need five-hundred-year-old Dragon Spring Liquid. Mortals would need to go search for this treasure. However, a cultivator using the Pill Manipulation art wouldn't need to search at all. By directly gathering the essence of heaven and earth, they could just transform it into Dragon Spring Liquid!

This was the convenience of Pill Manipulation.

It wasn't restricted by materials. As long as a substance existed between heaven and earth, no matter how rare or hard to obtain, a cultivator could manifest it directly out of thin air!

On the other hand, this was also the flaw of Pill Manipulation, as well as the main reason why alchemy so often led to furnace explosions—this kind of material transformation wasn't stable.

"All things and all matter are born from heaven and earth."

"Even a mere rock on the side of the road is born from the essence of heaven and earth upholding the wonders of creation. Within it exists a precise ratio."

"Only by perfectly controlling this ratio can one ensure there are no issues with the transformed material. Once the ratio is flawed, the transformed material will suffer the fate where a hair's difference leads to a thousand miles of divergence. Throwing it into the furnace to refine alongside other transformed materials in that state will absolutely result in an immediate furnace explosion."

Even if they got lucky and the furnace didn't explode.

The resulting pill would be vastly different from the intended one.

Regarding this, the jade slip even specifically recorded a short story about an independent cultivator refining pills. The pill that independent cultivator attempted to refine was the most ordinary Body Tempering Pill.

Unfortunately, the materials weren't transformed properly.

He took the resulting Body Tempering Pill himself. According to its normal medicinal effects, his pores should have relaxed to rapidly expel the impurities from his body.

Commonly known as "pores taking a shit."

In reality, he immediately suffered from diarrhea right after eating it. A grand independent cultivator was forced to squat in the latrine for an entire day, shitting himself to the point of collapse.

He originally thought that after such an ordeal, even if the process wasn't quite what he'd imagined, he had at least expelled his impurities. Yet, when that independent cultivator checked his condition afterward, he found that his body hadn't been tempered in the slightest. The Body Tempering Pill he had painstakingly refined had actually turned into a laxative.

Therefore, a few sayings had always circulated within the Immortal Gate:

Urge a man to learn alchemy, and you set the mountains aflame.

Urge a man to learn artifacts, and gods and men will curse his name.

Urge a man to learn arrays, and you spark new grudges and old hate.

Urge a man to learn talismans, and you wipe clean his slate.

The four arts of immortal cultivation will send you riding a crane to the west.

Only persuading someone to learn to draw talismans—although it carried the vague suspicion of being a waste of time and energy—ultimately had low costs and low danger, making it barely justifiable.

Aside from that, each of the other three was more absurd than the last.

Yet even so, the four arts of immortal cultivation remained methods that every cultivator in the Immortal Gate wanted to learn. Not only could they generate income, but they were also tied to another matter entirely.

Grotto-Heavens and blessed lands.

A major spectacle of the Immortal Gate, these were refined by cultivators and possessed all sorts of miraculous properties. Not only could they generate income, but they could also empower the cultivators themselves during spell battles.

They were basically equivalent to mobile Cave Abodes.

However, exactly how did one refine such a convenient thing?

This involved the four arts of immortal cultivation. Thus far, only the four crafts of alchemy, artifacts, arrays, and talismans could refine complete Grotto-Heavens and blessed lands.

Take the Soul-Falling Studio Master, for example.

Although this person was an independent cultivator, he possessed genuine skills. Leaving all else aside, his Soul-Falling Studio blessed land had been refined using the art of drawing talismans.

I got this Pill Manipulation slip from Xiaoxiang. It seems he was privately studying alchemy. He must have wanted to refine a blessed land of his own. Quite ambitious... As expected, there's also a furnace in his storage bag. Judging by its design, it probably cost him quite a bit.

This guy was simply too nice.

Before he died, he had gifted him so many things, even preparing the tools for him. As long as he wanted to, he could try his hand at alchemy right now...

"...Hm?"

As he thought about it, Wang Ping's expression gradually shifted.

The next second, he abruptly extended his spiritual sense and entered the Six Desires Heavenly Demon Flag again. Earlier, he had thrown Xiaoxiang's soul into the flag to dispose of it.

