After talking for a few more hours with Guang Zhenqiang, Jian and Qin eventually bade farewell to her as she told them that she would have to move her stuff to their place first before she would be able to move in. Seeing their slightly sad expressions as they watched her go, Guang Zhenqiang could not help but chuckle at the sight, telling them, “I’ll try to come back as soon as possible. I promise.”
With that, Zhenqiang left the couple’s abode to head back to the city where she lived… with a large sack in tow. As to what it contained…
It was high-grade Spirit Slag.
Surprisingly, during their talks, Jian brought up the subject of the large pile of high-grade Spirit Slag outside their house. Knowing very well that such a large amount of the stuff would help out in their progress of buying the medicine necessary to wake up Qin’s father, as well as improve Qin’s mastery over alchemy, Guang Zhenqiang went ahead and accepted the suggestion of bringing the high-grade Spirit Slag with her back to the city to be sold.
Then again, she only accepted it once she was told by the two that she would get a cut from it. She was doing all of the heavy work, after all.
As they watched Zhenqiang’s silhouette disappear from their field of sight as they looked at the sun up above the skies, Jian and Qin could not help but look at each other for a bit in silence before heading back inside, deciding to sit facing each other in the living room as they stared at each other’s faces.
Scratching his head from the somewhat tense atmosphere that was gradually suffused around them, Jian took the initiative to start the conversation, asking his wife, “You’re still doubtful as to whether Lady Guang will help us, right?”
“Well, that is what you told me, after all,” Qin said in response. “Though, from how you acted earlier, it seems that you have no reason to doubt her anymore. Say, Jian. What was on that parchment?”
Unexpectedly, the topic of their current conversation was the parchment Guang Zhenqiang gave Jian a few hours ago as proof that she was not sent by the two clans at all. After seeing its contents, Jian lost all of his doubts about Zhenqiang colluding with the two clans… however, Qin still hadn’t seen it.
Hearing that, Jian headed towards another part of their house before coming back to the living room with parchment at hand. It was, in fact, the same parchment that Guang Zhenqiang gave him. After that, he gave it to his wife and told her, “Go ahead. Open it and see what’s written on it.”
Nodding in response to his words, Qin unfurled the parchment given to her, only for an expression of confusion to appear on her face as the thing written on the parchment was… nothing. Instead, an emblem of the Mirror Heart Sect could be seen etched on the parchment. With that, a hint of anger could be seen on her face as she asked Jian, “Jian…”
However, before she could even ask the question, Jian told her, “Send qi into the parchment through the tips of your fingers. Once you do, you’ll understand.”
Although she was somewhat furious, thinking that Jian was stupid for believing Guang Zhenqiang after being given a picture of her sect’s emblem, she did what she was told, sending qi through the tips of her fingers into the parchment.
As she was still in the Essence Gathering Realm, she did not have the ability to release qi out of her body far away. At most, she could only radiate this qi out of her body to a few centimeters at most.
Nevertheless, the paltry amount of qi she was able to radiate outward was absorbed by the parchment, which sent an influx of information into her mind in response. After reading the influx of information she had received, an expression of shock could not help but appear on her face as she looked at her husband, who was looking at her with a light smile.
A few minutes later, Qin closed up the parchment given to her as she gave it back to Jian, saying, “You know, Jian, you could’ve just told me to send qi into the parchment from the get-go, no?”
In response, Jian chuckled. “Well, it’s rare for you to get angry, so I thought, why not use this chance to see her get angry?”
Though, not long after, his expression turned solemn as he cleared his throat, continuing, “In any case, you now know why I couldn’t tell you earlier.”
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Hearing his words, Qin nodded, saying, “Out of all the things people know about the Mirror Heart Sect, one thing stands out the most.”
“The Mirror Heart Pact,” both said at the same time.
As the Mirror Heart Sect was the kingdom’s prime sect for righteous people, then the Mirror Heart Pact could be said as the reason why they had this name. A technique created by the Mirror Heart Saint, the Mirror Heart Pact made sure that the person who signed it would abide by the clauses written on the pact until the person achieved the goal of the pact.
