The tip of the green shoe retracted back into the window, leaving only a faint blue mark on the field ridge, shimmering slightly in the morning light.
Wei Changsheng didn't move, his fingertip tapping lightly on the handle of the small hoe, shaking off a few dry soil particles.
He looked down at the "Spiritual Pressure Frequency 63% Match" he had just recorded on the Jade Slip, then glanced at the little fox curled up in the corner of the straw shed—its tail tip was still glowing blue, as if a small lamp inside it had its brightness adjusted.
"It seems last night wasn't a coincidence," he murmured.
"If they truly dare to come, then don't blame me for using you all as experimental controls."
He took out three crushed, mutated Ninglu Grass powders from his Storage Pouch; their color was grayish, and they had a sweet, cloying medicinal scent.
This wasn't ordinary herbal medicine, but a low-grade mutated species produced by the System, coming with additional effects of "mild hallucination + directional confusion."
He squatted down and evenly mixed the powder into the soil of the eastern field ridge, intentionally sprinkling an extra pinch in a few places where footprints overlapped.
"The Spiritual Charm Maze Array, first line of defense, deployed," he clapped his hands.
"Next, we wait for the fish to bite."
Half an hour later, footsteps approached from afar.
Three people walked abreast, their Spiritual Mud-soled shoes making a distinctive "hissing" sound as they rubbed against the ground.
The leader was a burly man with broad shoulders and a thick back, none other than Li Mang, the Outer Sect Servant.
The two behind him were one tall and one short, their eyes flickering, clearly there to make up numbers and bolster courage.
"Oh, isn't this Servant Wei?" Li Mang stood outside the field ridge, his voice drawn out.
"I heard your Spiritual Rice grows pretty well here?
Brother, I've recently hit a Bottleneck in my Cultivation and want to borrow some Spiritual Rice for an emergency; you know, for us Outer Sect Disciple, helping each other out is common."
Wei Changsheng raised his head, his face immediately showing a hint of panic, his hands unconsciously rubbing at the corner of his clothes: "Senior Brother Li is joking, my meager harvest is barely enough to complete my tasks, how could I have any extra..."
"Barely?" Li Mang was startled, then sneered, "That's a fresh way of speaking; which Sect's dialect is 'barely'?"
"Ah?" Wei Changsheng froze, then realized he had slipped up and quickly corrected himself, "I mean... just barely, barely enough! The method passed down from my ancestors makes it hard to Cultivate, and the harvest is also meager."
Li Mang narrowed his eyes, his right hand subtly rising, a faint green rune floating in his palm—it was the "Spiritual Object Detection Art" commonly used in the Outer Sect.
He slowly scanned the fields, his gaze fixed on a few particularly tall Spiritual Rice plants.
"Heh, still hiding things?" He took a step forward, directly stepping onto the field ridge.
"One seedling can yield three ears; this isn't a meager harvest, you're hiding good stuff and not sharing it!"
Before his words finished, his foot went soft.
It wasn't loose soil, but his entire line of sight suddenly twisted.
He swayed violently, seeing his left foot step into a cluster of poisonous thorn vines, the sharp thorns already piercing his boot sole, blood trickling down his ankle.
He jumped away with a cry of "Ah!", but forgot that there was a steep slope to his right, and he stumbled, almost falling into the ditch.
"What's wrong?" The tall Disciple rushed to support him.
"Don't touch me! My feet are full of thorns!" Li Mang's face turned pale, and he frantically slapped his pant legs, as if countless fine thorns were truly embedded in his flesh.
The tall Disciple looked in the direction he was pointing, but there was only flat, even soil beneath his feet.
Just as he was about to speak, he suddenly felt a pain in the sole of his foot, and looking down, he saw a black vine emerging from the ground, wrapping around his calf.
He let out a cry of surprise and jumped on the spot, only to collide with the short Disciple, and the two rolled into a heap.
Wei Changsheng stood still, looking "shocked," but in reality, he was silently thinking: "Hallucination effective, trigger rate 100%, realism S-grade—System production, truly stable."
He quietly tapped the small hoe on the ground, a slight tremor of spiritual power.
The soil at the edge of the field trembled slightly, and a few withered grasses moved without wind, as if stirred by some invisible force.
"The ancestral secret art of protecting the fields has been activated!" He deliberately shouted loudly, his voice trembling, as if he himself was startled.
Li Mang finally broke free from the hallucination, cold sweat pouring down, and he looked up, glaring at Wei Changsheng: "What kind of trick are you playing?!"
"I... I didn't expect this either!" Wei Changsheng took two steps back, his tone flustered.
