Chapter 325 Inkstone
In Shantong Mansion, on the eighth floor of the Golden Building, this place was originally vacated to serve as a huge lounge and observation deck, from which one can overlook the entire city.

There was constant music and singing downstairs and the lights were bright.

Zhou Tieyi walked in supported by two maids, but before the two maids could help Zhou Tieyi wash, Bai Mei took Zhou Tieyi's arm with a cold face and politely declined the two maids.

After the last time Zhou Tieyi was assassinated as a dancer, the subsequent impact naturally became apparent, for example, Baimei and Miaoyu forbade Zhou Tieyi to go to the place with willows and smoke.

The two maids left with looks of regret and jealousy.

After the outsiders left, Zhou Tieyi hugged Bai Mei and said, "Sister is still the best."

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Late at night, Zhou Tieyi got up wearing only a single layer of clothing. He took out a white jade chessboard directly from the void beside him. With his current understanding of the way of space, he was able to bind the white jade chessboard to the surrounding space centered on himself and use it at any time.

The light of the white jade chessboard expanded, enveloping Zhou Tieyi's body.

At this time, the space inside the white jade chessboard has been completely covered by the Taoduweng tree, which has absorbed Taoism and divine power.

At this time, Taodu Weng had grown into a ten-foot-tall giant tree, with green veins and red blood vessels intertwined and spreading throughout the dark void.

On his trunk, lines of lightning were lifelike. These lightning lines combined from time to time to turn into nine complete dragon seals, forming a thunder scripture, making silver-white arcs flash around from time to time, illuminating the vast darkness. While helping Zhou Tieyi to produce a large number of fruits with Thunder Dragon Seals, he himself was also using the power of spring thunder in the chessboard to comprehend the Thunder Dragon Seal.

On the main trunk, Taoduweng still maintains a slightly old human face, which complements his bark.

On the spreading branches, wisps of clear, pure white righteousness are like intricate leaves laden with fruits.

Most of these fruits are bright red, and the smaller ones are snow-white.

It looks like a peach, but vaguely reveals the facial features and limbs of a baby, symbolizing the gestation of life, which is both sacred and weird.

Most of them are made from the corpses of Zhulongpo warriors, and can help ordinary people improve their physical talents and reach the level of the children of military generals.

Apart from the peach and plum fruits produced by these ordinary corpses, the most eye-catching ones are the twenty fruits on the top.

This is the result of the divine fetuses of the ten third-grade gods who descended at that time.

Although Zhou Tieyi did not get their divine weapon, he did not obtain the most crucial divine power.

But he got the kingdom of gods and the corpses of gods of ten people.

Among them, the god whose divine power belongs to Xinghui has the most complete kingdom of god and corpse of god, which is equivalent to a complete third-grade high-level spiritual material. Even if there is some loss when converted into peach and plum fruit, it still maintains the third-grade level.

The divine kingdoms and divine corpses of the other nine people were shattered due to the participation of Baidi, and part of the power directly dissipated into the void between the two places, so it was incomplete.

After being transformed by Taoli Weng, some of the fruits were consumed, so eighteen of them did not reach the third grade level, but were only equivalent to the fourth grade.

But this is a fourth-grade spiritual fruit that can change one’s bone and muscle talents!
The value is immeasurable.

In addition to the changes in Tao Du Weng, the original power of thunder and righteousness in the chessboard have also been completely transformed into 361 black and white chess soldiers. The power attributes of these chess pieces themselves come from the struggle at the third level, and they are controlled by the tribal warriors through spiritual descent. When the strength of the tribal warriors becomes a little stronger, each chess piece can almost exert the combat power of a sixth-grade warrior. With more advanced military formations and the Five Emperors, Zhou Tieyi has a force in his hands that can compete with the third level.

The next step is how to cultivate these black and white chess pieces so that they can be promoted like the Five Emperors' Divine Generals, this peerless magic weapon.

Zhou Tieyi looked from the side and found that according to his wishes, the space inside the entire white jade chessboard could be used at will. A moment later, a wooden box half a person's height appeared in front of him. On the wooden box, a Mohist mechanism diagram was outlined in silver, sealing the things inside.

Today's banquet is in full swing, and of course the officials of Shantong Prefecture will present the specialties of Shantong Prefecture.

Apart from the inkstone mine, there is nothing else worth mentioning in Shantong Prefecture's specialties.

Zhou Tieyi opened the half-man-high wooden box in front of him. Inside, there were neatly stacked pieces of cut inkstone, each weighing fifty taels.

