Chapter 004: Rio Tinto’s Mineral Veins

“It’s really Lord Du Fan!”
“Lord Du Fan is back again!”
“Wow! Lord Du Fan is so powerful! He’s brought so many magical beasts!” As Du Fan returned to City of Doha, the screams of the underground soldiers came one after another.
It’s no wonder these soldiers were making such a fuss—thousands of griffins were flying towards City of Doha in overwhelming numbers. These level-7 magical beasts with lion heads and eagle bodies, whose wingspan reached nearly eight meters, were indeed a breathtaking sight when thousands of them flew together towards the city!
Soon, inside City of Doha, Du Fan headed straight to a quiet area in the east.
There, there was a large forest. When planning the entire city, Du Fan had intended to turn this area into a public recreational space for Doha, but due to the huge scale of the project, construction had never started. This time, with the arrival of the elves, this forest was assigned to the elves’ archers as their residence.
Such a quiet forest was exactly what the elves liked. Covering nearly several hundred acres, it could accommodate tens of thousands of people.
As Du Fan led a large group of griffins into the forest, shadowy figures began to appear one after another. Agile elves emerged from all directions in the forest.
“It’s me! Du Fan!” Seeing the elves raising their long elf bows at the griffins, Du Fan immediately shouted.
Hearing Du Fan’s voice, the elves lowered their bows.
“Elder Du Fan, what’s the matter with these griffins?” asked Ma Shan, a leading elf, in confusion upon seeing Du Fan.
“I caught them for you to use as mounts,” Du Fan said, looking at the elves.
“Mounts?” Hearing this, excitement appeared on the elves’ faces.
These griffins actually appeared in small numbers in the elves’ forests. Some lucky elves who encountered them trained them as their mounts. There were no more than fifty elves who owned griffins! Thus, having a griffin was something the elves were very proud of. Moreover, besides strength, elves needed luck to obtain such magical beasts, as griffins were rare and usually lived in the Twilight Mountains.

“Elder Du Fan, are all these griffins for us?” an elven archer said excitedly, stammering.
“Probably. There are over three thousand in total, prepared especially for you elven archers,” Du Fan replied with a nod.
Hearing this, the elves present were so excited they could hardly speak. Seeing them at a loss, Du Fan shouted, “Go and call all the elves here quickly! Come and prepare to sign the contracts.”
At Du Fan’s words, all the elves disappeared to find their companions. Looking at the griffins everywhere, Du Fan ordered that a thousand remain on the ground while the rest flew up into the trees.
With such huge griffins, only one could stand on each large tree, and even then, the trees swayed violently under their weight.
Soon, all the elven archers arrived.
“Line up! One by one!” Du Fan ordered firmly.
To sign a contract with a magical beast, one had to subdue it. Although these elven archers were at level eight, one level higher than the level-seven griffin beasts, these griffins were still flying magical beasts. If level-eight elves were to subdue these level-seven flying griffins, it would be quite good if half of them succeeded.
Hearing Du Fan’s words, the elves began to line up one by one.
Meanwhile, Du Fan had already gathered the griffin beasts together. Though they weren’t in formation, they were at least grouped together.
Walking up to the griffins on the ground, Du Fan shouted, “Let’s begin! One at a time!”
Upon hearing this, the elves who had already taken their positions stepped forward.
“Be ready. The moment my hand leaves the griffin’s head, you must step forward to sign the contract!” Du Fan said seriously. “If you sign, you’ll have to subdue them yourselves.”
“Okay, I understand,” the elf replied, nodding repeatedly.
“Are the rest of the clan members clear? The moment my hand leaves the griffin’s head, you’ll only have five seconds to sign the contract. If you miss those five seconds, you’ll have to rely on your own strength to subdue the griffin,” Du Fan shouted to the elves behind him.

