Next to Qinglian Pool, Lin Shiming opened his eyes, exhaling a sigh of turbid breath.
After three days, he had finally recovered from the beast tide.
On that day, after he and Lin Xianzhi returned to Fangmu Mountain, they had worked together to repel the invading horde of beasts.
Fortunately, most of the Third Rank and Fourth Rank Demonic Beasts had been outside Qingyun City, and on Fangmu Mountain of the Lin Family, there were only three Third Rank Demonic Beasts, and all of them were at the early stage.
With Lin Houyuan and Lin Shijie joining hands, along with the great formation of Fangmu Mountain, they managed to hold on until Lin Shiming and Lin Xianzhi arrived to help.
After driving off the Demonic Beasts, Lin Shiming went back up the mountain to heal, while his seventh great-uncle, Lin Xianzhi, went to Nanling Mountain in Lingnan County to assist Lin Houyong in defeating the beast tide.
With everything in order, Lin Shiming began to tally the gains from the beast tide.
He first organized the Demonic Beast materials, which included both Second Rank and Third Rank, and after a rough estimate, these materials alone were worth about a hundred thousand Spirit Stones. This value took into account the sharp decrease due to the excessive slaughter of Demonic Beasts that had devalued the materials, otherwise it would have been even more.
You should know that Lin Shiming had slain more than a dozen ape-like Third Rank Demonic Beasts.
Of course, these materials also stirred Lin Shiming's interest in artifact refining.
With the family owning a vein of Golden Iron Stone and so many Demonic Beast materials, plus the stockpile of First Rank and Second Rank Demonic Beasts at the family's disposal, they would fully support him going far on the path of artifact refining.
Having collected all the refining materials, Lin Shiming released the Golden Winged Mantis, which looked rather pitiful now. Of its two serrated limbs, only one remained; the other had been blown to pieces by Li Chuanhuan in Qingyun City.
The Golden Winged Mantis squeaked, its massive body now slightly taller than Lin Shiming. Its triangular head affectionately nuzzled Lin Shiming's forehead.
Lin Shiming also stepped back, gently caressing the head of the Golden Winged Mantis. His eyes held a touch of pity as he then took out Healing Pills, fed another one to the Golden Winged Mantis, and gave it a large bowl of Third Rank Spirit Water from Qinglian Pool.
The Golden Winged Mantis once again crawled up the wall of its stone chamber, while Lin Shiming finally took out a new Storage Bag and a new Spirit Beast Bag.
Everything inside the Storage Bag and the Spirit Beast Bag had belonged to a disciple from the Spirit Beast Sect in Qingyun City.
After having the Golden Winged Mantis assassinate the target, he immediately switched out the Storage Bracelet and the Spirit Beast Bracelet below.
Lin Shiming first opened the Storage Bag and took out a gray cloth Magic Artifact from within.
Yet, when he picked up the book, he was shocked to discover that the book was actually a magic artifact.
The book was entirely crafted from the hides of mysterious beasts, but upon channeling True Yuan into it, he found that it was a damaged Fourth Rank Magical Treasure.
This pleasantly surprised him, and upon opening the book, he discovered it contained secret methods for cultivating spirit insects and for encouraging the evolution of Spirit Beasts.
The entire book had only seven or eight pages, two of which were dedicated to concocting a special elixir that induced Spirit Insects and Spirit Beasts to devour and breed with each other.
Several other pages contained the secret technique for transferring the bloodline of demonic beasts, a method known as the Blood Demon Ancestral Return Secret Art.
To Lin Shiming, this was on par with the Heavenly Wood Spirit Cultivation Secret Technique.
He finally understood why the disciple of the Spirit Beast Sect was capturing precious demonic beasts everywhere - clearly, it was both to purify their bloodlines and to breed rare Spirit Beasts.
Lin Shiming was so excited that it took him a long time to calm down, and then he thought of the Spirit Ants. Opening the Spirit Beast Bag, he took out a Jade Box, which contained dozens of Spirit Ants buzzing around inside. Since the ants had not devoured Spiritual Energy for a long time and were suppressed by the Spirit Jade, they now appeared listless and no longer as fierce as they had been.
If these Spirit Ants were well-cultivated, there was no doubt they could achieve the formidable power they demonstrated when breaking the formation back in the day!
The more Lin Shiming thought about it, the more excited he became, and he could hardly contain himself.
However, he also knew this was not a matter to be rushed. The Spirit Ants had an extremely fierce nature, and if he dealt with them now, there was no guarantee they wouldn't rebel in the end. Instead, he chose to continue keeping them inside the Spirit Jade to temper their fierceness.
He put away the book that was a Magical Treasure and looked through the remaining items in his Storage Bag and Spirit Beast Bag. Inside the Storage Bag were only seventy to eighty thousand Spirit Stones.
In the Spirit Beast Bag was a Third Rank Demonic Beast that had already recognized a master and had been backfired by the Spirit Contract, losing its value for further cultivation, so he killed it outright and used it as material for Artifact Refining.
In the corner of the Storage Bag, to his delight, Lin Shiming also discovered two Xue Sha Thunders.
Xue Sha Thunder was a kind of True Yuan secret thunder condensed by Thunder Attribute cultivators through the consumption of their Essence Blood, a one-time attack item, but it had quite a reputation in the Immortal Cultivation World - it was almost comparable to a full-powered strike from a late-stage Foundation Establishment Thunder cultivator.
Used correctly, it could seriously injure late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators.
Seeing this, Lin Shiming also felt somewhat fortunate, as back in the chaos of Qingyun City, it was the sneak attack from the Golden Winged Mantis that was successful. Otherwise, in a true fight, he might not necessarily have been a match for the disciple of the Spirit Beast Sect.
To say nothing of anything else, these two Xue Sha Thunders alone could have brought him from the brink of death back to life.