Chapter 179: Upgrade Stone

Turning it over and giving to Bai Yunfei, Zhu Zi had a pained look on his face. “I give this to you. This is for saving Xiao Fang’s life!”

“Eh? What’s this?” Bai Yunfei asked in confusion.

“It’s thanks for saving Xiao Fang and me.”

Waving his hand, Bai Yunfei spoke, “What are you talking about, it was because of me that you three got in trouble to begin with. It should be me that should be apologizing to you. What’s the need for this then?”

But Zhu Zi’s hand remained still in the air. “It was because of the disk you gave me that my life was spared. And it was because of that act of courage that Xiao Fang was finally able to see it and my determination. She has….she has accepted me. So, I—I wanted to thank you!”

“Err—she did…?” Bai Yunfei had never expected to see that he had actually ‘helped’ Zhu Zi’s chase after Xiao Fang. “People always say that ‘if there’s a will, there’s a way’. There’s no need to thank me like this…”

“I need to thank you, if I don’t, I’d never be able to let it go.” Zhu Zi pressed on. “This is a strange stone. It’s the reason why my body is so strong. But even now, I’ve no use for it, and there’s no point in keeping it. I know you aren’t any ordinary person, so if I give it to you, you should be able to find an even better use for it.”

Rendered speechless by the determination of Zhu Zi, Bai Yunfei took a look at the stone handed to him. It was pulsating with the faint wisps of worldly energy, but traces of an elementless energy could be felt (coincidentally the most perfect type of energy any soul cultivator can absorb). It wasn’t high in quality, and at the very best, it could probably be classified as a low-grade primal stone.

To the eyes of the commoner, a primal stone would be an absolute treasure for them. As long as it was on their body for an extended period of time, they could make use of the primal energy to strengthen their bodies. It appeared that Zhu Zi had been using that energy to become as strong as he was now to be one of the strongest commoners around.

Whilst Bai Yunfei was still thinking about the stone, Zhu Zi had already pressed the stone into his hands, “In short, this is my thanks!”

“But really, you don…” Bai Yunfei had wanted to say something more about the stone when something out of the corner of his eyes caused the words waiting to come out from his mouth to immediately die out there.

The reason for his loss of composure was due to the fact that a string of information was immediately sent to his head about the stone….

……

“……”

This string of information swam around Bai Yunfei’s head, rendering him speechless as if his spirit had left him.

The drastic change that overcame Bai Yunfei caused even Zhu Zi to feel alarmed, “Bai Yunfei, wh—what happened?!”

From head to toe, Bai Yunfei’s body began to shake. With a strange expression, Bai Yunfei managed to speak, “Er, nothing. Nothing really. I just didn’t expect something like this….”

Looking back down onto the stone, Bai Yunfei grew quiet.

“Then, I’ll accept this stone. Zhu Zi, thank you.” He managed to say.

Smiling honestly, Zhu Zi spoke, “This is my gift of thanks to you, why are you thanking me? I’ve said it already. This thing has no use anymore, so I wanted to give it to you. I hope that you’ll be able to find a good use for it soon.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll definitely be able to find a good use for it….Haha. Zhu Zi, yo—you’re amazing!” Bai Yunfei let out a mental sigh of relief. He wanted nothing more but to hug Zhu Zi in this moment—don’t misconstrue this action to be something else—but really, this was simply far too amazing to be true!

With the stone tucked carefully away, Bai Yunfei hesitated for a moment before shaking his right arm to take out a set of strength increasing accessories. Handing it to Zhu Zi, he spoke, “You should know what these are. I’ll give them to you. There’s also a set of earrings, you can give that to Xiao Fang. I’m sure she’ll love it.”

“I…..” Zhu Zi wanted to refuse the gifts at first, but in truth, he had a great desire for these strange accessories, and so there was hesitation to be had.

“No need to refuse them. Take it. They’re not important to me in any case.” Bai Yunfei pushed the items onto Zhu Zi’s hands before continuing to speak, “They’re extremely unique items, so it’s best if you don’t let other people know about them so easily. It might give you unwanted trouble.”