"This field is a Spiritual Vein node left by my ancestors; outsiders trampling on it will trigger a backlash... I told you early on, this land cannot be touched!"
"Nonsense!" Li Mang was furious and raised his hand to form a spell.
The tall Disciple beside him, however, pulled him back: "Wait! Didn't you see it? When his hoe just shook the ground, a spiritual rune flashed!
This might not be an ordinary farming tool, but a Spiritual Artifact!"
"A Spiritual Artifact?" The short Disciple also climbed up, still shaken, "No wonder the ground moved... He even said ancestral secret art; he might really be a descendant of some reclusive spiritual farmer."
Li Mang gritted his teeth, staring intently at Wei Changsheng: "You're just a Servant, where did you get a Spiritual Artifact?"
Wei Changsheng didn't answer; instead, he took out a small handful of ordinary Spiritual Rice from his bosom, flicked his wrist, and the grains scattered with the wind, landing on the field ridge.
Strangely, the moment those grains touched the ground, they emitted a faint golden light, then sprouted tender shoots at a visible speed, growing an inch of green seedlings in just three breaths.
The three men's eyes widened, unable to utter a single word.
"This... this is Instant Growth Art?!" The tall Disciple's voice trembled, "It's rumored that only a Golden Core Old Ancestor can stimulate vitality; how could he, a third-level Qi Cultivator, possibly..."
Wei Changsheng withdrew his hand and said calmly, "Although I am a Servant, my ancestors were also a Spiritual Farmer family.
If you offend again, next time it won't just be an illusion."
His tone was calm, yet it carried an undeniable chill.
Li Mang's face was ashen, and he still wanted to say something, but he was held by the arms by the two men, one on each side: "Let's go, Senior Brother Li, it's not worth risking our lives for a bit of Spiritual Rice..."
The three retreated in disarray, not even daring to look back.
Wei Changsheng stood rooted to the spot, only slowly exhaling once their figures had completely disappeared.
He looked down at the Jade Slip and found a small line of text had appeared in the "Mutation Record" column at some point:
"Unknown individual absorbed mutation source, not counted as System output."
He frowned, turned back to the straw shed, and immediately saw the little fox lying on the ground, spitting out a blue-tinged grain of rice from its mouth, resembling mutated Spiritual Rice, but there was no record of it in the System.
"You stole food again?" He walked over, picked up the grain of rice, and felt a faint Spiritual Pressure fluctuation from his fingertips.
The little fox looked up, its eyes clear, and its tail wagged gently, as if saying, "I'm helping you test the side effects."
Wei Changsheng stared at the grain of rice, his brows furrowing tighter: "The System didn't register it... was it missed, or... did it grow on its own?"
He didn't think any further, put the grain of rice into his Storage Pouch, and turned to walk deeper into the straw shed.
Taking out the bag of three hundred Intermediate Spirit Stone from his bosom, he hesitated for a moment, then only took out ten, flicked them with his fingertip, and put them into the "Recharge" column of the System interface.
"【Spiritual Field expanded to 1.5 mu, growth speed +10%】"
The moment the prompt sounded, a tiny line of text flashed at the bottom of the interface:
"External Spiritual Pressure monitoring detected, recommend enabling 'Silent Mode'."
Before Wei Changsheng could clearly see it, the tip of the little fox's tail suddenly swept across the screen, leaving a faint blue trace, and that line of text instantly vanished.
He closed the Jade Slip, resealed the Spirit Stone bag, and tucked it into the very bottom of his Storage Pouch.
"Only recharge, no cultivation," he murmured to himself.
"Mutation rates can't be messed with, data can't be wrong, System traces... must be hidden deeper."
He stood up and walked to the edge of the field, squatted down, and used the small hoe to thoroughly turn over any obvious herbal residues into the soil, then scattered a circle of ordinary spiritual grain husks outside the field ridge, disguised as everyday spills.
"From today onwards, System output will never be harvested in the open," he clapped his hands and stood up.
"Whoever wants to probe, don't blame me... for using science to slap them in the face."
The little fox jumped onto his shoulder, its tail gently resting on the side of his neck, as if reminding him of something.
Wei Changsheng narrowed his eyes, looking towards the Quiet Cultivation Pavilion; the window paper was still calm, but he clearly remembered that fleeting glimpse of the green shoe tip.
"You thought you were coming for a soft target," he sneered, "but you ran into a Doctor of Agriculture."
He turned to leave, then suddenly stopped.
At the edge of the field ridge, a wild grass that should have withered was slowly sprouting, its leaf edges glowing with a faint blue light.
He squatted down and reached out to touch it.
The grass leaf trembled slightly, as if responding to his touch.
Wei Changsheng's fingers froze in mid-air.