The sun had just cast a slanting shadow on the east side of the barren land, and Wei Changsheng was already kneeling in the center of the field, his fingertips gently tapping the ground. The small fox circled at his feet, its tail occasionally brushing against his trousers, as if urging him to start.
He ignored it, took out the Ninglu Grass seed from his Pregnant, and carefully pressed it into a cracked crevice in the soil. He rubbed his thumb, and Spiritual Qi seeped into the ground. Then, his mind sank into his Sea of Consciousness—the System interface unfolded in his consciousness, a mu of Spiritual Field glowing faintly.
“Coordinate mapping, activate.”
Reality and the System instantly connected. A foot-square area in the center of the barren land became slightly warm, as if scorched by an invisible flame. The small fox’s ears twitched, and a silver ring on the tip of its tail suddenly rippled with a blue glow, flashing in sync with the System interface for 0.3 seconds before quickly returning to calm.
Wei Changsheng didn't even blink. He had long given up on this little thing behaving itself.
“First batch: thirty Spirit Rice plants, ten Ninglu Grass plants, three sections of Star-Patterned Ground Yellow root remnants.” He muttered, syncing the external seeds into the System Field. “Irrigation mode: basic drip irrigation, record data three times daily.”
The System prompt sounded, and Spiritual Qi quietly circulated between the field ridges. One day in the outside world, one year in the System—this meant that from now on, this dead land would complete three hundred and sixty-five growth cycles in his mind.
He stood up and clapped his hands: “Alright, you go lie down over there. Don’t jump around when I’m casting, it affects my modeling.”
The small fox whimpered, tilting its head to look at him, its eyes seeming to say, “You’re the guinea pig.”
Wei Changsheng couldn't be bothered with it. He pulled out a blank Jade Slip from his Storage Pouch, bit his fingertip, and used his blood as ink to rapidly etch a table onto it.
“Column one: Crop Type. Column two: Batch Number. Column three: Time to Maturity. Column four: Mutation Status. Column five: Planting Point Yield.”
He mumbled as he wrote: “Even Excel isn’t as clear as this Jade Slip of mine. The cultivation world still relies on mental calculation and deduction, no wonder Cultivation Techniques are becoming extinct.”
Nothing happened on the first day. Spirit Rice sprouted, Ninglu Grass unfurled its leaves, and the Ground Yellow roots slowly extended. The System calculated planting points: +17.
On the second day, one of the Ninglu Grass plants had golden leaves and abnormal Spiritual Qi fluctuations. Just as he was about to record it, he found the data returned to normal, and the mutation disappeared.
“False mutation?” He frowned. “System bug or interference?”
On the third day, the Spirit Rice matured. After harvesting, the System prompted: +13. No mutation.
On the fourth day, among the second batch of Spirit Rice, the third plant suddenly had a stem three times thicker, grains as full as pearls, and its Spiritual Qi value soared fivefold. The System prompted: “Positive mutation detected, effect increased by 500%, planting points +21.”
Wei Changsheng’s eyes lit up, and he immediately pulled up the log for comparison.
“Fourth batch, thirty plants, one mutated… ratio 3.33%.”
On the fifth day, Ninglu Grass had no mutation, planting points +8.
On the sixth day, one plant in the third batch of Ground Yellow had a spiral root System, and its medicinal properties were detected to have increased by 480%, close to the 500% threshold. The System confirmed the mutation, planting points +19.
On the seventh day, he recorded all seven days of data into the Jade Slip, his fingertips sliding across the table, repeatedly tallying.
“Five effective plantings, three mutations occurred, only one plant each time… Total plants one hundred and forty, four mutated plants.”
He paused for a moment, muttering to himself: “4/140, approximately 2.86%... No, the sample isn’t enough.”
He re-divided: five plants from each batch of thirty were designated as the observation group, the rest as the control group. Then he recalculated.
“Five batches, five plants from each batch for key monitoring, a total of twenty-five key samples. One of them mutated.”
“4%.”
He narrowed his eyes: “The System description says ‘5% of crops have a 5% chance of mutating’... Could it be that it’s not a fixed ratio, but a superposition of double probabilities?”
He slapped his thigh: “I get it! It’s not ‘five out of every hundred plants will definitely mutate,’ but ‘each individual plant has a 5% chance of becoming a mutable individual,’ and among those individuals, 5% will truly mutate!”
In other words, the total probability of a single plant mutating is 0.25%.
But he had seen four mutations in seven days, far exceeding the theoretical value.
“Either my luck is Heaven-Defying,” he sneered, “or… the System is secretly adjusting parameters.”
He stared at the Jade Slip, then suddenly wrote a line of small characters: “Abnormally high mutation frequency, is it related to the System not being recharged? Or… is there a resonance effect with the small fox?”
Just as he was thinking, the small fox suddenly darted onto his shoulder, flicked its tail, and slapped him across the face.
