It was precisely what Cheng Yang wanted. He put it into his ring and then left the instance dungeon.
Of course, the instance dungeon provided other benefits as well. Five pieces of purple equipment dropped. Of which, Cheng Yang took a ring and a pair of boots. The other went to Yu Kai for distribution. Until a large number of Blacksmiths were trained, this was the only source of good equipment.
On their way back to Silkworm Mountain, Yu Kai and Cheng Yang engaged in small talk. It quickly devolved into Yu Kai pestering Cheng Yang about his decisions. Although he knew he couldn’t change Cheng Yang’s mind, Yu Kai wanted to make sure his friend knew what he was doing.
“How is your training going, Yu Kai?” Cheng Yang asked once they were back.
“I’m about halfway to leveling up. I’ll probably only need another ten days.” Yu Kai said, “The Experience Fragments you gifted to me were really helpful.”
Cheng Yang nodded. It was a satisfactory amount of progress. Yu Kai was among the very peak of humanity. The combination of near-endless funding and the Nirvana Feather granted the Phoenix Empire’s leaders a tremendous advantage.
“Make sure to focus on your training even more than before. We need everyone to take hold of this opportunity.” Cheng Yang said. “If we can assemble a team of Pinnacle-Grade soldiers, we’ll be able to sweep across the entire Cloud City area.”
“We could do that now, couldn’t we?” Yu Kai was confused by Cheng Yang’s warning. “The soldiers in the safe zone hardly pose a threat to us.”
“I’m not talking about just the safe zone but the entire Cloud City Area, including nearby cities, villages, counties, and townships.”
Yu Kai was stunned. As someone who led soldiers on the front lines every day, he knew all too well the dangers posed by the wilderness. Although Pinnacle-Grade monsters were impossible to find near the villages, once you got ten kilometers away, they were as common as maggots. Not to mention that the Standard-Grade monsters almost outnumbered the Low-Grade ones.
If Cheng Yang wanted to dominate the entire area, it wouldn’t be easy.
“I’ll try to make sure everyone focuses on training.” Yu Kai said tentatively.
“That’s all you can do. We can give them everything they need, but if some idiot wants to waste their potential, there’s no way to stop them.” Cheng Yang sighed. “At the very least, once we only need an army of High-Grade soldiers to completely ignore the Cloud City safe zone. It would be for the best if we didn’t need to come into direct conflict with them.”
Although Cheng Yang was vicious when dealing with his enemies, he saw no reason to exterminate weaker opponents. Although he would be marginally safer, enough people were dead already. There was no reason to increase the body count.
After that, Cheng Yang began his return journey to Phoenix Village. This time, Cheng Yang had Enlai guard him as he collected various alchemical components. Since the Experience Fragments for monsters killed by a pet went to their master, this was killing two birds with one stone.
As soon as Cheng Yang returned to the village, he isolated himself in his Meditation Hall and started brewing potions. Tonight, Cheng Yang would become a High-Grade Alchemist and obtain the qualifications to make Magic Amplification potions.
After the fiasco with the Bone-Eating Ants, Cheng Yang had become less greedy with regards to selling his potions. Now he only sold the twenty percent promised by the contract between him and the Alchemy Tower manager in the Cloud City safe zone. Of course, his latest source of income helped him overcome the temptation to oversell.
It was almost to the point that Cheng Yang considered nullifying the contract since the profits were small. However, he knew better than to antagonize someone related to the gods. It was always better to be on their good side.
Once he had expended all of his Energy, Cheng Yang’s Profession was on the verge of leveling up. Then, after midnight, his Energy was replenished.
Once he used half of that, Cheng Yang became a High-Grade Alchemist.
Once he did, he took the Magic Amplification potion recipe out of his ring and used it. The scroll dissolved into light as a new option appeared under his Alchemy system pane.
The Magic Amplification potion had thirteen ingredients. Twelve were rather common, and Cheng Yang would only need an hour or so to gather a large supply. The last one was somewhat more difficult. It was called the Eight Treasures Flower, and it was considered a High-Grade Ordinary material.
Although it was harder to find that the other ingredients, that didn’t put it on part with once in a century Natural Treasures. It wouldn’t be a problem for someone to find one or two a day if they focused on searching for it.
However, that was unacceptable for Cheng Yang. Thankfully, he wouldn’t need to gather them personally. A person’s Harvesting skill only needed to be at the High-Grade level to harvest the flower perfectly. Even with a Low-Grade skill, a person would succeed fifty percent of the time.
Cheng Yang visited the QuestHall and posted a fetch quest for Eight Treasures Flowers. Each one could be exchanged for ten Experience Fragments and ten territory contribution points. Since he was the Lord of Phoenix Village, rewarding contribution points was a unique privilege he held.
He also had the option of using his Adventurer points from when he completed the God Quest. However, Cheng Yang had no desire to part with them. He wanted to raise his Adventurer Rank, so they were too important to squander.
Once he’d sorted out a supply chain, Cheng Yang began training