“Understood, Elder Du Fan.” Hearing Du Fan’s words, all the elves spoke out loudly.
Nodding at the elf standing in front of him, Du Fan produced a milky-white gas from his hand and pressed it directly onto the griffin’s head. His radiant combat energy had a synergistic effect when used against spells that imposed restrictions. Soon, Du Fan removed his hand from the griffin’s head. As soon as he did, the elf waiting nearby immediately placed his hand on the griffin’s head.
Just two seconds later, the elf archer also removed his hand from the griffin’s head. After that, the griffin became very docile and followed the elf archer. It seemed the elf archer had successfully contracted with the griffin.
In fact, as soon as Du Fan removed his hand from the griffin’s head, these elf archers only needed two to three seconds to contract with those griffins.
Of course, what these elf archers didn’t know was that when Du Fan lifted the restrictions placed on the griffins by Tek, he had caused mental chaos, stunning most of them.
After several hours of effort, nothing went wrong, and the thousand elf archers managed to contract with all thousand griffins.
…
A few days later, the official in charge of recruitment reported the progress to Du Fan.
“Lord, this time I recruited over 18,000 students of appropriate age who are suitable for learning magic. As you instructed, I arranged for them all to settle down.”
“Hmm. Were there any students with strong mental strength but unable to sense energy?” Du Fan asked.
“No, my lord,” the recruitment official replied promptly.
“Hmm, not a single one?” Du Fan pressed further upon hearing this.
“Indeed, my lord. There have been none. Though some lack the ability to sense energy, their mental strength is four to five times greater than ordinary people, or even ten times stronger—such cases have truly never occurred,” the recruitment official said immediately.
Hearing this, Du Fan suddenly felt relieved. It seemed that abnormals like himself were still too rare. Traveling through dimensions, haha—what were the chances that a soul could traverse to another space?

“If there aren’t any, it’s fine. Hehe, according to your estimate, there aren’t many suitable students left for the Magic Academy to train in magic, right?” Du Fan said with a smile.
“By estimate, the number of eligible young people suitable for magic training who we haven’t recruited yet shouldn’t exceed a thousand!” the recruitment officer said.
“That’s good, that’s good,” Du Fan said with a smile.
After the recruitment officer left, Du Fan went straight to Ringtone.
“Ringtone, how much Fireweed can you grow using this amount of Water of Life?” Du Fan asked, taking out a quarter barrel of Water of Life.
“Du Fan, are you planning to use this much Water of Life to cultivate Fireweed?” Ringtone was surprised to see such a large amount at once.
“Mm, I need explosives made from Fireweed urgently,” Du Fan said, noticing Ringtone’s expression.
“When do you need them?” Ringtone asked quickly.
“In ten days,” Du Fan replied.
“Since we have ten days, we can grow much more Fireweed,” Ringtone said with a smile. “If estimates are correct, ten days should be enough to grow 100,000 pounds of Fireweed from this amount of Water of Life.”
The amount of Water of Life used is proportional to the cultivation time—the shorter the time, the more Water of Life is required.
“Then I’ll just need 50,000 pounds of Fireweed,” Du Fan said, taking back half of the Water of Life.
Seeing Du Fan take it back, Ringtone smiled but said nothing.
Du Fan noticed her smile and, smiling in turn, took out more Water of Life.
“Ringtone, please keep this Water of Life for me,” Du Fan said with a smile.
“Du Fan, it’s not right for me to keep this much Water of Life,” Ringtone quickly replied, watching his actions.
“Keep it. You’ve seen its power—just one cup can save a person’s life as long as they’re not dead. Keep it so I can feel at ease when I’m not around.” Du Fan explained.
Only then did Ringtone store all the Water of Life.
“Should we still pack it in paper packets of half a pound each?” Ringtone asked Du Fan.

“Not bad, still half a jin per pack,” Du Fan replied.
“Do we need to put a large amount of iron pellets inside?” Hearing Du Fan’s words, Ringtone began to ask.
“No need this time,” Du Fan said in response to her question.
Fifty thousand jin of Fireweed equaled 1,500 jin of explosives. In ten days, when the dwarves started mining the Lituo vein, it should come in handy.
Suddenly, Du Fan felt a strong sense of reluctance.
The water from the Spring of Life was considered a divine-grade item on the continent, aside from the elves. With so much of that water, only a little over 1,000 jin of explosives were obtained. To be honest, in Du Fan’s eyes, it wasn’t worth it.
After some thought, he realized that there seemed to be plenty of this water among the Ancient Tree elves. With that thought, Du Fan gradually felt more relieved.
Soon, the six days agreed upon with Leader He Li arrived. That noon, Du Fan directly controlled Qing Suo to head toward the Lituo vein, and along the way, they quickly spotted the Bilu tribe at the mine.