Chapter 343: Grand Black Celestial Golden Bone
A few days later, Chu Liang received a gift from the Violet Gold Marquess.
A long time ago, they had promised to reward him with a treasure for infiltrating the White-Bone Hall. However, the delivery had been significantly delayed, likely due to some scheming.
The logic was simple. At that time, the Eastern-Route Guider must have known that the Dark King Sect would soon attack Mount Shu, and the three infiltrators would likely die in that battle. If the delivery was delayed and the infiltrators died, they would be able to keep the treasure.
While the Violet Gold Marquess wouldn't care about such things, the Eastern-Route Guider would make these small calculations. However, after the battle at Mount Shu, most of the Dark King Sect disciples who were sent there died, but the three infiltrators survived unscathed.
After confirming their survival, the Eastern-Route Guider could only marvel at their resilience. Then, he sent the rewards to the three of them.
Chu Liang, of course, didn't set the delivery address as the branch of Taotie Pavilion nearest to Mount Shu. Instead, he provided an address that was farther away and went to retrieve it himself.
The infuriating thing was...that the bastard sent the treasures of nature using cash on delivery.
For some valuable items, the Taotie Pavilion allowed the option of the recipient paying for the delivery. However, if the delivery fees weren't paid for a long time, Taotie Pavilion would be able to keep the treasure.
And so, Chu Liang gritted his teeth and paid the high postage of dozens of Vermillion-Bird coins.
Not long ago, as the richest man in Mount Shu, he wouldn't have cared about such a small amount of money, but now that his fortune was nearly exhausted, he had to be frugal.
However, considering that the treasure delivered was real, Chu Liang wasn’t bothered by it ...
After all, even if he was bothered by it, all he could do was complain inwardly.
The reward sent by the Violet Gold Marquess was a piece of Grand Black Celestial Golden Bone.
After opening the box, Chu Liang marveled at the effort that had gone into choosing this reward.
Previously, the Eastern-Route Guider had only mentioned treasures that could help them break through to the fifth level, so Chu Liang expected they would send some ordinary items.
Despite having the word bone in its name, this Grand Black Celestial Golden Bone was not actually an animal bone. It was really an ancient divine tree called "Grand Black Celestial Tree" from the Western Regions. This strange and precious item was formed after this tree had been buried underground for thousands of years.
It appeared to be an extremely hard solid, shimmering with a dark golden luster, but the spiritual energy it contained was astonishing.
This was an excellent item for advancing to the next cultivation level, especially for practitioners of yin-nature techniques in the diabolical sects.
In this light, the Violet Gold Marquess was quite generous, though the Eastern-Route Guider was a bit stingy.
However, this item is somewhat unsuitable for Chu Liang.
The foundation of his cultivation lay in the Golden Core of Lesser Yang, which meant that he did not cultivate any actual diabolical techniques. The amount of yin energy in this Grand Black Celestial Golden Bone was far too strong that it conflicted with the nature of his cultivation. It seemed he could only sell it for money.
Wait a minute?
Suddenly, Chu Liang had an idea.
What if I gave this thing to the Colorful Doll?
Activation could be done with just treasures of nature. There was no specific mention of whether the treasure should contain yin or yang energy.
And it was all thanks to the existence of the Five-Elements Puppet.
In comparison, the Qi-Circulation Puppet, which could only speed up qi cultivation, and the Golden-Core Puppet, which provided an external golden core, suddenly seemed mediocre even though they had offered amazing advantages.
The Colorful Doll deserved the highest salary!
This was really how Chu Liang felt at the moment.
Before using it, he thought it was too expensive. But after he had employed its services, he couldn't help but marvel at how incredible the doll truly was.
At this moment, Chu Liang's Sea of Qi capacity and recovery speed far exceeded those of his peers, placing him on par with a fifth-realm cultivator. His knowledge of divine abilities was also comparable to those at the fifth realm. Now, with the upgrade in the quality of his foundational qi, a unique characteristic of a fifth-realm cultivator, what still separated him from being considered an actual fifth-realm cultivator?
The only difference was that when he was at the fourth realm, he would be on par with a fifth-realm cultivator. And by the time he reached the fifth realm, he would be much stronger than a fifth-realm cultivator. This was the only difference!
With that, Chu Liang excitedly arranged the three puppets next to each other.
Keep it up!
As long as you maintain your current high spirits, I will surely have a brighter future!
...
The time went on peacefully. Two days passed by when Chu Liang suddenly received a letter.
It was from the Great Astral Sect.
Obviously, in the Great Astral Sect, only his good friend, the macho man Yun Chaoxian would write to him.
Chu Liang felt puzzled as he opened the envelope, wondering why Yun Chaoxian had written him a letter.
His correspondence with Yun Chaoxian had been quite frequent. It occurred not only during the Mount Shu Summit but also afterward. After the summit ended, Chu Liang invited a group of macho men from the Great Astral Sect to boost the atmosphere during the opening of Berry Wonderland.
However, both had been busy lately, and they hadn't been in touch for a while.
"Brother Chu, receiving your letter is almost like having the pleasure of seeing you in pearson.[1]"
Upon reading the first sentence, Chu Liang smiled slightly. He thought to himself that Brother Yun shouldn't try to use fancy words if he wasn’t brought up in a culture that used it.
"Receiving your letter is almost like having the pleasure of seeing you in person" might be a phrase Yun Chaoxian picked up from Chu Liang's previous correspondence. Considering the cultural atmosphere of the Great Astral Sect, he probably wouldn’t have heard such expressions often.
Luckily, he only misspelled the word and hadn’t accidentally communicated something completely different, such as spelling person as prison. [2].
The next sentence read:
"Lately, I... have a favor to ask of you. When do you have time for me to come and discuss with you in detail?"
1. Not a typo. In the raw, it was mentioned that the expression was 见字如吾 but he wrote the last character wrongly as 悟 ☜
2. I changed the joke so it makes sense in English. The expression here was 见字如悟. And the original joke was that thank goodness he didn’t write the last character by breaking 晤 apart which would be 日吾 and this means fuck you. So if he had done this, it would be seeing your letter is like fucking you ☜