93: Chapter 93 The Substance is Buried in the Soil, the First Step Takes Placement

The third day, early morning.

The three patches of gravelly ground at the easternmost edge of the thin-soil area of the spirit fields were usually deserted. The ground was covered with a layer of gray-white gravel the size of fingernails, and the soil layer was so thin that every time a shovel dug in, one could hear the sound of stone scraping against iron. Su Qingli crouched on the ground, holding those three golden grains in her hand, waiting for the sun.

Four old spirit farmers stood on the ridge behind her; they had all come from Black Reef Island and had farmed their entire lives, yet they had never seen seeds like these. One old farmer couldn't help but ask her, "Miss Su, even weeds only grow halfway here; do you really intend to plant here?"

"That is exactly where I intend to plant."

The moment the sun broke over the eastern horizon, the first rays of light struck the surface of the gravel ground. The gravel was warmed slightly by the sun. Su Qingli did not hesitate; she pressed the three seeds into the center of each of the three plots, less than an inch into the soil. She didn't water them or fertilize them; she simply patted the soil down and stood up to watch.

For the first few moments, nothing happened.

Then, the soil surface moved.

It wasn't breaking open from above. It was from below.

The three seeds sank—not to the depth she had pressed them, but the seeds themselves had burrowed about three inches deeper. Three extremely fine cracks appeared on the surface of the soil, as if something underground were stretching.

Su Qingli crouched back down and used her finger to gently brush away a layer of loose soil.

The seeds were gone. In their place was a white root hair, finer than a strand of hair, currently burrowing into the cracks between the gravel.

When the root hair encountered a stone, it didn't go around—it drilled straight in, like wire piercing dry mud.

"It isn't picky about soil," Su Qingli muttered to herself. She stood up, brushed the dirt from her knees, and turned to the old farmers, saying, "This seedling produces three harvests a season. When the first season's ears appear, call me."

One old farmer stared at the three cracks for a long while before suddenly asking, "Miss, this thing—is it growing by eating stones?"

Su Qingli did not answer. She had already written four characters in the ledger: Enters soil, self-burrows.

The thunder bamboo Garden was on the other side of the island. The garden was not large, and it was encased in the Seal-Breath Restriction laid down by that wisp of Luo Qingcheng's Geng Metal Sword Intent. Ye Zhe was crouching next to the thunder bamboo, where he had already dug a pit—one and a half feet in diameter and exactly two feet deep, with the walls patted perfectly smooth. When he buried the nodes of the tide sound spirit bamboo, his movements were very slow; the moment the lower end of the bamboo node entered the soil, he looked up at Lu Changyuan.

"How deep should it be buried?"

"The bamboo node itself is two inches."

Ye Zhe filled the soil back in and pressed it firm with his palm. Then he moved back half a step and crouched to wait.

The leaves of the devil-cleansing thunder bamboo swayed gently in the morning breeze. There was no movement at all in the pit next to it. Ye Zhe did not move. He stared at the mound of fresh soil like a cat guarding a hole, waiting for its prey to emerge.

About the time it takes to burn an incense stick passed.

A jade-green bamboo shoot tip emerged from the ground.

The speed at which the shoot tip broke through the soil was at least three times faster than ordinary bamboo—Ye Zhe watched as it grew from one inch to one foot before stopping. When the silver runes on the bamboo node lit up for the first time, the flow of Spiritual Qi in the entire garden suddenly changed direction—it was as if someone had drilled a small hole in the bottom of a water vat, and the surrounding wood Spiritual Qi began to flow very slowly toward this new piece of bamboo.

The leaves of the devil-cleansing thunder bamboo swayed again. This time, it wasn't the wind.

On the two-foot-wide patch of empty ground between the two bamboo stalks, two extremely faint lines of Spiritual Qi appeared in the air—one was the dark cyan unique to the devil-cleansing thunder bamboo, and the other was the silver-white of the tide sound spirit bamboo. The two lines touched in the middle, separated, and then touched again. It was as if they were recognizing each other.

"Symbiosis has initiated," Ye Zhe said in a very low voice, as if afraid of disturbing them. "Elder Tianji said it would be three times faster—it's only just beginning now; it only counts once their roots touch."

Lu Changyuan stood outside the garden and watched for a while.

