Spirit Plant Entry: Immortality Begins with Farming

夜

When Yin Jiu reappeared, he brought a flask of wine.

It's not a spirit wine, it's the strongest mortal liquor.

He sat on a stone stool outside the thatched hut, poured two bowls, and pushed one bowl to Chen Yuan.

"drink."

Chen Yuan didn't move: "Cultivators drinking alcohol disrupts spiritual energy."

"What's disrupting the spiritual energy of those Heavenly Dao cultivators in Zhongzhou is..." Yin Jiu picked up the bowl and drank it all in one gulp, a sickly redness rising on his pale face. "The Ghost Path of the Western Desert cultivates Yin energy, death energy, and resentment energy. The potency in the wine is just enough to suppress the Yin coldness."

He put down the bowl, his ashen eyes fixed on Chen Yuan: "How many days have you been refining the blood?"

"The third day."

"How many drops of your essence were given?"

"Nine drops."

Yin Jiu nodded, took out a black pottery jar from his pocket, and placed it on the ground between the two of them.

The mouth of the jar was sealed with talisman paper, and the cinnabar patterns on the talisman paper had faded considerably.

"This contains 'Yellow Spring Soil,'" he said. "It's a special type of corpse-nurturing soil produced by the Western Desert Netherworld Sect, and it's also useful for ghost-path spiritual plants. Adding a little to the blood ginseng's pot can accelerate blood refining and also... reduce the amount of blood you bleed."

Chen Yuan didn't touch the pottery jar: "What's the price?"

"The price is that the Blood Ginseng will carry a trace of Netherworld energy." Yin Jiu poured another bowl of wine. "In the future, when you use its medicinal power to cultivate, your spiritual energy will also be mixed with Yin energy. For Ghost Path cultivators, it's a tonic; for Heaven Path cultivators... it's poison."

"You want me to switch to the path of the demon?"

"I want you to live." Yin Jiu looked up at him. "Although the Blood Refining Technique can control the Blood Ginseng, it requires twenty-one drops of essence blood for seven days of nourishment. You are only at the third level of Qi Refining, and your total essence blood is less than a hundred drops. If you take away twenty percent, your foundation will definitely be damaged. Using Yellow Spring Soil can save seven drops of blood."

Chen Yuan stared at the pottery jar.

The cinnabar patterns on the talisman paper seemed to wriggle slightly in the moonlight, like something alive.

He could feel the chill seeping from the jar—not just the low temperature, but a deeper, eroding force targeting life itself.

"Why did you help me?" he asked. "Don't say it's for the blood ginseng. A half-evil blood ginseng isn't worth all this trouble."

Yin Jiu remained silent for a long time.

After a long while, the sound of the night watchman's drum came from afar; it was the third watch of the night.

"Let me tell you a story," he began, his voice soft. "Twenty years ago, there was an inner disciple of the Yellow Springs Sect in the Western Desert. He was quite talented and reached the Foundation Establishment stage at the age of twenty-three. He had a junior sister who was frail and sickly. He spent ten years' worth of savings to ask someone to exchange her for a 'Life-Creating Pill' from the Central Plains, hoping to change her fate against all odds."

He paused, then took another sip of wine.

"She passed away the day before the elixir was delivered. He sat holding her body for three days, then made a decision—to use the forbidden technique of the Yellow Springs Sect to refine her into a 'living corpse.' He succeeded; she 'came back to life,' able to speak, walk, and even retain most of her memories. However, she could no longer be exposed to sunlight, could not eat hot food, and needed a drop of her closest relative's blood every month to keep her body from decaying."

Chen Yuan felt a chill run down his spine: "And then?"

"Later, his junior sister 'lived' for five years." Yin Jiu smiled, a bleak smile. "In the fifth year, the Yellow Springs Sect and the Netherworld Sect went to war, and he was ordered to go to war. Before he left, he left her six drops of his essence blood, sealed in a jade bottle, instructing her to take one drop every month. As a result, the war lasted for eight months, and when he returned, she had already..."

"Insufficient essence and blood?"

"That's enough." Yin Jiu shook his head. "She just couldn't bear to use it herself. The last bottle of essence blood was left untouched on the table, with a note next to it that read: Brother, don't bleed for me anymore."

The thatched hut was deathly silent.

Only the occasional barking of dogs in the distance and the rustling of the wind through the thatch could be heard.

"That disciple," Chen Yuan asked slowly, "is it you?"

Yin Jiu neither admitted nor denied it.

He stared at the swaying liquid in the bowl, and for the first time, a human emotion appeared in his gray pupils—not sadness, but a duller emptiness, as if the edges of time had been smoothed out.

