The room was silent. Rinrin, Ning and Su were sitting with their mouth ajar as they heard what Bo Rei had to say.

“Your say ‘all’ the servants in the medical garden no longer want to work for us because of the refining incident.” Rinrin said in shock.

“Yes, not only that but they want you three to suffer through it before they leave as a price for the pain they went through and they also want 3 300 year old mature herbs. Of course I already kicked them out of the garden before they could take anything.” She said.

“They have some nerve! Wanting us to suffer and still squeeze out herbs!” Rinrin was furious when she heard the demands that they were suffering.

“Oh please, that is only a few hundred 300 year old herbs. They only asked for that because there are few herbs of lower age maturity. They know their limits, they probably want to trade the herbs for pills which isn’t stupid. For us, that amount of herbs is a drop in the ocean. We simply need to plant herb seedlings and the energy from the refining will cause them to age rapidly. Of course it won’t be as exaggerated as the first refining since the energy release from the medical mountains will be far less since a large amount of their spirit energy was used to improve but at least 100 year old herbs will appear.” Rei said.

“So we really have to undergo this refining?” Ning asked reluctant.

“I was going to use a body refining method on you children anyway so it doesn’t matter if it’s now or later.” Bo Rei nonchalantly said.

“Eh?” The three exclaimed.

Rei looked at them and brought out her Treasure Pagoda. “You children are still too young to know every secret of this but it's called the lifeline of the Yi Clan. You think simply refining treasures is all it does? In the body of all cultivators with any power surpassing Qi gathering they have something called a Spirit Vein. There are five such veins but depending on each person they would have one specific vein developed which is usually a specific element which is why there are people who have talent for alchemy and pill refining and others don't. Those with a Spirit Vein of Fire Element will have a large talent since they can control their flame with greater ease. For the Yi Clan, they have had this treasure for more than several thousands of years and the area they possess span several nations under their wing. They cannot be weaklings and talentless but such people will always be born but in the Yi Clan it does not matter. We are a clan with immense heritage of spiritual rune users and so we also know how to manipulate spirit treasures and the most abundant is the medical and spirit mountains. For refining a spirit vein we simply break a branch of the Spirit Vein and refine the Spirit Vein with a special formation.” She said.

The children were flabbergast when they heard such a huge bomb.

“Does it hurt as much as they were complaining?” Rinrin asked.

“Several fold.” She said.

“EHH!” Su exclaimed.

“Oh don’t give me that girl, you are improving the very vein of your talent. The Spirit Vein is what refines and purifies the energy in your bodies. It is a unique branch of meridians you can’t find normally but they are there. Common people have it merged with their Dantian where the purification is done but yours is loose around your Dao seeds. As for your Dao Beasts, they don’t have them because they don’t have meridians but they have talent matching your own and their is more closely tied to their bloodline anyway.” Bo Rei said.

“When do we do this?” Ning asked.

“Now I already told them we were going to do this today so we could get this out of the way so all of you strip off everything down to your birthday suits. One by one I will slowly take you to refine.” She said bluntly.

“Wait! Now!... i-in front of Ning?” Su said extremely embarrassed.

“What are you embarrassed about? Didn’t you strip yourself while mounting Ning?” She asked.

“EH! You show that!” Su exclaimed and began to sob from embarrassment.

“Mother, why do we need to develop our spirit veins in the first place? I thought the talent we possessed was already at the pinnacle?” Ning asked.

Rei snorted but did not retort or insult her son. He did not know after all. “Spirit veins are Graded as Spirit Vein, Spiritual Vein, Heavenly Vein and Divine Vein. Spirit Veins are the most common in the mortal realm because it is what everyone is born with. By refining it it is possible to reach Spiritual Vein Grade. The closer to complete formation the vein gets the easier it will get for the owner of these veins to ascend to the Spiritual Realm above. If one did not refine and completely form at least half of their spirit vein they would take thousands of years of cultivating to enter the Spirit Realm if they survived long enough. The Yi clan has a specific method to test spirit veins. Simply touch the very peak of the pagoda.” She said with a grin.

