Spirit Plant Entry: Immortality Begins with Farming

Reality passed in an instant.

When the crimson light that Hong Gu transformed into bursted out of the illusionary rift, she saw that the seven burning blood needles she had shot out were turning around and shooting towards her brow.

The red light from the needle tip left afterimages in the morning mist, its trajectory cunning and blocking all her angles of evasion.

She quickly made a hand seal, and blood spurted out from the tip of her tongue again.

The blood mist exploded, and the burning blood needle shattered three inches in front of the nose—but the fragments did not scatter.

They floated and spun, reforming in the blood mist and condensing into seven miniature versions of "Red Maiden".

They all look exactly like her.

The same red dress, the same makeup, and the same deliberately drawn allure at the corner of her eyes.

But the expressions on those "Red Sister's" faces were ones she had never seen on her own face before: fear, guilt, despair, and a hint of... relief.

They looked at her and spoke in unison, their voices overlapping like an echo in a valley:

"Can they escape?"

"Sin is sin."

"The crying from the bell...can you hear it every night?"

Hong Gu retreated rapidly, her shoes scraping against the bluestone with a harsh screech. She could smell the burnt odor of her own essence and blood, and feel the exhaustion of her spiritual energy draining away wildly through her meridians.

But deeper still lies the bloodied void in my heart, torn open by the illusion.

Suddenly, she didn't want to run away anymore.

It's not about accepting fate.

It's something more complex—like someone who's been running for thirty years and is finally tired.

Suddenly I wanted to see what would happen if I let go.

But the thought only flashed through my mind.

She spat out more blood essence, the blood mist exploded, and the seven mirror images screamed and dissipated.

At that very moment, Jing Ling's real attack landed.

It raised its right hand.

With fingers spread out, a pale flower blooms at the tip of each finger—petals as thin as cicada wings, lines like the lines on a human palm.

The center of the flower is not the stamen, but rather a series of rotating, pitch-black eyes.

All eyes turned to Cherie Chung.

Five pale beams of light shot out.

It wasn't a straight line, but a curved, living trajectory, like five pale snakes weaving a net in the air, closing in on her!

The Xuan Gu moved.

His withered hands formed a mudra, his knuckles turning white from the force.

The void behind them tore open, and the rattling sound of chains being dragged echoed from the crack, mixed with countless mournful howls.

A skeletal demon god, three zhang tall, stepped out of the rift—three heads and six arms, each arm wielding a phantom instrument of torture: a heart-splitting knife dripping blood, a soul-drawing whip with remnants of souls coiled at its tip, and a bone-scraping hook gleaming with a cold light…

"The Dharma Image of the Underworld - The Arrival of Punishment!"

The demon swung its six arms, and the instruments of torture collided with the pale beam of light—

No sound.

The space at the point of impact collapsed directly into a small black hole, swallowing up light, sound, spiritual energy, and even distorting the surrounding light.

Half a breath later, the black hole exploded!

The shockwave swept across the valley in a ring, snapping dead trees at waist height in its path, leaving smooth, mirror-like cuts.

The ground was plowed into trenches half a foot deep, the soil was turned up and the dark blue-green rock layer underneath was exposed.

Yin Jiu was blown away by the shockwave.

He twisted in mid-air, his body emitting a sickening grating sound of bones grinding together—the seven bone spurs that were originally hidden in his spine were now completely fused with it.

His back skin was torn open, blood spurted out, and seven pale white bony tails burst forth from his body, their barbs flashing with a ghostly green poisonous light.

The excruciating pain made his vision go black.

But he didn't stop.

"Netherworld Demon Body - Seven-Tailed Fangs!"

He screamed, his voice distorted with pain.

Its body transformed into a skeletal shadow, shooting swiftly along the ground. Its seven bony tails spread out like a peacock's tail feathers, stabbing at the Well Spirit's lower body from seven tricky angles—the only point where the Well Spirit could contact the well's opening, and also the hub connecting its power to the earth's veins.

Jing Ling lightly lifted her left foot and stepped down.

The movement was very light, like crushing a fallen leaf.

But the patterns on the bluestone beneath our feet came alive.

Those ancient, mottled carvings began to wriggle, peeling off the stone surface and rising into the air, transforming into seven bluish-gray stone snakes.

