Four ethereal, Deep Blue spirits flew out of the necromantic energy orb, one after another.
Simon whispered, "Today is the day of your death, and also the day of your rebirth.
Today, you begin a new life, ranked by your order of resurrection.
Your current names are numbers: One, Two, Three, Four."
Death and pain had completely twisted the souls of these four bandits.
They lost many memories in the process, becoming obedient, powerful, and terrifying.
Hearing Simon's words, the four ghosts nodded docilely, "Understood, Master."
Simon was very satisfied with them; powerful souls, excellent intelligence.
They could learn, far more useful than those Sheep Undead.
"Undead have a unique talent for frost magic and telekinesis.
I will teach you, and you must learn."
Simon brought them into his Pure Land, then followed them in.
In the current Pure Land, an eternal, never-setting sun hung in the sky.
The land was a smooth wilderness, with a single ice peak standing in the center, the only undulation.
His mother's teardrop was preserved at the summit of the ice peak.
Beyond the ice field lay a circular expanse of fields, where lush crops had already unfurled fresh green branches.
There was also a grassland where a flock of sheep grazed under the supervision of the Wolf Pack.
Simon's experimental area was south of the ice field.
After spending some time explaining magic to the four human undead, Simon left the Pure Land.
According to his plan, he was due to purchase iron ore.
The mine was not far from the Wolf Pack Resting Place, but when Simon arrived, he found the atmosphere very tense.
Several men were huddled together, arguing incessantly.
Simon stopped to listen for a while and roughly understood that they had been robbed last night, and a guard had died.
The Tundra was already sparsely populated, so it seemed the attackers of the mine and those who broke into the Wolf Pack Resting Place were the same group.
Simon walked over and asked from a distance, "Gentlemen! I'm here to buy ore! Do you have any iron ore?"
The crowd turned to scrutinize this strange man.
A grey-haired Nord elder walked over, his face ashen, but he tried his best to offer a gentle expression, "Friend, of course we sell iron ore.
How much do you need?"
"How much do you have?"
"We currently have five thousand pounds in stock."
"How do you sell it?"
"Two silver coins per pound."
After some haggling, Simon bought six hundred pounds of iron ore, spending almost all his silver coins.
The quality of these iron ores was average, but at least there were no fakes or shoddy goods.
The Troll was also given a large cart as a friendly gesture, and he rumbled off into the depths of the Tundra.
When he reached an uninhabited area, Simon immediately stored the ore in his Pure Land.
He planned to divide these six hundred pounds into two halves: one half to be smelted into steel ingots, and the other half to be transformed into gold ore using the Midas Touch spell, then cast into gold bricks.
After a period of busy work, five days later, he had bought all the remaining stock from the mine.
Now he had more than enough steel ingots.
It had been a fruitful and busy week.
Simon had crafted the Sleeve Flying Swallow, a ninth-tier mechanical weapon from the Sword Casting Villa, and enchanted it with Soul Communion.
This way, when he controlled the Sheep Undead to possess them, these shuttle-shaped darts could fly at high speed within a radius of several hundred yards, like true flying swallows.
They were definitely essential tools for murder, arson, and travel.
This mechanism could also be activated once in mid-air, with internal components firing even smaller and swifter needles.
Whether poisoned or enchanted, they were deadly implements.
There was another set of hidden weapon techniques to complement the Sleeve Flying Swallow, but Simon did not need them.
Even with his telekinesis, they were very effective, far more flexible than pure martial arts.
And with undead possession, he could control a considerable number of Sleeve Flying Swallows at once—as long as there were enough undead.
Simply controlling them with a mental link only required a thought, which was very convenient.
This meant the sheep flock needed to expand.
Some areas of the Tundra had been almost completely scraped clean by Simon, now looking bare and flat, quite pitiful.
However, since it cost nothing, taking more was fine.
The four human undead—the Nord was named Number One, the Wood Elf was Number Two, the Imperial was Number Three, and the Orc was Number Four—had all learned basic frost magic.
Of course, for undead, this was not difficult at all, as necromantic energy itself was compatible with frost magic, having similar resonance.
Next was telekinesis.
For souls and spirits to influence matter, a medium is required, such as Soul Communion, a corpse, or telekinesis.
Undead usually cannot touch matter unless they master telekinesis, which allows them to exert real force on the material world.
This is also a talent of undead, or rather, telekinesis originated from undead.
Mages reconstructed the undead's influence on matter with alteration magic, which is how the spell telekinesis came to be.
The spell telekinesis precisely proves the overlap of matter and will at some fundamental level.
What the essence of the world is, and what form the gods who created the universe truly take, are mysteries worth pursuing for a lifetime.
Simon recently had quite a few ideas about alchemy.
Alchemy here specifically referred to potion-making: collecting materials like plants and minerals, then mixing them through methods such as distillation and grinding to release their internal magical energy, forming a miraculous potion.
This discipline also directly pointed to the essence of the world.
Many potions already touched upon the realm of metaphysics, which was undoubtedly helpful for Simon's magic studies.
Moreover, alchemical potions gave Simon hope for modifying internal energy.
If a special potion were used as blood, and meridians were sculpted in External Armor for the potion to circulate, allowing the undead to resonate with the potion's magical energy, perhaps a new form of energy could be generated.
The principle was essentially refining essence into qi, but the entire process involved external substances participating in the reaction.
Simon was unsure if the final result would be successful.
Seeing his experimental ideas becoming increasingly fantastical, Simon felt quite helpless.
However, sometimes the path of exploring mysteries is more important than the outcome.
Obsessing over modified internal energy, constantly drawing nourishment from various fields—it didn't matter what kind of flower such a tree would bloom, the sheer anticipation alone was enough to excite him.
Simon planned to find time to begin practicing hard qigong.
The Lion Appearance Sect's external martial arts were unparalleled, and even without internal energy, his brute strength alone would be enough for him to conquer the world.
Jonas was too young to practice body-damaging techniques.
Simon planned to wait ten years, until he had a solid foundation, before teaching him hard qigong.
As for himself, with Troll blood flowing through him, his physique differed from ordinary people, so the martial arts he practiced would need slight modifications to suit his individual body.
These were all matters that required effort, with no moment to relax.
Before he knew it, it was time to visit Jonas again.
Simon couldn't think of any new snacks to bring this time, so he simply made some dried mutton.
Changing the flavor would have to suffice as a way to get by.
However, this meant all the goat meat from his experiments was used up.
The sheep flock was currently in a recovery period, making large-scale slaughter inconvenient.
Simon planned to go fishing for seafood sometime later.
The fish pond was already set up, but there were no fish yet.
It seemed he needed to build a fishing boat and weave some fishing nets.
Fishing nets were difficult to make, so he would have to check Winterhold to see if there were any pre-made ones.
Thinking of this, Simon tucked a few large gold bricks into his pocket and turned to leave.
Winterhold, here I come again.
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