She did just that and all five pillars began to radiate moonlight. Then the blue pillar began to turn white from the bottom up a quarter of the way up.

“As you can see, my spirit vein has formed 25% of the way but this is because I had to leave the clan without my pagoda when I was young for reasons I will not say at this moment.” She said.

The three did not even try to inquire and each touched their own pagoda. The five pillars began to release a light matching each pillar but the amount of light that lit up for each pillar was much different when compared to the beautiful woman in front of them. For them it was between five and 10% for all the veins.

“As you can tell, Riders have all five Veins due to their constitution. It took me 20 years for me to improve the Spirit Vein of your father, Ning, so that I could birth a proper talent. Your brothers were born before I could finish but you were born after I had refined an entire Earth Rank Spirit Vein into your father by drugging him into sleep and creating all the formations by hand.” She said.

“You just used father?” Ning asked in shock.

“I did love him, if I didn’t I would never have allowed him to touch me but once you were born and how he treated you I got over it. Even if your father has a good Spirit Vein now he does not have the backing and resource to make use of it so I feel nothing towards him. He was a close minded and foolish idiot and only your grandfather was wise in that family.” She said coldly before snapping her eyes towards them, “Now chop chop! We need to get this over with.”

The children were reluctant before Bo Rei finally consented to letting them enter the pagoda before removing the clothing.

Ning went first and was taken into his mother’s pagoda and removed his clothing.

When he threw them outside she sent inside a small pinky thick Spirit Vein branch, one of each color matching the elements.

After a moment he felt a tremendous spiritual power lock all around him and he was dragged to the center of the pagoda as a very complex formation formed above and below him. The five roots moved into specific positions and small pillars of light came from them connecting the two circles.

What Ning saw last was a pillar of light before he blacked out from that moment of hell like pain.

When Ning fainted the energy from the formation washed his entire body as seemed to break it down and rebuild it in an instant. A large amount of impurities were sucked out of him and the five Spirit Veins from the mountains turned into lights before they rushed into his body.

Around his three Dao Seeds, under the immense energy flow five small very thin root like meridians flowed around. Three of them had very minute sized hairs connected to the three Dao Seeds matching the element.

Suddenly the new Spirit Veins rushed through the body and landed in that empty space flowing along side them as it was turned into energy as thin as the little fiber like Spirit Veins before they began to merge. A tremendous amount of energy flowed into the Spirit Veins to make sure that the two Spirit Veins became one. The two twined around each other and doubled in thickness but the energy flow did not stop. There were some that were smaller than others. Specifically the fire and lightning which lacked a Dao Beast. For Riders, the Dao Beast’s Spirit Veins are the first to merge with them but these are weaker due to the lack of them.

When refining balance is always the key and in this case it is no different, the energy flowed into those veins and brought them closer to balance with the others but was still slightly weaker due to not having a connecting Dao Seed.

When it was finished, Ning collapsed and was ejected onto Rei’s lap and without much worry she dressed him quickly.

She did not wait and stripped the two girls since Ning had already undergone refining and threw Rinrin into her own Pagoda and Su into her own before putting the Spirit Veins in and begin to activate the Pagoda.

Refining a Spirit Vein inside a human, one would expect to take a long time but it takes only five minutes and after that amount of time they were thrown out and dressed as well.

She forced the pagoda back into the body of the children and stored everything before calling a servant. There were people that were leaving watching the door and when the three came out fainted they knew it had happened. Their body was releasing a strange aura which the people knew since it was a similar energy they felt so they were even more sure.

After a few minutes it was Bo Rei that came out and glared at them and threw a small space pouch. “Get out of my sights now. I don’t need trash working for me.” She said coldly and turned to follow her children.

The ex servants examined the content of the bag and turned before leaving calling the rest to do the same.