Each ink stone is like a black diamond, deep, pure, and full of fire.

One ounce of inkstone is worth one ounce of gold. This is the price of inkstone in Daxia, and it is often out of stock.

Along with the flames, there was also a mixture of scattered spirits and energy that attacked Zhou Tieyi. The impact of the spirits and energy formed by so many ink stones made Zhou Tieyi frown slightly. He now felt like he was trapped in someone else's military formation.

Although this military formation is disorganized, the pure mental impact seems more difficult to deal with in this chaos.

Even though Zhou Tieyi knew that he could withstand the impact of Mo Shi's dissipated energy, he still felt like he was listening to a noisy audio and just wanted to get away from it as quickly as possible.

This is the power contained in the inkstone itself. A ten-pound inkstone is enough to support a mechanical device like the spider tower in a less intense battle. This shows the energy contained in it.

For a long time, even though people in this world knew about the Ink Stone, they all believed that it was difficult to use. The chaotic essence and spirit in it not only impacted the mind, but also alienated the flesh and blood of the body and caused pathology.

Therefore, among the middle and lower level practitioners, only the martial arts practitioners can have long-term contact with the inkstone, but they cannot use the inkstone. They only regard it as a cursed object to harm others.

It was not until more than three hundred years ago that another great figure of the first rank and universal love emerged in the Mohist school. He developed a mechanism diagram of inkstone that could perfectly utilize the chaotic spirit of the inkstone to drive the mechanism, instead of relying solely on the monk's own strength.

Zhou Tieyi took out two inkstones and closed the box. Without the impact of the inkstone's spirit, the noisy "music" in his ears became smaller, and was only transmitted from the two inkstones in his hands.

"Father God, is this the inkstone?"

Beside Zhou Tieyi, Tao Du Weng looked over with curiosity.

Zhou Tieyi did not hesitate to hand over one of the inkstones. He came here originally to make use of Tao Du Weng's power to see if he could find a new and more efficient way to utilize the inkstones.

When Zhou Tieyi learned about the substance called inkstone, the first thing he thought of was nuclear fuel, which is equally dangerous and also contains huge amounts of energy.

Even at the beginning, he felt that although the inkstone might not be as powerful as nuclear fuel in terms of energy, it was easier to use. After all, there were things like inkstone mechanism arrays in this world.

If he used the inkstone well, he might be able to change the world through the revolution of ordinary people. But after he really came into contact with it, he found that things were not as simple as he imagined.

The first inkstone mechanism array has an extremely high wear rate and needs frequent maintenance. Especially during the use of high-power inkstones, the mechanism array will often be overloaded, which requires a mechanism sorcerer to repair it at all times, otherwise the inkstone energy will explode and form a spiritual shock wave.

Although the second ink stone mechanism array can utilize the spiritual energy in the ink stone, it cannot completely control all the energy, and a small amount of the spiritual energy will still dissipate.

This level of dissipation does not have much impact on practitioners, but it is still harmful to ordinary people. If ordinary people stay around the ink stone mechanism for a long time without interruption and without a safe distance, their spirit and body will slowly develop diseases, which is similar to some heavily polluting jobs in modern times.

This is why, after so many years, the ink stone is still only circulated among practitioners.

This is also the reason why Zhou Tieyi brought the ink stone to Tao Du Weng for experiments today.

Inkstone is a rare object that was created when the essence of a powerful ancient life form was sealed in the natural environment after its death.

The Taodu Weng can devour the flesh and blood of living beings and transform it into pure peach and plum fruits. This kind of peach and plum fruit can give others a large amount of blood and energy, while not containing the pollution of other people's spirit and energy!

If Tao Du Weng can completely transform the ink stone into a pollution-free energy source that can be used by ordinary people, it will be enough to change the current practice system.

Zhou Tieyi looked at the black stone that Tao Du Weng was playing with with a branch and asked tentatively, "Can you absorb the black stone and produce peach and plum fruits?"

Tao Du Weng was stunned, and a thoughtful look appeared on his face, "Father God wants me to expel the chaotic spirit and energy in it and let it return to a pure state?"

Then he gave the answer, "I'm afraid that's not possible for the time being."

"why?"

Tao Du Weng replied, "Father God, I can transform the flesh and blood of others and make them pure again. In fact, it comes from the authority [flesh and blood] you have bestowed upon me, the purification of [spirit] by Confucianism's great and upright energy, and the transformation of [ancestral qi] by the five elements."

