Rise of the Wang Clan: Starting with a Portable Farm

Chapter 195: Discovering a Spirit Stone Mine

“Sweep the perimeter. Secure anything of value. We leave immediately!” Wang Hao commanded, his eyes scanning the darkening canopy. “And remember, handle those Blue Ghost Spider eggs with extreme care. That species has decent potential; they would make excellent spirit beasts for each of you.”

They had lingered too long in the spider’s nest, and twilight was fast approaching. Wang Hao needed to get them out before true night fell.

The adult Blue Ghost Spider had been reduced to pulp by Wang Hao’s earlier assault, greatly diminishing the value of its corpse. However, certain scraps were still precious to Qi Refining cultivators. Wang Hao claimed only the Beast Soul, leaving the rest of the carcass to Wang Wenjiang and the other four juniors.

Suddenly, Wang Wenzhu pointed toward a cluster of vegetation. “Fifth Brother, look! A Purple Shadow Orchid!”

Wang Hao glanced up. It was indeed a Purple Shadow Orchid. This rare spiritual herb thrived only in environments saturated with toxicity. The natural miasma of this forest, combined with the venomous presence of the spider colony, had created the perfect breeding ground.

The Purple Shadow Orchid was a versatile ingredient, most notably serving as the core component for the Purple Shadow Pill—a supreme antidote.

It had been a long time since he had obtained a new seed variant. Wang Hao carefully excavated the orchid, cradling it in his hands as he nodded with satisfaction. “Not bad. A Tier 2 spiritual herb right off the bat. Your luck is far better than your Fifth Brother’s was back in the day.”

Recallling how his own early adventures had consisted mostly of running into bandits and robbers, Wang Hao couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

Moments later, the group had packed their harvest, leaving nothing behind, and rapidly retreated from the dense forest.

Two days later, the group arrived at a desolate stone forest. The terrain was littered with shattered boulders, the favored hunting ground of the Two-Tailed Scorpion.

As they passed through a narrow gap between two megaliths, a piercing whistle tore through the air from above.

“Watch out! Above us!” Wang Wuxiang screamed the warning, instantly triggering a protective spell on himself.

Wang Hao reacted with practiced calm, deploying the Cloud Wave Shield to cover the group. A dozen wind blades slammed into the barrier, resulting in a series of dull, heavy thuds.

Two pitch-black scorpions, each over twenty feet long, leaped down from the crags. Judging by their aura, they were merely Tier 2 Low Grade Demon Beasts.

However, two of them at once would be overwhelming for Wang Wenjiang and the juniors. Wang Hao made a split-second decision: he would delete one from the equation and leave the other as a training dummy.

The scorpions whipped their tails forward, firing a volley of venomous stingers.

Another Demon Beast that knows dual spell types, Wang Hao noted with raised eyebrows. Even during the beast tide, Tier 2 monsters with dual affinities were rare, yet he had encountered them consecutively here.

Observing their behavior, they appeared to be a mated pair. If he captured them for breeding…

No, forget it. Demon Beasts were unruly by nature. Taming them required excessive resources and time. The return on investment simply wasn’t there.

Wang Hao extinguished the thought of capturing them alive. Cyan light flared beneath his boots.

In the next heartbeat, one of the Two-Tailed Scorpions collapsed, dead before its body hit the ground.

Wang Wenzhu and the others gasped in shock.

This time, they hadn’t even worn down the beast’s demonic power. Wang Hao had simply obliterated it with a single sword strike.

“The remaining one is yours,” Wang Hao said lazily. He flourished his sword with a stylish spin, turned his back on the battle, and unstoppered his gourd for a sip of spirit wine.

The surviving scorpion, witnessing the instant death of its mate, shrieked in terror and attempted to flee. Wang Hao flickered, his movement technique carrying him directly into its path. With a brutal punch, he sent the creature flying back toward the juniors.

“Form up!” Wang Wenjiang shouted, summoning his Magical Artifact.

The Two-Tailed Scorpion let out a hissing roar, its fear turning into cornered rage as it launched a frantic assault on the five cultivators.

Wang Wenjiang retrieved a verdant seed from his robes. Infusing it with Spiritual Qi, he threw it to the ground. The seed took root instantly, erupting into thick, serpentine vines that coiled around the scorpion, binding its limbs.

The beast struggled violently, snapping vine after vine, but the magical plants seemed endless, regenerating and tightening their grip with every second.

Wang Wenzhu and the others seized the opportunity, unleashing a barrage of spells and artifacts.

Beams of spiritual light slashed through the air.

With its limbs bound, the scorpion couldn’t dodge. It was forced to spit wind blades from its maw to intercept the incoming fire.