***

As the three children begin to wake up they see Rei sitting while her Pagoda is active. A large amount of Qi was flowing inside the second floor and after a moment she made the refining formation and wild Qi was sucked in and pure much cleaner Qi came out and filled Rei.

This was energy refining through the Pagoda. By doing this, impurities of different kinds are removed and much purer Qi was absorbed into the body for refining. This should not be done often because the quantity of Qi also decreases since the impurities making up the Qi are also part of the energy.

As they sit up she looks over, “So how did it feel?” She asked smiling.

They shivered, “I hope to never try that again.” Ning said.

“Sadly you need to do it and it will only get harder but rest assure, you can only perform that once a year, your body releases a specific energy after being refined and the pagoda will not activate while you are inside during this period even if you are inside a medical garden or spatial ring when it refine.” She said.

They sighed in relief and suddenly they felt something being tossed to them and quickly reacted. What fell in their hands were several medical garden. One of them was Ungraded Earth Rank while the others were High Grade Mortal Rank. There was three types and each gave a different feeling as they released only one type of energy.

“Now each of you have a medical garden as well as a beast space.” She said.

They looked at her confused and she smiled, “Those spaces have spirit mountains of High Grade Common Rank which is attune to a single energy be it Infernal Energy, mana or Qi. I planted common tree sprouts and grass and threw some herbs here and there. Just let pests and such form in them as you refine and soon wild beasts will start to form and we will soon have a personal training ground.” Rei said happily.

“That feels like we are making a separate realm.” Su said.

“Well they are born like this. A stable realm with trees, herbs and life aren’t born overnight no matter how powerful a person may be. Even the people in the highest Heavenly Realm need to refine the separate realms and bring in materials into it to properly make the place.” She said.

“So what now? We have no one to protect our garden.” Ning said.

“Oh no problem no problem. Strong enough pests to bring in beasts will take a year to appear. By then we will have the manpower it will take amount a month to reach the ports to the west so we have half a month free and we can use the pests to test out the weapons and armor you will be making next.” She said.

“Weapons and armor? Is mother going to make us learn blacksmithing next?” Ning asked.

“Yes.” She said and tossed a strange black square item which they caught and looked at. “This is a treasure smithing tool. Isn’t this equivalent to a pill cauldron but many times harder to make?!” Ning asked in shock.

“Boy! It’s been almost four months already and yet you still underestimate your mother, I! You had best stop getting surprised by every damn little thing! All treasures need to be refined and the Treasure Pagoda is a refining treasure created in the Spirit Realm and only by sacrificing the life of one of the first Yi clan who ascended did the clan gain the knowledge and techniques to create this! Don’t even dare to think your mother, I, can’t make a High Grade Common Rank Smithing tool for my own brat!” She said in a seriously irritated tone. She turned before tossing several space bags at them. “You first train to make mortal weapons. There is common ore in there. This is a good exercise for you to learn how to control your fire to not turn metal into ash. Even if you have upgraded those cauldron it was with strong metals, smithing is the same as pill refining so if you have questions just ask. You can control the metal with your spiritual power and you can congeal and solidify the metal in the same fashion. Use only Qi flames.” She finished her rapid fire explanation and left the three dazed children.

They remained dazed before Rinrin fell backwards and let out a shout. “Damn, mother is getting more impatient with us.” She said,

“I think we do overreact a bit too many times though.” Su said.

“Yeah I think you’re right, treasure making needs spirit blacksmithing, as she said using the smithing tool we also make metal and armor as if making pills so it is possible we need pill refining for the process and then we need to train as spirit enchanter so that we can know the runes. If we compare ourselves to the Yi clan we are probably the lowest level trash in the clan since we are already almost 13 and only learning the basics.” Ning said.

They nodded understanding how they were indeed lacking and why she might be getting frustrated. Rei wanted them to learn faster because she probably wanted to return home.

Ning took the tool and after over looking it he bit his finger and let his blood drop on the tool before he mixed his spiritual energy with the drops of blood and created a powerful spiritual blood brand on the smithing tool. He would eventually refine this and so it was an important tool for him now. He looked through his back and indeed found only common metals. Silver, Gold, Iron, Copper, Tin, Nickel, Zinc and many other raw ore which has yet to be refined into ingots.