The snake scales are fine stone carvings, and the snake's eyes are two points of eerie green light.

The stone serpent raised its head, opened its stone mouth, revealing countless serrated teeth, and lunged at Yin Jiu's seven bony tails!

At the same time, Jing Ling pointed her right hand at the White Bone Demon God, and the dark eyes in the heart of the pale flower at her fingertips shimmered.

Xuan Gu let out a muffled groan.

He saw the White Bone Demon's movements... flowing backwards.

The arm that had raised the Heart-Slaying Knife slowly returned to its unraised state; the action of drawing the Soul-Snatching Whip regressed frame by frame to its starting point; the trajectory of the Demon God's six arms left afterimages in the air, and those afterimages converged in opposite directions.

It's as if someone has seized the timeline and forcibly dragged it forward.

"The laws of time?!" Xuan Gu's pupils constricted sharply. "How could you—"

Jing Ling clenched her left hand into a fist.

The green stone snake exploded into a sky full of stone dust, which floated, spun, and recombined in the air, eventually forming hundreds of stone swords.

The sword's body was mottled, yet the blade remained as sharp as if newly polished, reflecting a cold, hard, bluish-gray luster in the morning light.

"Earth Vein Transformation Sword - Thousand Blades Piercing the Heart," Jing Ling said softly.

Swords fell like rain.

Yin Jiuqi's tail danced wildly, its bony tail colliding with the stone sword, producing a dense, teeth-grinding impact sound—crack! clang! hiss! Bone fragments and stone powder flew everywhere, raising a gray-white mist in the air.

He shredded dozens of stone swords, but there were too many, too fast, and too many of them.

Three blades break through the defense.

The first blade pierced through the right shoulder blade, its tip protruding from behind, leaving a spray of blood mist.

Yin Jiu's body swayed, and his movements slowed down by half a beat.

The second sword pierced through the left thigh, the blade completely embedded, with only the hilt remaining outside.

Yin Jiu grunted and knelt on one knee, a gap appearing in the movement of his bony tail.

The third blade pierced straight into his heart.

The tip of the sword had already touched his skin—Yin Jiu could feel the cold, stone-like touch, smell the faint fishy smell of moss on the sword, and hear the sound of his heart pounding wildly in his chest, on the verge of breaking.

He closed his eyes.

Yeah.

If I die, I can go see Xiaodie.

Even if it's just fantasy, even if it's just self-deception, it's better than living like this, neither human nor ghost, reliving that rainy night over and over again.

But the expected excruciating pain did not come.

He heard a loud "clang," which made his eardrums ache.

Open your eyes.

Xuan Gu's White Bone Demon God self-destructed one of his arms.

The arm that held the Heart-Slicing Knife was severed at the shoulder joint; there was no blood at the cut, only gushing pale spiritual energy.

The severed arm exploded in mid-air, and the bone fragments reformed and solidified into a huge bone shield, blocking Yin Jiu's way.

The stone sword struck the bone shield and shattered into dust.

However, the form of the White Bone Demon God also became nearly half-ethereal as a result—the remaining five arms became transparent, the outlines of the torture instruments began to blur, and one of the three heads directly disintegrated into points of light.

Xuan Gu knelt on one knee and spat out a mouthful of blood.

The blood was dark red, mixed with tiny, ice-crystal-like fragments—a sign that his spiritual veins had ruptured after he forcibly activated his Dharma form and suffered a backlash.

He looked up at Yin Jiu.

Their eyes met.

Yin Jiu saw that there was no blame or anger in his senior brother's eyes.

There was only a very deep, very deep weariness.

And a hint of... relief?

"Junior brother," Xuan Gu spoke, his voice hoarse like sandpaper scraping against stone, "I'm sorry."

Yin Jiu was stunned.

"Back then..." Xuan Gu gasped for breath, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth with each word, "...it wasn't me who killed you."

"It is Master."

"He wanted to use your 'pure Yin body' to refine a batch of 'Nine-Turn Rejuvenation Pills' to save his Daoist partner's life. I found out and tried to stop him... but it was too late. He controlled my body and used my hands... to kill you."

He paused, as if using all his strength to say the next sentence:

"Xiaodie... was also killed by him."

"He needed a female corpse with a 'lingering vengeful spirit' as a medicinal ingredient. So he chose Xiaodie, on the day you left, on that rainy night."

