Immortal Stones were the currency of the Great Desolate, and an indispensable cultivation resource for every Dao Immortal.
Ordinary cultivation, replenishing vitality, restoring immortal power, setting up supernatural formations, refining immortal weapons and treasures—none of these could be done without Immortal Stones.
Immortal Stones were different from spirit stones or crystal stones. Spirit stones and crystal stones could be nurtured from spirit veins, but Immortal Stones had to be refined, requiring vast quantities of spirit stones and crystal stones to be tempered within a cauldron furnace.
This stuff had always been the hard currency of the Great Desolate.
Three hundred Immortal Stones—if you said it was a lot, it wasn’t exactly a huge sum; if you said it was little, it was definitely not insignificant.
For example, each Golden Rainbow Crystal from the Xiaoluo Secret Realm could be exchanged for over ten thousand Immortal Stones. That sounded like a lot, but one had to remember that the entire Xiaoluo Secret Realm only produced a handful of Golden Rainbow Crystals each year. And currently, the Xiaoluo Secret Realm had existed for over a thousand years. Calculated this way, the Immortal Stones distributed per person weren’t actually that many.
In ordinary times, when Immortals went into seclusion for bitter cultivation, they could be entirely self-sufficient relying on spiritual energy.
But if they ventured out to gain experience, the meager spiritual energy between heaven and earth was utterly insufficient. That was when Immortal Stones were needed for sustenance.
Different cultivation realms meant different daily consumption rates of Immortal Stones when out gaining experience.
For example, a True Immortal, on average, needed one per day, which was enough.
A Superior Immortal needed two per day to sustain daily consumption.
As for Qiānniǎo, being a Golden Immortal, she needed three or four per day to maintain her daily consumption. In other words, three hundred Immortal Stones could sustain her for a full hundred days.
However.
This was only for sustaining daily consumption while out gaining experience.
If, while out gaining experience, one encountered some urgent situation, the consumption would multiply exponentially. Consuming dozens, even hundreds of stones in a single day was not impossible. And if one wanted to refine some little trinket, the Immortal Stones spent would be countless.
A while back, Qiānniǎo had refined just one little trinket and spent over four thousand Immortal Stones on it. And it could only be considered a semi-finished product, not even qualifying as an Immortal Weapon yet. According to Qiānniǎo’s estimate, if she wanted to refine it into a proper Immortal Weapon, she’d need tens of thousands of Immortal Stones, no question.
Therefore, in the Great Desolate, when Immortals refined Immortal Weapons and treasures, it often took many years. Partly because refining an Immortal Weapon required repeated tempering and testing, but more importantly, refining a single Immortal Weapon treasure required far, far too many Immortal Stones. Ordinary Immortals could only accumulate them slowly.
“I’m telling you, Little Drunkard, you really don’t know the cost of running a household until you’re in charge. You think three hundred Immortal Stones are easy to come by?”
Seeing Gu Qingfeng sneer at the three hundred Immortal Stones, Qiānniǎo felt it necessary to knock some sense into this ignorant fellow. “Let me tell you, this Immortal only managed to get them by risking her life out there! It’s only someone of my caliber who has this ability. You try swapping with someone else? Forget three hundred Immortal Stones, many Immortals can’t even produce three.”
“I say, Big Sister Qiānniǎo…” Gu Qingfeng had barely started when Qiānniǎo immediately corrected him, “Call me Immortal! Immortal Qiānniǎo!”
“Alright, Immortal Qiānniǎo. If you said many Immortals in the Ancient Era couldn’t produce three Immortal Stones, I’d believe it. But isn’t it the Modern Era now, ten thousand years in? The heaven-earth spiritual energy is tens of millions of times richer and purer than in the Ancient Era. Cultivation resources shouldn’t be scarce either, right? Shouldn’t you have some harvest just by going out for a stroll?”
“What? What did you say?”
Qiānniǎo looked as if she had heard the funniest joke in the world, or as if she were witnessing an ignorant little brat spouting nonsense. Pointing at Gu Qingfeng, she said with great exasperation, “Big brother! Do you think Immortal Stones are like spirit stones? That you can just go out for a stroll and get some? How utterly ignorant!”
