Chapter 209 – Life 73, Age 16, Martial Disciple 1

While living in the Verdant Fields Sect, time seemed to pass me by far quicker than usual. Each day, I spent the morning tending to my field of flowers and the afternoon teaching Bao and SuYin to cultivate using the methods I had learned in the Yellow Orchid Academy.

While I did have them practice fighting against each other using basic combat techniques, our primary focus was on helping each other learn to grow better, more potent herbs. Mostly this involved teaching ourselves through experimentation and the books in my mental library, but after our first crop was harvested, we also purchased a few simple herbalism lessons from low-level members of the sect. 

My disciples seemed to enjoy the time spent in these lessons, but I left the first one feeling more than a little underwhelmed. I couldn’t be too hard on the kid who was trying to teach us, but as a Disciple from a bottom-feeder sect in the Wastes, he was missing a lot of basic information. I found that the limited collection of books in my mental library was a far better guide than the teachers available to me as a simple farmer.

SuYin and Bao continued trying these lessons several more times, and they shared what they learned from them with me, but I focused my efforts on my books and my experiments.

Knowing that blue peonies contained wood-based medicinal energy, I set up several different sections in my field to try different formations to see how various combinations of energies affected the growth of plants. These experiments proved that the herbs needed some type of energy other than just qi to grow properly, but I didn’t have any filter designs specific to medicinal energy, demonic energy, or any more exotic energy forms, so the conclusions I could reach were limited.

It was easy to grow a peony that was considered to have an efficacy of 100%. More or less, I just needed to place a seed in the ground and wait for the flower to blossom. However, my goal was to go beyond this. Where any normal farmer could grow a peony with 100% efficacy, an herbalist was supposed to be able to push it to 120, 130, or even 140%. I didn’t know what the theoretical limits of an herb's boosted efficacy was, but the best peony I had ever seen had an efficacy of 137%.

Of course, none of the lessons we received from the Verdant Fields Sect addressed this topic. They were more concerned with consistently achieving 100% efficacy instead of pushing beyond it.

Should I have gone to find a real teacher who could have told me how to do this? Probably. Should I have just bought such information from the System and had it shoved into my head directly? Maybe. But that wasn’t the point. I was enjoying spending some downtime just farming and experimenting. It had been a long time since I had allowed myself to just relax and become absorbed in learning a new craft without worrying about schemes and deadlines. 

I was learning herbalism far slower than I otherwise could have, but I was doing so with a unique approach. Other than just having fun, I was hoping that whatever I learned by studying in this way would complement what I would eventually learn from more knowledgeable sources.

Of course, I didn’t just focus on herbalism. At night, I would study Jin’s books on refining and slowly improve my skills in that as well. Wood qi wasn’t ideal for use in refining, but it was balanced. Where fire qi destroyed metal and earth qi hardened it, wood qi was more like metal qi. It affected metals evenly. It just took a lot of power to have any meaningful effect.

My schedule was simple. In the morning, I tended my flowers. In the afternoon, I trained my disciples. In the evening, I practiced refining. Like this, the days rolled by.

While I had only given SuYin and Bao peak nine-star affinities to start with, I knew that they would need more than that if they wanted to continue progressing. I considered having them learn the wood essence cultivation technique so that they could boost their affinities on their own, but learning a Peak-Earth technique with only a nine-star affinity would have been far too difficult.

I could have boosted their initial affinities to make such a task easier, but I wanted them to slowly work their way through the more complicated techniques. I started by having them study a Low-Yellow technique and when they mastered it, they were given something more challenging.

They both got stuck around the Mid-Profound level, and I knew that this was mostly because of their lacking affinities. To fix this problem, I spent some time crafting a Wood Essence Gathering Formation. I only allowed them to sit inside of it for one hour each week, but that was more than enough to raise their affinities fast enough to keep up with their progress in learning new techniques.

