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    Chapter 181: Entering the Red Lotus Demon Cave Instance Again, Mining Strange Metals (5k)

    After a brief explanation, Su Xing realized he had made a huge blunder, feeling a wave of awkwardness.

    He quickly changed the topic, saying:

    “Ahem, Xue Jie, how’s the Taro Association’s business going lately? Is there anything you need my help with?”

    As soon as the conversation turned serious, Jin Cong Xue’s attention was immediately drawn away.

    “The Taro Association’s business is pretty good… Following your instructions, I’ve allocated more manpower towards white-quality equipment and strange metal mining.”

    Jin Cong Xue paused, a hint of worry in her voice.

    “However, just the employees working on mining strange metals from the six instances number in the thousands… and each month it costs a considerable amount…”

    “The main source of income for our chamber of commerce right now is the Beautifying Dan, but the customer base for it has basically reached saturation, and the sales aren’t as good as before. So our cash flow is a bit tight…”

    Su Xing nodded slightly after listening.

    He provided thousands of Beautifying Dans each week, amounting to two to three thousand each month.

    Plus, a single Beautifying Dan could maintain a person’s appearance for one to three months.

    Some wealthy women even stockpiled dozens of Beautifying Dans, making the market somewhat saturated.

    After thinking for a moment, Su Xing said:

    “I can refine a higher-quality version of the Beautifying Dan, one that can keep a person’s appearance from aging for a year, even three years!”

    “Not only can it maintain your appearance, but it can also make you look ten years younger! Once I give you the pills, you should be able to earn a considerable amount of money…”

    The Beautifying Dans Su Xing had been refining before were the low-quality version.

    He used ordinary ginseng for those.

    But now, a large batch of ten-year spiritual ginseng in Su Xing’s Spirit Field Paradise had matured. If he used those to refine the pills, it would be enough to produce true Beautifying Dans.

    The effectiveness would be unknown, but for mortals, it would be akin to a divine elixir!

    Jin Cong Xue’s eyes lit up after hearing this, obviously very interested.

    “Ten years younger… appearance maintained for one to three years?”

    “Damn… if there were really such pills, they would be worth a fortune, the price would be ten times, even dozens of times higher!”

    “However… we can’t sell this high-quality Beautifying Dan in large quantities like before, we need to use hunger marketing!”

    Jin Cong Xue, being a strong business woman, quickly formulated several plans for selling the Beautifying Dans.

    Su Xing was very satisfied. With Jin Cong Xue’s help, he was completely confident in the Taro Association’s future development.

    After thinking for a moment, Jin Cong Xue continued:

    “Boss~ I also have the idea of expanding into overseas markets… America, the Yellow Island Nation, and the other six countries and twelve regions, they will surely be fond of the Beautifying Dan!”

    “The domestic market is saturated, but the international market still has a huge blue ocean!”

    Su Xing nodded slightly and said:

    “Leave those matters to you, just discuss any problems with me…”

    After finishing their business discussion, Su Xing skillfully completed a circuit, using his divine consciousness to probe before returning to his dormitory and entering his Spirit Field Paradise.

    This week’s goods were exchanged for simulated energy, totaling more than 90 million points.

    As a result, Su Xing’s energy level was restored to 150 million points.

    On the afternoon of September 9th, 2024 in the New Era, Su Xing promptly started a new simulation.

    “Start simulation!”

    【Ding! This simulation consumes 5200 energy points, remaining energy 150,016,000 points, remaining simulation times unlimited.】

    【Simulation starting!】

    【Drawing a blue innate talent costs 10,000 energy points, drawing a purple innate talent costs 100,000 energy points. Do you want to draw?】

    “Draw a purple innate talent!”

    Su Xing silently said.

    【Ding! Congratulations, you have obtained the purple innate talent, I’m Not the Rain God!】

    【I’m Not the Rain God: Purple innate talent. Whenever you sing loudly and the number of onlookers exceeds ten thousand, the probability of rain falling in that area within seven days will be 100%. (Please, hold a concert in the desert!)】

    Su Xing saw the new innate talent and rolled his eyes, muttering:

    “Geez, another conceptual innate talent? A mandatory rain-making innate talent… But it doesn’t seem very useful!”

    Su Xing shook his head slightly, momentarily unable to think of a suitable usage scenario for this innate talent.

    He looked at the simulation panel.

    【In the Spirit Field Paradise, you realize you’re in a simulation.】

    【You stay in Kyoto City for several days before heading towards the northern frontier region of Great Summer.】

    【You disguise yourself and conceal your aura, using a concealment spell to shield your destiny. You fly on your sword at an altitude of tens of thousands of meters.】

    【Half an hour later, you arrive in Ma Yi City, Northwest Province.】

    【Following the information in your memory, you quickly find a heavily guarded instance, the Red Lotus Demon Cave!】

    【You use a few spells to successfully evade the guards and enter the Red Lotus Demon Cave instance.】

    Su Xing nodded slightly upon seeing this.

