Life is quite leisurely.

The medicinal seeds brought back in March had finally reached the time for harvest. Chen Yu held the herbs and walked back into the courtyard.

This single stalk of Baoxin Grass had borne only three cyan fruits, its roots and stems resembling vines. If one were to cover the fruit and leaves at the top, its appearance would be indistinguishable from a normally matured Baoxin Grass.

Plucking one of the fruits and bringing it before his eyes, under the shrouding veil of his spiritual perception, that layer of cyan skin seemed to emit a faint spiritual luminescence, vastly different from the dim, faded environment all around.

He was hardly unfamiliar with this; a spiritual plant's manifestation under spiritual power had always been thus—the unique brilliance of all things detached and clinging to its surface. Apart from the pure radiance in his vision, he had also witnessed other hues, including scarlet, amber, yellow, and green.

The connection between spiritual plants and these colors had yet to be fully explored, but Chen Yu always felt that the two were not entirely unrelated.

However, compared to his discoveries regarding magic arrays and array patterns, he had seen too many of these bizarre phenomena in spiritual plants long ago and had grown accustomed to them. Even if he could not fathom them for the moment, he did not take it to heart at all.

His gaze shifted up and down, scrutinizing the cyan fruit.

The fruit looked somewhat firm, but its stem had already begun to turn yellow and wither, indicating that it was indeed ripe. This was the insight he had gained after multiple rounds of cultivation using spiritual qi: whenever such a condition appeared, it was either a failure of catalysis due to over-nourishment, or complete maturity.

Could it be that it needed to be ripened in a jar of straw like persimmons?

Chen Yu pondered for a moment, thinking that perhaps it was fully ripe, yet perhaps it was not meant to be eaten in the first place, which explained why it felt firm to the pinch and looked cyan in hue.

Furthermore, this fruit was too small, about the size of a soybean, and there were only three in total. Even if he wanted to ripen it in a jar, it was practically impossible.

Sitting in bleak solitude was no solution. He wanted to feed it to Brother Chicken, but recalling how those ground dandelions last time had caused Brother Chicken and his family quite a bit of suffering, he weighed his options and decided to find another subject for experimentation—at least giving Brother Chicken a few days off.

With such relentless round-the-clock exhaustion, no matter how battle-hardened one was, it would be too much to bear.

His thoughts turned, and he quickly locked onto a target.

Rising, he took a few steps and arrived in front of the large water vat. Chen Yu looked ahead to see a soft, white belly patterned with fine scales floating upward toward the sky, drifting lazily in the water to catch the sunlight.

Two pairs of short fins paddled leisurely, parting the duckweed clinging to one side as the breeze blew, revealing a fish head.

Perhaps sensing movement, the pale, tender fish belly instantly flipped over. With a splash of water, nothing remained in his view except a dark back streaking downward and disappearing into the depths.

This black fish certainly knew how to enjoy itself.

Pinching the fruit between two fingers, Chen Yu stood before the water vat and witnessed this scene, unable to help the sigh that its life of leisure was far more relaxed than his own as a Daoist temple master.

Though it had cost him a great deal of effort to capture the creature, he had done so purely on a whim. The black fish was not making a fuss, and for the time being, he had no intention of boiling it into fish soup.

Ever since it was placed in the water vat, this nameless fish had remained quiet, bearing no resemblance at all to a ferocious wild fish that preyed on other fish and shrimp.

For several days, most times he saw it, it would be floating with its belly rounded upward, lazily basking in the sun.

When he first saw it, it was truly astonishing, but as its leisureliness grew day by day, it made him feel that had its fins not been so short, it would likely have joyfully patted its belly and sung out loud.

Moreover, Chen Yu discovered that although the black fish ate meat, its desire for food was not strong; it would eat whatever was offered. Occasionally, when he forgot to feed it, it would even consume the duckweed floating on the water's surface.

It was entirely unpicky, a trait that rivaled that stubborn deer. At least after putting it in the water vat, aside from feeding it two small shrimp at the very beginning, he had only given it blades of grass to make do the rest of the time, yet the black fish still looked plump and well-fed.

Having been kept in the vat for several days, instead of becoming thin and emaciated like the fish, crabs, and loaches of previous times, it had actually grown somewhat rounder.

Truly bizarre.

