This chapter has been brought to you by me, and WanderingGummiOfDoom.

Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen Intelligence

Zuo Mo opened his eyes as he came out of meditation. He shook his head. There still hadn’t been any change in his cultivation. This was the fifteen day that his cultivation hadn’t moved. Pu Yao was still in meditation and he didn’t know when the guy would wake up.

He forcefully shook his head, throwing all those thoughts out of his mind. His eyes once again landed in the yard. The yard was the backyard of the store, and naturally couldn’t compare to his little yard in the West Wind Valley. The little yard was filled with all kinds of materials, jade stones, gold thread, and jadeite bamboos etc. Most of the materials were all cheap first and second-grade materials, but the sheer volume was amazing.

Zuo Mo started to flip through the materials, occasionally summoning the Stalagmite fire to process some materials. Sometimes, he would take out a little knife to shape the material into the form required. He would sometimes suddenly stop, and sink into his thoughts. The materials flowed like water through his hands. He carefully placed some of them in the corner, and threw some of them to the ground carelessly.

After laboring for four hours, when the sound tablet announced the time, he finally woke up from his work.

It was time to work and earn jingshi. He reluctantly rose up. Before, he hadn’t been interested in formations and felt it hard to learn. Now that he was concentrating on it, he actually found that there were many interesting places.

Things like sword scriptures and spells would frequently have places where the descriptions would be lacking, and promoted comprehension. Only formations focused on transformations of yinyang and the five elements. Even though it was incomparably complex, but after careful study, Zuo Mo was able to understand the main concepts.

Only after Zuo Mo left did Li Ying Feng come over to clean up the yard.

As she cleaned, she sighed. No wonder Shidi felt he didn’t have enough jingshi to spend. Spending like this, how could it be enough? Li Ying Feng was responsible for buying all the materials that Zuo Mo needed. She was clear to Zuo Mo’s daily expenses. Shidi would spend from a minimum of thirty pieces of third-grade jingshi, to over a hundred third-grade jingshi on materials everyday. This was just because Shidi wanted low-grade materials. If he used middle-grade materials, then the expenses would fly to an intimidating step.

She had never heard of anyone who learned formations like this.

However, Shidi was a weird person. He didn’t learn like other people, and he didn’t make jingshi like other people. Quite a few times, she had wanted to urge Shidi to be more frugal, but when she thought about the jingshi that Shidi made every day, the words that reached her mouth went away.

Shidi only spent six hours taking jobs each day. All of his other time was completely spend on the mountain of materials piled up in the yard.

She stopped walking, her gaze landing on a formation disk beside her feet. The initial days, formation disks were what Shidi had made the most. However, after that, the number of formation disks that Shidi made decreased. It had been a few days since Shidi had made a formation disk.

Why was he making formation disks again? Was he preparing for the Sword Test Conference?

Li Ying Feng picked the formation disk up from the ground. Closely examining it, she found that she didn’t understand what was written on the disk at all.

She laughed. Wei Sheng Shixiong and Zuo Mo Shixiong were both genius. How could normal people understand the mind of geniuses. Before Zuo Mo Shidi, Li Ying Feng had never seen formation disks before. She carefully put the formation disk in the corner. After cleaning up fro Zuo Mo for this many days, she could easily sort out what was useful and what was trash.

Zuo Mo’s business was average today. Since a few days ago, his business had declined. He knew that it couldn’t be avoid. There were only so many xiuzhe that need his services. It was due to the Sword Test Conference that he had earned so much. The people that could exchange and pay  valuable goods were not local xiuzhe.

Cultivation was piled up with jingshi. Zuo Mo knew this from a long time ago, but only after studying formations did he truly have an understanding of the phrase. Formations were completely built up with jingshi!

Seeing that his stream of income was not long-lasting, his own studies would probably also pause soon.

However, in a short amount of time, it would be his turn to attend the Sword Test Conference. At this time, he was too lazy to care about earning jingshi. It would wait until after the Sword Test Conference.

When Zuo Mo cleaned up for the day, Li Ying Feng handed him a jade scroll.

“What is this?” Zuo Mo asked strangely.

“The information on a few attendees of the Sword Test Conference.” Li Ying Feng saw that Zuo Mo was looking strangely at her and explained, “The sect leader left me in charge of the logistics. I have to do something. Oh, and some information about the Sword Test Conference.”

“Oh.” Zuo Mo took it and asked, “Did you send it to Eldest Shixiong and Luo Li?”

Li Ying Feng was angry, the tendons in her forehead jumping. It would have been fine if Zuo Mo hadn’t mentioned it but since he did, she was extremely displeased. After the sect leader put her in charge of logistics, she had especially gathered the informations and given it to Wei Sheng Shixiong and Luo Li Shixiong. Wei Sheng Shixiong had disappeared without a trance, and Luo Li Shixiong had looked at her in puzzlement and asked, “What’s the use in this?”

She had almost died from anger.

Seeing Zuo Mo’s unconcerned attitude, her displeasure reached a peak and she gave a cold snort, turned and left. Zuo Mo rubbed his head in puzzlement, ignorant of what had set Shijie off.

Returning to his room, he took the jade scroll and started to browse through.

There was a lot of information inside the jade scroll, especially for those powerful experts. It seemed that Shijie had put a lot of effort. As he read, Zuo Mo started to get interested.