    “In the previous simulation, I found a small, high-grade strange metal mine in this Red Lotus Demon Cave instance…”

    “I wonder how much strange metal is actually inside this instance?”

    Su Xing pondered. His simulation energy was severely lacking, and if he couldn’t obtain simulated energy through new methods.

    With just over a hundred million points per week, it wouldn’t be enough for Su Xing’s future cultivation needs.

    Therefore, Su Xing set his sights on the Red Lotus Demon Cave instance he had discovered before.

    This mine instance might offer Su Xing a pleasant surprise?

    However, for safety’s sake, Su Xing planned to simulate it beforehand in this simulation, to see if there were any risks.

    Thinking this, Su Xing silently said:

    “Use the immersive simulation function, duration 24 hours!”

    【Ding! You have successfully used the immersive simulation, consuming 2,400,000 energy points, remaining energy 147,660,000 points.】

    As the simulator’s prompt sounded, Su Xing’s vision shifted.

    The next second, Su Xing appeared in an unfamiliar environment.

    The air temperature suddenly rose by more than fifty degrees, reaching nearly eighty degrees Celsius.

    Su Xing frowned slightly, feeling the heat wave coming from the air.

    Of course, this temperature had no effect on Su Xing.

    “This… is the Red Lotus Demon Cave instance?”

    Su Xing observed his surroundings. Everything was red rock, scorched by the high temperature, and even touching it felt hot.

    The space inside the cave wasn’t large, barely enough for Su Xing to fit in.

    Su Xing looked ahead and saw that at his feet was a bottomless cave, seemingly pointing directly towards the Earth’s core.

    “According to the description in the simulation text… the depths of the Red Lotus Demon Cave instance should have a Flame Demon. Defeat it and go deeper… to find the strange metal mine.”

    Su Xing pondered. He was using the immersive simulation to explore in order to practice for his real-world exploration later.

    Su Xing didn’t hesitate, activating his elemental force armor and protective energy barrier at the same time, shielding him.

    “Then… let’s explore deeper…”

    Su Xing used his spiritual energy to fly rapidly towards the cave below.

    The deeper he went, the higher the temperature.

    After about ten minutes, Su Xing estimated that he had reached a depth of tens of kilometers underground.

    The temperature here was getting hotter and hotter, rising from eighty or ninety degrees to over five hundred degrees.

    “This Red Lotus Demon Cave is truly bottomless…”

    Su Xing frowned slightly and continued to explore deeper at an accelerated pace.

    After another hour or so, Su Xing estimated that he was at least hundreds of kilometers away from the surface.

    The darkness here was total, only the high temperature of one or two thousand degrees Celsius, ordinary creatures wouldn’t be able to survive.

    Along the way, Su Xing encountered some special monsters that lived in these extreme temperatures.

    These monsters were mostly at the Grandmaster level, and Su Xing only needed to activate his elemental force slightly to easily kill them.

    “Already hundreds of kilometers away from the surface… how deep is this Red Lotus Demon Cave?”

    Su Xing sighed. Could it be that this cave is a thousand kilometers deep?

    Su Xing’s speed increased, instantly killing any ordinary monsters he encountered.

    After several hours, Su Xing felt the space getting wider, and the temperature reaching a shocking three thousand degrees Celsius.

    Faint light emanated from the special ores on the rock walls.

    Su Xing slightly slowed down, releasing his divine consciousness like a tide.

    Sure enough, a few thousand meters away, he sensed a monster with an extremely powerful aura.

    “That… is the Flame Demon?”

    Su Xing was stunned.

    In his divine consciousness perception, this Flame Demon’s appearance was somewhat similar to the Hell demons in Western mythology.

    It had two horns on its head, its body was made of lava, and its eye sockets contained two blazing flames.

    It was ten meters tall, with an evil aura emanating from its entire body.

    “Judging from its aura… this Flame Demon is indeed at the peak of the Martial Emperor level…”

    Su Xing frowned slightly. He thought that the Red Lotus Demon Cave instance environment was simply too harsh for ordinary cultivators.

    “Thousands of degrees of heat, a thin oxygen environment… in this kind of place, even Grandmaster-level cultivators would probably not be able to survive…”

    Su Xing had a bad feeling about this.

    Such a harsh environment, low-level cultivators wouldn’t be able to enter, which meant that Su Xing couldn’t invite a large number of people to mine the ore.

    Could he invite Heavenly King-level cultivators to mine ore?