Chen Yu suspected whether eating too many earthworms nourished by spiritual liquid had caused some sort of mutation in this fellow, otherwise such unusual aquatic phenomena wouldn't occur.

And what interested him most was the spirituality displayed by this black fish, that cleverness as if it had attained sentience.

Especially after the gluttonous deer visited a few times and they frolicked and played together, this appearance of possessing wisdom had thoroughly captured his attention.

Unfortunately, after numerous spiritual probes and attempts at communication, Chen Yu confirmed that although this black fish possessed various unusual traits, it lacked intelligence in the ordinary sense.

In terms of behavior, wildness and instinct still dominated.

Of course, recently the creature had been spending more and more time basking in the sun, and its wild nature seemed to be gradually fading away.

Glug, glug!

A flurry of bubbles swelled up, and the black fish floated up once more. After swimming a circle, it settled against the side of the water vat farthest from Chen Yu, continuing to lie on its back right against the glass-like edge of the water.

He watched for a moment, making a scooping motion with his palm. Amidst the splashing of water, droplets spiraled upward, enveloping the entire fish within a sphere of water.

The black fish struggled at first, but perhaps recalling something—how similar this water sphere was to the previous one, and how, aside from a slight difference in size, it was equally impossible to break free from or escape—it simply gave up. Like a salted fish transformed by the sunlight, it flipped over and silently practiced backstroke.

Seeing that the creature was sensible, Chen Yu gave a light smile and dissolved the water sphere. As the fish opened its lips wide to draw in air, he flicked the cyan fruit directly into its mouth.

He even gave the fish's head a slight shake to ensure it wouldn't spit the fruit back out.

Plop! Feeding complete, he tossed it back into the water vat.

He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, figuring that results should show in two or three days. Medicinal seeds cultivated with spiritual qi were ninety-nine percent free of toxins, though it wasn't entirely out of the question that it might be inedible, much like the fresh sheep-milk fruit. All he could do now was wait and see if any strange changes would occur.

August 11th, sunny.

The consecutive days of scorching sun cast a faint wave of sultry heat over the entire Shiya County, and the warmth and coolness brought by the earlier heavy rain had completely dissipated.

In the ditches at the foot of the mountain, water flowed gurglingly, channeled from the nearby mountain ponds to irrigate the fields of every household.

After the spring millet, some farmers would sow a crop called upland grain. It was similar to rice, though inferior in yield, and required multiple watering and soaking sessions to grow.

Sown at the turn of late spring and early summer to succeed the spring millet, it could be harvested by the tail end of autumn.

For the mountainous countryside, it was better than nothing.

Compared to upland grain, farmers naturally preferred to cultivate rice; however, this region of Xizhou was far, far away from the Central Plains and the Southeast, and the rice varieties cultivated in only a very few places in those regions had not yet been introduced here.

Chen Yu had no memory of such a thing in his mind; he had only heard of it from a fellow Daoist the last time he went down the mountain to attend a Dharma assembly.

In ancient times, such scattered planting patterns from east to west were entirely normal. Not to mention different crops in the east, west, south, and north, sometimes even within a single prefecture or county, the crops grown by different villages varied widely.

On one hand, this was due to inconvenient transportation which hindered communication and dissemination; on the other hand, the yield differences among most crops were actually quite small, and many had only recently been domesticated and cultivated from wild mountain grasses.

He still remembered that several hundred years ago, this entire region of Xizhou was filled with people drinking blood and devouring raw meat—how could there be any talk of farming?

Upon the large bluestone, accompanied by a wisp of clear incense, Chen Yu dismissed the wandering thoughts in his mind and gathered his focus to achieve stillness.

As the faint wisp of smoke drifted past his nostrils, the incense for subduing the spirit and stilling the realm—crafted from the fruit of the mutated mixed-aroma herb—exhibited extraordinary efficacy. He quickly reined in his thoughts, his mind settling into stillness, and a strand of spiritual light surged and undulated within his consciousness.

Two days prior, considering that incense sticks were rather inconvenient, he had remolded the mixture into incense tablets. When needed, he simply had to cut off two pieces and place them in the censer to use.

In the temple, there was a portable censer about the size of a palm.

It was exceedingly compact.

The only thing that required a bit of effort on his part now was having to prepare some charcoal; otherwise, amidst the smoke and blazing fire, how could one ever find the peace of mind to enter deep meditation?