Xiao Fei found no way to leave the canyon, so he was forced to live in seclusion at the bottom of the canyon, leading a peaceful, elderly life ahead of schedule.
It was irrelevant to him that the canyon was unable to absorb spiritual energy from heaven and earth.
Heaven and earth spiritual energy was inherently at odds with him, refusing to enter his body no matter what.
His cultivation relied on spiritual stones, elixirs, and spiritual fruits to replenish his spiritual energy.
He didn't care that heaven and earth spiritual energy wouldn't enter his body; everyone had their pride!
Now, besides his normal cultivation each day, he would enter his space to continue his research into the art of alchemy.
His current alchemy level was considered excellent among second-tier alchemists, but his pill output rate had not yet reached ten percent, and he was unable to refine mid-grade pills, let alone high-grade pills.
He was bored to death anyway, and his space had twenty times the normal flow of time, so it would be a waste not to use it.
Xiao Fei would spend twenty hours a day refining pills in his space, leaving him exhausted, his hands and feet trembling.
Fortunately, he now had the Spirit Nurturing Tea. He would brew a pot of Spirit Nurturing Tea and slowly sip it for half a day.
The Spirit Nurturing Tea contained a special kind of spiritual energy that could eliminate divine sense fatigue, and with every sip, he felt a sense of pleasure from his spirit.
After finishing a pot of tea, his divine sense was fully restored. He would then enter his space again and spend another twenty hours learning artifact refining.
He couldn't find any artifact refiners here, so he had to do it himself to refine the Soul Nurturing Wood for his second sister.
He had no foundation in artifact refining at all. Now, he was learning from scratch based on the artifact refining jade slips left by several rogue cultivators.
While flipping through numerous jade slips, he discovered one with a restriction. However, these cultivators had long since died, and the remaining restrictions were slowly dissipating.
When he broke the restriction and read the contents of the jade slip, Xiao Fei jumped up in excitement.
This jade slip actually contained the art of refining a substitute puppet.
He vaguely remembered that the Black Wind Old Demon was skilled in this art, and even after killing him twice, he couldn't truly eliminate him.
It was likely that this jade slip was left behind by the Black Wind Old Demon.
The refining method recorded in the jade slip, both in terms of materials and techniques, was not an easy task.
Xiao Fei currently lacked the materials to refine puppets, and even if he had them, he wouldn't be able to refine them with his current artifact refining skills.
However, this made him even more interested in learning artifact refining.
With twenty hours dedicated to learning artifact refining each day, Xiao Fei's progress was rapid.
A year later, Xiao Fei refined a wooden statue for his second sister using the Soul Nurturing Wood.
The statue's appearance was identical to Xiao Lan's, standing a little over a foot tall. The space within it was tens of times larger than the original Soul Nurturing Bead.
Soul Nurturing Wood had the effect of nourishing the soul. This particular piece of Soul Nurturing Wood had been cultivated in the space for many years, and the materials used were abundant. The effect of nourishing the soul was tens of times stronger than the original Soul Nurturing Bead.
After Xiao Lan moved in, she was very satisfied. She hid inside every day and no longer liked to come out to scare people by impersonating ghosts.
Xiao Fei continued to diligently research alchemy and artifact refining in his spare time.
He had the materials for alchemy readily available in his space, so he could continue refining.
Among the previous spoils of war, there were quite a few artifact refining materials, enough for him to practice with.
Xiao Fei was trapped in the canyon and unable to leave. Time flew by, and another thirty years passed.
His current magical power cultivation had caught up with his physical strength, reaching the late stage of Foundation Establishment.
During these thirty years, besides cultivation and learning, he also made various delicacies.
However, due to the limited variety of ingredients, he could now extract a Five-Colored Spirit Lotus from his space and make over a hundred dishes using its leaves, flowers, seeds, and roots.
The excess spiritual herbs and fruits in his space, apart from alchemy, were all distilled into spiritual wine and stored in the space.
Now, a large pile of spiritual herbs and a large pile of spiritual wine were stored in his space.
With Xiao Fei's current alchemy level, he could refine second-tier pills with an output rate of almost ten percent for every furnace.
This would inevitably include mid-grade pills, and sometimes he could even produce a high-grade pill.
In addition to alchemy, out of boredom, he had studied all the artifact refining jade slips he could find and could now refine spiritual artifacts.
Alchemy and artifact refining still couldn't fully occupy his energy, so he also learned formations.
However, the knowledge of artifact refining and formations he learned were all methods of evil cultivators, exuding a ghostly aura or rolling demonic energy.
Their methods were bizarre and wicked; refining with human bones and corpses was just routine.
Collecting souls from massacres or the destruction of towns was also done occasionally.
After learning these methods from the evil cultivators, Xiao Fei could only admire the resilience of the mortals and low-level cultivators in the Eagle Mountain Kingdom.
Transportation in the cultivation world was not developed. Relying solely on legs, ordinary people would never be able to escape the Eagle Mountain Kingdom in their lifetime.
Moreover, there were many natural dangers between the Eagle Mountain Kingdom and the Lu Kingdom, which even Qi Condensation cultivators found difficult to traverse.
Those living at the bottom could only be at the mercy of these evil cultivators.
Therefore, the Eagle Mountain Kingdom would launch a war against neighboring countries periodically, primarily to plunder population and various resources.
When Xiao Fei finished studying and comprehending all the formation jade slips, his formation level had definitely surpassed any cultivator who had fallen into the canyon.
At this point, he could begin to discern some clues about the formations within the canyon.
The canyon contained a natural formation, formed by the terrain of mountains and rivers.
However, with his current formation level, he was still unable to break this formation.
But it wasn't entirely without hope. There was another type of creature in the canyon that was unaffected by the formation.
These were the small fish in the lake.
Anyone who entered the lake could only sink; even wooden boats would sink, but these small fish were different. They could swim freely in the lake.
Xiao Fei devised a way to refine a large net and spent several days fishing in the lake, finally catching a few small fish.
He dissected several of them consecutively. Apart from their more delicious taste, these fish seemed no different from ordinary fish.
The only notable difference was their swim bladders.
The swim bladders, about the size of a finger, were covered with many natural, profound runes.
With Xiao Fei's current formation level, he couldn't fully understand the meaning of these runes.
However, he could roughly analyze that these runes were precisely what allowed them to overcome the sinking gravitational pull of the natural grand formation in this place, enabling the small fish to float upwards.
With this discovery, Xiao Fei's reclusive life gained another pastime: fishing.
He had an idea: if he could collect a large number of swim bladders and refine them into a spiritual artifact, it should be able to carry him away from this place.
Xiao Fei threw the caught small fish into the lotus pond in his space for cultivation. After a few days, he found that the small fish showed no abnormalities.
Occasionally, they could even float above the water's surface and hover in the air for a while before falling back down.
They were all fish that yearned for the blue sky and white clouds, fish with ideals and aspirations.
Seeing that the fish were living well in his space, Xiao Fei continuously caught fish and released them into his space.
The fish raised in the space grew rapidly under the twenty-times time flow.
Xiao Fei also discovered that these fish could absorb spiritual energy in his space.
Moreover, their bodies continued to grow, quickly breaking the five-inch length limit and reaching six to seven inches in length.
With this discovery, Xiao Fei became even more satisfied, as it meant that the day he rode a swim bladder to fly into the sky was not far off.