In Guang Zhenqiang’s case, the goal of her pact was to help Jian and Qin.
“Don’t you think the goal of her pact is quite vague?” Qin could not help but ask her husband, to which he replied, “Well, if you think about it, the vaguer it is, the more freedom she has in her choices. Plus, the only downside to the pact for her is that she cannot intentionally harm us. Since we’re her friends, she has no reason to hurt us at all, no?”
“It’s all quite confusing to me, really,” Qin said in response. “But since she’s signed the Mirror Heart Pact, then that means she’s on our side.” Muttering these words, she could not help but let out a sigh. “To think Third Uncle doesn’t actually have the intention of helping us out…”
Hearing that, Jian patted her on the shoulder as he told her, “It’s fine, Qin. After all, we’ve already lived on our own for two years without the help of our clans. What’s the problem with staying that way for a bit more?”
“You’re not really comforting me, Jian,” said Qin, only to lightly chuckle a bit after. Soon, Jian started to chuckle as well as they embraced each other. After that, they looked at each other for a bit before Jian suggested, “Should we build an extension to the house during the next few days Lady Guang is not around?”
“Sure. But leave the planning to me, though. I don’t want you to add something to the extension that I definitely won’t allow normally,” joked Qin with a chuckle as the two soon went out of their house, obtaining the materials necessary to build the house’s extension.
…
Twelve hours had passed since Arthur started to idle around once more, allowing the [Qi Conversion] skill to automatically do its thing while he chatted with Sisa from time to time, as well as look at the outside world through [Spirit Sense]. Naturally, during this time, he had seen the entire conversation between Guang Zhenqiang and the two, knowing that the information he had obtained from it would have greatly changed the motive of the narrative quest the system gave him.
However, for some reason, it still hadn’t changed.
‘Is that information not relevant to the quest or something?’ Arthur could not help but ask himself. He also talked to Sisa about it, who also found it weird that the narrative quest did not update based on the information.
In any case, by the time he decided to check on the progress of [Qi Conversion], it was already nighttime. Looking at the pile he had amassed so far, Arthur could not help but be astounded as the pile near the core was more or less the same size as the previous pile he exchanged for System Points.
“You’re telling me… a couple of upgrades on [Qi Conversion] and Qi Purity is enough to half the time I take to produce the same amount of Spirit Slag I exchanged back then?” Arthur seriously could not believe it. Fortunately, Sisa was there to give him a wake-up call, telling him, “You better get used to big numbers in the future, Arthur. After all, we’re still nowhere near the limit.”
“I know that, Sisa,” Arthur replied. “But still… wow.”
After being in awe for a couple more minutes, Arthur went ahead and exchanged all of the Spirit Slag he had produced into System Points. Which came to a total of…
Ding!
You have exchanged 11.5 kilograms of Spirit Slag for 11,500 System Points.
Seeing that he now had a lot of points to spend again, Arthur opened up the upgrade screen, focusing his attention on two skills that he wanted to upgrade twelve hours ago.
“This is going to benefit you in the long run, Arthur,” he muttered to himself as he allocated 5000 of those points towards upgrading said skills. As to which skills they were?
Naturally, it was [Spirit Aura] and [Spirit Sense].
Ding!
[Spirit Sense] has been upgraded to Level 20.
[Spirit Sense] can now create a basic sensory field spanning 4.95 kilometers, lasting for 5 hours and 55 minutes before disappearing.
[Spirit Aura] has been upgraded to Level 20.
The range factor of [Spirit Aura] has been increased from 1:1 to 5:1. Current range is 500 meters.
The boost factor of [Spirit Aura] has been increased from 0.03:1 to 0.05:1. Current boost is 115%.
“Now that I’ve seen the effects of the upgrades, I can totally justify the fact that it’s worth it,” Arthur said once he took a look at the upgrade notifications. Though, once he looked at the number of points it would take for him to upgrade the skills to Level 21, he could not help but make a hissing sound as he said, “I... think... that’s enough for now.”
“So… what next?”