Chapter Ten: Preparations

Page 1 of 3

What is this?

As the turbulence in his sea of consciousness gradually subsided, Chen Yu blinked, squatting in place, somewhat at a loss.

A… mass of air?

Could the great white stalk now produce oxygen?

But the milky white substance surely wasn’t oxygen; his meager knowledge of chemistry left him unable to make sense of what he had just seen. Dazed, he could only sense he had cultivated something extraordinary.

He tried to guide it with his mind, but the wave that had surged through his consciousness earlier seemed only a fleeting coincidence. Now, without the aid of his inner sea, all Chen Yu could do was stare helplessly.

He was unwilling to break open the root to see what was inside, loath to destroy the only fruit of his labor.

He stood and circled the great white stalk several times, unable to find a solution, so he could only leave it be for now.

“I’ll keep it for now and see what happens next.”

Since it was a vegetable, it would mature one day. Whether this unique white root would bloom or bear fruit, Chen Yu had no idea. Whenever that time came, there would surely be some change.

Should he plant a few more?

Gazing at the two remaining empty plots in the herb field, the thought kept creeping in, but after some consideration, he suppressed his curiosity and decided to wait a couple more days.

One would suffice. If he planted too many and they all got catalyzed by his spiritual essence, who knew if they’d develop some strange connection and gain sentience on the spot—what then!

He wasn’t comfortable planting them elsewhere, and besides, he’d been using his spiritual essence rather liberally these past days. Its quantity had visibly dwindled.

So he decided to wait and see. If the great white root didn’t mutate further and continued to grow healthily, perhaps he had truly discovered the proper way to use his spiritual essence.

“It just feels inexplicably fitting for farming,” Chen Yu mused, reflecting on how long he had experimented with this golden finger of his.

Only today did he finally stumble upon a potential clue.

In fact, long ago, when he first pried off a mote of spiritual essence and infused it into a wild weed, witnessing that bizarre scene, he’d formed a vague suspicion about these miraculous particles.

In subsequent experiments, though the results were less than ideal, he still made some new discoveries.

As he’d noted when feeding it to the red earthworm, the vivid visual enhancements were merely the outward appearance of the spiritual essence’s effect. If his guess was correct, its true function was more of a stimulus to the object’s very core.

When the stimulation reached a certain point, it could even trigger something akin to evolution!

He called it evolution rather than mutation because, as Chen Yu observed, the effects seemed largely benign.

Whether it was the thick-skinned beans, the enlarged Lanting fruit, or even the deceased crimson earthworm.

None had sprouted extra eyes or grown faces—nothing as grotesque as one might imagine. At most, they seemed a little surprising at first glance.

Who would have thought a Lanting fruit could grow so large!

At the thought, Chen Yu couldn’t help but regret never tasting that fist-sized Lanting fruit.

To his mind, spiritual essence was neither good nor bad in itself; the process was simply too abrupt, and for previous test subjects, a single mote was far too concentrated to be absorbed.

If he could harness this benign stimulation, perhaps some interesting things might happen.

Now, Chen Yu was eager to know—if a tiny Lanting fruit could grow to such a size, what about spring millet? Would half an acre yield a thousand catties?

Page 2 of 3

If that were truly possible, he’d probably laugh out loud even in his dreams.

…

Thus, days passed, and Chen Yu often lingered in the herb field, squatting on the ground, scrutinizing the great white stalk.

As time went on, he could clearly feel its condition improving—the leaves unfurling, growing lush and vibrant, no longer withering as before.

The other vegetables he’d transplanted at the same time were all buried under yellow earth, decomposing under the influence of the spiritual essence to nourish the growth of the white root.

Save for the first time, he had never again managed to pierce the root’s surface with his sight, yet Chen Yu was sure what he’d seen then was no illusion.

Something was surely brewing within this plant, however unchanged its outward appearance.

This wasn’t idle fancy, for each time he drew near, a faint tremor would stir in the depths of his consciousness.

No longer as intense as the first time—now, the waves in his sea of consciousness barely rippled at all.

In a blink, mid-March arrived.

Zzz—ka ka

Leaning the rice jar, Chen Yu bent over and reached in, head turned away, scooping out the last grains into a bowl.

