Pollution

The next morning, Li Shiming felt the Spiritual Qi Vortex in his chest and sighed helplessly.

He had not cultivated the Five Elements Qi Absorption Art yesterday, wanting to see whether the Spiritual Power he had consumed could recover on its own.

In the end, after an entire night, there was no sign of any recovery in the Spiritual Power inside him.

In addition, he discovered something even more serious.

Back when he had the Spirit Gathering Disk, he cultivated the Five Elements Qi Absorption Art every day and had not felt it. But since the Spirit Gathering Disk could no longer be activated, he had gone two days without being able to cultivate the Five Elements Qi Absorption Art.

Yet it was precisely these two days without cultivating the Five Elements Qi Absorption Art, with his body no longer nourished by spiritual qi, that made him feel his body had been contaminated.

And the source of that contamination was the food he ate every day.

It was not that the food was poisonous, but that worldly food without spiritual qi was filthy to a body that had been baptized by spiritual qi.

Of course, this contamination was not severe, but if he suffered it long-term, combined with the fact that he had no spiritual qi with which to cultivate the Five Elements Qi Absorption Art, then forget improving his cultivation—he feared it might even decline.

It was not that he had no spiritual qi. Inside the Server Room Space, there was dense spiritual qi.

It was just that the spiritual qi inside the Server Room Space was Rootless Water; every bit used meant there would be that much less.

He had originally planned to treat the spiritual qi inside the Server Room Space as a reserve, to be used in emergencies.

Now it seemed he had to use this spiritual qi to solve the most urgent problem before him.

First, he had to solve the issue of food. Without food containing spiritual qi, even if he used the spiritual qi inside the Server Room Space to cultivate, he would merely be able to hold on a little longer.

In "Spirit Planter Basics" and Shi Ximing's cultivation notes, there were methods for growing Spirit Rice.

But even the cleverest housewife could not cook without rice. To grow Spirit Rice, he needed a Spirit Field.

There were ready-made methods for creating a Spirit Field as well, but forget having seen those materials—he had not even heard of them, Not to Mention buying them.

He also understood that, given his current situation, even if he knew where they were sold, he would not dare go buy them.

He was only at Qi Refining Second Level and had no ability to protect himself. If he dared take the Magic Artifacts or books in his possession to exchange for Spirit Field materials, the cultivators would probably swallow him whole, skin, bones, and all.

The Spirit Field method was naturally unworkable, so he thought of the advanced planting methods from his Previous Life.

Although Spirit Rice was a spiritual qi crop and could not be grown through ordinary planting, he could still be considered to have a few Spirit Planter methods. The Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art could make Spirit Rice grow.

In any case, there had been nothing much going on recently, so he began sending his consciousness into the IBMz15 Mainframe, searching through the vast database for planting-related information.

Li Shiming had completely forgotten that the Autumn Examination results were posted this morning. Of all the examinees, he was probably the only one who was utterly indifferent to the matter.

"Congratulations, Young Master! Young Master passed the provincial examination and became Second Scholar!" the pageboy Mo Yan shouted from outside the study.

Originally, the good news should have been delivered by yamen runners, but Li Shiming lived in the rear garden of the Government Office, and after Mo Yan received the news, he took the congratulatory notice and brought it over.

"Si Qin, give Mo Yan two taels of silver. All the servants are to be rewarded!" Li Shiming's train of thought had been interrupted, so he could only helplessly instruct Si Qin.

"Young Master, you're a Juren now!" Si Qin did not have his composure and said it with a bouncing laugh.

"I know. Go tell Mo Yan to quiet down. After he gets the reward silver, have him go play somewhere else!" Li Shiming Waved His Hand and soothed the excited Si Qin.

Si Qin did not understand Li Shiming's attitude toward passing the examination, but that did not affect her happiness. She bounced out of the study.

Li Shiming once again focused his mind on the IBMz15 Mainframe's database. The data contained a great deal of agriculture-related information.

In the Flower Family of his Previous Life, rice cultivation had been at the forefront of the world. Among them, there had even appeared a grand druid like Elder Yuan, who pushed rice to unprecedented heights.

It was just that his time was limited, and his conditions were limited too. Wanting to cultivate an optimized, stronger strain of rice in a short period was not very realistic.

What he needed most was to first grow Spirit Rice. Only on that foundation could he consider other matters.

After comparing a large amount of data, he found the method with the highest feasibility: soilless cultivation technology.

Soilless cultivation technology, especially technology aimed at rice, was already a relatively mature system.

Li Shiming ultimately chose the technology for growing rice in a plant factory environment. The reason he chose this technology was that this method could make maximum use of space.

One had to know that the Server Room Space was not large. Excluding the area already in use, the remaining usable area was only seventy square meters.

Seventy square meters was still too small if he wanted to use it to grow rice.

But if he could create a plant factory environment, then he could form multi-layer soilless cultivation. With the Server Room Space being four meters high, aside from the lowest layer, which would be the seedling-raising layer, he could still form four planting layers above it.

To make maximum use of the Server Room Space, Li Shiming dismantled even the suspended ceiling in the Server Room Space.

The suspended ceiling had been there for the central air conditioner and multiple sets of LED cool lights. Needless to say, without external equipment, the central air conditioner was only left with air vents, which were nothing more than decoration, so it was better to dismantle it.

Previously, Li Shiming had always entered the Server Room Space with his consciousness and had no need for lighting. Under the perception of his consciousness, the lack of lights in the Server Room Space had no effect on his consciousness at all.

But to create a plant factory environment in the Server Room Space, he needed lights to enable photosynthesis.

Fortunately, the electricity was ready-made. He only needed to connect the power, and he could light up the LED cool lights.

There were many LED cool lights. When the server room was originally designed, the LED cool lights had covered the entire ceiling to create a shadowless effect. Once distributed, there were enough LED cool lights for a multi-layer plant factory.

This saved him a tremendous amount of time. After all, while he had the technology to make electric lights and his consciousness possessed Micron-level control inside the Server Room Space, actually making light bulbs would still require quite a bit of time.

Over the next few days, apart from needing to visit his examiners, Li Shiming stayed almost entirely in the study.

In just a few short days, he spent several hundred taels of silver purchasing large quantities of the materials he needed.

Inside his Server Room Space, a set of wooden shelves with five levels from bottom to top had already been built.

On the wooden shelves were trays made of glass. These glass pieces had very mottled colors, but in this era, any one of these variegated trays would be an expensive treasure if taken outside.

The glass trays were made from sand. To make transparent glass required higher-quality silica sand, and he was not trying to make money from glass. He only needed the stable properties of glass; the color did not affect its use.

Of course, this was also related to the fact that he had obtained large amounts of gold and silver from the Storage Bag and did not need to worry about money.