“What are you doing?” He waved it away.
But the small fox didn’t retreat. Its ears perked up, and its pupils narrowed into a line, staring intently at the meditation pavilion in the northeast corner of the medicinal garden.
Wei Changsheng’s heart stirred.
“You sensed it again?”
He didn’t press further. Instead, he took a small pinch of powder from his Storage Pouch—it was the residue of the mutated Ninglu Grass he had harvested yesterday, ground into a powder, its spiritual essence more than ten times stronger than ordinary Spirit Medicine.
He scattered it in a circle around the east side of the barren land, deliberately leaving a small pile on a high point of the field ridge, shaped like a bird’s peck mark.
“Spiritual Essence bait array, activate. Whoever comes to steal will have to leave something behind.”
That night, he didn't return to the Servant’s quarters. He curled up in a makeshift shed by the field, feigning sleep, but in reality, his Divine Sense was locked onto the System interface.
At the third quarter of the Zi hour, the small fox’s ears suddenly glowed blue, pointing precisely at the window ledge of the meditation pavilion.
He opened his eyes, as expected.
The next morning, he knelt beside the bait pile, gently pushing aside the surface powder with his small hoe.
0.7 grams were missing.
He narrowed his eyes, rubbed the ground with his fingertips, and felt a faint trace of green residue—like a footprint left by a shoe sole that had touched special spiritual mud.
“Spiritual Boots? Standard issue footwear only distributed to Outer Sect stewards, combining anti-slip, Spiritual Qi gathering, and lightness effects.” He sneered, “Li Mang and his gang, they really dared to come down themselves.”
He made an imprint of the green mark on the Jade Slip, then took a wisp of faint light from the tip of the small fox’s ear and superimposed it with the residual Spiritual Pressure for comparison.
“Spiritual Pressure fluctuation frequency 63% match… Not one hundred percent, but enough to explain the problem.”
He put away the Jade Slip, then suddenly let out a low laugh: “You’re after the Spirit Rice, but what I’m planting isn’t Spirit Rice at all. It’s data.”
He looked up at the meditation pavilion. The sun was shining on the window paper, revealing a blurry human figure.
The figure raised a hand, as if recording something.
Wei Changsheng didn’t hide or avoid. Instead, he stood up and waved at the window, his movements as exaggerated as if he were greeting someone.
“Go on, look, look. Look a bit more, maybe you can even save me some experimental costs.”
The small fox lay at his feet, spitting out half a blade of grass, the edges of the leaf glowing faintly blue.
He glanced at it, said nothing more, and simply put the grass blade into his Storage Pouch.
This was already the third time—after the System Spirit Medicine was eaten by the small fox, it wasn’t fully absorbed. Instead, it remained in its body in some kind of slow-release manner, even its excretions carried spiritual essence.
“Are you a fox, or a Spirit Medicine compression pack?” he mumbled.
But he didn’t delve deeper. Something else was more urgent now.
He opened the Jade Slip and looked at the un-deleted deduction: “High mutation rate… Is it related to Spirit Stone reserves?”
He reached into the depths of his Storage Pouch, where three hundred Intermediate Spirit Stones lay, his entire fortune.
“The System can be recharged to expand the land, and it can also accelerate growth… But I’ve never tried throwing money at it.” He narrowed his eyes. “What if, after one recharge, the mutation rate goes straight to maximum?”
He didn’t act immediately. Instead, he turned to the last page of the Jade Slip and wrote down a new plan:
“Day eight: Attempt to recharge 10 Intermediate Spirit Stones, observe changes in growth speed and mutation probability.
Day nine: If effective, expand planting scale to lure the fish.
Day ten: Set a trap to catch them, investigate the forces behind the observer.”
After writing, he closed the Jade Slip and looked up at the barren land.
The field soil was still hard and dry, the wild grass was waist-high, and withered vines entangled stakes, showing no signs of life.
But he knew that beneath this dead land, living water was secretly surging.
He squatted down and grabbed a handful of soil. He suddenly discovered a dark brown fragment of rock embedded in the soil, irregularly shaped, with tiny cracks on its surface.
He gently scraped it open with his small hoe, revealing a hint of a golden thread inside.
“This isn’t a Ground Yellow root remnant…” He narrowed his eyes. “This is a Spiritual Vein?”
His fingertip trembled, and Spiritual Qi penetrated. The golden thread glowed faintly, actually resonating slightly with the System Spiritual Field.
“A remnant branch of a Spiritual Vein? Or… a man-made Spiritual Qi-attracting array base?”
Before he could investigate further, the small fox suddenly darted onto his shoulder, its tail bristling, staring intently in the direction of the meditation pavilion.
The pavilion window had opened a crack at some point, and a green shoetip quietly extended out, resting on the window ledge.
The shoetip was stained with a speck of blue light, as if it had brushed against something it shouldn’t have.