"Since then, I've understood something," he said. "In this world, cultivators of the Heavenly Path seek immortality, cultivators of the Demonic Path seek freedom, and cultivators of the Ghost Path often just seek... to 'hold on.' To hold on to love, to hold on to memories, to hold on to that tiny bit of tenderness they don't want to let go of. But the cycle of reincarnation is broken, and the Netherworld itself is in dire need of protection. What can they hold on to? They can only use their lives, their blood, and their souls to gamble on that slim chance."

He looked up at Chen Yuan: "What you're doing now is no different from what I did back then. Old Zhao entrusted the seeds to you, and you wanted to plant them for him; Widow Li and her son were destitute, and you wanted to help them; the eight acres of land were on the verge of being abandoned, and you wanted to fight for a way to survive. These are all about 'preserving'. But what do you have to preserve? Besides your meager cultivation, besides this worthless body, what else do you have?"

Chen Yuan couldn't answer.

Yin Jiu stood up and pushed the pottery jar towards him: "The Yellow Spring Soil can save you seven drops of your essence blood. Seven drops of blood are enough for you to live for three more years, enough for you to see Widow Li's child grow up, enough for you to finish farming Old Zhao's fields. The price is only a trace of Yin energy contamination, adding more hurdles when you establish your foundation in the future—but you, with only four spiritual roots, don't have much hope of establishing your foundation to begin with, do you?"

After he finished speaking, he turned and walked into the night.

"I will come again at midnight tomorrow. Whether you use the Yellow Springs Soil or not is your choice."

The black robe disappeared into the darkness.

Chen Yuan stared at the pottery jar for a long time before reaching out and peeling off the talisman.

The moment the jar was opened, an indescribable odor surged out—not a foul smell, but a more complex aroma: aged grave soil, rotting roots, and a very faint scent, like the ashes of burnt incense.

The soil was pitch black, with a layer of grayish-white frost on its surface.

He scooped up a small pinch and placed it in his palm. It felt cool to the touch, and the particles were so fine that they didn't resemble soil, but rather ground bone meal.

Within the sea of ​​consciousness, the seedling of the term tree trembled violently!

Not a warning, but... a longing?

The sapling's roots danced wildly in the gray mist, pointing directly at the Yellow Springs soil in his palm.

At the same time, the [Evil Devouring] ability automatically activated—wisps of black energy were released from the soil and absorbed by the root system.

The moment he absorbed it, a shattered image flashed before Chen Yuan's eyes:

A murky yellow river, with countless pale arms floating on its surface;

There is a broken stone tablet by the river. The inscription is blurred, and only three characters can be recognized: "Wangchuan Ferry".

A woman in red sat at the ferry crossing, her back to him, her long hair hanging down into the river.

The woman slowly turned her head; her face had no features, only a mouth that stretched to her ears...

"what!"

Chen Yuan suddenly flung his hand, scattering Yellow Spring Soil all over the ground.

The image is shattered.

He was panting heavily, his forehead covered in cold sweat.

What was that just now? A hallucination? Or a memory left over from the underworld?

Within his sea of ​​consciousness, the sapling of the word tree absorbed the wisp of black energy, and the black runes on the bottommost leaf became clearer. At the same time, a message appeared:

[Absorb fragments of 'Netherworld Yin Energy']

[Enhanced 'Evil Devouring' ability: Can slowly purify low-level Yin and evil pollution]

[Warning: Excessive absorption may lead to cognitive distortion]

Cognitive distortion...

Chen Yuan recalled Yin Jiu's grayish-white pupils and his words, "What ghost cultivators often seek is simply to remain."

He also recalled Su Wanqing's warning: "The Yin Sha Rift allows demonic energy to leak out."

If the Netherworld of the Western Desert is damaged, and if the Reincarnation System is malfunctioning, then the wandering Yin energy, ghosts, and even obsessive ghost cultivators like Yin Jiu... all become explainable.

They are not doing evil.

It's a form of self-rescue.

Using the wrong methods, desperately clinging to something that is about to disappear in a collapsing world.

Chen Yuan squatted down and carefully gathered the spilled Yellow Springs soil back into the pottery jar.

The icy coolness returned when my fingers touched the soil.

But this time, he forced himself to feel carefully—beneath the coldness, there was a faint, almost imperceptible trace…

Warmth?

No, it's not warm in terms of temperature.

It's more abstract, like... the relief after an obsession has dissipated?

He suddenly understood.

Yellow Spring Soil is not ordinary soil; it is soil that has buried countless ghost cultivators, yin spirits, and living corpses.

It absorbed their obsessions in life, their resentment after death, and also the sense of "relief" they felt when they finally let go.

Therefore, Yin Jiu said that it "can save seven drops of essence blood" - it's not that the Yellow Spring Soil has any magical effects, but that the "relaxed" afterimages within it can counteract the blood ginseng's thirst for essence blood.