While Bao’s initial knowledge led to him helping SuYin out in the early days, it wasn’t long before he started falling behind. When we first met, he was 22 years old, and stagnation had already set in. By the end of our first four years together, SuYin had far surpassed his abilities and was the one helping him out instead.

When SuYin turned 20, I guided both her and Bao on their breakthroughs to Martial Master. Then, they spent the next 8 years exploring that realm. After that, they broke through to Grandmaster. During the following four years, I trained them in everything they needed to know about the Grandmaster realm.

Bao, with his stagnated cultivation base and poor aptitude, struggled at times, but SuYin was always there to pull him up with her. I had no idea how high her talent in cultivation or herbalism was, but her blessing of a perfect memory meant that she never forgot a single word I said. After only a single practice session, she could remember everything I taught and was able to guide herself and Bao in mastering it.

As their skills and cultivation bases grew, my own abilities grew as well. I was limited to only practicing Rank 1 herbalism because of the limits of my environment, but I gained several powerful insights on how to grow peonies, astragalus root, and schisandra berries. Being a skilled Rank 1 herbalist after 16 years of practice might not be overly impressive, but I was happy with the gains. 

More important than my ability to grow random herbs, my experiments helped me better understand what was needed to create a viable ecosystem within my storage space. I had tortured peonies in nearly every way imaginable, and I did my best to understand exactly what they needed to survive and thrive. 

While Bao’s cultivation base was languishing behind SuYin, his ability to analyze herbs was exceptional. His blessing allowed him to understand herbs in a strange and unique way. Whenever he looked at my experiments, he was easily able to pick out small problems and find ways to make minor changes so that the herbs would grow quicker and more vibrantly. 

Unfortunately, he lacked a solid theoretical framework for the information that his blessing provided him. So, while he always had ideas for how to make improvements to my experiments, he could usually only give me vague advice, and sometimes he was entirely incapable of putting his thoughts into words.

Still, every bit of advice he could give me assisted in my endeavors to make the best Rank 1 herbs possible. While I was never able to create anything with an efficacy above 120%, by working together, we found several different methods of pushing these simple herbs to that limit.

Of course, none of these ‘special’ herbs were submitted to the sect. As far as the Verdant Fields Sect was concerned, the three of us were rather normal farmers with a lower-than-normal success rate at growing simple herbs. I had no desire to get wrapped up in sect politics or have some elder decide I needed to be shipped off to the Verdant Forest Sect. I was happy just spending my days tending my simple herbs.

As the years passed, my progress in herbalism might have been somewhat limited, but I did gain a rather firm understanding of Rank 1 and 2 refining. While crafting true weapons and armors would be a bit beyond me without first learning rudimentary smithing, I was still able to perfect Jin’s method for growing specific grain patterns in low-Rank metals through the use of qi and then imbuing them with energy.

I might not be able to create a deadly Rank 2 sword, but I was more than competent enough to make a shiny Rank 2 steel ingot.

Another task I checked off my to-do list was learning about all the spirit fire seeds I now possessed. Including my Cold Mountain Fire and the Expanding Realms Fire, I now had copies of 22 different fire seeds, and each of them had different, unique functions.

To figure out what they all did without risking large-scale destruction again, I could only turn to the System.

“System, how much for an analysis ability that will give me the basics of what a fire seed is and what will happen when I supply it with energy? This only needs to work on seeds Profound-Rank and below.”

Cost 1 billion credits.

“Purchase.”

Purchase confirmed. 743,954,553,487 credits remaining.

Then, I looked through my various seeds.

