Han Li waited for the elegant woman to disappear into the sky before flipping his palm. There was now a blue jade slip, a green jade slip, and a yellow command talisman in his hand.

The green jade slip included methods and tips on how to tend to the plants in the medicine garden that was left behind by the previous caretaker. Because the grade of the medicine herbs here was quite common and there was only a small variety of them, so long as he wasn’t a moron to the utmost degree, tending to the garden would be extremely easy.

As for the blue jade talisman, it recorded the cultivation art that Mu Peiling had left behind. The Profound Ice Arts wasn’t a top grade cultivation art by any means. It was so pathetically weak that it couldn’t even be considered a second rate cultivation art. Its only merit was that it was easy to cultivate and its bottlenecks were comparatively easy to break through.

However, this wasn’t a result of malice or bad intentions. As Han Li was an external affairs disciple, his cultivation must’ve been poor so she had opted to give an easier cultivation art to him.

As for the command medallion, it controlled the crude spell formation that enveloped the medicine garden. Of course, he didn’t hold it with much regard and placed all three of the items in his storage pouch. Afterwards, he entered the thatched cottage with unhurried steps and slowly walked through it before leaving.

As Han Li stood in front of the cottage, he swept his gaze towards the small mountain behind the medicine garden and revealed a faint smile.

He slowly closed his eyes and gradually released his spiritual sense to envelope a radius of about fifteen kilometers. After seeing that there were no other cultivators in the area, he waved his arms without regard.

A series of clear rings sounded out as a dozen twinkling azure flying swords left his sleeve and shot towards the small mountain. Under the control of his spiritual sense, the flying swords efficiently cut out a cave from the mountain as if its stone were soft tofu. In an instant, he had already carved out a deep cave residence.

Han Li’s consciousness then split into many strands as he had them control each of his flying swords. Each of them began to hurriedly carve out stone rooms, each unique in their size and style. As Han Li had already become incredibly proficient in splitting his consciousness, this took very little effort. About six hours later, a new small-scale cave residence had secretly appeared in the mountain. 

Han Li revealed a trace of happiness at seeing that the first draft of his cave residence was completed and immediately took out several sets of formation flags and discs. The small mountain then became incredibly busy as several high grade concealment spell formations were placed around it.

Although this spell formation was incapable of escaping the keen notice of a Nascent Soul cultivator, it would escape the passing notice of a Core Formation cultivator.

For Han Li, this would be enough for the time being. After all, there would be no reason for a high grade cultivator to suddenly visit such a trifling medicine garden as this one. Also, these measures were only a temporary affair. Once he refined and placed down a Spirit Constraining Formation, even a Nascent Soul cultivator would be incapable of seeing anything amiss.

After Han Li finished placing down the spell formations, he placed the Ninecurl Spirit Ginseng inside his cave residence’s small medicine garden. Only after carefully placing down several formidable restrictions around it did he release it from confinement. The Ninecurl Spirit Ginseng was crucial if he was to condense a Nascent Soul.

Following that, Han Li placed the gold-silver Gold Devouring Beetles into the insect room. As for the black-tainted Gold Devouring Beetles, Han Li kept them at his side since he couldn’t induce them to reproduce with the Rainbow Skirt Grass.

Neighboring the insect room was a spirit beast room he had specially prepared for the Weeping Soul Beast. Because the beast had consumed such a large quantity of umbra beast souls, it had remained in deep sleep ever since it returned to his storage pouch. Even Han Li was unable to wake it from its slumber. 

However, Han Li faintly guessed that because the Weeping Soul Beast had consumed so many souls, it had begun to evolve a grade.

Han Li naturally desired such a outcome. Having acquired a safe haven, Han Li immediately made peaceful arrangements for the beast. At that moment, Han Li also decided to take advantage of the beast’s slumber to refine the Weeping Soul Pearl inside his stomach to completion.

Because of the Weeping Soul Beast’s soaring advancements, Han Li felt slightly worried that he would be unable to fully control the evolution of the Weeping Soul Beast. During his time in the Umbra Realm, he felt the Weeping Soul Pearl stir several times in his stomach when the Weeping Soul Beast had savagely absorbed the umbra beast souls in his enlarged state.

