The Path of Immortality: Starts With Creating Water Bear Gu

In the following period, no more customers visited, and seeing no one, Long Xuan decided to close his stall.

Although he still had seven Little Strong Gu insects left unsold, he earned six mid-grade spirit stones today, equivalent to six hundred low-grade spirit stones. For a rogue cultivator, this was no small sum, and Long Xuan was very satisfied.

With a substantial amount of money in hand, he finally had the confidence to go shopping.

Long Xuan eagerly walked into the depths of the market, looking for the piece of black iron ore and the peak-grade spirit stone that had been on his mind.

However, after a month and a half, it wasn't that easy to encounter such items again.

Moreover, each Gu cultivator was busy with cultivation and collecting resources in the wild; they couldn't set up stalls here every day. Finding them again was purely a matter of luck.

After a fruitless search, Long Xuan had to give up in disappointment, realizing he didn’t have the protagonist's halo.

But it didn’t matter. There were countless treasures. New stall owners and new treasures flowed into the market every day. Treasures were endless.

Old treasures must go for new ones to come, and the new treasures might not be inferior to the old ones.

Recently, a new chamber of commerce had settled here, dealing in fossils. The shop’s yard was piled high with countless fossils.

In this world, there were many sources of spirit insects: some were captured in the wild, and some were artificially bred.

Spirit herbs in medicine gardens also produced insects, but only high-grade spirit herbs' insects were valuable for refining Gu. The insects from low-grade spirit herbs were killed by insecticide powder.

Some spirit beasts also had certain spirit insects parasitizing inside them, including humans, who may also have them innately. They are called innate spiritual Gu. Such people are often geniuses with incredible extraordinarily abilities. 

Some spirit insects came from underground, like earthworms, mole crickets, and ants…

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Even hard stones might contain insects, and their quality could be quite high.

Earth entered an ice age every few eons, and this world was no different, but it was even colder.

During this period, temperatures plummeted, cold waves swept the world, and every corner was engulfed in cold. The entire surface was covered in snow and glaciers, turning the world into an icy, white landscape with bone-chilling winds.

Thus, the earth entered an eternal winter, with countless years passing without a day of warmth.

During this time, surface plants were massively frozen to death, and the earth stopped producing food. All living beings either froze or starved to death. The vitality of all things ceased, and countless species went extinct during the ice age, with only a few survivors.

Insects, however, were the most resilient life forms. When the ice age approached, insects worldwide followed high-grade spirit insects underground, entering a hibernation phase. Their bodies were covered in a thick stone layer to insulate them from the cold.

Hibernating insects entered a state of apparent death, with all bodily functions stopping. They neither ate nor drank, with energy consumption paused, and their lifespan ceased, allowing them to survive endless years.

Only external disturbances could wake them, slowly crawling out of their stone layers, possibly after millions or even billions of years having passed.

These stones containing ancient spirit insects were called fossils by Gu cultivators.

The spirit insects in these fossils were ancient, possibly rare species or even long-extinct ones, of immense value. Discovering one could lead to instant wealth.

However, not all spirit insects could survive the ice age. Most, even with stone insulation, froze to death. Very few spirit insects survived that period.

Therefore, most stones contained dead insects, which had turned into true fossils over endless years. Only one in a hundred stones had live insects.

The forces controlling fossil mines maximized profits by selling all fossils, shifting the risk to others. Whether it was a loss or gain depended entirely on individual luck.

This gave rise to the globally popular fossil gambling industry.

"One cut to poverty, one cut to wealth, one cut to rags." This industry thrived on excitement.

Despite most people losing, Gu cultivators were addicted, hoping luck would favor them, uncovering heaven-defying insects and becoming wealthy overnight. These people were gamblers.

There were patterns in fossil gambling. The stone's texture could hint at the presence of live insects, leading to the emergence of many fossil gambling masters.

However, even the best master in the world only had slightly higher success rates. No one could definitively determine if a stone contained live or dead insects.

But today, an exception entered this fossil shop.

In Long Xuan’s eyes, stones without visible progress naturally had no insects, while those with visible progress did. The more decimal places, the better the stone.

To him, the shop’s valuable materials were like gifts, being given to him for free.

Long Xuan’s mouth curved into a smile as he confidently walked in, still masked.

This fossil shop was large, divided into several areas. Fossils with high sale potential and high insect emergence rates were concentrated in one area, with high prices.

Fossils with poor sale potential and higher chances of dead insects were in another, larger area, and cheaper.

This area had the most people, everyone hoping for a big find at a low price.

They picked up fossils, tapped and felt them, studying for a long time, often indecisive, making the area crowded but with infrequent transactions.

The stones varied in size, some as small as a fist, others up to four meters high, displayed in the courtyard and called "Stone Kings." A crowd marveled at these, touching and exclaiming over them.

Naturally, the "Stone King" had the highest price in the shop. No one dared buy it, and few could afford it, so it remained, with many onlookers but no buyers.

Long Xuan was amazed by the "Stone King." How afraid of death was this spirit insect to form such a thick stone layer? Surely, it wouldn’t freeze to death.

The insect emergence rate for this "Stone King" must be very high.

Instinctively using his golden finger ability, Long Xuan saw a progress of [82.68732%] in the "Stone King."

Wow, five decimal places! This indicated the insect inside might be a peak-grade spirit insect over ten thousand years old, essential for refining peak-grade Gu insects.

Long Xuan’s eyes lit up, and his heart pounded wildly.