Spirit Plant Entry: Immortality Begins with Farming

The moment Chen Yuan's palm touched the dark red energy core, the entire skeleton of the Bone-Eating Vulture jolted violently as if struck by lightning.

"Ugh—!"

That wasn't a sound, but a shrill whistling sound of bones grinding together, mixed with the tremor of the soul, drilling straight into the brain.

The sensation from Chen Yuan's palm was both icy cold and scalding hot, like pressing on a piece of rotting flesh, sticky on the surface but burning deep inside.

The light of the gray-black stars pierced into his core from his palm.

Nourishes—

Like a red-hot iron being branded into oil.

The sound was so faint it was almost piercing.

"ah--!!!"

The guillotine's scream now took shape—a blood-red vision exploded before Chen Yuan and Bai Zhi's eyes simultaneously, and eight hundred years of fear mixed with excruciating pain crashed over them like a tidal wave.

Bai Zhi's legs went weak, and she almost knelt down.

"Hold your ground!" Chen Yuan yelled without turning his head, his hand seemingly welded to the core. "This is only the first strike!"

"The...first time?" The spiritual voice trembled uncontrollably in Chen Yuan's mind. "I feel...something...scraping my bones...from the inside..."

"Just scrape it off." Chen Yuan gritted his teeth, the gray-black light piercing deeper. "That filthy thing has grown into your bone; it has to be scraped clean. Bear with it."

Cluck cluck.

A thin crack appeared on the surface of the third rib on Lingjiu's right chest. Black smoke seeped out from the crack, carrying a sour, putrid smell mixed with the metallic stench of rust.

"Look!" Bai Zhi pointed to the crack, her voice strained, "Its bones..."

"Normal." Chen Yuan stared into the depths of the core—in his microscopic vision, countless black threads were curling and struggling like worms. He locked onto the nearest one, and the gray-black light gathered into a needle tip, then suddenly flicked it.

Snapped!

The black stockings broke.

"Awooo—!" The flame in the vulture's right eye suddenly shot up three feet high, and its entire skeleton began to creak and tremble as if it were about to fall apart. The bone spikes on its right wing suddenly rose up, pointing straight at Chen Yuan's back.

"Chen Yuan!" Bai Zhi wanted to rush over.

"Don't move!" Chen Yuan still didn't turn around, roaring at the bone vulture, "You begged me to do it! Now you're crying in pain? Too late!"

The bone spur hung in mid-air, its tip trembling violently.

The flame in his right eye flickered wildly between dark red and eerie green, moving as fast as if it were fighting.

"Continue..." The spiritual voice squeezed out from between his teeth.

"Are you crazy?!" another shrill voice pierced the air—it was the Evil Vulture. "He's scraping our souls! A few more strokes and we're done for!"

"Even if it's gone... it's better than now." The spirit gasped for breath. "Scrape."

Without wasting words, Chen Yuan split the gray-black light into three streams, simultaneously piercing the three intertwined black threads.

Sizzle—!

A louder sound, like meat pressed against a red-hot pan. A cloud of black mist burst from the vulture's chest, and the smell became even stronger—this time mixed with the smell of burnt feathers.

"Stop...stop for a moment..." The spiritual voice was so weak it was almost fading away. "I...can't breathe..."

"It can't be stopped." Chen Yuan's face was covered in sweat, beads of sweat dripping from his chin onto his core, hissing and emitting white smoke. "If we stop, the cut we just made will fester back up. It'll be a waste of time and effort."

"But I... really..." The spirit began to choke up, "It hurts so much... even more than when I was refined into the core of the array..."

"Then curse." Chen Yuan increased the force in his hand, and the fourth tuft of black silk snapped in the light. "Curse those bastards from the Blood Fiend Sect, curse this broken formation, curse these eight hundred years. If you curse it out, it will hurt less."

The bone vulture remained silent for two breaths.

Then, a roar exploded in Chen Yuan's and Bai Zhi's minds at the same time:

"You bastards of the Blood Fiend Sect—! I curse your ancestors for eighteen generations—!!!"

With a roar, his spiritual consciousness jolted. The flame in his right eye abruptly fixed on a ghostly green hue, still trembling, but no longer shifting.

Chen Yuan seized the opportunity and unleashed the full power of the Gray-Black Starry Sky!

Silvery-white light cascaded into the core like a waterfall. Patches of black silk began to melt, and the leaking demonic energy swirled into a black whirlwind within the vulture's chest cavity, causing its newly formed pale golden bone membrane to rattle.

But Lingjiu's body also began to break down.

First, the left wingtip—those finger bones, long since corroded and brittle—turned into grayish-white powder, falling off like sand. Then, the edges of the ribs peeled off piece by piece.