The price is that users will also be tainted by those fragments of obsession.

Chen Yuan covered the pottery jar and reattached the talisman paper.

Then he picked up the bowl of wine that Yin Jiu had left behind and drank it all in one gulp.

The strong liquor burned my throat, and my spiritual energy was indeed disrupted.

But the chaos wasn't caused by the gentle wood-elemental spiritual energy of the "Long Breath Technique," but by something deeper—a sense of alienation that he had been suppressing, a feeling that belonged to a transmigrator and was out of place in this world.

"Keep it..." he murmured to himself.

Over the past five years, he has been "adapting," "struggling," and "surviving."

But was there ever a moment when he wanted to "hold onto" something?

How to preserve the memory of the world called Earth?

How can we preserve the ordinary lives of ordinary people, free from the daily anxieties of life and death?

Or is it simply about preserving the almost blurred self behind the name "Chen Yuan"?

he does not know.

All he knew was that as he picked up his second bowl of wine, he heard the footsteps of a third person outside the thatched hut.

Light, steady, with each step perfectly spaced.

Chen Yuan put down the bowl without turning around.

"Manager Liao."

"How did you know it was me?" Manager Liao walked into the thatched shed, his brow furrowing as he looked at the wine bowls and earthenware jars on the table. "Yin Jiu was here?"

"Just left."

"Did he give you soil from the underworld?"

"Given it."

"Did you use it or not?"

"not yet."

Manager Liao breathed a sigh of relief, then tensed up again: "Did he put something in the wine?"

"Probably not," Chen Yuan said. "He wanted me to use the Yellow Spring Soil willingly; using medicine would have been a poor move."

"So, do you want to use it?"

Chen Yuan didn't answer, but instead asked, "Manager Liao, what was Yin Jiu's reaction when you refused him three years ago?"

Manager Liao was stunned for a moment: "He... smiled. He said, 'You'll regret this.' Then he left."

Did you ever regret it later?

"No," Manager Liao said firmly. "I've seen people corrupted by the Yellow Springs Soil. At first, it was just their spiritual energy carrying a yin aura, then their temperament changed drastically, and finally their souls were gradually assimilated by those fragments of obsession, turning them into... something neither human nor ghost."

"If I don't use the Yellow Spring Soil, my essence and blood will be depleted, my foundation damaged, and I'll have no hope of achieving Foundation Establishment in the future, and I won't live past a hundred. If I use it, there's a sliver of a chance to preserve my foundation, but the price is that I might become a monster." Chen Yuan looked up at him, "If you were in my shoes, what would you choose?"

Manager Liao opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Chen Yuan laughed: "You see, that's what makes Yin Jiu so brilliant. He never presents 'right or wrong,' but 'dilemmas.' Either path is a dead end; the only difference is whether the dead end comes quickly or slowly."

He stood up and walked to the blood ginseng in the corner of the thatched shed.

After three days of blood refining, most of the black spots on the blood ginseng have faded. The golden veins on the leaves have reappeared, but the color has changed from light gold to dark gold, like congealed blood.

He bit his fingertip, squeezed out the first drop of blood from the fourth day, and dripped it onto the ginseng root.

The moment the blood seeped in, the blood ginseng trembled slightly.

Within his sea of ​​consciousness, the roots of the seedling of the word tree simultaneously burrowed into the blood ginseng—absorbing evil energy while attempting to "purify" it.

Chen Yuan could sense that the evil energy absorbed by the sapling was mixed with fragments of Old Zhao's obsession: "Plant it...plant it..."

It was also mixed with the ferocity of the mountain demons, the corrosive power of demonic energy, and the chilling coldness of the Yellow Springs soil.

The [Evil Devouring] ability is slowly operating, gradually stripping away and transforming these chaotic energies.

Progress is very slow.

It's so slow it's despair-inducing.

"Manager Liao," Chen Yuan said with his back to him, "do me a favor tomorrow."

"you say."

"Go to the market and spread the word that my golden-veined blood ginseng will mature in seven days, and those who are interested can pre-order."

Manager Liao's expression changed: "You want to lure the snake out of its hole?"

"No." Chen Yuan turned around, his face displaying a cold calm that Manager Liao had never seen before. "I want to see just how many snakes are lurking beneath the water in this shantytown."

He picked up the third bowl of wine.

"Yin Jiu wants blood ginseng, Liu San Niang wants a method, Li Xiong wants spirit stones, Fan Datong wants political achievements, Fei Yu Sect wants stability... Everyone wants to take something from me."

"Then I'll have them come and get it."

"But when you take it, you have to put your hand into the same bowl."

"I want to see whether they divide the spoils first, or... bite each other first."

The wine bowl was emptied.

In the distance, the sound of roosters crowing arose.

It was almost dawn.