Gu Changhuan accepted the royal jelly and carefully inspected the bee queen's condition. Confirming that she was unharmed, he tossed a storage bag to the bearded cultivator.

He placed the beehive into his spirit beast pouch, took a quick tour of the third floor to ensure no high-tier spiritual objects had appeared, and then hurried up to several shops on the fourth floor before eagerly returning to his leased cave dwelling.

Inside the Xuantian Tower, Gu Changhuan was delighted to find the first crop of spirit rice ripe. The Type Three puppet had almost finished harvesting it.

The spiritual herbs had all grown into seedlings as well, and some were already flowering.

A few dozen seedlings were growing at an exceptional pace, though they were not medicinal herbs, but rather spirit tree saplings.

Gu Changhuan selected the sturdiest of the saplings, replanted it on a small hill near the edge of the Xuantian Tower's interior, and placed the beehive upon its branches.

With a clear hum, the Azure Cloud Sword sliced through the spherical magical artifact holding the spirit bees. The moment the Black-Tailed Spirit Bees swarmed out, Gu Changhuan instantly withdrew from the Xuantian Tower.

The aggressive Black-Tailed Spirit Bees flew outward, only to find that their target had vanished into thin air. The surrounding environment was tranquil and pleasant, filled with blossoming spiritual herbs. Captivated at once, the bees readily set to work gathering pollen and making honey.

When he next entered the tower, the Black-Tailed Spirit Bees paid him no attention.

He planted the seeds from his trades and his purchases on the fourth level in an empty patch of ground.

At last, all the ingredients needed for brewing spirit wine were assembled.

Gu Changhuan turned his attention to studying the spirit wine formulas in his possession.

Truth be told, he already held two such formulas: the First-Tier Middle Grade Three-Month Wine and the First-Tier High Grade Clear Splendor Brew, both acquired from the clan Scripture Pavilion.

The Gu Clan had stood for over three hundred years, so possessing wine-brewing formulas was hardly strange. However, because crafting spirit wine was laborious and far less convenient than simply selling spiritual rice or refining it into Inedia Pills, the clan's annual output of spirit wine was pitifully small.

He had made spirit wine before, but had relied on the quality of the ingredients. He had simply washed them, left them to ferment, and stored them to age. There had been little skill involved.

The recipe sold to him by the veiled female cultivator was a genuine brewing method for a spirit wine called Drunken Spring Breeze.

Drunken Spring Breeze was a potent liquor; it was said that those with a weak tolerance would be intoxicated merely by the scent, hence its name.

Combined with the ones from the Scripture Pavilion, Gu Changhuan now held three distinct spirit wine formulas.

The most crucial preparatory step before formally brewing spirit wine was the creation of the wine starter.

Wine Starter required spirit rice and various spiritual herbs. He had freshly harvested rice; some of the herbs were newly bought, and the rest came from his existing supplies.

He was already a second-tier low-grade alchemist. A first-tier high-grade Wine Starter should be well within his abilities.

Gu Changhuan failed only once before successfully refining the starter for the Three-Month Wine.

On his third attempt, he produced two blocks of Wine Starter.

Drunken Spring Breeze proved trickier. With so many ingredients to combine, he failed twice before producing its starter.

For each of the three varieties, he refined over a hundred blocks of starter. Like alchemy, crafting wine starter demanded constant vigilance and left no room for carelessness, placing a heavy burden on a cultivator's spiritual power and Divine Sense.

Yet this rigorous demand was precisely why alchemists and artifact refiners often possessed a Divine Sense far surpassing their peers.

With the wine starters completed, the production of the spirit wine was more than halfway done.

Just as Gu Changhuan prepared to begin brewing in earnest, another obstacle arose: he lacked a sufficient number of wine jars.

Gu Changhuan sighed. It was always some minor detail.

Disguising his appearance once more, he hurried to the fourth floor of the market and bought out the remaining stock of wine jars from several shops.

Now, everything was truly in place.

Gu Changhuan spent over twenty days busy within the Xuantian Tower, finally completing the first batch of spirit wine and burying the jars beneath an empty patch of ground.

One day outside equated to ten days inside the first layer of the Xuantian Tower, and spirit wine typically required at least half a year of fermentation and cellar storage to mature.

For him, that was only a little over half a month outside.

With that settled, he finally had the time and proper conditions to turn his attention to puppet refining.

The puppets described in Zhenlingzi's notes were far beyond anything sold in Kaitian Hall, and naturally, the difficulty of refining them was incomparably greater.

The more he read Zhenlingzi's notes, the more he realized how much there was to puppet making.

According to Zhenlingzi's records, the Spirit Realm had once seen a brilliantly gifted puppet master who could create puppets possessing human-like intelligence and autonomy. These creations could even cultivate on their own, differing very little from ordinary people.

Regrettably, that genius was not human. Per the records, he used his puppets to expand his race's territory by a third, eventually achieving Ascension through their aid. Even after his departure, several of the puppets he left behind continued to roam and cultivate within the Spirit Realm.

Strangely, the genius had left no inheritance at all.

Zhenlingzi's methods were less extraordinary, but puppets made with them still showed a good deal of intelligence.

Unlike ordinary artifact refining, puppet making required heating only a few core components. The rest needed no fire.

Gu Changhuan chose the simplest design to begin with: an ape-shaped puppet.

The initial step was carving the main torso and limbs out of ironwood.

He had expected making the puppet's core to be the hardest part. Instead, he was stumped by the very first step: carving.

Two lifetimes, and he was still hopeless at making things by hand.

He stared at the gouged, lumpy arm he had carved. How could this be so hard when shaping a sword had gone so well?

His spirit swords always came out perfectly straight!

So why did his carving look like this...?

He brooded over it, unwilling to admit that he was simply all thumbs.

Yet after carving five pieces of ironwood in succession, he had no choice but to face reality.

For a long moment, Gu Changhuan stared at the abstract wooden ape, and it stared back. He decided to stop wasting materials.

Having money was no excuse to throw it away.

Back to the stall, then.

That day, Gu Changhuan reappeared on the third floor. The stall was the same, and so was the small wooden sign.

He had added one line beneath the others: "Spend over fifty Spirit Stones and receive a fine wood carving—free!"

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