He did not enter the garden. The Seal-Breath Restriction was sensitive to the Spiritual Qi of outsiders, and he didn't want to disturb the newly planted bamboo.

"Record the changes in the Spiritual Qi flow once every day. Record it for three months."

Ye Zhe nodded.

At the broken reef shelf of the Outer Port, Leng Feng selected three locations—a gap in the northern section cracked by last winter's waves, a depression in the middle section where a ship's hull had collided, and an edge in the southern section that had already begun to scatter gravel debris. He took the vine seeds from his bosom, crouched at the edge of the reef, and pressed them into the stone crevices one by one.

The moment the vine seeds touched the reef, the dark blue hard shell on their surface split. It didn't shatter—instead, dozens of root hairs finer than spider silk extended from the cracks. The root hairs burrowed along the texture of the reef surface, and halfway through, they encountered seawater.

The seawater did not soften the root hairs.

On the contrary, the root hairs burrowed even faster.

Leng Feng watched those root hairs drill into the stone crevices and reached out to bend the vine body. The vine body was cold and hard, with a slight elasticity when bent with force—he estimated the hardness, which was roughly equivalent to a second-grade High Grade spirit material, still far from third-grade Cold Iron.

"Three years," he stood up, looking at the broken reef beneath his feet. "For these three years, it will be weak. Protect it."

A Sword Ray Cavalry soldier behind him looked at the vine body, then at the long sword hanging at Leng Feng's side.

"Captain Leng, after three years, can this thing really be used as a ship's keel once it's cut?"

"We'll talk about things three years from now when the time comes," Leng Feng turned and walked back. "For now, just keep it alive."

North side of the Outer Port berth. Chen Mo stood on a narrow stone embankment, with the water surface just three inches below his feet. This cold water channel was not long; it branched off from the main channel of the Outer Port and extended three miles northward before merging into the deep sea. The water color was deeper than the main channel—not due to pollution, but because it was cold. Cold water had a higher density, and sunlight refracted less when it hit, so it looked dark.

He crouched down and inserted an old jade slip used for measuring temperature into the water. The jade slip was engraved with a scale from zero to one hundred; after touching the water, the liquid line began to sink, stopping at the eighteenth graduation mark.

Cold sea. But not extremely cold.

"Enough," Chen Mo muttered to himself.

He took the coral mother branch from his bosom. The palm-sized transparent coral shimmered with a cold white light in the morning sun, and the star points inside were still flowing slowly. He carefully submerged the mother branch into the water, holding it with his hand to keep it from being swept away by the waves.

After the mother branch entered the water, it did not sink immediately.

It floated three inches below the surface for a few moments. Then, an extremely fine tentacle extended from the base of the branch and touched the stone of the reef wall. The tentacle paused on the stone for about ten moments—as if judging whether this stone was suitable.

Then it attached itself.

A soft snap. Very crisp. Like the sound of a seashell closing.

The mother branch was firmly attached to the reef wall, and the branch body slowly unfolded. The seawater within three feet began to clear—not suddenly, but with a clarity where the turbid matter sank bit by bit, and the light penetrated bit by bit. Beyond three feet, it was still the original water color, but within three feet, one could clearly see every small seashell on the reef wall.

Chen Mo pulled his hand out of the water and shook off the droplets.

"That's it," he said. "Next is just waiting. Thirty zhang a year. After three years, this entire channel will be clear."

Outer Port cold water layer. Lu Hu and four veteran soldiers had already been soaking in the cold water channel for over an hour. They were not diving—Foundation Establishment Stage Cultivators had limited time they could stay underwater, so the four of them took turns diving, each diving for the time it takes to burn an incense stick, then coming up to swap after finishing a section. Things like cold spring eyes left no trace on the water surface.

You had to dive down, place your hand against the stone wall, and feel the extremely fine cold current seeping out from the cracks in the stone—that was it.

"Brother Hu!" The third veteran to dive emerged from the water, his voice urgent and bright. "There is one below! On the back of the concave reef, cold water is seeping out from the stone crevices; it's freezing enough to sting the hand!"

Lu Hu untied the cold marrow jade shell from his waist, bit down on it, and plunged into the water.

