Spirit Plant Entry: Immortality Begins with Farming

Just as the fourth leaf of the blood ginseng began to curl, footsteps sounded outside the thatched hut.

It wasn't the somber steadiness of Yin Jiu, nor the deliberate lightness of Manager Liao.

It's a different pace—lazy, casual, like a cat pacing after a nap, but every step is precisely timed to the intervals between heartbeats.

Chen Yuan sat on a low stool in the thatched shed, pinching his fingertips.

The third drop of semen on the fourth day was just squeezed out, hanging on the fingertip, a bright red drop, about to fall.

His hand didn't tremble, nor did he look up.

"Three drops of essence blood nourish a half-dead ginseng," a woman's voice came from the doorway, slightly hoarse and seductive, "Boy, are you really not afraid of losing everything?"

Chen Yuan's hand trembled.

The drop of blood missed its mark and landed on the edge of the ceramic basin, slowly sliding down the rough clay and leaving a dark red trail along the rim.

He slowly turned his head.

A woman in a red dress was leaning against the door of the thatched shed.

She was around thirty years old, with a full figure and unnaturally pale skin. There was a small, dark red beauty mark at the corner of her eye. Her lips were painted brightly, as if she had just eaten blood. Her hair was loosely tied up and held in place with a dark purple wooden hairpin, with a few stray strands hanging down her neck, swaying slightly with her breath.

The most striking thing was the belt around her waist—not made of cloth, but strung together with some kind of fine scales, each the size of a fingernail, gleaming with a cold, hard, dark purple luster in the dim light of the thatched hut.

"Who are you?"

"Just call me Aunt Hong." The woman walked in, the hem of her red skirt brushing against the threshold without picking up a speck of dust. She squatted down in front of the blood ginseng, her skirt spreading out like a poisonous flower suddenly blooming.

She extended two fingers and picked up the leaf from the blood ginseng's curled hair. Her fingernails were dark purple, the same color as her belt, and the edges were sharper than human fingernails.

"The Blood Refining Technique that Yin Jiu taught you?"

Chen Yuan didn't answer, his eyes fixed on her hands as she picked up the leaves. Her hands were very white, her wrists were slender, but the strength with which she picked up the leaves was as steady as an iron clamp.

"How do you know Yin Jiu?" he asked in return.

"A traitor to the Yellow Springs Sect of the Western Desert, a disgraced member of the Ghost Spirit Sect, a treacherous rat who steals things from the dead." Hong Gu loosened the leaves, clapped her hands as if they were covered in something dirty, "Three years ago, he stole a Nascent Soul ancient corpse from the territory of the Blood Fiend Sect in the Eastern Wilderness. We chased him for eight thousand miles, and he finally escaped by jumping into the Netherworld Rift. I never expected him to hide in this remote and impoverished place in the Southern Frontier."

Hong Gu turned to look at Chen Yuan, her eyes glowing with an eerie dark red in the dim light:

"I heard he stole the corpse to create a 'living corpse,' supposedly his deceased Daoist partner. He was incredibly devoted, and also incredibly mad."

"Did he tell you that the Blood Refining Technique could save this ginseng and allow you to utilize its medicinal power?"

Chen Yuan remained silent for two breaths.

"……yes."

"Half true, half false." Hong Gu stood up and took out a jade box from her bosom. The box was dark red, with twisted patterns engraved on its surface, like blood vessels. She opened the box, and inside were seven pills, each dark red and about the size of a little fingernail, with fine black lines on their surface.

"The Blood Refining Technique can indeed control the Blood Ginseng, but to utilize its medicinal power?" She scoffed. "What a joke. The spiritual power of Ghost Path cultivators is Yin. Your ginseng is now tainted with blood energy, demonic energy, and Yin energy; it's already a hybrid. You, who cultivates Heavenly Dao techniques, dare to use it for cultivation? Within three days, your spiritual power will surely go berserk, and your meridians will be shattered."

She picked up a pill and casually tossed it into the ginseng basin.