Explosions rang out as the wind blades collided with the cultivators’ attacks, neutralizing the first wave.

Suddenly, Wang Wenjiang’s short sword shot forward like a viper. The scorpion failed to react in time. Clang!

The blade struck home, but scorpion-type Demon Beasts were renowned for their armored carapaces. The strike left only a faint white scratch on the shell, failing to draw blood.

Despite the lack of lethal damage, the beast was terrified and outnumbered. It was gradually being ground down.

The juniors released their puppet beasts to join the fray, adding kinetic force to their magical bombardment.

Even the toughest carapace has a breaking point. After fifteen minutes of sustained fire, a sickening crack echoed through the stone forest. The scorpion screamed as its shell shattered. Spells bombarded its exposed flesh, drawing green ichor and leaving its two long tails dragging limply on the ground.

The juniors grinned, relaxing their guard as they moved in to harvest the corpse.

Suddenly, a pulse of ochre light enveloped the “dying” scorpion. In the blink of an eye, it vanished into the earth.

Wang Wenzhu stared at the empty ground, dumbfounded. “That bastard played dead!”

“Did you think a Tier 2 Demon Beast would be so easy to kill?” Wang Hao’s voice was cool. “Don’t just stand there—chase it! It’s heavily wounded; it can’t travel far underground.”

In truth, the scorpion had never left Wang Hao’s Spirit Sense. His system map was, as always, reliably unfair.

He had initially assumed the beast was feigning death to launch a desperate counter-attack—a lesson he wanted the juniors to learn the hard way. He hadn’t expected it to choose immediate flight.

With a wave of his hand, Wang Hao swept the first scorpion’s corpse into his Storage Bag. “Follow me.”

He enveloped the group in spiritual light and led them underground using an earth-escape technique.

In the time it took to exchange a few words, the scorpion had already tunneled nearly a mile away. Fortunately, its injuries were severe; the trail of blood and chaotic energy it left behind was easy for Wang Wenjiang and the others to lock onto.

Fifteen minutes later, they breached into a subterranean cavern. The space was rough and uneven, the floor littered with jagged debris.

The Two-Tailed Scorpion lay huddled against a rock wall, its aura barely flickering.

Seeing Wang Hao and the execution squad arrive, it let out a pathetic chirp. Ochre light flared around its body as it tried to merge with the stone wall to escape again.

Thud.

Instead of passing through, the beast slammed into the wall and bounced off. The stone was impenetrable.

Wang Hao stepped forward and decapitated the creature with a casual flick of his wrist. He had no more patience for the scorpion; he had spotted something in this cave far more valuable than a beast core.

Wang Wenzhu and the others looked around the cave, confused. “Fifth Brother, is this some kind of mineral vein? These rocks seem incredibly hard. Even the scorpion’s earth escape failed against them.”

“The main reason it failed was its injuries. Under normal circumstances, this stone shouldn’t have stopped it,” Wang Hao shook his head, his eyes fixed on the glittering cave walls. “However, look at the shimmer. These rocks are saturated with Spiritual Qi. It looks like raw spiritual material. Wenjiang, Wenzhu—hack a piece off for me.”

“Yes!”

The two summoned their Magical Artifacts and struck the wall with full force.

Clang!

A harsh, metallic ring pierced their ears. Sparks flew, but after several full-powered strikes, they had only managed to chip off a few pathetic fragments. They couldn’t even identify the ore.

“Your luck… it’s almost frightening,” Wang Hao muttered, unable to suppress a twinge of jealousy. If Tier 1 Magical Artifacts were this ineffective, this was almost certainly a Tier 2 mineral vein.

His gaze grew heated. Although the Wang Clan occupied two Tier 2 spiritual mountains, they possessed no Tier 2 mines. Their revenue stream relied heavily on agriculture and Pill sales.

Those industries were labor-intensive, slow, and carried high overhead costs.

Mining was different. It was essentially printing money. You dig it up, perform simple processing, and trade it directly for currency. Every clan that controlled a mine was filthy rich.

Wang Hao drew his Green Light Sword and slashed at the wall.

Crack!

With a crisp sound, a two-foot fissure appeared in the rock face. Embedded within the fracture were several glowing, greenish stones.

Wang Hao moved quickly, reaching into the fissure to pry out one of the green chunks. He held it up, feeling the hum of energy.

“There is no mistake,” Wang Hao announced, his voice steady but intense. “This is raw Spirit Stone ore. With minimal processing, this becomes pure currency.”

A Spirit Stone mine was a special type of deposit formed only where spiritual veins converged. Over thousands of years, ordinary ore would absorb the ambient Spiritual Qi, slowly transforming into crystallized spiritual power—wealth in its purest form.