"Chen Yuan! It...it's breaking!" Bai Zhi's voice was choked with sobs.

"It's shredded flesh!" Chen Yuan roared back, veins bulging on his forehead. "Emerald green—!"

He slammed his left hand onto the vulture's sternum.

A pale green light surged out, clinging to the peeling bones. This time it wasn't destruction, but growth—the power of the emerald stars drilled deep into the bone, like spring rain seeping into parched land, urging the last remaining life force to sprout.

creak... creak...

New, pale golden bone slowly grew from the broken edges. It was slow, like a snail's crawl, but it was definitely growing.

It grows as you scrape it.

Lingjiu's consciousness was already blurred by pain.

"Uh...ah...ho..." Its sounds were incoherent, sometimes like whimpers, sometimes like the howls of a wild beast. The flame in its right eye flickered, the two consciousnesses completely tangled up. The newly grown bone had barely sprouted when it was shattered by the next wave of purifying pain, and the emerald light quickly rushed to mend it.

A loop. It never ends.

Bai Zhi turned her head, her shoulders trembling. She smelled a mixture of odors—burnt smell, blood, and a very faint, crisp scent unique to newborn bones.

Chen Yuan wasn't having an easy time either.

Simultaneously driving two stars, his meridians felt as if they were filled with molten iron.

The silvery-white stars flashed red wildly in his mind, warning him that he was about to overdraw his energy. The pale gold stars began to automatically repair the wounds in his body, but they couldn't keep up with the rate of destruction.

"Big guy!" Chen Yuan gasped for breath, "There's still... the very last forty percent left! It's wrapped around your soul marrow! This is the most crucial part, so stay alert! Hold on, and you'll be able to fly!"

The flame in the vulture's right eye flickered slightly.

"Fly..." Her spiritual consciousness drifted aimlessly. "I think... I've forgotten how to fly..."

"Think about it now!" Chen Yuan roared, "Think about what it felt like to have the wind whistling under your wings! Think about you soaring into the clouds, your feathers covered in water droplets! Think about how you used to roam freely across the vast sky and earth!"

"The sky..." the spiritual voice faded into the distance, "blue... the clouds are white..."

"Yes! Just like that!" Chen Yuan poured all his last bit of strength into his right hand, the gray-black light plunging deep into the core. "Hold on! I'll take you back!"

"ah--!!!"

The final purification begins.

The deepest black silk has already grown into one with the essence of the Vulture.

Peeling them off was like tearing flesh from one's own body. The vulture's consciousness completely dissipated, leaving only instinctive, continuous wailing. The speed at which its skeleton collapsed doubled, and the repair capabilities of the emerald star were clearly unable to keep up.

Blood seeped from the corner of Chen Yuan's mouth.

Blood dripped onto the core, hissing. His vision began to darken, and the scenery blurred.

"Damn it..." he squeezed out a single word through gritted teeth.

A cold hand suddenly pressed on his back.

Angelica dahurica.

Without a word, a gentle, warm current, carrying the scent of fresh grass, flowed from her palm into Chen Yuan's body.

It wasn't intense, but it was continuous, like a mountain spring soothing his almost dried-up meridians.

Chen Yuan didn't turn around, only managing to squeeze out a "...Thanks" from his throat.

Then he gritted his teeth, combined the life force that Bai Zhi had brought with his last bit of star power, and poured it all into his core!

Gray, black, green, and golden light mingled together, forming a chaotic torrent that crashed violently against the deepest black threads—

boom!!!

The energy core exploded with light.

It wasn't dark red, but a clean, bright, golden light. Where the light swept, the remaining black mist melted away like snow meeting the sun. The skeleton stopped collapsing, and newly formed pale golden bone tissue spread out like a tide, covering the entire body.

On the bone wings, illusory, flowing feather outlines grew.

The flame in his right eye finally settled—it was a clear, pale blue flame, burning quietly. The chaos within was gone, leaving only a bottomless weariness and a slight bewilderment, as if he had just woken up.

Bone-Eating Vulture?

No.

Now it should be called the Wind-Riding Vulture.

It slowly lowered its reborn head, its single, pale blue eye quietly watching Chen Yuan, who lay sprawled on the ground, barely able to breathe.

After a long time, a voice, still weak but no longer trembling or fragmented, gently echoed in Chen Yuan's mind:

"……wind."

"It seems... a little warmer."

Chen Yuan tried to grin, but his face only twitched.

Before everything went completely dark, he felt something supporting his body—soft, newly grown feathers, fluffy as if they had been sun-dried.

Then he knew nothing more.

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