Staring at the meager half bowl of rations, he could already foresee his gnawing hunger that afternoon.

Nowhere near enough!

He was at least half a martial artist; being well-fed was the bare minimum.

He didn’t have the means for hearty meat, nor the tolerance for large bowls of wine, but—he couldn’t possibly train on an empty stomach. Even if his body could bear it, his stomach couldn’t.

“I’ll have to go down the mountain,” he decided.

He’d hoped to hold out until after sowing season, but the current situation left no room for delay.

“It looked like there was plenty left before, how did it empty out in the blink of an eye?”

Rice jar: What do you think?

Sighing, Chen Yu hurriedly set about cooking, picking a few stalks of newly sprouted jade-leaf greens from the garden to make do with.

“Just as well, I harvested some tangerine-silver fruit a few days ago. This trip down the mountain, I’ll buy grain and also pick up some herbs for White Cloud Powder.”

The tangerine-silver fruit had been left to dry on the bamboo fence, fruit and root separated and sealed tight.

In his memory, both could be used medicinally—the fruit could be combined with White Cloud Powder to promote circulation and nourish the blood. The root also nourished the blood, though in different ways—essentially, it was an aphrodisiac.

This time, Chen Yu planned to take the dried tangerine-silver roots to the pharmacy in exchange for silver to supplement his household funds.

This tangerine-silver plant wasn’t very old, but age was merely one way to gauge a herb’s potency.

Whether it was the result of rumor or deliberate misinformation, to seasoned herbalists like the old Taoist, the belief that “the older, the better” was just a tale to fool common folk. Believe it at your peril.

His predecessor hadn’t learned much, but he had picked up a few tricks in this regard. As far as Chen Yu knew, when the pharmacies in town bought herbs, they looked at the gatherer first, and only then at the quality of the herbs.

The reason was obvious: they wanted to see if the seller was an unlucky sucker.

Page 3 of 3

After all, this wasn’t some world of immortal cultivators where age equaled strength.

Most herbs were like this—of course, there were exceptions, but they were exceedingly rare and not the norm.

Yet people were ever curious; anything that defied common knowledge would always be in high demand.

Forget century-old ginseng—even the great white root behind his house, if it grew for ten years, would have people clamoring for it as a fairy herb, claiming a single bite could invigorate the blood, two bites might grant instant ascension.

“Come to think of it, there really is a nearly sentient great white root behind my house now!”

Chen Yu shook his head with a wry smile. In recent days, that white stalk had become ever more peculiar—not glowing, nor exuding fragrance, but rather, it had begun to grow in reverse.

The day the spiritual essence network in the soil was fully absorbed, its whole trunk shrank somewhat. After five or six days, as of this morning, the once-prominent white root had completely retreated underground, leaving only two palm-sized leaves swaying above the soil.

At this point, he no longer had any idea what it might become.

To avoid overdoing it, he refrained from adding more spiritual essence.

He just hoped it wouldn’t sprout legs and run off into the night like in the old stories.

After tidying up, Chen Yu gathered his things, putting the tangerine-silver root in his pouch.

He hadn’t been idle these past days, either.

He’d climbed the mountain twice more, gathering wild greens to enrich the temple garden.

On one such trip, fortune smiled: on his way back, he spotted a long-eared white fungus at the edge of a grassy patch.

It resembled deer antler, pure and white.

Consulting his memory, he confirmed it was another aphrodisiac he had no use for. He planned to sell it along with the tangerine-silver root on his trip to town.

A pity he hadn’t run into that clumsy deer—he’d have liked to see what it felt like to pet a sika deer.

Meanwhile, after several days, the bamboo poles had finished drying. After roasting the joints, he was now hanging them with a river stone from the ceiling beam to set their shape. They’d be ready to try out when he returned.

“Come to think of it, am I forgetting something?”

Just as he was about to set out, Chen Yu glanced back at the temple nestled in the dappled green.

His handsome face tilted toward the sun, long hair tied back, secured with a bamboo hairpin with casual ease.

“Ah, well—whatever it is, it can’t be that important.”

Turning onto the mountain path, the young Taoist’s figure slowly faded from sight.

In the silence of the temple, atop a pillar,

A bamboo tube trembled faintly.