Chapter 46: Schemes

Eating peach blossoms all day isn’t much of a solution; compared to that, he much preferred to taste the flavor of peaches themselves.

Carrying a soil basket, Chen Yu bent down in the mountain field and began weeding.

The hillside soil and rocks were somewhat exposed, and the grass grew embedded in the earth, requiring considerable effort to pull out. If there were large clusters, he would even need an iron hoe. Cultivating mountain fields was always like this—twice the effort for half the result.

But he had no other choice. This patch was the best land he could find nearby. If he wanted better fields, he would have to go downhill or venture deeper into the mountains, to places where withered branches and leaves had decomposed into fertile soil.

Chen Yu was unwilling to trouble himself further and planned to manage this piece of land well. Besides, he had other means. He possessed spiritual liquid, which could largely substitute for fertilizer, hastening crop growth and maturation.

However, he had yet to decide whether to apply the spiritual liquid, waiting to see if the spring millet in his medicinal field would exhibit any side effects.

He didn’t spend long weeding. Being diligent in the fields, there were few weeds, and he quickly finished.

Next came watering.

The clouds above had thinned, and it was uncertain whether it would rain. The wind whistled persistently by his ears, but no raindrops fell.

The water was drawn from a small pond formed by a shallow mountain stream halfway up the slope. It was not deep, fed by a mountain rivulet that had flowed for over a decade, yet there was no sign of fish or shrimp.

Originally, tall straight trees grew on both sides, but the disciples of the Cloud Crane Temple had used the area for fetching water and chopping firewood.

After excessive cutting, the patch had become bare, now overgrown only with wild grasses reaching up to his ankles.

In a corner, two or three dozen reeds swayed. It was June, so they had yet to bloom. As Chen Yu approached, balancing the carrying pole, a wild pheasant with mottled plumage called out once, then flapped its wings in panic and flew away. Peering into the reeds, he soon saw a nest woven from messy dry grass.

Intertwined with tree roots, fallen leaves, and scraps of hemp found somewhere, the nest was perched on reed stalks, beneath which clear pond water shimmered.

The nest was only half complete. Without lingering, he set down the water bucket, scooped up more than half of its contents, hoisted the load on his shoulders, and walked away briskly.

There were many wild pheasants nearby. Besides the Cloud Crane Temple, Qingtaishan was uninhabited. In earlier days, a few Taoist practitioners would occasionally enter the mountains to forage, but as their numbers dwindled, the wild birds and animals had multiplied.

This pond offered little food—no fish or shrimp. Even if the birds bred here, they would have to forage for beetles and earthworms nearby or nibble on grass seeds, much like the chickens back at the coop, managing to fill their bellies one way or another.

On the mountain path, Chen Yu’s thoughts were scattered, but his steps were light and nimble, each footfall barely grazing the stone steps as if skimming water’s surface.

Graceful and agile, his movements were fluid.

Of all the techniques taught at the Cloud Crane Temple, only this footwork pleased him. Perhaps the heavens compensated for his mediocre martial skills elsewhere by granting him rapid progress in stepping techniques. His advancement was swift, rivaling that of internal training enhanced by energy refinement.

By now, this skill had almost reached perfection, worthy even of admiration from a resurrected elder Taoist.

The water bucket was flat-bottomed, not pointed or round. He climbed steadily, never stopping. Even if tired, he could have set it down to rest, but Chen Yu carried it all the way to the mountain field, not spilling a drop. Every scoop was poured carefully over the spring millet seedlings.

The ladle was long, over three meters, with a wooden edge at the mouth to help distribute water evenly across the field.

It took him half an hour back and forth to finish watering.

...

The afternoon passed quietly. The mountain was peaceful. After finishing the watering, Chen Yu rested and leafed through Taoist scriptures. Lately, he had been pondering how to write his own book.

He had yet to put pen to paper. The temple had brushes and inkstones but lacked sufficient writing paper.

Not that there was none—just too little for his intended use.

Writing was a process of self-reflection. Sometimes thoughts in the mind needed to be committed to paper to reveal flaws.

Once the book was made, he could read and review it daily, adding, deleting, and refining his ideas to keep them coherent and on track.

Especially regarding cultivation, there was no room for carelessness.

In recent days, he planned to descend the mountain briefly, to visit the county town. First, to buy food supplies—cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and noodles. If he could find ginger, he would buy some, along with star anise and other spices.

Second, to purchase paper and a cleansing agent.

The latter, also called ‘Guo Jing,’ meaning household cleanliness, was a local product used for washing cookware. It removed grease stains, similar to caustic soda or lye. The Cloud Crane Temple had some in stock, but it was recently depleted. After frying food in oil yesterday, he realized cleaning was troublesome; a greasy residue lingered on his fingertips.

He boiled water twice before managing to clean the pots properly. Fortunately, firewood was abundant on the mountain.

“No rush to go down yet. Better wait until after the spring millet harvest,” he thought.

...

Returning to the mountain in mid-May, he poured a bag of spiritual liquid onto the medicinal field. The spring millet was growing well, already tasseling with a hint of golden color.

The millet cultivated with spiritual liquid grew not only faster but bore thinner husks and larger grains. Each ear produced nearly thirty kernels.

In his memory, this spring millet differed from the ‘yellow millet’ he had seen before in his previous life. Both yield and taste were much improved. Ordinarily, spring millet rarely produced more than twenty kernels per ear, often with empty or shriveled husks.

“The stalks are sturdy, not crooked like the others.”

Grain crops were prone to disease and pests, but this field showed no such problems.

Chen Yu planned to calculate the total yield after harvest and mill some for testing. If any side effects appeared, he would stop using the spiritual liquid immediately.

But this was unlikely. So far, the spiritual liquid, like the spiritual energy, while less potent, brought only positive effects. Adverse reactions would only arise if the plants absorbed too much and became overwhelmed.

It would be a matter of days.

Counting it all, the millet had spent some time in wooden trays before being sown immediately after seeding. A month had passed, and these plants were far ahead of those in the mountain fields.

Rubbing his chin, he considered sowing another batch, provided these millet crops proved problem-free.

“Though if I do, I’ll need to add more primordial spirit roots to the fourth batch, just to ensure there’s enough later.”

One white rod could catalyze a primordial spirit root containing eight to eleven energy beads, equivalent to four to five bags of spiritual liquid. Although he had started storing the liquid in bamboo tubes, he still preferred to think in terms of bags, as the amount in each tube varied with its size. Water pouches were more standardized for easier tracking.

“One application requires one bag. This medicinal field has been watered twice; if expanded, it would need another watering.”

Three bags per month wasn’t much.

Three bags could guarantee abundant harvests and accelerate growth by several months—a trade-off he considered well worth it.