The pill dissolved upon contact with the soil, releasing a wisp of dark red mist. The mist spread along the cracks in the soil, and the moment it touched the roots of the blood ginseng, a small patch of the curled black spot on the ginseng leaf faded away at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"The Blood Fiend Sect's 'Demon Transformation Pill' is specially designed to dissolve impurities." Hong Gu closed the jade box with a soft snap. "One pill is equivalent to three days of your hard work. There are seven pills in this box, enough for you to nourish the Blood Ginseng until the day of your conscription check."

Chen Yuan stared at the box of Demon Transformation Pills. The jade box gleamed with a warm luster in the dim light, but the smell seeping from the cracks in the box—a fishy, ​​sweet smell mixed with a faint, almost imperceptible burnt odor—made him instinctively tense up.

"And the price?" he asked.

"Smart." Hong Gu smiled, revealing two rows of neat white teeth with sharp tips. "The price is that on the day the blood ginseng matures, I will take thirty percent of its essence. As for the remaining seventy percent, you can do whatever you want with it."

Chen Yuan remained silent.

He stared intently at the jade box, and a few lines of small characters appeared in his field of vision:

【Name】: Demon Transformation Pill (Blood Fiend Sect Recipe)

[Ingredients]: Demon beast essence blood, demonic energy crystals, and Heart-Eating Grass juice

[Effect]: Dispels negative and impure energies, accelerates the growth of spiritual plants.

[Side effects]: Long-term exposure may lead to mania and a 1% increase in bloodlust.

Bloodlust.

Chen Yuan looked away and turned to Hong Gu: "You are a demonic cultivator."

"Hongluan, an outer sect steward of the Blood Fiend Sect in the Eastern Wilderness," the woman readily admitted, even taking two steps forward, her red skirt brushing against Chen Yuan's knees. "However, I'm now considered a semi-rogue cultivator. I offended someone in the Eastern Wilderness and came to the Southern Frontier to avoid trouble."

"Do you have a grudge against Yin Jiu?"

"Enmity?" Hong Gu tilted her head, her beauty mark twitching slightly. "Not really. We just have different paths. Those treacherous rats of the Ghost Path are always scheming to turn the living into the dead and the dead into living corpses, while we of the Demonic Path value 'freedom'—killing when we want, robbing when we want, and when our techniques are perfected, we dare to trample even the laws of Heaven. We just dislike each other."

She walked to the only wooden stool in the thatched hut and sat down, crossing her legs. Her red skirt slipped down a bit, revealing a section of her fair calves. A string of dark purple bells, seven or eight in total, was tied around her ankles with a thin silver chain, but strangely, the bells did not ring when she moved.

"Did Yin Jiu give you the Yellow Springs Soil?"

Chen Yuan's heart skipped a beat.

"Don't play dumb, I can smell the stench of death." Hong Gu pointed to the pottery jar with talismans pasted on it in the corner. "Did he say that using it would save one's life essence, the only price being tainted by yin energy?"

Chen Yuan's throat went dry: "...Yes."

"Do you know why Yellow Spring Soil can save on life essence?" Hong Gu leaned forward, the strange aura mixed with blood and floral scent wafting over. "Because the soil has been buried with living corpses. Not ordinary corpses, but the kind that were refined into 'vessels' by ghost cultivators to nourish remnant souls. Those remnant souls have long lost their minds, leaving only the most instinctive desire to 'eat.' When you use Yellow Spring Soil to nourish ginseng, the ginseng will absorb fragments of remnant souls from the soil. Those fragments will replace your life essence, becoming nutrients for the blood ginseng."

She paused, her smile turning dangerous: "But the remnant souls must be returned. Once the blood ginseng matures, Yin Jiu will come to 'harvest' them—taking the ginseng and the souls together. Those remnant souls have been nurtured within the ginseng for seven days, already intertwined with your essence and blood. When he takes them, you'll lose at least 30% of your divine soul. At best, you'll become an idiot; at worst…"

She didn't finish speaking; she simply stuck out the tip of her tongue and licked her sharp teeth.

Chen Yuan felt a chill run down his spine.

He recalled the story Yin Jiu had told, and remembered him saying, "What cultivators of the Ghost Path often seek is simply to remain."

