Chapter 79 – A New Energy Source: Exotic Metal!

After Su Xing voiced his doubts internally, he quickly received a rare response from the simulator.

【Ding. After the host has acquired a full ten talents, simulation energy can be spent to expand talent slots. Talents of the same function will be automatically replaced by higher-quality versions, and the host may freely swap talents of different qualities.】

Hearing the simulator’s answer, Su Xing finally breathed a sigh of relief. The talent slot limit wasn’t capped at ten—this gave him much greater growth potential.

“Sigh, here we go again—grinding energy day and night!”

After finishing his simulation, Su Xing didn’t idle around. He immediately threw himself back into pill refinement without pause.

His main focus was still Beauty-Preserving Pills, along with a small batch of Healing Pills.

A week passed quickly.

Over seven days, Su Xing had refined a full three thousand Beauty-Preserving Pills and Healing Pills combined.

The reason he could refine so quickly was twofold: first, unranked pills were simple to make; second, after breaking through to the Nascent Soul stage, his spiritual sense and spiritual energy had grown enormously. Refining three thousand pills in a week still left him with energy to spare.

As he refined pills, Su Xing mulled things over:

“I can already multitask while refining unranked pills. Maybe I should forge a few more pill furnaces—that would drastically increase my refinement speed!”

The idea stirred something in him. He recalled that during one simulation, he had split his attention across multiple furnaces, refining several batches simultaneously. Although the failure and explosion rate went up, the overall refinement speed had increased dramatically.

For instance, if Su Xing refined three furnaces at once and one of them failed, his efficiency still doubled.

“Sigh, the only headache is that furnaces forged from ordinary metal can’t withstand the extreme temperatures of Separation Fire. Before I even finish refining the pills, the furnace would probably explode… If I remember correctly, during that simulation, Lu Yuanwu specifically had a batch of pill furnaces made for me, using something called exotic metal?”

“I’ll ask Jin Congxue about it when I see her later—what exactly is this exotic metal?”

Su Xing stored the finished pills in his storage ring and headed to the small villa where he and Jin Congxue usually met.

Jin Congxue was wearing a light blue dress today, her long hair cascading loosely. Bright eyes, pristine teeth, and the lingering fragrance of a fresh bath.

Noticing Su Xing’s momentary daze, Jin Congxue rolled her eyes with a coquettish charm.

“What? You only come to see me once a week, and it’s always for work. If you think I look good, then come see me more often~”

Su Xing felt a tingle run through his body at her honeyed voice, and could only smile wryly. “Sigh, work comes first… These past few days, the moment I open my eyes it’s pill refinement. Where would I find the time to come see you?”

With that, Su Xing handed over the pills he’d prepared in advance.

Jin Congxue took them, counted the quantity, and raised an eyebrow.

“Your pill refinement skills have improved again, haven’t they?”

Su Xing nodded. “These pills should be worth three to four billion. Give it another two weeks, and we’ll have roughly enough for the first round of funding to acquire the Lingyun Merchant Association!”

Jin Congxue nodded in agreement, then handed Su Xing a storage ring of her own.

“This week we only purchased a hundred thousand pieces of white-quality equipment, and another twenty thousand were farmed by our own people. After all, with the Lingyun Merchant Association acquisition requiring so much capital, we really can’t spare the funds…”

Su Xing accepted the storage ring with a nod, then joked, “So I’m going to be starving for the next two weeks, huh? When are you going to let me eat my fill?”

Jin Congxue recalled what Su Xing had said last time about eating equipment and burst out laughing, covering her mouth. “Don’t worry. Once these two weeks are over, you’ll be stuffed to bursting! I’ve heard that the Lingyun Merchant Association stockpiled a massive batch of white-quality equipment over the past few years that they’ve been sitting on, unable to sell. This acquisition includes that entire stockpile—definitely enough to fill you up!”

Su Xing’s eyes lit up. If even Jin Congxue described it as a massive batch, the quantity had to be substantial.

Su Xing currently had two million energy on hand. If he didn’t exchange it for cultivation, it would be enough for now—after all, advancing even a single level at the Nascent Soul stage cost one million energy…

As long as he could endure these two weeks, a huge influx of energy would follow. Su Xing could handle that.

After chatting with Jin Congxue for a while longer, Su Xing asked, “By the way, Xue, do you know about exotic metals?”

Jin Congxue nodded. “Exotic metals are one of the essential materials for forging high-quality equipment. Even the lowest first-order exotic metal can be used to forge blue-quality equipment. The stuff is pretty expensive though. Why do you ask?”

Su Xing’s eyes brightened. He hadn’t expected exotic metals to be equipment-forging materials. Didn’t that mean they might contain a considerable amount of energy too?

Su Xing wasn’t certain yet, so he said, “I’m planning to forge two new pill furnaces so I can refine pills faster. But ordinary metal simply won’t work, so I thought of exotic metals…”

Hearing this, Jin Congxue gave a small nod, then directly retrieved a palm-sized piece of exotic metal from her storage ring and handed it to Su Xing.

“This is second-order exotic metal—enough to forge orange rare-quality equipment. See if it’ll work for the pill furnaces you need.”

Su Xing took the exotic metal in his hand and immediately felt its heft.

This palm-sized piece of exotic metal probably weighed several hundred jin. What kind of metal density was this?

Su Xing’s heart stirred, and he tentatively tried to absorb the exotic metal as simulation energy.

A notification chimed in his ears.

【Ding. Detected 300 kilograms of second-order exotic metal. Can be converted into 60,000 simulation energy points. Convert?】

Su Xing froze for a moment, then erupted with inner joy. This tiny piece of second-order exotic metal contained 60,000 simulation energy points?

This was absolutely a prime material for providing simulation energy!

Suppressing his excitement, Su Xing asked, “Xiaoxue, how much would a piece of second-order exotic metal like this sell for on the market?”

Jin Congxue thought for a moment. “The market price for second-order exotic metal is about 50,000 per kilogram. A 300-kilogram piece like this would probably go for over 15 million yuan…”

“Of course, that’s the market price. Exotic metals are special minerals found in certain dungeons—low supply, high demand. If you buy directly from Class Users at first-hand prices, second-order exotic metal runs about 40,000 per kilogram…”

Su Xing did some quick mental math. One kilogram of exotic metal converted to 200 simulation energy points, meaning each point of simulation energy cost about 200 yuan.

This conversion ratio was roughly the same as white-quality equipment. A single piece of white-quality equipment cost about 700 yuan and yielded around five energy points—sometimes even six with good luck.

But the issue was that Su Xing’s demand for white-quality equipment was simply too enormous. Exotic metal was far more compact, less likely to attract attention, and a single palm-sized piece of second-order exotic metal could produce 60,000 energy points.

“Perhaps second-order exotic metal could serve as a nice alternative to white-quality equipment going forward?”

Su Xing mused to himself, then asked, “So, do you have any first-order exotic metal?”