    This… seemed a bit unrealistic.

    “Whatever… let’s deal with this Flame Demon first, we’ll think about mining the strange metal later…”

    Su Xing’s mind moved, and he flew rapidly towards the Flame Demon.

    “Roar roar roar~”

    As if sensing Su Xing’s rapidly approaching aura, the Flame Demon roared loudly at Su Xing, its hands continuously pounding its chest, seemingly declaring its ownership of the territory…

    However!

    Su Xing didn’t even seem to notice, and as he got close to the Flame Demon, he directly wrapped his elemental force around his fists.

    No flashy moves!

    A terrifying punch struck out!

    Boom!

    A force of a million tons hit the Flame Demon’s chest directly.

    The two blazing flames in the Flame Demon’s eye sockets slowly extinguished…

    Just one punch, the Flame Demon at the peak of the Martial Emperor level, died!

    “Whew~”

    “With my current power combined with elemental force… anything below Legend couldn’t withstand a single punch!”

    Su Xing smirked, then quickly spread his divine consciousness, trying to see if there were any hidden enemies nearby.

    After confirming that there were no enemies, Su Xing went to the Flame Demon’s lair and found a cave that was several meters wide and bottomless.

    “This cave… should be the way to the lava pool, right?”

    Su Xing murmured.

    In his previous simulations, he had taken a bath in this lava pool, trying to break his limits, but he had failed.

    And the strange metal mine was near the lava pool.

    Su Xing’s mind moved, and he walked towards the lava cave.

    As Su Xing approached the lava layer, the temperature around him rose rapidly.

    It quickly soared to over five thousand degrees Celsius.

    Su Xing’s brows furrowed even deeper. At such a high temperature, cultivators below the Heavenly King level would not be able to survive.

    Soon, Su Xing arrived at the lava layer.

    This was a relatively open and flat rock area.

    In front of him was a lava pool that was bubbling with heat, and next to the lava pool were many black rocks.

    Among the rocks, there were some red special ores mixed in.

    It was strange metal!

    Su Xing slowly approached the rocks, reached out to touch them, and frowned slightly:

    “This strange metal is actually mixed with other ores… Doesn’t that mean it needs to be refined before it can become pure strange metal?”

    Su Xing secretly felt a bit disappointed.

    These several-meter-tall giant rocks probably only contained three to five percent red strange metal.

    If he wanted to purify it into strange metal, he didn’t know how much time it would take…

    Su Xing was a little disappointed. The strange metal ore needed to be refined and purified before it could be fully obtained.

    And cultivators below the Heavenly King level couldn’t enter the depths of this cave, so they couldn’t refine and purify the strange metal.

    Things… seemed to be at an impasse.

    “Wait… who said it needed to be purified before it could be converted into simulated energy?”

    Su Xing suddenly realized.

    His simulator absorbed all substances containing energy, not just pure strange metal.

    This meant that Su Xing could completely absorb the entire rock, including the strange metal and the accompanying rocks!

    “That’s right! I can directly absorb the entire rock… I don’t need to refine it!”

    “It’s just that I’m currently in a simulation and can’t use the simulator’s abilities…”

    “But I can first extract all these ores containing strange metal!”

    Su Xing didn’t hesitate, he took out his ink-ice sword, wrapped it with elemental force, and began to try mining.

    The ink-ice sword cut through these giant rocks like tofu.

    Su Xing cut them into standard cubic ores, one meter in length, width, and height, and stored them in his Spirit Field Paradise.

    Each block of ore was exactly one cubic meter.

    After working for more than ten hours, Su Xing successfully mined nearly a thousand cubic meters of ore, all of which were stored in his Spirit Field Paradise.

    “Next, I just need to see how much energy these ores containing strange metal are worth…”

    Su Xing smirked.

    As for the method of detection, it was very simple. Although Su Xing couldn’t use the simulator’s ability to absorb substances and convert them into energy during the simulation.

    But after the simulation ended, as long as Su Xing looked at how much energy these ores were worth,

    Then subtract the middlemen’s profit, which would be the energy value contained in these ores.

    Soon, the simulation time ended, and Su Xing returned to the real world.

    “A thousand cubic meters of ores containing strange metal, it should be worth a lot of energy, right?”

    Su Xing muttered, stroking his chin.

    He looked at the simulation panel.

    【You obtained a total of one thousand cubic meters of ores containing strange metal in the Red Lotus Demon Cave.】

    【The next day, you left the Red Lotus Demon Cave instance and returned to Kyoto City.】

    【You continued to refine pills and practice swordsmanship every day.】

    【Until a month later, you set off for Shuangqing City.】

    【You disguised yourself and concealed your destiny, so that the Old Dog wouldn’t sense your threat to him.】

    【You suppressed your divine consciousness and swept through Shuangqing City unscrupulously, trying to lure the Old Dog out.】

    【Finally, three days later, the Old Dog found you.】

    “Finally here, Old Dog! Before I kill you in the real world, I still need to simulate it…”

    Su Xing’s mind moved, and he said silently:

    “Use the immersive simulation function, duration one hour!”

