Qin Yun's workshop was located on a secluded hill near the Lian Clan's compound. It was once a mansion that belonged to a distant relative of the Lian Clan but was retrofitted to fit Qin Yun's needs. While the property wasn't as grand as some of the others you could find within Jin City, its location made for prime real estate.

Over the years, many had tried to buy it off the Lian Clan, yet they had refused every time. It wasn't as if they lacked money. It had been in the family for such a long time that it held sentimental value. As such, they were reluctant to allow outsiders to alter it in any way.

That was until Qin Yun came along. The Lian Clan had tried everything to tie him to them, even once mentioning a marriage between Qin Yun and Lian Huiling. Unfortunately, Qin Yun rejected their offer. While he would have had no qualms marrying her, he didn’t want to tie himself too tightly to the Lian Clan. Besides, Lian Huiling had also been against it.

With no other recourse, they reluctantly offered that mansion once they heard Qin Yun was seeking a quiet place to further his craft. While Qin Yun initially offered to simply rent it, the patriarch insisted he become the owner. Their intentions were clear, and Qin Yun accepted it.

Over the years, the mansion had remained unused. A formation had been erected upon its perimeter, which prevented any dust or wear from transpiring within and even disallowed intruders. The only way to gain access to it was to have a specific token. This was the reason Qin Yun had to reach out to Lian Huiling to return to his property. After his retirement, he had given them that token back.

With the token in hand, Qin Yun could return to this familiar workshop. As Lian Huiling was a busy woman, she parted ways with Qin Yun almost immediately after giving him the token. After hearing the tale of the last few days, Qin Yun knew she had many things on her mind and saw her off.

As Yun Jingfei stood before their new residence, she felt a sense of familiarity. This mansion subtly resembled their courtyard within the Qin Clan. It was clear Qin Yun had left his touch here. Yet, she couldn't feel the inviting and warm atmosphere she was used to.

Of course, Qin Yun was a bachelor then and had no interest in whatever comfort this residence could offer. It was only meant as a workshop away from his clan so that he could lose himself in his work. Now that he returned with a wife in tow, things would obviously change.

As they entered, a sprawling courtyard greeted them. It remained as Qin Yun had left it as if not a single day had passed since then. There were ornate statues on each side of the main house depicting various guardian animals. Exquisitely decorated pillars supported a large slanted tile roof, while trees and greenery were sprinkled around the courtyard, giving it an aura of life.

Yet, Qin Yun couldn't help but frown. It had been years since he last set foot in this place, but the estate had been maintained flawlessly. He expected the flora to be overgrown as no one had taken care of it since he left; the information recorded in the token said as much.

Of course, the Lian Clan could have sent a caretaker without his knowledge to take care of things, but would they erase his involvement from the token? Qin Yun didn't think so, as doing so would be much too suspicious. The Lian Clan wouldn't do such a thing and sour their relationship.

In fact, they did not need to take care of things personally, as the formation would do it all automatically, at least regarding inanimate objects. This type of formation could do nothing against living plants, only keep out intruders.

While the neatly trimmed plants remained on his mind, Qin Yun thought little of it. It wasn't something to dwell on. Qin Yun opted to check on his workshop while Yun Jingfei explored the rest of the house.

While the courtyard was vast and surrounded by tall stone walls, only three buildings were present within. The main house, where they would now live. A smaller structure which served as housing for the residence’s servants and Qin Yun’s workshop.

Surprisingly, Qin Yun's workshop was easily as large as the main house—in fact, it may be even larger. When designing this building, Qin Yun added multiple rooms for all the disciplines he could wish for.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

There was a large forge with a furnace that could burn hot enough to even melt most of the metals one could find in the Western Region. This was Qin Yun’s primary occupation. He would experiment and forge whatever came to mind, keeping the successful products while gifting his failures to the Lian Clan to sell at auctions.

Surprisingly, even his failures were sought after as they were much more potent than artifacts of the same class. Of course, few could rival Qin Yun in this field as he had many lifetimes of experience in worlds where artifacts were much more advanced. While he still couldn't match the treasures born from the world's providence, common and profound rank artifacts were as easy as breathing to him.

There was also an alchemy room filled with many rare and precious herbs. Still, this room had barely been used, as Qin Yun had almost no interest in alchemy. In fact, he couldn't fathom why it was so popular in this world.

His disdain for it was rooted in logic. Alchemy was the act of extracting the Qi from spiritual herbs and mixing different attributes to create a particular effect. Using a flame, one would burn the vessel containing the Qi, extracting it before using a rotational force to mix all the different Qis, then using pressure to form a pill.

