Eternal Swordmaster

After resting for a while, Lin Xin picked up the book on Formation details and continued reading, with the flame of the oil lamp flickering slightly due to the cold wind blowing from outside the stone house.

Whoosh...

Unbeknownst to him, it had started raining outside.

Lin Xin opened the window and looked toward the two stone houses on his left, which were the residences of Wang Chong and Xiao Lingling. There was light leaking from the cracks of Wang Chong's room, while Xiao Lingling's stone house seemed somewhat dim, seemingly without any lights on.

Lin Xin placed his hand on the windowsill; the cold touch of the stone transmitted from his fingers to his forearm and then throughout his body, making him shiver all of a sudden.

The large raindrops occasionally drifted over, hitting the stone sill of the window and splashing onto the back of his hand.

"So cold..." he shrank his body, feeling the temperature drop suddenly.

Recalling what Master Ji Lu had said earlier, it would freeze at night here, and staying outdoors could hinder one's cultivation practice.

"Outside, the temperature must be only about three to four degrees..." Lin Xin estimated, returning to the new desk he had just bought and sat down, continuing to read "Detailed Analysis of Formations" amidst the smell of fresh red lacquer on the desk.

"Tomorrow I must find a way to solve the food issue." Lin Xin had already noticed something amiss here; the food provided here was not purchased rice but something like chocolate beans, which had a much higher energy concentration than rice and other foods.

Because Inner Qi was actually extracted from food, Lin Xin had a good grasp of this aspect.

Previously, he had to eat four or five meals a day, occasionally adding some snacks or dried meat, to sustain his Inner Qi cultivation practice. Now, he had just eaten one meal of that kind of food and already felt full. Moreover, the amount of Inner Qi extracted was even more than before.

After briefly reading, Lin Xin extinguished the oil lamp, washed his face and feet with the river water he had fetched today, and then went to bed, covering himself with a blanket.

The soft white quilt was very warm; he stuffed the gaps around his neck tightly and wrapped himself in the quilt.

His eyes gazed at the ceiling of the stone house, which was rough and unevenly colored in gray-white.

This way of sleeping was identical to how he slept in his previous life, which suddenly gave him the illusion of being back on Earth, as if he was currently in his own bedroom wrapped in a blanket sleeping.

Hiss! Clang!!

Suddenly, the sound of clashing sharp weapons came from outside.

"Zhou Yaxuan! You wretch!" a man yelled in desperation, mixed with a woman's cold laugh.

"You're the fool. Who else can you blame..."

The voices of the two quickly swept past the nearby stone houses and rushed into the distant woods, soon drowned out by the sound of rain.

Listening to the sounds outside, Lin Xin's illusion was immediately dispelled.

"I'm no longer on Earth..." he felt wistfully. Tightening the blanket around him, he closed his eyes and slowly drifted off to sleep.

**************

Thump thump thump.

Lin Xin groggily woke up, hearing the stone door being knocked loudly.

"Lin Xin! Are you still not up?" Wang Chong's voice came from outside.

Opening his eyes, sharp sunlight streamed through the cracks of the stone window, hitting right on the open page of Detailed Analysis of Formations on the desk.

After taking a few breaths, Lin Xin responded.

"Coming, just a moment."

"Hurry up, we need to get the tasks early!" Wang Chong yelled from outside.

Lin Xin quickly got out of bed, put on his clothes, then opened the door; Wang Chong and Xiao Lingling were both standing outside, already fully dressed.

"What's the rush?" he frowned.

"It's not about rushing, Lingling asked around. Here, the tasks are distributed at sunrise every morning. If we're late, only the leftovers are left. With our low strength and most of our food already taken, we must hurry. Otherwise, it will delay our cultivation practice," Wang Chong explained hastily.

Lin Xin understood.

"I'll be ready in a moment." He quickly washed his face, rinsed his mouth with salt water, and then left the stone house with the two, heading towards the outskirts of the town.

They passed through a small peach grove and climbed a slope up the mountain. Throughout the journey, they could see named disciples going up and down the mountain, some with gloomy faces and others looking relaxed grouped in twos and threes, with very few going solo.

As they climbed the mountain, the path became more crowded; they quickly reached the top where hundreds of people were gathered in a dense, mixed crowd of variously dressed individuals, all eyes fixed on a large white stone wall in front.

The stone wall was exceptionally white and smooth, with many words written on it in charcoal pencil, line after line. The words were dense and plentiful, somewhat dizzying to read.

Lin Xin gazed from a distance of about thirty meters and astonishingly made out the fingernail-sized small characters written on it.

'Investigation Task: Missing person case within the Golden Jade Sect, deadline six months, threat level three.'

'Hunt Task: Xuan Ye Cave's Ling Zhongzi has defected and entered our sect's territory, may use a Formation Talisman for pursuit. Deadline one month. Threat level four.'

'Investigation Task: Investigate the Mist Town in the Outer Regions, obtain a century-old Human Ganoderma, specific materials to be provided. Deadline three months, threat level six.'

Lin Xin quickly scanned the tasks, all of which ranged from threat level three to nine.