Gu Qingfeng asked, “What? Isn’t that the case?”
“You really…” Qiānniǎo explained, “It’s true that the Modern Era has been open for ten thousand years. It’s true that the spiritual energy is tens of millions of times richer and purer than in the Ancient Era. And it’s also true that there are many cultivation resources out there. But there’s one issue you haven’t considered, have you? That is, the number of Immortals in the Great Desolate during these ten thousand years of the Modern Era is tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of times greater than in the Ancient Era.”
“Becoming an Immortal in the Ancient Era was so difficult, often requiring cultivation for thousands or tens of thousands of years. But in the Modern Era now, becoming an Immortal is as common as a daily meal, even easier than building a foundation in cultivation. Forget the Great Desolate; even in the secular world, Immortals are a dime a dozen now.”
“One monk fetches water to drink, two monks carry water to drink, three monks have no water to drink—don’t you understand this principle? What’s more, nowadays, the cultivation resources of many great worlds are monopolized by those giant overlords. You simply can’t imagine how difficult it is for ordinary Immortals to survive in the Great Desolate.”
To be honest.
Gu Qingfeng didn’t have much of a concept when it came to cultivation resources.
Because in his five hundred years of cultivation, thinking back carefully, he never seemed to have lacked any cultivation resources. After all, he never went out to gain experience or adventure. It was always about fighting and killing. And killing people, plundering goods, and seizing resources was much faster than going on adventures.
Hearing Qiānniǎo say this, he nodded. “That’s true. Although the heaven-earth spiritual energy is richer and purer, there are also more and more Immortals. The pressure to survive naturally multiplies.”
“No kidding! Did you think it was easy?” Qiānniǎo rolled her eyes. “When I was young and didn’t understand, I always thought our Ancestral Patriarch and the others were too conservative, lacking backbone, just knowing how to guard our little patch of land in the Xiaoluo Secret Realm without any ambition. But now that I’ve grown up, I realize that for our Ancestral Patriarch and the others to be able to guard this little patch of land in the Xiaoluo Secret Realm amidst the chaos of the Great Desolate is already remarkable. It’s precisely because the Ancestral Patriarch can guard the Xiaoluo Secret Realm that we can cultivate in peace and never have to worry about Immortal Stones.”
Qiānniǎo sat down beside Gu Qingfeng and started drinking with him. “Little Drunkard, you know what? Many Immortals in the Great Desolate have a hard time surviving. Our Xiaoluo Secret Realm has a Golden Rainbow Spirit Vein, so we can be self-sufficient. Occasionally going out to gain experience, we even have a small surplus. But the Immortals from other Secret Realms are different. Too many people, resources simply aren’t enough to go around.”
Qiānniǎo went on about the current situation in the Great Desolate. “If your aptitude is good and your potential is great, the Secret Realm might cultivate you, guaranteeing your daily consumption. But if your aptitude is average, the Secret Realm can’t be bothered with you. Forget distributing Immortal Stones to you; if you cultivate in their Secret Realm, you even have to pay them a certain amount of Immortal Stones every year.”
“Many Immortals, in order to survive, can only rely on going out to take risks. If luck is good, they might gain something. If luck is bad, they might have no harvest for ten or eight years, and might even lose their lives.”
Gu Qingfeng shook his head and sighed. “Isn’t living like that too stifling? You’ve already become an Immortal; you can cultivate anywhere. Why stay in so-called Secret Realms?”
“You really talk without feeling the strain on your back. Do you think it’s easy for one person to get by in the Great Desolate? It’s simply impossible to survive! Staying in a Secret Realm, although survival is a bit harder, at least your life is guaranteed. If something happens, everyone can look out for each other a bit. If you’re alone outside, you might not even know how you died.”
Raising her cup to drink, Qiānniǎo said something that had struck her the most since she started venturing out: “In the Great Desolate, if you have no background, no influence, and no strength, you live a life worse than a dog.”