Chapter 32: World-Boundary Seed

After killing the giant rat, Lin Donglai became something of a celebrity in the Spirit Field Valley due to the exaggerated descriptions provided by Ning Feng and Chen Shu. Although the valley only housed about twenty farming disciples, most of whom were at the first level of Qi Refinement.

Lin Donglai himself felt nothing of the matter. He simply waited until it was time to collect his monthly salary of two spirit stones, then began preparing the necessary materials for planting several types of spiritual herbs.

Tree bark, moonlight moss, and water-absorbing blue stones.

As the season approached late autumn, it was time to begin planting Kidney Essence Grass; any later and it would be too late.

Consequently, Lin Donglai had already placed the Kidney Essence Grass seeds in the Sweet Dew Gourd for soaking, and they had mostly sprouted by now.

The water spiritual energy cultivated through the Renzi Water Collection Technique was more suitable for the Sweet Dew Gourd, and as a water- and shade-loving spiritual herb, Kidney Essence Grass favored water spiritual energy above all else.

At his pre-planned spiritual field, Lin Donglai first spread a layer of tree bark over the soil, then placed the water-absorbing blue stones according to their designated positions. He then arranged the moss over the stones. Once finished, he planted the sprouted Kidney Essence Grass into the moss.

The moss, blue stones, and tree bark were all used to retain moisture without causing excessive water accumulation that might rot the roots; only this specific environment was suitable for the growth of Kidney Essence Grass.

After planting two hundred Kidney Essence Grass plants, Lin Donglai let out a sigh. The materials for this setup alone had cost him two spirit stones.

He could only hope that Xiao Yi, the alchemy apprentice, would soon refine the Wondrous Pill so that he could earn enough spirit stones to make up for his losses.

He then skillfully took out the Sweet Dew Gourd and performed the Sweet Dew Rain Incantation.

After another two weeks of cultivation, Lin Donglai had successfully refined the four required Water-element Fetal Breaths. This rapid progress was mainly because, after killing the giant rat, his Dao Seed had absorbed its life essence, allowing him to condense several drops of essence blood on that very day.

Now, Lin Donglai had resumed the cultivation of the Jiayin Life Collection Technique.

With the Water and Earth elements already established, and given that Lin Donglai himself possessed a prosperous Wood element—a low-grade Jia Wood Spiritual Body—transitioning from the Water element back to the Wood element caused him no discomfort. On the contrary, the presence of Water and Earth provided a boost to his Wood spiritual energy, making his cultivation speed even one-third faster than when he had first started the Jiayin Life Collection Technique.

The primary reason was that the Jia Wood vitality was inherent to the Spiritual Root Dao Seed itself, and practicing this technique in the small grove yielded twice the results with half the effort. The only thing constraining Lin Donglai was the speed at which essence blood was generated. Once his essence blood was complete, he could immediately refine the Fetal Breath, merge it with the Wood-element essence qi, and plant it into his Inner Landscape liver.

With the resumption of the Jiayin Life Collection Technique, Lin Donglai's cultivation began to grow. In just a few short days, he had already accumulated twenty-two strands of spiritual energy.

Looking at the Blood Marrow Rice, which had been planted for over two months, Lin Donglai estimated that he could harvest a crop in about another month, before the arrival of winter.

Lin Donglai's talent for farming was indeed excellent. Through his diligent care during this period, not only had very few Blood Marrow Rice seedlings died, but there were even signs of a bountiful harvest.

However, he didn't plant much—only two portions of field, which would yield approximately 70 to 80 catties of Blood Marrow Rice.

Lin Donglai estimated that if he had the capacity to apply fertilizer once more before maturity, he could likely obtain even more.

After providing a supplemental Sweet Dew Rain to the two portions of Blood Marrow Rice, Lin Donglai looked toward the fields of others.

After only a few glances, he secretly shook his head.

Although everyone had been exchanging ideas on spiritual planting lately, it was clear that some people simply lacked talent. Even those who invested more into their spiritual fields than Lin Donglai still produced messy, haphazard results.