Yin Jiu stood frozen in place.

The world seemed to have been muted.

The sound of the stone sword striking the bone shield, the sound of the wind in the valley, the sound of my own heavy breathing—everything disappeared.

Only my senior's words echoed in my mind:

Xiaodie was also killed by him.

For two hundred years, he had hated many people. He hated himself, his senior brother, God, the medicine that separated him from Xiaodie, that rainy night, and everyone who was alive.

But he never imagined that this was the truth.

……absurd.

……ridiculous.

...making it impossible to even know who to hate.

"Why..." he heard his own voice, sounding strange and unfamiliar, "Why didn't you tell me sooner..."

"I'm telling you, you'll go for revenge." Xuan Gu laughed bitterly, "And then what? Your master is at the late Nascent Soul stage, while you're only at the Qi Refining stage. Going there will just be suicide."

"So I sealed your memories. Using forbidden techniques, I locked that memory, along with my guilt, deep into the depths of your consciousness."

"I wanted to wait until you became stronger, until you were able to protect yourself, before telling you. But later... you cultivated the demonic path and went astray. I dared not say it. I was afraid that if I did, you would completely break down and become a monster who only knew revenge."

He coughed up a mouthful of blood, which was mixed with fragments of internal organs.

"I was wrong," he said, his voice growing softer. "I shouldn't have made the decision for you. I shouldn't have thought... it was for your own good."

Yin Jiu looked at him.

Looking at his senior brother's hunched back, his black robe soaked in blood, and his face contorted with pain yet still trying to force a smile at him.

Two hundred years of hatred suddenly lost its support at this moment.

Like a castle built on quicksand, its foundation was removed, and it collapsed with a crash.

The person he had hated for two hundred years had actually been protecting him all along.

The sins he used to torment himself were not his fault at all.

He lived a life that became a joke.

A complete, absurd, and pathetic joke.

Yin Jiu wanted to laugh.

But as soon as she managed to twitch her lips, tears streamed down her face.

These weren't tears of sorrow. They were something more complex—absurdity? Relief? Or the utterly devastated bewilderment that comes with finally unloading a heavy burden?

he does not know.

He just looked at his senior brother, tears mingling with the blood on his face as they streamed down.

Then he heard Jing Ling's voice:

"The obsession has been severed."

"Your 'Ghostly Body' is missing the most crucial element... I'll help you fill it in."

Jing Ling flicked his fingers.

A tiny, black spark flew from its fingertip, slowly slicing through the air and heading towards Yin Jiu's brow.

Yin Jiu did not dodge.

He didn't even move.

Just watching that spark get closer and closer, watching it magnify in my field of vision, watching it touch my skin—

A sharp pain exploded.

It was a hundred times more intense than all the previous pain combined.

He let out inhuman screams, his body convulsing violently.

The seven bony tails began to fuse, their joints intertwining, growing, and twisting, coalescing into a pair of enormous white bone wings on their backs. The wingspan stretched three zhang (approximately 10 meters), blotting out the sky.

Each bone spur's extension was accompanied by a clear crackling sound of bone breaking and reforming.

He could feel his consciousness being stripped away.

It was as if another being was forcefully squeezing into his consciousness, covering his memories, and altering his will.

The part belonging to "Yin Jiu" was gradually squeezed into the corner, becoming increasingly blurry.

In the end, he completely lost control of his body.

Suspended in mid-air, its bone wings fluttered slowly, and its dark eye sockets held no emotion, no memory, and nothing that belonged to "humanity".

Only emptiness remains.

Jing Ling turned to him and whispered the order:

"Now."

"Kill your senior brother."

Bone Wing Yin Jiu turned around.

The motion mechanism is like a puppet controlled by threads.

Its dark eye sockets "looked" at Xuan Gu, and with a flap of its bone wings, it transformed into a pale afterimage and rushed straight away!

Xuan Gu didn't move.

He just knelt there watching his junior brother rush towards him, looking at those empty eyes and those bony wings that blotted out the sky.

He suddenly laughed.

The smile was very light and faint, like a sense of relief or liberation.

"Alright then," he said softly, addressing both his junior brother who was rushing towards him and himself. "This way... it's fine too."

Then he closed his eyes.

Waiting for the end.