    【Ding! You have successfully used the immersive simulation, consuming 100,000 energy points, remaining energy 147,560,000 points.】

    The reason Su Xing used the immersive simulation function again was that he had set his sights on killing the Old Dog.

    And to kill the Old Dog in reality, for caution’s sake, Su Xing was going to practice in the simulation.

    The next second, Su Xing’s vision shifted, and he appeared in the wilderness.

    “Senior! I wonder where you come from in the cultivation world?”

    Behind Su Xing, an old man in a black robe spoke with a hoarse voice.

    His tone was still respectful towards Su Xing.

    “This… is the Old Dog?”

    Su Xing’s mind moved, and he looked at the Old Dog.

    The Old Dog looked ordinary, like a normal old man.

    But Su Xing could see at a glance that this was his disguised appearance.

    “Oh? You’re asking me where I come from in the cultivation world?”

    Su Xing didn’t answer directly but asked back.

    The Old Dog’s heart sank. He seemed to sense that something was amiss in Su Xing’s tone.

    But his years of relying on his gossip calculation art hadn’t given him any warnings.

    The Old Dog felt a little reassured, so he boldly said:

    “Senior, you must have been asleep for a long time after the Great Catastrophe… You’re not very familiar with this world, right?”

    “I woke up a couple of hundred years earlier than you… I can be your guide!”

    The Old Dog smiled, his tone becoming even more respectful.

    Because in the Old Dog’s eyes, Su Xing was now a Returning Void Stage cultivator with a powerful divine consciousness!

    Seeing the Old Dog’s humble appearance, Su Xing actually smiled.

    The next second, he suddenly attacked!

    Elemental force wrapped around his fists, and a million tons of force struck the Old Dog’s body.

    Boom!

    The Old Dog’s face still showed a look of astonishment as he died.

    He didn’t understand why Su Xing had suddenly attacked, nor did he understand why his gossip calculation art, which he had relied on for thousands of years, had not given him any warnings.

    The Old Dog’s body exploded in place, turning into a mist of blood.

    Su Xing also picked up the Old Dog’s storage artifact.

    The Old Dog’s soul escaped, fleeing rapidly towards the distance.

    But Su Xing directly trapped it with his fire control spell.

    Before dying, the Old Dog’s soul was still incredulous:

    “Senior, we don’t know each other, and we have no grievances… why did you kill me?”

    Su Xing sneered and said:

    “Hehe, you don’t know me… but I’ve known you for a long time!”

    Then, Su Xing didn’t waste any time and directly crushed the Old Dog’s soul.

    Thus, the Old Dog’s soul and body were destroyed, completely disappearing from this world.

    “Things… seem to be developing too smoothly!”

    Su Xing frowned slightly, opened the storage artifact, and after confirming that all of the Old Dog’s treasures were inside, he breathed a sigh of relief.

    “So, the Old Dog was really killed by me so easily?”

    Su Xing was still in shock for a moment.

    Half a year ago, the Old Dog was still an insurmountable mountain for Su Xing.

    He had tormented Su Xing, almost refining him into a human elixir.

    But now, Su Xing had killed the Old Dog with just one punch!

    This was the gap brought by absolute strength!

    “Indeed, it was too smooth…”

    Su Xing was always cautious and felt that there was some kind of trap waiting for him.

    But then Su Xing shook his head.

    “Also, I’ve been thinking about the Old Dog for days… I’ve been simulating this for dozens of times, with malice aforethought, wouldn’t he be doomed to die?”

    Su Xing summed it up.

    This time, he had won because he had malice aforethought and struck first.

    Although the Old Dog was at the peak of the Divine Transformation level, his habits of thousands of years had made him overly reliant on his gossip calculation art for warnings of danger.

    But he had encountered Su Xing, a real scumbag, who had been scheming for hundreds of years (in the simulator) to kill him.

    Even his gossip calculation art had failed, which allowed Su Xing to finally kill him.

    After killing the Old Dog, Su Xing didn’t stay long. He prepared to fly away on his sword.

    About half an hour later, Su Xing, who was flying high in the air, suddenly stopped and flew towards a deep mountain.

    At this time, it was quiet all around, only the chirping of birds could be heard in the mountains.

    But Su Xing frowned, looking at the empty surroundings and said loudly:

    “Since you’re here, why don’t you show yourself?”

    (End of Chapter)

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