The concave reef was four zhang deep underwater. The reef body was not large, and its surface was covered with dark green seaweed. He went around to the back and placed his hand against it—the water seeping from the stone crevices was indeed cold, at least five degrees lower than the surrounding cold water layer. He used his finger to probe two inches into the stone crevice and felt a fist-sized depression. The cold spring eye was at the bottom of the depression, like an extremely small well, bubbling with cold Qi.

He took the mother shell from his mouth and placed it against the depression.

The moment the edge of the mother shell touched the cold spring eye, the two shell halves opened slightly. The pale blue light inside the shell suddenly brightened—not a blinding brightness, but like someone suddenly lifting half a corner of a lampshade covering a lamp. Then, the shell edge began to secrete a layer of extremely thin, semi-transparent, milky white substance. It wasn't jade. It was the cold jade marrow that Elder Tianji spoke of—it was just the first layer, just emerging, thin as paper.

Lu Hu emerged from the water and wiped the water from his face.

"It's attached! It's already secreting jade!"

The veterans on the shore let out a low cheer. Lu Hu climbed ashore, soaked, with seaweed strands hanging from his hair, but he looked like someone who had just walked out of a casino having won money.

"Three to five layers a year, three thousand per layer. That's nine thousand to fifteen thousand a year. Ten of them—"

"Don't count ten yet," Lu Changyuan appeared at the side of the cold water channel, though no one knew when he had arrived. "Securely raise one before thinking about the second."

"Yes," Lu Hu chuckled, still muttering "nine thousand to fifteen thousand" under his breath.

Evening. Council Hall.

Everyone reported their results.

Su Qingli recorded them item by item in the ledger—earth vein jade spike entered soil, self-burrowed three inches, not picky about soil verified; tide sound spirit bamboo planted two feet deep, symbiosis initiated, Spiritual Qi flow direction turned from east to northwest; gold-patterned iron thorn vine entered three sections of broken reef, root hairs drilled into stone crevices, current hardness second-grade High Grade; Starlight Coral mother branch entered water at the north side of the Outer Port berth cold water channel, already attached, water quality within three feet turned clear; cold marrow jade shell entered water at the bottom of the concave reef in the Outer Port cold water layer, already attached to cold spring eye, shell edge began to secrete first layer of cold jade marrow.

All five items had landed.

But each was just a beginning. It was just like farming—the seed entering the soil was only the first step; the subsequent water, fertilizer, pests, weeds, wind, and rain, every single thing had to be managed.

Leng Feng sat by the window, wiping the sword laid across his lap. He spoke up, "Three years. The slowest is the iron thorn vine; it will take three years to cut the first harvest."

"The fastest is the coral," Chen Mo chimed in. "Thirty zhang a year, but the first year won't show big changes—it takes a full three years to clean the entire near-shore area."

"The jade spike is the most reliable," Su Qingli said without looking up. "The first season's ears will appear after ninety days. By then, we'll know if the yield per mu can truly support forty people."

"What about the black turtle egg?" Leng Feng asked.

Lu Changyuan took the egg from his ring. The pale golden patterns on the eggshell were flowing faster in the evening light than in the morning—the frequency was accelerating, as if waiting for something, or perhaps urging something.

"Cold Dragon Abyss," he put the egg back into the ring. "Once things at hand stabilize, Uncle Hu and I will take the cavalry to explore it once."

The door was pushed open.

Chen Mo walked over from the direction of the underground Workshop, carrying a sealed jade bottle in his hand. The bottle body was coarse porcelain, as unremarkable as the teacup he usually used. But his expression didn't look like he had just come from the Workshop—it was more like he had something to say.

"Lord," he placed the jade bottle on the table.

"The second batch is out. The formula has been adjusted—old sand reduced by half a percent, thunder-struck wood shavings increased by three percent, and the fine outer skin replaced with selected material from the second molt. The quality this time—"

He paused.

"Is more stable than the first batch."

Lu Changyuan picked up the jade bottle and pulled out the stopper. A faint, bitter scent escaped from the bottle's mouth. He shook the bottle; it contained about half a small bottle of pale cyan liquid, which was more distinctly cyan than the first batch.

"Yield?"

"One hundred and twenty small bottles. All sealed."

Su Qingli looked up from the ledger and glanced at the bottle of purification liquid.

Then she picked up her pen, started a new page in the ledger, and wrote four characters at the top of the page.

Purification, second batch.