Spirit Plant Entry: Immortality Begins with Farming

Night, midnight.

Chen Yuan sat cross-legged in the thatched shed.

The flame of the oil lamp flickered in the night wind, casting his hunched back into a distorted shadow on the earthen wall.

The golden-veined blood ginseng in front of me stood on a low wooden stump, its leaves thick and with fine serrations along the edges.

The light fell on the leaves, and the golden-red veins looked like living blood vessels, slowly undulating and flowing.

He spread out his right hand.

The last spirit stone in his palm had shattered into powder, grayish-white, which trickled through his fingers, leaving a few shallow marks on his trousers.

It was eerily quiet outside the shed.

It wasn't the usual quiet of the night; it was the kind of deathly stillness where even field mice didn't dig in the soil and night birds didn't flap their wings.

In the sea of ​​consciousness, the green seedling of the word suddenly trembled.

It wasn't the sting of a warning, but a deeper resonance.

Five auras were pressing towards the shantytown from different directions. Some were cold, some were fishy, ​​some were heavy, and some were sharp. Although they came from different directions, they all pointed directly at the thatched hut.

The fastest one had already reached a hundred feet away.

The aura was damp and sticky, like a coffin lid just pulled from the bottom of the water; even the grass and leaves along the way were covered with a thin layer of frost.

Chen Yuan could "see" clearly with his eyes closed—it was Yin Jiu.

He opened his eyes and blew out the oil lamp in one breath.

Just as the light disappeared, his right hand was already pressed on the rough edge of the ginseng pottery basin.

The entry for "Blood Essence" exploded into thirty-six dark gold fragments in the sea of ​​consciousness, which traveled along the meridians to the palm and then into the soil.

The blood-refining energy within his body, which had been cultivated for over ten days, was suddenly activated, intertwining with the power of the entry, boiling like water, and seeping into the roots of the blood ginseng along the edge of the basin.

Chen Yuan could clearly feel the trembling of each root of the blood ginseng—not out of fear, but out of the excitement of extreme hunger.

It's as if the ginseng has already grown onto him.

Also at this time-

The dilapidated wooden door of the thatched shed rotted from the very middle.

It wasn't smashed, it rotted slowly.

The wood grain first turns black, then becomes brittle, and finally turns into fine black ash that falls off in a rustling sound.

The door is gone.

Yin Jiu stood outside the door in the night, his gray eyes gleaming in the darkness like two wells.

He wasn't wearing a hood, his sparse hair lay flat against his scalp, and the wrinkles on his face were so deep they could trap his shadow.

"The time has come."

His voice was as dry as the bark of an old tree that had been dried in the sun for three years.

He stepped in, and a layer of white frost formed where he walked.

The frost marks seemed alive, crawling along the ground, over the mud bricks, over the grass stems, until they reached the grass mat where Chen Yuan was sitting, stopping three inches from his feet.

It's like testing the waters, or like measuring something.

Chen Yuan didn't get up, but tapped the edge of the basin with his left index finger.

"despair."

A crisp sound.

The frost on the ground cracked open with a snap, shattering into fine ice shards that gleamed coldly in the moonlight that streamed in.

"Senior Yin arrived right on time." Chen Yuan looked up. In the darkness, his eyes shone unusually brightly, like two pieces of unburnt charcoal.

"On time?" Yin Jiu chuckled, the sound like shards of ice grinding against each other. "A step later, and the 'soul source' you're nurturing in this ginseng would have become someone else's bargaining chip."

A withered, white hand, as bony as bone, emerged from beneath the black robe and hovered three inches above the blood ginseng leaf.

A wisp of black energy descended from the fingertip, as thin as a spider silk, slowly reaching towards the main stem of the blood ginseng—but it trembled suddenly half an inch away from the leaves, as if scorched by an invisible fire, and abruptly retreated.

Yin Jiu's pupils contracted.

"You...?" His voice trembled for the first time, filled with barely suppressed shock, "...refined it into a natal spiritual plant?"

"Watering, fertilizing, sunbathing." Chen Yuan looked up.

"You can't cultivate yin and yang symbiosis with a clumsy method." Yin Jiu withdrew his hand, his black robe fluttering without wind, and wisps of black smoke rising from his sleeves. "For this ginseng to achieve yin and yang harmony, it needs to draw on the earth's fire energy at midnight and noon, it needs to fuse at least three lingering obsessions, and it needs a living person willing to act as a 'bridge' to ferry the soul source across, bearing the backlash themselves—"

He took a step forward, his greyish-white eyes fixed intently on Chen Yuan:

"How much did you take on?"