Cold Mountain Fire, Yellow-Rank, Elements: Earth/Water, Consumes: Energy, Produces: Granite/Water

Expanding Realms Fire, Profound-Rank, Elements: Space, Consumes: Energy, Produces: Space

Flowing Metal Fire, Yellow-Rank, Elements: Water/Metal, Consumes: Energy, Produces: Mercury

Blazing Inferno Fire, Profound-Rank, Elements: Fire, Consumes: Energy, Produces: Fire Qi

…

Red Lotus Fire, Profound-Rank, Elements: Fire/Wood, Consumes: Qi/Matter, Produces: Medicinal Fire Energy/Medicinal Wood Energy

Black Tortoise Fire, Profound-Rank, Elements: Earth/Water, Consumes: Matter, Produces: Demonic Earth Energy/Demonic Water Energy

Aside from the fact that some of these fires could produce medicinal and demonic energies, what most intrigued me were the seeds like the Blazing Inferno Fire that could consume any type of energy to produce pure fire qi. It would essentially act as a supercharged version of a qi filter, except instead of blocking the unwanted energies, it would convert them into the desired form.

These flames opened up a few possibilities for providing energy and resources to my storage space as it grew, but I would need to carefully consider the implications before using them for such a purpose. Placing the seed of the Flourishing Grove Fire in my soul and allowing it to flood the space with wood qi might be beneficial in some ways, but as I had seen in my experiments on Rank 1 herbs, such an imbalance could have catastrophic consequences.

Speaking of my storage space, at the end of these 16 years, it had grown to a staggering 42 million cubic meters. It was now a sphere with a radius of over 200 meters. This was nice, but I was beginning to realize a problem. If my storage space continued to grow in this manner, it would be somewhat wasteful. 

If I wanted to build a large farm or a city, I needed the largest horizontal cross-section possible, and a sphere wasn’t an efficient way to achieve that. I wanted to let the space expand a bit more first, but soon, I would have to try altering its shape.

With only about one month left until the sixteenth Su Clan blessing ceremony since the start of the loop, it was time for me to leave the sect and return to the clan, but before I did so, I needed to have one last meeting with SuYin and Bao.

---------------------------------------------------

Looking at my two disciples, I was proud of how far they had come.

Using the Essence Gathering Formation I provided them, they had only been able to raise their wood affinities to mid seven-star, and with this somewhat limited affinity, they had both been able to form pristine foundations as Martial Grandmasters.

“Bao, SuYin, my time in the sect is over. I am leaving, and the two of you need to decide what you will do.”

Bao looked at SuYin and encouraged her to speak.

“Master… Where are you going? Can we go with you?”

I smiled and nodded. “I am returning to my clan to take care of a few simple matters. You may come with me if you wish, but I would recommend a different path. You have both remained simple farmers in this sect, but your current skills in cultivation are far beyond anyone else here. Try to push yourself and see what you can achieve on your own.”

I looked around at our fields of blue flowers. “We are all Grandmasters, but we have only tackled learning Rank 1 herbalism. This sect may not be very powerful, but they should be able to help you learn the basics of Ranks 2 and 3. Why not try it out and see what you can learn? You might even get a chance to move up to the Verdant Forest Sect and become a Lord. I will visit you in a few years and see how things turn out.”

The two looked at each other silently for several moments before turning back to me.

SuYin was the first to bow her head. “Yes, Master.”

Bao followed only shortly thereafter. “Yes, Master.”

I spent a few more hours talking with them, and I handed off a few items I felt would be helpful, but what I could give them was limited. There weren’t any storage bags in the Wastes, and carrying around the plate of an Essence Gathering Formation seemed like a quick way to end up dead.

After a final farewell, I returned to my cave and got dressed in a bright red robe that I had bought from the Blue Wind Pavilion years earlier. It was made of the finest silk and was embroidered with golden dragons. Then, I did my hair up in a traditional topknot and fixed it in place with golden adornments. Finally, I carefully shaved my face, leaving only a tidy short beard behind.

Fully prepared, I stepped out of my home and collapsed the cave I had been living in for the past sixteen years. Then, I departed.

“System, teleport me to a secluded spot in the capital of the Proud Mountain Kingdom of the Rising Sun Empire.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 1,590 credits. 743,953,301,897 credits remaining.