Gu Rong Ping, from Clear Sky Lake, called the strongest among the younger generation of Clear Sky Lake. He might be warm and gentle, but his title of the strongest of Clear Sky Lake was based in his battles. From two years ago, he fought sect after sect without one loss. That had created his strongest in Clear Sky Lake title.

Clear Sky Lake had beautiful scenery and dense ling energy. It was much more prosperous than Dong Fu, and the sects there outnumbered Dong Fu. The title of strongest, it really had some substance to it.

Finishing off Gu Rong Ping’s information, Zuo Mo had a feeling that this Gu Rong Ping would be Eldest Shixiong’s enemy. As to himself, he didn’t have any thought. If it wasn’t for the order of the sect leader, he definitely wouldn’t attend something like this Sword Test Conference.

With that time, he would rather earn jingshi, Zuo Mo muttered.

He kept on reading. Nan Men Yang, Gui Feng etc. None of them were simple people. Zuo Mo also saw quite a few that he was familiar with. Dong Fu Hall’s Yu Bai, Ling Ying Sect’s Chang Heng, Dong Qi Sword Sect’s Zong Ming Yan etc were all included. He even saw a person that he had met a long time ago, Chi Sword Sect’s Liang Luo. However, the other person, Shi Xiang, who had given him the Ice Crystal sword was not on the list.

Hmm.

Zuo Mo’s gaze suddenly landed on the picture of one of the people in the jade scroll. The person was wearing a black veiled hat. Wasn’t this the person that came to him to cut the cold magnet? So this guy was also attending the competition!

He didn’t know anyone else on the list.

However, when he saw their cultivation level, he was instantly speechless.

Ningmai, ningmai, ningmai… … all ningmai! All the xiuzhe that were not local who had passed through the preliminary Sword Test Conference were all ningmai. Zuo Mo didn’t have any thoughts of struggling at all. What he was pondering now was surrendering immediately when he was called up. When the warm and harmonious smile of the sect leader flashed through his head, he instantly shook, and cleared his head, brushing away the thought.

Being injured was a minor matter. If the sect leader was thinking about ge, then ge wouldn’t have good days in the future!

Seeing this list that could really be considered grand, he felt, in his sect, only Eldest Shixiong had any hope of victory. Even Luo Li Shixiong wasn’t anything to look at.

Luckily, there were no jindan xiuzhe. Otherwise, Zuo Mo felt his heart couldn’t bear it.

Following that was the rules for this year’s Sword Test Conference. Li Ying Feng Shijie probably had guessed that the three of them would have been concerned about this so she had completely listed everything. There wasn’t anything unclear in the rules. After the preliminary Sword Test Conference was the true Sword Test Conference.

The first two rounds were random one on one matches, followed by a competition without any rules! At that time, Elder Tian Song Zi would open the Great Pine Pavilion of Dong Fu Hall for all the attendees to enter. Inside Dong Fu Hall’s Great Pine Pavilion, any contestant could attack any other person until the other lost the ability to battle. In the end, the last ten remaining people would become the winners of this competition. To guarantee that there wouldn’t be any fatalities among the contestants, there would be ten or so jindan judges that would be present the entire time. The ranking of the ten people would also be decided by the jindan experts.

Tsk tsk, even jindan experts were coming out to be judges. Ten at a time, this would really be spectacular!

Zuo Mo hadn’t understood this Sword Test Conference at all. Such a public rousing, and cost intensive Sword Test Conference, there wasn’t any use.

Oh, maybe the elders had their own thoughts. Zuo Mo kept on reading and his mind jumped.

What was after were the prizes for this Sword Test Conference.

Zuo Mo’s eyes were bright as he looked at the rows of prizes, drooling.

Fourth-grade Pine Green Peak sword, fourth-grade Hundred Desolate Lucky Beast belt, fourth-grade Scattered Gold coronet, third-grade Elemental Cloud Water sleeve, third-grade Sky Woven clothing, third-grade Ice Snake Ling armor… …

There were ten high-quality talismans. The order to pick was based on the ranking received in the competition. Only now did Zuo Mo understand why so many xiuzhe had come to Dong Fu to attend the Sword Test Conference.

As they said, people die for wealth, birds die for food! He gritted his teeth and thought in fury. When his gaze swept across one of the prizes, countless ripples started in his heart. He was extremely tempted. At this time, he only hated how low his strength was.

Without an exception, the first ten talismans were the finest of the finest. They were even a few ranks above the talismans he had taken from the wastrels of Ling Ying sect. For some of the prizes, Zuo Mo wanted to sell himself, and exchange for the talisman.

After greedily looking through the first ten prizes, Zuo Mo gluttonously looked down.

There were also third-grade talismans in the lower ranks, but were clearly lower in quality than the first ten. Zuo Mo had read with great interest. Okay, even if ge wouldn’t get one, he could still enjoy looking at them, Zuo Mo comforted himself. These few days, he had been sunk in the world of formations, spending great mental effort. Relaxing now, he felt light.

Just as he browsed randomly through the prizes and occasionally calculating the prices, as he drooled.

Suddenly, when his gaze reached one of the prizes, he first stilled and then suddenly stood up!

Translator Ramblings: The Sword Test Conference is soon… … Zuo Mo has to prepare. Pu hadn’t shown up this chapter so Zuo Mo is stuck in zhuji for now. Look at the cultivation of all his competitors!