Chen Yuan didn't answer. He reached out and plucked a ginseng leaf, crushing it between his fingertips. Juice seeped out, golden-red in color, carrying a bitter medicinal fragrance, yet mixed with a very faint trace of blood.

"Old Zhao said before he died, 'Plant them.'" He scattered the broken leaves back into the pot. "He had three mu of land, so I planted one; Widow Li had two mu of land, so I planted one; I planted one on my own three mu. Eight mu of land, more than three hundred jin of seeds, every single one stained with blood—my blood, the blood of the monsters, and the lingering thoughts of those who died in the fields, in the mines, and on the front lines."

He paused, then said, "Senior Yin said that the source of the soul is the manifestation of obsession. Then, wouldn't what grows on these eight acres of land count as a grave?"

The thatched hut fell silent.

In the distance, a stray dog ​​whimpered briefly, then disappeared.

Yin Jiu fell silent.

He leaned forward slightly beneath his black robe, his greyish-white eyes flickering in the dim light of the blood ginseng. After a long silence, he finally spoke, his voice lower and deeper than before:

"What's buried in the grave isn't just obsession, but also debt. If you plant all these debts into a ginseng plant, it won't become medicine, it will become—"

He hadn't finished speaking.

A very faint sound of bells came from outside the shed.

It wasn't a bell ringing; it was the air being stirred up by some high-frequency vibration, humming softly like an illusion, yet clearly penetrating the ears and creating delicate echoes within the skull.

Yin Jiu's black robe suddenly billowed backward, making a rustling sound.

Hong Gu leaned against the remaining half of the door frame outside the door, her red dress standing out in the night like a splash of blood, dazzlingly bright.

She twirled the dark purple soul-capturing bells between her fingers. The bells themselves did not move, but the seven small bells trembled slightly on their own, touching each other without making a sound, only creating invisible ripples.

"Oh, is that cunning rat lecturing people again?"

She stepped in, her gaze sweeping past Yin Jiu before fixing directly on the Blood Ginseng. Her peach blossom eyes shone eerily in the darkness, a dark red hue deep within her pupils flickering with the light of the Blood Ginseng.

"Let me see..." She bent down, her nose almost touching the ginseng leaf, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the dark red in her eyes was so intense it seemed to drip out. "Yin and Yang in harmony, golden patterns and blood-red light, and it also carries the scorching heat of underground fire. This quality, in the black market of the Eastern Wilderness, is enough to exchange for half a magic weapon of the Golden Core stage."

She straightened up, flicked her wrist, and the Soul-Capturing Bell swayed gently.

Still no sound.

But all the shadows in the shed—the lingering shadows after the oil lamp went out, the blurred outlines cast by the moonlight, even the darkest patch of darkness beneath one's feet—converged simultaneously. As if gripped, pulled, and then suddenly released by an invisible hand.

"The soul source is yours, the essence is mine." Hong Gu smiled at Yin Jiu, her tone as light as if she were dividing candy. "Yin Jiu, the old rule, three-seven split."

Yin Jiu's hands, hidden beneath his black robe, slowly clenched, his knuckles making a soft cracking sound: "Hong Luan, this is not the Eastern Wilderness."

"Where doesn't the yellow earth bury people?" Hong Gu took a step forward, the hem of her red skirt sweeping across the ground, instantly melting the frost marks left by Yin Jiu, and a faint mist of blood rose up. "In the Southern Frontier, killing doesn't require bloodshed? Yin Jiu, you and I both know that the real value of this ginseng isn't its medicinal properties, but the 'cause and effect' within it—you can use it to nourish a remnant soul, and I can use it to refine a 'cause and effect puppet,' whose combat power is equivalent to that of a mid-Foundation Establishment cultivator."

She took another step closer, and the two were now less than five feet apart.

"Tell me, do I need a puppet, or do you need a... little sister?"

As the last two words were spoken, the temperature inside the shed plummeted.

It wasn't the chilling, deathly cold of Yin Jiu, but a different kind of murderous intent—sharper, stickier, and with a bloody, sweet smell. The air seemed to have solidified into glue; every breath felt like swallowing shards of ice.

Chen Yuan sat between the two, his right hand still resting on the edge of the basin.

He could feel the roots of the blood ginseng growing wildly—not downwards, but towards him. Roots as thin as hair silently pierced through the cracks in the bottom of the ceramic pot, burrowed into the soil below, and then crept up along the ground, touching his ankles as he sat cross-legged, gently wrapping around them.

Round and round.

The roots of symbiosis.

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

The third aura has arrived.

And it didn't come from the ground—