Zhou Tieyi nodded slightly. The power of the Nine Ancient Gods was undoubtedly powerful.

It is precisely because of the power of the nine ancient gods, the combination of Confucianism and the true meaning of the Five Emperors that the almost unreasonable strange tree Taodu Weng was born.

This only involves the level of blood stealing. If it is the level of dragon seal condensation, one will also need to make use of one's own talent of [Usurping God].

"But the core of all my transformations comes from the premise of 'being alive' or 'life'. Just like you have the priesthood of [Nurturing], which can accelerate the birth of life, but it cannot bring life to dead things out of thin air."

"Alive."

Zhou Tieyi said softly. He probably understood that the 'alive' mentioned by Tao Du Weng should be similar to the concept of 'activity' in biology, plus the concept of 'spirituality' in this world. Therefore, even the bodies of the killed enemies were temporarily 'alive' and not completely dead.

There were still some things Zhou Tieyi didn't understand. He had nothing to hide in front of Tao Du Weng, so he asked, "But there is also spirit in the ink stone."

In his original understanding, essence, energy and spirit can constitute a complete life.

Tao Duong explained, "This is the element of 'life', but the elements also need a process of reassembly."

"Just like a corpse is dead in the eyes of ordinary people, but alive in my eyes, the ink stone in front of me has spirit and energy, and has the conditions to be alive, but in my eyes, it is dead. Life and death are not immutable, and they can also transform into each other."

Zhou Tieyi has seen a lot from birth to death, and he has also seen from death to birth in this world.

The first time was when his mother performed the trick of 'casting beans into soldiers' to help him forge the Five Emperors. The second level of Taoist celestial phenomena is 'heavenly man', which has the ability to transform heaven into man, that is, to transform dead things into living things with spirituality.

The second time was in the underworld Yellow Spring. In this ultimate dead river, pure life such as the Yellow Spring snake fish was also born.

Thinking of this, Zhou Tieyi suddenly smiled with admiration, "What a fate."

He already has a candidate to participate in the experiment of activating the activity of inkstone.

It was his elder brother Zhou Tiege.

The true meaning of life and death that he comprehended was further developed when he was forging the Five Emperors, and there was already a trend of mutual transformation. He also bore the Zhou family's curse about blood and the underworld, which vaguely involved the original Emperor of Life and Death.

As his strength increased and he learned more information, even if he could not find out about his family's situation through simple methods like qigong, Zhou Tieyi could still make corresponding inferences about the Zhou family's affairs.

He could even guess that when the water level of the Yellow Spring River shrank in the Bingzhong battlefield some time ago, the power of the Emperor of Life and Death was not sealed like that of the Lord of the Blood Sea, nor was it consumed like that of the Azure Dragon. So someone else must have released this power, or obtained it. The most likely suspect was the Emperor of Great Xia himself, or his people hiding in the dark.

With a plan in mind, Zhou Tieyi first took out the Tianyi Jade Disc. Under the power of the mirage, Zhou Tiege and Hao Ren, who were far away in Tianjing, traveled thousands of miles in spirit and appeared in front of Zhou Tieyi through the Shinto talisman.

Hao Ren, who had just come back to his senses from his dream, possessed a chess piece the moment he saw Zhou Tieyi and bowed, "My Lord."

After conquering the Zhulongpo tribe, Zhou Tieyi naturally had more power of faith to bestow new Shinto talismans, so the first people he bestowed the talismans on were his eldest brother and Hao Ren.

Hao Ren has temporarily taken charge of his core forces in Tianjing, so naturally he needs to stay with him until the end.

What would make both parties trust him is naturally Hao Ren converting to Shintoism and becoming his own subordinate god.

At the same time, his plan to make money in the barbaric tribe still requires Hao Ren's power to complete.

Zhou Tieyi glanced at Hao Ren and said calmly, "No need to address me so formally, just call me Sir."

Hao Ren nodded obediently. Although he had become Zhou Tieyi's core, it was also his first time seeing Tao Du Weng. Anyone who saw Tao Du Weng for the first time would naturally be unable to help but show a look of surprise, curiosity and fear.

"Sir, this is..."

Facing Hao Ren's strange look, Tao Du Weng stretched out a branch with tangled veins and blood vessels, on which was a blood-red fruit that looked like a fetus not yet full-mooned, and handed it to Hao Ren, greeting him warmly, "Hello, please have some fruit."

(End of this chapter)