Ning looked at the tiny furnace and made it float in the air before making it big and was shocked to find it was nearly 2 meters tall. He made it shrink to a more manageable size before spreading his spiritual sense around it. He found the material was Bone of several Earth type beasts with Profound Iron and some Common Steel mixed in. “It’s clear as day that mother intends for us to personally upgrade this into something proper later removing these trash faults.” Ning thought before he thought a bit and pulled out iron ore and tossed it in.

He lit up one flame and put his hands over the opening on the sides and began to feed Qi fire into the furnace.

The heat instantly exploded inside the furnace and to Ning’s shock the common iron was completely turned to ash. “Wha…” He was startled by how weak the metal was to turn to ash. Metals are metals how hot does it have to be for it to make metal burn to ash?

He narrowed his eyes and threw more into the furnace and began with a small trace of the flame this time

With the lowest output he found that the rock metal began to turn red and the materials began to melt slowly. He started to raise the output slowly and very quickly the metal melted and with his control he formed a ball in the very center. It was a large ball of metal but it had many impurities, or in this case, other metals.

Ning thought about what impurities were and though that since he was training at this time he wanted to see if he could easily make pure metal but he did not know if the impurities were needed so with his spiritual sense he pulled the different metals and rock to the surface. The rock was out right burned to ash without anything left.

“ARH! I burned it again!” Rinrin shouted suddenly.

She was also training but she was getting frustrated and had dust all over her face and clothing already. It would indeed infuriate a princess, working something heavy like smithing.

In Ning’s furnace he pulled the impurities into one ball while the iron was in the other. When examined the ball of molten metal and kept kneading it like dough and slowly pulling out the remaining impurities that was deep in the red metal. When all the traces were gone Ning concentrated on solidifying the impurities creating a small multicolored ball and let it drop through a small opening on the side that went into small basin of water causing it to boil momentarily.

He pulled it out and found the strangely colored ball of metal but it had a very fun and interesting look to it. For the Iron he did the same and made a nugget of iron and dropped it. When he took it out of the water he found a ball of grey ball and when he pressed it the found the metal strangely soft. “Is this really iron?” Ning asked himself curiously.

He walked outside and found his mother and asked.

“All pure metals are soft. Gold in its pure form isn’t even a solid and needs a different solid metal to helps it form into a solid. She explained what was impurities and what should be left to make it good and to add coal when mixing it to form iron. It needed a specific mixing method to form steel. This was quite the eye opener for Ning who didn’t know anything about metal work. Bo Rei had prepared a note book with mixtures for common metals to make common alloys that he could train with.

He quickly ran back and read up.

When he returned he found that Rinrin was working on pills, “What happened? Weren’t you training your smithing?” Ning asked.

“Hmph! Stupid metals burned to ash even when I used the lowest possible strength of my fire!” She shouted.

“Wow.” he said in shock. “I did the same thing but it just turned the rock red and I needed to increase it more. Why don’t you meditate first and try after calming down again.” Ning said.

His advice was sound and she looked at him before putting her things away and sitting to meditate.

Su was still practicing but she was sweating a lot and sighed a lot. She shouted that she had a lot of difficulty but even with a bit of pill knowledge she had gained recently she couldn’t work well the metal.

Ning returned the iron and impurities and mixed them before removing the proper proportion and pulling out coal and slowly added and mixed them slowly watching as the Iron and Coal mixed to form steel. He slowly added more and when he reached a specific density where the iron was already somewhat viscous even when the heat was very high to the point that popping from the furnace could be heard he thought of what to make and decided to try end. He made the ingots and dropped them out into the water.

The water was part of the treasure and formed from Qi and was naturally cool water but the heat can be controlled since some tools need a specific water temperature.