Yet at this moment, looking at the calm space inside the flag, Wang Ping's expression was incredibly grave. After pondering for a long time, he tentatively called out in a soft voice, "Senior Heaven-Stealing Thief? Is that you?"

—The space inside the flag remained completely serene. Hearing his voice, the demons looked toward him, but they innocently tilted their heads one after another, looking as though they didn't understand the command.

Seeing this, Wang Ping instantly bared his teeth.

Am I overthinking this?

There was no helping it. This heist-within-a-heist had gone a bit too smoothly. Xiaoxiang alone had earned him a massive fortune, practically dropping a tremendous stroke of luck into his lap out of nowhere.

But the problem was, he had already experienced a similar situation with Chen Luoyan. As the saying goes, once bitten by a snake, one fears a well rope for ten years. The more he thought about it now, the more afraid he became, subconsciously suspecting that this Xiaoxiang might just be that old bastard, the Heaven-Stealing Thief, again. It really was hard to say!

Thinking up to this point, Wang Ping felt a bit helpless again.

After all, even if it truly was the Heaven-Stealing Thief hiding inside his Six Desires Heavenly Demon Flag right now, if the other party refused to show himself, what could he possibly do about it?

Moreover... was it possible that he really was just overthinking it?

After all, in theory, the Heaven-Stealing Thief was still in the Great Shun and wouldn't dare to leave without authorization. Besides, even if the guy was fleecing someone, he couldn't just keep shearing the same sheep, right?

"...Fuck!"

After mulling it over, Wang Ping ultimately cursed, deciding to wait for Daoist Xuanhe to return and confirm with him whether there were any errors in the contents of the Pill Manipulation art.

If there were no problems, he would learn it.

Even if this really was the Heaven-Stealing Thief's arrangement, he would accept it. So what if it was a sugar-coated cannonball? Whether the cannonball would explode was another matter; he would eat the sugar coating first!

However, right at that moment.

"Boom!"

A massive boom echoed from the heavens above. Wang Ping raised his head at the sound, only to see three beams of Divine Powers light descend from the sky, landing outside the Myriad Colors Blessed Land.

Immediately after, the light dissipated.

In an instant, Daoist Xuanhe, Daoist Yuhong, and Yun Xuantong—three inner sect disciples—walked out one after another. Their gazes immediately landed on Wang Ping.

The next second, Daoist Xuanhe breathed a sigh of relief. As a smile appeared on his face, he immediately waved his hand, casting down a beam of magical light to protect Wang Ping and prevent others from probing him further. Only then did he say, "It's a good thing you are unharmed, Dousheng. The bandit cultivator who struck this time was truly far too insidious."

"Let me ask you."

The moment Xuanhe's voice fell, Yun Xuantong stepped forward impatiently, his face livid. He demanded coldly, "Where were you just now?"

Hearing this, Wang Ping put on a look of sheer bewilderment, innocently tilting his head.

"Three senior brothers... what happened?"

"Something huge has happened."

Compared to Yun Xuantong, Daoist Xuanhe wore a stern look, his expression pulled tight. "Fengyuan, Xiaoxiang, Changyang... all three outer sect disciples have been murdered."

"What!?"

At those words, Wang Ping's complexion changed drastically. With disbelief written all over his face, he gaped in shock. "Xiaoxiang is dead? Who would dare to commit such Great Rebellion!"

Daoist Xuanhe made the final ruling without any hesitation.

"It was definitely done by a bandit cultivator."

Yun Xuantong didn't reply, but Daoist Yuhong beside him was equally filled with righteous indignation. He raged, "To kill my junior brothers—I cannot share the same sky as these bandit cultivators!"

"Hmph..."

Hearing this, Yun Xuantong's gaze turned cold as he stared faintly at Wang Ping. "We absolutely cannot just leave this matter at that. As I see it, we must find the real culprit."

"Senior Brother Yun is right!"

Hearing this, Wang Ping nodded in agreement without hesitation. "This is no longer an ordinary bandit cultivator. We have to strike hard; this matter must be investigated to the very end!"

After saying that, Wang Ping put on a magnanimous and open appearance.

After all, since he hadn't been immediately arrested and interrogated, it meant they had no evidence. And if there was no evidence, it meant he didn't do it.

I have a clear conscience!