Although Han Li kept a calm face in front of Fairy Violet Spirit and Mei Ning, he had felt great trepidation. Now that he had the opportunity, there was no way he would dare to allow this situation to continue.

As for Yuan Yao’s explanation of the Weeping Soul Pearl’s symptoms, they should pose little problem to Han Li given his superior magic power and spiritual sense. Moreover, the Weeping Soul Beast had unexpectedly ascended two ranks since then, and the symptoms may have been corrected. But regardless, in light of the Weeping Soul Beast’s current abilities, it was worth braving the risk.

With his plans decided, he didn’t immediately refine the Weeping Soul Pearl, but instead chose to address another pressing matter, the Wind Spirit Energy inside his body that had yet to scatter.

Feng Xi, the grade nine Windbreaker Beast, naturally couldn’t pursue him to the Heavenly South Region, however, the fact that the Wind Spirit Energy still remained in his body was cause for much distress. Perhaps another incident would occur if too much time had passed, but directly refining this harmful energy didn’t seem possible.

He had tried several times before to little effect. As of current, he only had the clumsy method of using magic power to forcefully expel it. While it was possible, it would take no small amount of time. It was for this reason that Han Li had put if off until now.

Now that he had settled down in a peaceful place, he planned on completely eliminating this danger inside his body. With several huge ape puppets acting as sentries in the medicine garden in order to respond to any sudden visits, he entered his refinement room.

Han Li sat cross-legged in the quiet room with a solemn expression and immersed his spiritual sense into his body.

He examined the lustrous golden light sphere that was contained inside his Dantian and noticed that there was no change.

After a moment of thought, he decided to control the Divine Devilbane Lightning that enveloped the harmful energy and had the net of lightning slowly relax to reveal a gap. The originally calm energy contained within the lightning immediately grew restless and wildly rushed out of the gap.

Just as the strand of harmful energy began to rush out, Han Li’s spiritual sense began to stir and had the golden lightning envelope it once more, closing the gap and restraining the remaining Wind Spirit Energy.

Not knowing what kind of chaotic harmful Qi that the Wind Spirit Energy contained, Han Li felt extremely worried that even this sliver could damage his meridians.

Resisting his feelings of great unease, he circulated all the magic power in his body and began to forcefully expel the sliver of harmful energy.

As he motionlessly sat inside the calm room, large beads of sweat began to flow down from his head and his face paled.

Four hours had unknowingly passed..

Han Li opened his eyes and spiritedly glanced around. He then waved his arms and flicked his fingers, shooting out two drops of grey liquid to the stone walls. Two small holes appeared where they struck.

Han Li let out a long breath of relief and wiped the cold sweat off his forehead.

Although the expulsion process had been incredibly painful and strenuous, it still worked. If he continued this sliver by sliver process of expulsion, he reckoned that it would take half a year before his body was completely free of the Wind Spirit Energy. This had greatly relieved much worry from his mind.

After a moment of rest, Han Li calmly took out a black jade slip from his storage pouch and looked through the method of establishing the Spirit Constraining Formation.

He had always been quite interested in this spell formation but he never had the time to carefully examine it. He now took the opportunity to delve into it as he wouldn’t feel truly safe until he had a Spirit Constraining Formation placed around his cave residence.

In the following days, Han Li began to divide his time into several parts. Apart from the four hours he used to expel the Wind Spirit Energy and a bit of time used to refine the Weeping Soul Pearl, he would spend the rest of his time studying the Spirit Constraining Formation.

As for the outside medicine garden, Han Li had his many puppets tend to it.

Additionally, Han Li continued to exploit the green liquid to mature the Rainbow Skirt Grass and feed it to his Gold Devouring Beetles. He faintly felt that these beetles were about to reproduce once more.

With this monotonous style of life, several months passed in the blink of an eye. During this time, Mu Peiling visited him two times. Once she saw that Han Li had tended to the medicinal garden in accordance to her conditions, she didn’t pay any more attention to the garden.

As for the Profound Ice Arts, the woman had no interest in taking the initiative to explain anything as Han Li hadn’t raised any questions.