Ning began to play around with the metals. What he didn’t notice was how he unconsciously used Tyrant’s flame and how the ash residue was slowly consumed by the flame. Very slowly the fame had begun to grow as it slowly processed the metals which were all tied to the earth.

Half a month passed quickly and something quite interesting was found. Each of the three had a very specific personal talent. This had nothing to do with the Spirit Vein or cultivating. Personal talent can appear even in the worst of trash granting heaven defying talent such as pill refining and so on.

In the time that they had, Ning has shown that he can literally play around with the smithing tools and metals. Be it common metal or spirit metals which are the rare ones usually tempered by Qi or other energies.

His Earth Fire has also begun to change. They did not know when but the previously red flame has begun to turn dark red with tint of brown. This caused Rei to be happy since it meant Ning was had enough comprehension of the natural Law of nature that refining earth attribute items, in this case metal, would slowly merge the material and refine the flame.

At the moment it was Low Quality flames with trace of dragon fire but the dragon fire does little for quality but improves the power. Only when the color reaches red brown will the fire become High Quality Earth Fire.

For Rinrin it is different, she showed that she possessed pill refining talent, even more then what the other two had, Su had very low talent for pill refining but she trained nonetheless due to Rei’s orders.

Finally Su was a Spirit rune genius. What takes the other two a few days of training she can do in less than half the time. Even when the talents were spread around Rei was quite happy by this fact because treasure making was always in groups anyway.

Anyway, after this half month, the three of them went to the inner sect management and saying they were going to leave for a short duration to explore. Of course Rei was coming along with them because they did not know where they were going.

Once the sect was notified they prepared what they needed and finally left towards the west.

***

In a dark room at the peak of an impressively high spirit mountain, a figure was bowed down. Looking out of the wind of this room and down upon the mountain range where the Geo Royal Sect resides, this figure watched the land with disgust.

“So why has there been no news of those brat’s blowing up?” He asked.

This was the one eyed man who had once tried to give Ning and Rinrin poisoned herbs but it was stopped mid way by Bo Rei who destroyed them and formed seeds out of their essence clean of any toxin.

“I do not know your Highness! I had passed it to that brat’s brother in hopes that it would also cripple him since so many quality herbs were handed over yet neither of them showed sign of being hurt. Only small scale explosions from common failure to make the pills were heard but never the extremely loud one that should follow the poisons explosion.” the bowing figure said.

This figure was the Deacon Xi who had despised the two children for their overconfidence but later learned of their skill. Now he had to admit that he was afraid of their skill and luck. They had the Zhao clan supplying Common and Mortal herbs for pill refining now and were being properly nurtured by the clan and not some random elder. In fact they are even regarded as Level 5 Mortal Rank alchemists because their highest level pill, Marrow Washing Pill, was indeed this level alongside the Lingzhi Life Pill. Of course these were still only disciple level pills. Elders of any rank would only use Earth Rank and above pills such as the Golden Healing pill or a Magi’s Iron Rank Profound Healing Potion.

“Someone must have intercepted the herbs but I do know the boy has given them over.” The deacon said.

“In other words someone identified the poison somehow or maybe they did not trust you due to the little fight you had. Does not matter, is there any significant news worthy of coming here to tell me or do you just want to lick the floor my feet walk over?” the one eyed man asked.

“Of course your highness, I have heard that the brat is going to leave alongside his women to explore the world for a few months. Two months ago he had married Huo Su so now he has two of the higher grade women of the sect with higher talent margin. I had come to inform you as it would become easy for you to deal with the brat now.” Deacon Xi said.

“Indeed, you may leave. This no longer concerns you, never appear at my door again. Your job is done and be happy this failure did not cost your head.” He said.

“Thank you your highness!” The Deacon said and quickly left faster than a startled rabbit.

“Come!” He shouted and suddenly a black robed man appeared, “Send a squad to deal with the brat. Bring me both girls. Wait… bring them all I want to have that brat suffer along since that bitch watching as I relish them. Now go!” He said.

“Yes master!” The man said and vanished.