"The threat level represents our level of Inner Qi, and the number three represents the Third Layer of Return to Origin, which means the enemies we could encounter on this mission are estimated to be at the Third Layer level. Of course, with unclear intelligence, there may be changes, so it's best to be at a higher level than this threat level in order to take on the mission," Xiao Lingling seemed to have found out some details.

"Being new here, it's best for the three of us to team up for missions. The success rate would also be higher," she suggested. "Additionally, our levels are too low, we'd better look at the lower ones."

Lin Xin nodded, his gaze shifting downwards, seeing rows upon rows of low-level missions densely written on the stone wall.

He noticed that beside the stone wall was a small pavilion where a few young people sat. Whenever someone came to accept a mission, they went inside to register, then they would come out and write on the stone wall.

"How about this one!" Wang Chong suddenly pointed towards the dense cluster of hundreds of messages on the right corner of the stone wall.

Lin Xin followed his gaze.

'Gathering Mission: Collect 100 bottles of Corpse Refining Water from Yin Wind Mountain, a multi-person task, unlimited number of participants. Difficulty level one, time limit of three months.'

"The reward corresponds with the difficulty level, the higher the difficulty, the higher the reward," Xiao Lingling explained.

Lin Xin remained silent, seeing that such tasks carried little danger but an unlimited number of participants meant lesser rewards.

By comparison, he preferred to first thoroughly study how to utilize his abilities before taking on missions.

It was clear that Xiao Lingling and the others were interested in this mission; rightly so, as taking on some simple tasks in the early stages to accumulate experience wasn't a bad idea.

"You two go together, I want to look around by myself."

Xiao Lingling glanced at Lin Xin, somewhat puzzled, but she didn't say anything.

"Alright, then we'll go our separate ways," she said. Had it not been for the fact that they had initially agreed to stick together, with her perception ability, she could have joined a better squad. She hadn't expected Lin Xin to reject her good intentions of sticking together.

Wang Chong was also a bit puzzled, but Xiao Lingling quickly pulled him closer to the stone wall. Familiar with making connections quickly, she started chatting up two men nearby and quickly became well acquainted, fully leveraging her charm.

Lin Xin stood alone on the outskirts of the crowd, not saying much, but finally looked at the mission wall again, then turned to walk down the mountain.

His plan was not to take on a mission first, but to see if he could use his abilities to create Formation Talismans and earn a profit from their sale. After earning enough Jade Money to buy quality equipment and supplies, he could conduct the monthly missions more safely.

Returning alone to the stone house, he didn't delay, immediately starting to search out detailed information on formations, flipping to the part about the Solar Yang Formation and beginning to prepare the materials.

Roots, stone powder, scorpions, and other such materials were prepared one by one, taking until noon to entirely process a batch.

Since it was his first time and being a novice, he wasted a lot of materials.

After eating his last piece of dark chocolate beans, Lin Xin sat cross-legged on the bed to regulate his Inner Qi for over an hour. Then, he got off the bed and began the actual creation of the Solar Yang Formation Talisman.

Taking out over a dozen different types of materials, he ground them all into powder and filled a clay pot with water to simmer the mixture of powders and remnants.

He boiled it on the stove for over an hour until the water inside turned into a thick, paste-like liquid.

Then, Lin Xin took out the white cloth he had purchased earlier, cut it into pieces, and threw it in.

The white cloth quickly turned black and was then removed by Lin Xin.

Strangely enough, soon after they were removed, the black cloths rapidly dried, displaying not even a hint of dampness.

The entire stone house smelled strongly of medicine at this point.

Lin Xin opened the window to let some of the medicinal smell out. Extinguishing the fire, he then took one of the processed black cloths and laid out the chicken blood ink he had purchased, biting his own finger to drip a drop of blood into the ink before stirring it evenly.

"It's time to start...."

He stood in front of the desk, took a deep breath,

dipped the brush into the ink and slowly began to write the Talisman of the Solar Yang Formation on the black cloth.

It was a simple 'R'-shaped symbol, only there were three dots above the 'R', making it look rather odd.

Lin Xin focused intently, holding his breath as instructed in the book, using his Inner Qi to control his hand, causing it to tremble and pause once every three breaths. Each pause had to be exactly uniform in terms of the thickness and uniformity of the strokes; it was to be the same each time.

This was an extremely difficult task and the key reason why creating formations was challenging, requiring extreme precision.

As he controlled it with his Inner Strength, Lin Xin's arm steadily wrote the first stroke.

Sizzle!

Suddenly, the black cloth under Lin Xin's hand spontaneously ignited. Startled, Lin Xin quickly jumped back, soon seeing the whole cloth burn into a pile of black ash resting on the desk. Eerily, there were no scorch marks on the wooden desk.

"I failed... the strokes must not have been even enough."

Unfazed, he continued with another piece of black cloth, starting to write again, using up thirty black cloths dyed with one batch of Black Ointment.

Since the Solar Yang Formation required five successful symbols to form a Formation Talisman, Lin Xin still had plenty of materials.

Continuing with the second cloth,

he attempted to control his steadiness on the first stroke without issue, but as he drew the second, the temperature on the black cloth began to noticeably increase.

Lin Xin held the brush, feeling waves of heat reach his hand from more than ten centimeters away from the black cloth.