Su Yunshang and Luo Shangdu both fell silent for several breaths, digesting that number.
Su Yunshang's voice grew graver than usual. "This matter is far beyond what I can handle as Cloudsilk Peak's grand elder. Senior Xia, Junior Sister Luo, we must return to Taiheng immediately and report this to the domain lord."
I said nothing.
"Have you considered that their numbers are only a secondary concern?" Luo Shangdu's gaze passed over Su Yunshang and settled on the high-grade spirit rice still unharvested in the spirit field.
The ears were nearly ripe, their grains plump, each wrapped in a thin layer of spiritual radiance.
Even inside their husks, their fragrance could no longer be contained. It drifted outward along the field ridges, and a single breath made the spiritual energy in our meridians tremble faintly.
This was no ordinary spirit rice.
Walking to the edge of a field ridge, Luo Shangdu plucked a grain from an ear and crushed it between her fingertips.
The husk broke, and the grain rolled out, dark gold throughout. Extremely fine patterns of laws flowed across its surface like miniature talismans.
"This quality, tsk, tsk." Luo Shangdu held the grain of spirit rice in her palm and offered it for us to see.
Su Yunshang glanced at it but could not make anything of it.
"This is immortal rice. Its spiritual energy content is more than thirty times that of the finest spirit rice in the Dao Domains. And the patterns of laws inside it don't belong to any system of spiritual patterns or dao patterns in the Dao Domains. It condensed from immortal spirit energy. If their Celestial Being Realm cultivators have been eating immortal rice like this for ten thousand years, what level of cultivation would they have reached?" Luo Shangdu prompted.
"Immortal