The Elixir is for You, The Poison is for Me

#249 - Gadgets

Chi also saw the string of small characters on the tooth, but only praised the carving skills before losing interest.

As for Nie Tie on the side, while Lu Jing was in a daze, it had already devoured the meteorite staff clean in no time.

When Lu Jing came back to his senses, he only saw the look of lingering desire on its face.

Chi said to Lu Jing, "It will probably digest all the impurities in three hours, and then excrete the essence. Afterwards, I can help you forge another staff. Besides the appearance, do you have any other requirements?"

Lu Jing thought for a moment, "Add some chromium, oh… that is, the material you discovered."

Chi nodded.

Then Lu Jing added, "Also, the material you just obtained, can you help me make some small things? Consider it fulfilling your so-called three-item agreement."

"So you can still have me make two more things for you. Any more than that, and you'll have to provide the materials yourself, and also pay me for my labor."

"How much is the general labor fee for forging weapons?" Lu Jing asked curiously.

"Depending on the difficulty and the time it takes, it's probably between five thousand and thirty thousand taels of silver," Chi said. "As for higher prices, it's not unheard of. The most expensive thing I've ever forged cost about two hundred thousand taels in labor, and I was busy for more than three months."

"In addition, I'll give a 50% discount for things ordered by the Si Tian Jian."

Lu Jing gasped when he heard this. Does forging weapons make money so quickly? Who would have thought that Chi, who doesn't wear any jewelry and dresses very simply, is actually an invisible top-tier rich woman.

If you had said so earlier, then living together before wouldn't have been out of the question.

Wait, Lu Jing felt that something was wrong. He asked Chi, "You don't leave the academy, and you don't have any hobbies. What do you need so much money for?"

"To buy materials, of course," Chi said in a matter-of-fact tone. "A few days ago, the department helped me find a very rare ore, but it was bought by a big salt merchant to make stone carvings. I spent three hundred thousand taels to buy it from him."

"… … … …"

Lu Jing didn't know what to say. Chi, seeing that things were settled here, was eager to go back and continue her fusion experiment. After leaving the method to enter the mountain belly, she hurriedly left riding Nie Tie.

Afterwards, Lu Jing pondered over the sixteen characters on the tooth for a while. On the surface, they seemed easy to understand, advising those who wanted to practice the plus version of the Mad Demon One Hundred and Eight Staffs to enter the Buddhist gate.

But upon closer inspection, Lu Jing felt that there were many doubts.

If Grandmaster Honglian wanted to pass on his proud martial art to someone in the Buddhist sect, wouldn't it have been better to teach the staff to a Buddhist disciple from the beginning? Why go through the trouble of giving the staff to that mountain spirit?

Moreover, there are so many monks in the world. If there really was an answer Lu Jing was looking for within the Buddhist sect, there wouldn't be a complete lack of news until now.

Little Monk Zhaoming had said that after Grandmaster Honglian's death, many people in the martial world wanted to obtain his mantle in martial arts.

Even the Xuankong Temple, as the top righteous sect in the world, couldn't help but be tempted, and invited Abbess Miaozhen, who had obtained Grandmaster Honglian's manuscripts, to the Xuankong Temple for a period of time.

Of course, from another perspective, the Xuankong Temple's move could also be considered protecting Abbess Miaozhen.

After all, there were many people in the martial world who had ideas about Grandmaster Honglian's martial arts. What they thought of first were those manuscripts left by Grandmaster Honglian. Although Abbess Miaozhen was very famous in the Buddhist sect and was a generation of eminent monks, she had never practiced martial arts.

Obtaining Grandmaster Honglian's manuscripts was not necessarily a good thing for her.

Abbess Miaozhen obviously knew this too. After arriving at the Xuankong Temple, she not only generously took out the manuscripts for the monks to read together, but also simply left the original manuscripts in the Xuankong Temple, and only copied a copy for herself.

The group of experts from the Xuankong Temple gathered together and studied the manuscript word by word for several months. Although they gained a lot, it was only in terms of Buddhist studies, and they did not see any martial arts secrets hidden in it.

So the matter gradually subsided.

Lu Jing also didn't have any ideas about Grandmaster Honglian's manuscripts. Firstly, it was too difficult to see that thing in the Xuankong Temple, and secondly, the manuscript had been studied so many times by the monks in the temple, and Lu Jing didn't think he could see anything new from it.

This so-called Pure Land didn't seem to be in that manuscript either.

Lu Jing had already climbed back onto the bed and was lost in thought again for a while, but unfortunately, he still couldn't get any reasonable answers, and in the end, he could only fall into a dream again.

The next morning, Lu Jing first went to listen to Professor Cui's Strange Object Exploration.

Then he came to the mountain belly where Chi was located. According to the previous agreement, he took away Nie Tie, who had finished pulling the meteorite, and came to Quzhujing.

Xia Huai and Yang Tao had also been waiting here early.

Although Lu Jing had already told them in the Strange Object Exploration class that he had successfully borrowed Nie Tie, Yang Tao and Xia Huai still couldn't believe their eyes until they saw this cute and cuddly strange beast appear in person.

After all, Chi's previous attitude seemed very firm, and she didn't leave any room for maneuver.

Neither of them knew why Chi had suddenly changed her mind after a few days. Could it be that the few casual pointers Lu Jing had given earlier had really worked? But hadn't he never attended the weapon refining class before?

Yang Tao looked at Lu Jing as if he was looking at some rare object, and admired, "I didn't expect that Brother Lu, you have this kind of skill! That's Chi, ah. I asked the professor who teaches the weapon refining class. He said that although Chi is young, in terms of weapon refining skills alone, Chi can already be his teacher. No one in the Si Tian Jian is above her."

"In fact, if Chi wasn't too obsessed with weapon refining and unwilling to waste time lecturing, she should have been the one to be this professor."

"Chi's weapon refining skills are indeed very powerful," Lu Jing said, looking at the panda who was gnawing on bamboo. "I can't compare to her either. It's just that I happen to know a little more than her, and I only have the ability to talk on paper."