So this is what "keeping" means—keeping someone else's soul, refining it into a vessel, and using it to nurture what you want to keep.

"Why are you telling me all this?" he asked, his voice a little hoarse.

"Two reasons." Hong Gu held up two fingers, her nails gleaming a cold, dark purple in the dim light. "First, I don't like Yin Jiu. Second..."

She stood up, walked to Chen Yuan, and leaned down. The two were so close that Chen Yuan could see the dark red lines deep in her pupils, like some kind of living thing slowly rotating.

"You're quite an interesting person." She stared into Chen Yuan's eyes and said, word by word, "With four spiritual roots and a Qi Refining Level 3 cultivation, you should have accepted your fate long ago. But you just won't. When demonic beasts attacked your fields, you fought desperately; when your spiritual fields were destroyed, you replanted; when Old Zhao died, you continued to cultivate his fields. This kind of stubbornness is rare even in the Eastern Wilderness Demonic Path."

She straightened up, took the string of dark purple bells from her waist, and placed them on the table.

There were seven bells in total, each about the size of a little fingernail, dark purple, with twisted runes engraved on their surface. Chen Yuan stared intently at them, but the runes blurred into a jumbled mess in his vision, indistinct.

"I'll lend you this 'Soul-Capturing Bell'," Hong Gu said. "During the last three days of the Blood Refining, if Yin Jiu comes, ring the bell. When the bell rings, he will surely retreat."

"What's the price?" Chen Yuan didn't touch the bell.

"The price is that you'll owe me a favor." Red Sister walked to the door, her red dress fluttering slightly in the night breeze. "I might need you to do something for me in the future. We'll talk about what it is then. You can refuse, but if you refuse..."

She turned around, and the dark red in her eyes deepened.

"I'll refine you and the Blood Ginseng together into my 'Blood Puppet.' Don't worry, compared to Yin Jiu's Living Corpse Mask, at least it can move, talk, and even help me farm."

A flash of red, and she disappeared into the night.

Only the box of demon-transforming pills and the string of bells remained on the table.

Chen Yuan stood still, staring at the two items, without moving for a long time.

A night wind blew in through the doorway, causing the oil lamp flame to flicker violently and casting erratic shadows on the wall. He walked over and picked up a Demon-Transforming Pill.

The pill rolled in his palm; it was dark red, and the black lines on its surface resembled congealed blood vessels, slightly raised to the touch. He stared intently at it, and the small print that read "Bloodlust Tendency +1%" was particularly glaring.

He put down the pill and looked at the string of soul-capturing bells.

The bells lay quietly on the table. There was no wind, but one of them was trembling slightly—not from the wind, but from its own movement, emitting a very faint hum that only Chen Yuan could hear.

Within the sea of ​​consciousness, the sapling's reaction to the bell was more intense than its reaction to the Demon Transformation Pill. Not disgust, but... wariness? The sapling's roots tensed slightly in the gray mist, like a snake encountering a natural enemy.

Chen Yuan reached out to touch it.

The moment my fingertips touched the cold surface of the bell—

"ah--!!!"

Countless shrill screams rushed into my mind!

Men's, women's, the elderly, children... all mixed together, all were the final screams of those on the verge of death. Interspersed among the screams were fragmented images:

A village engulfed in flames, a woman in a red dress stands atop a pile of corpses, laughing.

In the dark and sunless dungeon, humanoid creatures chained together are cannibalizing their own kind;

The pool of blood was boiling, and at its bottom lay one pale corpse after another, their eyes wide open...

Chen Yuan abruptly withdrew his hand, and the bell fell onto the table with a "ding".

The sound was crisp and clear.

The screams and images vanished instantly.

He was panting heavily, cold sweat pouring down his forehead, and his back was soaked with sweat.

How many souls have been refined into this bell?

"Freedom..." He recalled what Hong Gu had said, "Kill if you want, rob if you want..."

The "freedom" of the demonic path is actually this kind of "freedom".

The sound of a fourth person's footsteps came from outside the thatched hut.