Putting away the accessories, Zhu Zi spoke back to Bai Yunfei with a look of excitement, “Yes, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind!”

Thinking for another moment, Bai Yunfei felt that this deal was still quite lacking on his side of the deal. With another shake of his hand, a machete-like weapon about two-thirds of a meter long came out—it was the human-tier weapon Zhao Chuan had used to try and kill him from before.

Sparing it a single look over, Bai Yunfei handed the +10 human-tier weapon to Zhu Zi, “I’ll be giving this to you!”

“….”

Zhu Zi simply didn’t understand what in the world was going on. He was just giving Bai Yunfei a thank you gift for saving Xiao Fang a moment ago, but now he was being given something in return!

He was speechless towards Bai Yunfei, but the fact that Bai Yunfei could ‘bring’ out so many things from nowhere wasn’t what he was really shocked about. A few days ago, he had been lucky enough to bear witness to an ‘inconceivable’ fight after all.

Seeing the look of disbelief on Zhu Zi’s face, Bai Yunfei laughed in response. “Don’t be like that. Honestly, the stone you gave me doesn’t have much use for you, but for me, it’s undeniably a priceless treasure. If I don’t give you something in return, I’d never be able to feel at ease with myself.”

Still not quite understanding the situation, Zhu Zi took the weapon into his own hand and then gave it an experimental chop onto the nearby tree. With a resounding “thwock”, the blade left a wrist-sized cut on the tree, causing it to break and fall onto the ground.

Unable to stop himself from smiling at Zhu Zi’s dumbstruck expression, Bai Yunfei spoke, “As you can tell, this blade is quite amazing. If you use it when you’re hunting, you shouldn’t be able to come across any danger. If you’re using the items I gave you and this blade, you might sometimes feel a sense of dizziness. Don’t be afraid, you’ll find that your blade will become sharper than usual during that time. If it happens several times in a row, a good rest should take care of that. But still, don’t let anyone else know about the secret behind this blade, otherwise, someone will surely try to kill you for it. Got it?”

……

Afterwards, Bai Yunfei returned to the village with the still giddy-feeling Zhu Zi. Slapping him on the shoulder, Bai Yunfei returned to Shao Ling’s house by himself. Although he looked calm on the surface, Bai Yunfei was actually far more giddy than Zhu Zi was. He was just doing his best to restrain his emotions from showing up on it.

When it came to the Upgrade Technique of Bai Yunfei, what exactly was the biggest source of his headaches? It wasn’t the fear of not having any strong items to upgrade, it was the fear of the probabilities of success when upgrading!

It was fine if an incomplete soul armament blew up. He’d shed no tears over those.

But the super strong soul armaments that were already +10 like the Glacial Pricker, the Compliant Rope, the +11 Fire-tipped Spear, and the +12 Flameblade Bracer. Never would he dare try upgrading any of those any more than what it was right now, the results didn’t outweigh the risks!

According to his understanding of the Upgrade Technique, the chance of a successful upgrade past the +10 mark was pitifully low. If he were to try and upgrade all of his current equipment, he wouldn’t even be left with a third of it all. The loss of all those items would undoubtedly leave such a tremendous pain on Bai Yunfei he’d collapse against the wall if it were to happen.

It was a constant dream for him to hope that there would be some sort of method to increase the odds of success. For that reason, he took great pains to try and experiment each and every way he could to find a way. But until now, there had been no success at all.

But today!

Today a meatpie had fallen from the heavens!

Bai Yunfei had initially thought it was merely just a low-grade primal stone, but it was actually a unique object that could help him increase the chance of upgrading successfully!

How could he not be happy about that?

For the entire afternoon, Bai Yunfei was in a state of shock. Absent-mindedly, he followed Shao Ling to the mountains to hunt some prey until nightfall. Now that he was calm, Bai Yunfei immediately headed out of the village to reach the forests so that he was alone.

Sitting on the grass, Bai Yunfei took out the stone. It was pulsating just slightly, but it looked like any other ordinary white stone, causing Bai Yunfei to look even harder at it.

“So. Should I use it or not?”