Transforming Rain

Li Shiming woke from the wondrous scene of casting the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art and turned his gaze toward the area that had been watered.

There was a patch of camellias there, and only part of it had been affected by the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art.

He walked up to a camellia that had been watered by the rain and examined it closely. Its leaves were an emerald green different from what they should have been in autumn.

One had to know that it was autumn now, and all the camellia leaves were dark green.

He plucked a camellia leaf and put it in his mouth. These camellias had been specially transplanted here by his father, Li Wenyuan, and the camellias were regularly harvested for the household's use.

Although Li Shiming had no particular love for tasting tea, his predecessor had inherited Li Wenyuan's tea-tasting habits.

The moment he put the leaf in his mouth, he immediately sensed the difference.

The quality of the leaf had clearly risen by a level, surpassing its previous taste.

He could not help being astonished by the effect of the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art. With just one use, it had changed the quality of the camellias it affected.

Although he did not know how long the camellias' quality could last, if they were picked and stir-fried right now, they would already surpass the vast majority of famous teas.

This was a power that turned the rotten into the miraculous, leaving him unable to imagine what crops cultivated by immortals using a Spirit Field together with the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art would taste like.

Of course, if he truly wanted to taste it, he could try the two bags of Spiritual Rice in his Storage Bag.

But those were Spiritual Rice seeds. Even if he did not read "Spirit Planter Basics" or Shi Ximing's cultivation notes, he knew how precious seeds were. How could he waste them on a craving of the tongue?

He sensed the Spiritual Qi Vortex inside his body. One-third remained, and he did not want to cast any more spells.

The remaining one-third of his Spiritual Power could still be used in danger.

"Spells really are hard to learn and hard to use. This little bit of Spiritual Power is simply Not Enough to Consume!" he muttered helplessly, shaking his head.

What he did not know was that, in the Cultivation World, not all cultivators were able to learn spells.

Take the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art, for example. Generally speaking, a cultivator who could cast the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art could be considered to have stepped over the threshold of a Spirit Planter.

For Spirit Planter to be one of the Hundred Crafts of Cultivation, it was not something one could enter so easily.

If it were truly easy to become a Spirit Planter, then Spirit Planter would not have become one of the Hundred Crafts of Cultivation. If anyone could possess the methods of a Spirit Planter, the value of the spiritual qi crops grown by Spirit Planters would not be enough to support the independent existence of this profession.

To become a Spirit Planter, the first requirement was the Immortal Root: one had to possess at least either a water or wood spiritual root.

The other requirement was casting the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art. It might look as though Li Shiming had succeeded after only two attempts.

But in the Cultivation World, this step blocked countless cultivators, keeping the number of Spirit Planters at a rare level.

The Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art was indeed a low-level spell, but its difficulty in learning was not low at all. Perfectly drawing the complicated runes was one threshold, and needing the intent of spring breeze transforming into rain was another.

Those who normally learned the profession of Spirit Planter were cultivators of average talent. True geniuses were nurtured by sects when they were still at a low level and did not need to consider the matter of a side profession at all.

For cultivators of average talent, successfully casting the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art invariably required years of effort—three to five years, ten years, or even never managing to enter the door at all.

Most cultivators practiced for several months, realized they did not have the talent for it, and gave up.

It was not only the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art. All spells required the cooperation of intent. If one could not comprehend the existence of intent but still wanted to cast that spell, then one needed the help of talismans.

This was also why cultivators carried large numbers of talismans with them. It was not only because releasing talismans consumed less Spiritual Power and had the advantage of faster casting speed; the greater reason was that spells were difficult to learn.

Of course, within a sect, if one had a wise teacher's guidance, one could still use the experience of predecessors to comprehend the intent of spells more quickly.

Li Shiming turned into a tea picker, harvesting all the camellias across twenty square meters.

Afterward, in his Server Room Space, he stir-fried the camellia leaves he had picked into finished tea.

Stir-frying tea in the Server Room Space perfectly preserved the leaf quality enhanced by the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art within the tea leaves.

The techniques for stir-frying tea were in the database of the IBMz15 Mainframe, and they were the most mature tea-frying techniques, developed over countless years.

Returning to his own courtyard, he brewed himself a cup of tea with the leaves he had just stir-fried.

After taking a light sip, he found that his earlier judgment had not been wrong. Besides the tea's excellent quality, it also carried a trace of almost imperceptible spiritual qi.

This trace of almost imperceptible spiritual qi had not the slightest effect on him, who was at the Qi Refining Second Level, whether for his body or his cultivation.

But if tea leaves rich in weak spiritual qi were given to ordinary people to drink, they would be quite beneficial to the body.

He filled three jars with such tea leaves. There were not many leaves to be picked from twenty square meters of camellias, and producing three jars after stir-frying was already a very high yield.

"It's a waste for me to drink it!" Li Shiming shook his head and drained the tea in his cup in one gulp.

He packed the three jars of tea into a box and headed toward the office area of the Government Office.

"Congratulations, Xue Si!" In the Government Office, he ran into Professor Zhou of Nanling Prefecture, who smiled and spoke to him. Xue Si was his courtesy name.

Li Shiming returned the greeting in confusion, not knowing where the good news came from, and Professor Zhou did not explain anything to him either.

Professor Zhou was of the seventh rank and oversaw education affairs in Nanling Prefecture.

When he arrived at Li Wenyuan's office, the moment he entered, he saw a rare, delighted smile on Li Wenyuan's face.

"Shiming, I was just about to have someone call you, and here you are!" Li Wenyuan beckoned for Li Shiming to sit.

"Father, what has made you so happy?" Li Shiming asked after sitting down.

"Tomorrow is the day the rankings are posted, but the results of the Autumn Examination were already delivered today!" Li Wenyuan replied with a smile.

Ordinary candidates, even those from powerful and noble families, had no way to learn the ranking results in advance.

That was because the results of the examination papers would only come out the day before the rankings were posted. After they came out, they would be delivered to the Government Office. Other than the chief examiner and the assistant examiner, only the professor and the prefect could see the results; no one else could know them ahead of time.

The results would be posted on time tomorrow morning, and only then would the outcome be announced.

"Then your son has passed the provincial exam!" Li Shiming understood why Li Wenyuan was so happy, and said with a smile.

To be honest, if not for the influence of Original Body's emotions, since passing the provincial exam had been an obsession of Original Body's, he would not have felt much excitement over it.

After coming into contact with immortal cultivation, worldly affairs had far less influence on him.

At first, he had even entertained the idea of relying on the data stored in the IBMz15 Mainframe to change this world and accomplish some great undertaking, but with the existence of immortals in this world, all of that had shifted into a yearning for immortal cultivation.

"To avoid suspicion, the chief examiner did not make you First Place. You earned Second Scholar. It was your father who affected you!" Li Wenyuan said, his joy tinged with regret.