While this was the most basic of basics, it summed up the discipline of alchemy quite well. Qin Yun's problem lay in the fact that no matter how talented one was in alchemy, impurities were inevitable. That, however, would be Qin Yun's bane, as his cultivation philosophy deeply emphasized the importance of the purity of one's Qi. To Qin Yun, taking those pills, no matter how pure they were, would be nothing more than a setback. There were no shortcuts on his path.

While Qin Yun was averse to taking pills himself, it didn't mean he had no knowledge of it. In fact, he clearly remembered being an alchemy grandmaster in one of his previous lives in this world. He could even feel his imprint within modern alchemy techniques as if they were based upon the inheritance of his work. While he didn't know how much time had passed since then, Qin Yun figured it was so long ago that no records remained.

By chance, the Lian Clan discovered his expertise in the art of alchemy and built this room against his will, even gifting him all those precious spiritual plants. Little did they know that Qin Yun couldn't practice alchemy in his current state. Doing so would require using Qi or a natural flame as a base for vessel deconstruction. Even then, Qi would be necessary for the merging and forming steps, which he obviously didn't possess.

Qin Yun couldn't blame them, however, as he did show them some miraculous things while he was forging, and they assumed the same to be true for alchemy. Still, he refused to let their good intentions go to waste, and he started breeding the spiritual plants he had been gifted. Botany had always interested him, even more so regarding these strange and exotic plants containing Qi.

This hadn't been easy, however. Most of these plants required particular and diverse conditions to further their growth, ranging from soil quality and composition to the attribute and density of the surrounding Spiritual Qi. Isolating every factor to maximize their growth took him an enormous amount of man-hours.

For weeks, he had shut himself in his courtyard, trying different combinations and rejecting everyone who came to him for commissions. He was so engrossed that he lost contact with his clan, and they speculated that he had run away from the clan. They might have assumed he had fled into the night if not for Qin Meihui's assurance of his whereabouts.

Finally, after multiple months of hard labour, his efforts bore fruit. Through meticulous observations and experimentation, Qin Yun had inferred the foundation of how spiritual herbs came to be. Still, caring for those herbs took too much of his time. As such, he endeavoured to automate the process. Formations were perfect for this purpose.

Qin Yun could grow almost any plant by overlapping formations to regulate temperature, Qi density, soil quality, and sun exposure. At least the ones most commonly found. Some still stumped him, such as those requiring volcanic soil or frigid air. There was a limit on what formations could do with his current means. The lack of Qi was always a problem for Qin Yun.

With this knowledge, Qin Yun had replaced most of the plants in his courtyard with spiritual plants, yet camouflaged them as ordinary ones. If someone could somehow intrude into this place, Qin Yun didn't want them to ransack all the plants he had carefully grown.

With the help of those plants, Qin Yun's courtyard possessed a Qi density of over ten times the average of Jin City. While some secret realms belonging to the four great clans might overshadow his courtyard, Qin Yun was still proud of the result as his initial investment was minimal.

Besides, finding and occupying a secret realm was much too impractical for a single individual. Only the four great clans had the means to do so. Even then, they were barely able to keep their hold on them. If news of those realms were to spread out, the various sects would stop at nothing to occupy them. The same would hold true for Qin Yun's courtyard.

Qin Yun's workshop was just as he left it. All his tools were neatly arranged on the walls, still in pristine condition. He did a quick tour, verifying the integrity of the structure. While the formation could be used to slow the wear of materials, time couldn't be stopped. Well, it could, but the energy requirement would be astronomical—not something that Qin Yun was currently capable of.

Fortunately, Qin Yun had only been gone a few years, and nothing had changed. Almost nothing. Qin Yun saw some dirt on the floor of his workshop. While he would have ignored it in most cases, The dirt was much too fresh, as if it had been left shortly before they entered the compound, which should have been impossible as the formation surrounding it had always been active. If it had been breached, it would have been recorded in the token, yet it showed nothing of the sort.

Qin Yun grew suspicious. While the formation wasn't infallible, it had been placed by a formation grandmaster, one of the two mysterious Black Token owners. The chances of it failing were almost nil. There was only one way to bypass it without triggering the recording function.

Qin Yun thought back to the spatial fluctuations he remembered from a few days ago. While he noticed a big one near the ruins outside the city, there was also a small one, barely perceptible within the city's walls.

Qin Yun wondered if the universe was playing a joke on him. What were the chances of this fluctuation originating in the very residence he owned? Qin Yun could only sigh, wondering if his luck was good or bad. As he was lamenting his fate, Qin Yun heard the sound of a struggle originating from the main house. It seemed his wife had encountered this intruder.