Some had even given up on the path of spiritual planting prematurely and fled to learn other skills, such as Sang Zhi and Ma Teng, the disciples who had previously discussed Lin Donglai in private.

Seeing them leave, Lin Donglai had transplanted the remaining unmanaged spiritual rice from their fields into his own to tend to, hoping to squeeze out a few extra catties.

"I wonder how effective the Blood Marrow Rice will be."

The food from the Xianmiao Peak canteen had become completely ineffective. Whether it was the spiritual marrow in his body or his spleen and stomach, everything was protesting, demanding that Lin Donglai consume higher-quality spiritual grains and meals.

Although the canteen food was free and he could eat as much as he wanted, there was a limit; Lin Donglai usually ate an eight-person portion and would not consume more.

"If only I could kill another one or two giant rats to absorb their life essence..."

"I wonder if helping at the Outer Sect Immortal Food Hall to slaughter spiritual chickens and spiritual pigs would be useful... Forget it. If the taste or quality of the spiritual chickens and pigs changes because their life essence was absorbed, I'm afraid it would be hard to explain myself."

According to the *Records of Cultivation*, demonic cultivation techniques do not rely heavily on spiritual roots, but rather on refining massive amounts of life essence into demonic magic power. Consequently, practitioners often slaughter large numbers of mortals to extract life essence.

Lin Donglai did not want to be mistaken for a demonic cultivator.

With the Earth Immortal Dao Seed, once the Inner Landscape Blessed Field was established, it would be a wide, smooth road to success.

If he was going to farm, he would farm!

He had to endure the loneliness!

With this thought, Lin Donglai stopped agonizing and instead focused his mind on reading and absorbing knowledge.

Some of these books were farming notes and journals from the Spirit Plant Hall. Others were explanations and annotations of the Five Elements Qi Collection Technique found in the library of the Lecture Hall.

Reading more could indeed increase one's wisdom, allowing one to reflect on oneself and remedy deficiencies.

"The Yang Five Elements are not a complete set of the Five Elements. After I finish condensing the Inner Landscape Blessed Field, I don't need to rush into the second round of Yang Five Elements cultivation."

"Instead, I could try the Yin Five Elements Qi Collection Technique, cultivating the corresponding Five Elements Fetal Breaths and planting them into the five viscera. Once Yin, Yang, and the Five Elements are complete, the Inner Landscape Blessed Field will have the potential to evolve and expand on its own."

"The General Outline of the Five Elements is merely a reference for me."

"Besides, the sect lacks the inheritance of the Primordial Chaos Pill Scripture from the Foundation Establishment realm... With the Earth Immortal lineage as a precedent, I can afford to experiment more."

"This Five Elements Qi Collection Technique is almost perfectly compatible with the Earth Immortal lineage. If I can integrate and master it, it will surely aid my future path. If the opportunity arises in the future, I must inquire about the lineage of the ancient Primordial Chaos Five Elements Sect to obtain the complete *Primordial Chaos Pill Scripture*."

In Lin Donglai's vision, if the main roots of the Spiritual Root Dao Seed could reach a state of Five Elements mutual generation and Yin-Yang intercourse while automatically practicing the Five Elements technique, it could continuously and automatically collect the essence qi of the Five Elements, converting it into nourishment for the expansion of the Inner Landscape Blessed Field.

In this way, the subsequent expansion of the Blessed Field would no longer require the cumbersome process of condensing essence blood, refining Fetal Breaths from essence blood, and then merging the Five Elements essence qi with the Fetal Breath.

Lin Donglai's surplus energy could then be dedicated to increasing his cultivation realm, practicing spells, or tending to his spiritual fields...

Most importantly, the Inner Landscape Blessed Field was the foundation of a Grotto-Heaven. Once he possessed the seed of the Connecting Heaven Tree, it could even be called a "World-Heaven Seed."

Judging by the Earth Immortal inheritance, although this space had a low starting point, its potential was limitless.

Perhaps in the future, Lin Donglai could use this to open a world and attain the Dao of an Earth Immortal.