After returning to the seaside Black Bird Village, Wang Ping went straight to White Gull Mountain, without a care for how the fisherman from the Black Bird Village would explain Jiang's demise to his fellow villagers.
To him, he probably would never return to Black Bird Village ever again in his life. Even if that fisherman pushed all the blame for Jiang's death onto him, he wouldn't be able to hurt a single hair of his. What was there to worry about?
After more than a month on this trip, not only had he learned all the bird training techniques, but he had also obtained the Illusory Cloud Clams, which were an unexpected harvest. It could be said that he had gained quite a lot.
Therefore, although Jiang had marked a blemish on this trip, it did not ruin Wang Ping's good mood.
After returning to the cultivation ground on White Gull Mountain, he was fully focused on refining the spiritual force within those spiritual pearls, hoping to break through to the middle stage of Qi Refinement as soon as possible.
In the blink of an eye, a year had passed.
The seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year was a memorable one for Wang Ping.
After a year of ascetic cultivation, after refining the spiritual force within the five spiritual beads and taking four "Water Concentration Pills," he finally broke through the 36th acupuncture channel, the "Yin Tang acupoint" between his eyebrows, successfully advancing to the 4th level of Qi Refinement.
Once this "Yin Tang acupoint" was opened and he entered the middle stage of the Qi Refinement, Wang Ping's divine sense, which could initially only be used for inner sight, could now be released from his body.
Once his divine sense left his body, everything within a thirty feet radius around him was like an observation pattern on his palm, he could see everything in detail.
Originally, there were things that were hard to see with the naked eye. However, with a sweep of divine sense, the ants and worms hidden in the leaves of the grass stem became exposed.
But once cultivators could make their divine sense leave their bodies, their top priority of focus would be to use their divine sense to control Dharma artifacts.
Thus, after Wang Ping broke through to the middle stage of the Qi Refinement realm and stabilized his cultivation, the first thing he did was to use the Artifact Control Spell recorded in the "Cloud Water Technique" to leave his own divine sense imprint onto the low-grade Dharma artifact, the Meteor Fire-Snake Dart.
This way, as long as this Dharma artifact did not leave the range of his divine sense, he could recall the Dharma artifact from outside with just a thought. He could also use his divine sense to lock onto an enemy and use the artifact to attack the enemy with precision.
Furthermore, after leaving a divine sense imprint, even if the Meteor Fire-Snake Dart was temporarily snatched away by an enemy, the enemy would not be able to use the artifact to attack him. They would have to first erase his imprint and brand it again with their own divine sense.
It could be said that only after a cultivator had reached the middle stage of the Qi Refinement realm, could they truly control Dharma and possess a certain level of ability to protect themselves.
After refining the Dharma artifact once more and familiarizing himself with the process of using his divine sense to control the artifact, Wang Ping hastened his cultivation of a mid-grade Tier-1 spell that he had his eyes on for a long time, the "Rippling Water Shield."
As a water-elemental defensive spell, the defensive power of the "Rippling Wave Shield" was not weak at all. Among all the defensive spells of the same tier, it was second only to the earth-elemental spell "Rock Shield" and the metal-elemental defensive spell "Golden Light Barrier."
On the other hand, Wang Ping was using the water-elemental cultivation technique," Cloud Water Technique." If he were to cast the "Rippling Wave Shield" spell, not only would its power increase, but the success rate would also be higher and the casting speed would also be faster than other spells.
Cultivating Dharma spells would also put the cultivator's talent to the test.
Those cultivators who had a strong comprehension ability would be able to learn the relevant spells quickly, while the less intelligent cultivators might need to spend a lot more time to learn the relevant spells.
Wang Ping did not dare to say how strong his comprehension ability was, but he was definitely not the kind of person with a talent for being a fool.
When he first studied the "Water Arrow Technique," it took him only seven days to learn it. At that time, his cultivation level was only at the first level of Qi Refinement, and his Dharma powers were only enough for him to use the "Water Arrow Technique" three times.
Although it took him quite a while to learn the defensive spell, the "Rippling Water Shield", he used only twelve days to master it.
Of course, learning a certain spell did not mean that it could be used in actual combat immediately.
Any newly-learned spell would take a long time to be cast by a cultivator, as a single mistake could result in failure.
It was only after a large amount of practice that cultivators would be able to shorten the casting time as much as possible and reduce the chances of spellcasting failure to infinitely close to zero.
Therefore, for the next half a month, Wang Ping spent every day practicing the "Rippling Water Shield" spell in the "Heaven and Earth Shell."
The concentration of Spirit Qi in the "Heaven and Earth Bead" had increased yet again. After Wang Ping had used up his Dharma powers to practice the spell, he only needed to meditate for four hours inside to recover his powers. Then, he could continue practicing.
After half a month of diligent, ascetic practice, he finally reduced the time it took to cast the "Rippling Water Shield" to five breaths. The success rate of casting the spell was also 90%, providing very little chance of failure.
At this moment, Wang Ping left the "Heaven and Earth" and rushed to Black Stone Mountain with Xiao Feng and Bai Yu, preparing to participate in the February temporary market trade.
Bai Yu was now more than a year old and had been thoughtfully raised by Wang Ping. Its wingspan was now twenty feet, and it had learned to fly on its own six months ago.
It was indeed worthy of the name that Wang Ping had given it. It had a body of snow-white feathers and looked like a huge white gull. However, its beak was as sharp as that of a crane and its combat power was nowhere near low.
As a bird, Bai Yu did not like staying inside the "Heaven and Earth Shell," because the space inside was too narrow for it to fly.
Thus, this time, on the way to Black Stone Mountain, it acted as a "convoy" in the air, moving along with Wang Ping.
Only when they were near Blackrock Mountain did Wang Ping put Bai Yu, who had contentedly flown a trip, away into the "worldly shell" to climb Black Stone Mountain alone.
In the past year or so, Wang Ping had been busy with breaking through to the middle stage of the Qi Refinement realm and had never once come back to Black Stone Mountain.
Now that his cultivation had successfully broken through, he wanted to come over and discuss the situation with other cultivators to see if he could gain anything from it. At the same time, he also wanted to see if he could meet Lin Xiao'e. For this reason, he especially rushed over two days in advance.
If the cultivators of Golden Pearl Island wanted to come to Black Stone Mountain to participate in the temporary market trade, they would need to calculate the time to arrive. Normally, they would arrive a day earlier than expected.
Thus, when Wang Ping arrived at Black Stone Mountain, there weren't any other cultivators in sight.
However, no matter how much he waited in the open area halfway up the mountain, waiting by the bonfire at night, he did not see Lin Xiao'e come out to meet him.
After a night like this, Wang Ping more or less knew the answer.
When morning arrived, he stood up and bowed toward the mountain.
Afterward, he left the mountain and found a place to temporarily stay, patiently waiting for other cultivators to arrive.