All Scrolls Are Not Me, Only Then Do I Know I Am Me!

At that moment.

The blacksmiths were still gathered in twos and threes, buzzing over Jiu Cai Rong's case.

Su Yu Niang was speechless. She ran over, kicked one of them, and said, "Stop chatting and get back to work. They'll probably be logging on soon. Do you all punch in on the dot whenever you play games?"

The blacksmiths did not react much to Su Yu Niang's ascension.

Her prestige was already sufficient, especially after that exchange with Jiu Cai Rong yesterday.

She was the culprit!

Sure enough, the Stormy Mountain Villa detective plot had arrived!

But everyone merely complained inwardly before getting to work. Yet not long after they started, they could not help chatting about today's gossip again.

"It's five past eight. Why hasn't he entered the game? He's a full five minutes late! If they were doing a guild event and the guild master didn't show up like this, wouldn't the whole guild collapse?"

"I don't get it. It's not like his persona has collapsed or anything, right? He's clearly the victim."

"You don't know shit. This is social death! His dark history got dug up."

"Exactly, exactly. You're all taking it too lightly. Some people would rather die than suffer social death. Even after a car accident, you'd have to format your phone first thing! Why don't you try making all that stuff in your browser public for your relatives and friends to see?"

"Holy shit, hahahaha, I get it now."

"And you're still laughing? That's too tragic. Just imagining the weird looks my parents and siblings would give me after seeing me act like Boiling Sheep makes me want to shove my head up my ass and hide at home."

"Right, what do you think about the Copper of Shou Mountain we mentioned yesterday?"

"Hmm, I think it's interesting. Even if it isn't, the Dog Planner secretly watching us would definitely copy it in secret and secretly alter the setting until it became the real Copper of Shou Mountain."

"Because it's a Golden Skull? So Magic Copper is formed from the Sea of Consciousness, which means it can store endless magic power? The planner actually planted such a huge foreshadowing!"

"This is brass-colored."

"Maybe their skull's paint peeled and faded!"

Everyone chatted happily while hauling bricks, clearly treating the place like a chat room.

Su Yu Niang had been promoted into management and no longer had to haul bricks in the fields. While supervising these leek bricklayers, she took the opportunity to sneak over beside the Old Steward, intending to ask him a few questions.

She was different from Jiu Cai Rong.

Jiu Cai Rong loved management and was a management-oriented talent.

She, on the other hand, liked excitement, adventure, fighting monsters, and leveling up. She was a competitive player with a strong interest in cultivation.

But cultivation was not mainstream in this game. If she cultivated like the natives, it would take ten or eight years. Wouldn't that be far too slow?

A Spiritual Root, huh.

It looked incredibly interesting!

But she had to give it a try first.

"Old Steward, how should I go about cultivating if I want to?"

Su Yu Niang's eyes shone. She raised her biceps, her entire being screaming, Hurry up and give me a hidden quest! Then she bragged, "To be honest, among my species, I'm a once-in-a-million martial arts prodigy!"

Ning Zheng looked up at her, instantly understanding that tone of anticipation.

He had once been the same.

But reality had dealt him a savage blow.

The Fat Steward had looked at him with contempt and disdain and said, "Someone as useless as you wants to cultivate?" He had looked at Ning Zheng as if he were a stray dog by the roadside.

After all.

Put nicely, it was that the Dao could not be casually passed on. Put bluntly, who would be willing to let someone else compete with them for resources?

Although Cultivation Methods had now been popularized, and everyone under Heaven had a chance at transcendence, one had to meet the standards of a Confucian Scholar before being taught the methods.

But back when they were slaves, did they deserve to read? To cultivate?

"Cultivation is an extremely difficult matter. Fortunately, you met me. I can pave the road to immortality for you, sparing you some detours and hardships."

Ning Zheng sighed, stood up, and unlocked the door. A moment later, he took several books from the steward's study.

"Cultivation begins with cultivating the heart. If you can understand these, you'll qualify to cultivate. If you truly refuse to give up, I can let you try."

Su Yu Niang stared blankly at Understanding True Heart Studies, Investigating Things to Know Oneself, and Calming the Heart to Discuss Oneself. She opened the first page, and an overwhelming aura of Daoist philosophy rushed toward her. It was all about cultivating the body and nurturing the nature.

So this is actually a health-preservation game.

Before long, Su Yu Niang became immersed in it.

She was a top student, after all. She wanted to see what kind of monsters and demons were hidden in these books. Surely they were not some bizarre patchwork plagiarized from certain real-world philosophical classics?

A moment later.

She gradually began to feel that something was wrong. "This book is practically heaven-defying. It forms its own school? Some of the classics are even better than the words of certain ancient sages at first glance. They made a game, and even the books are this interesting."

She grew excited, quickly gaining an understanding of this world's system.

Why did one have to read books?

The first step of cultivation was Opening the Three Flowers: the three flowers were essence, qi, and spirit. Opening these three windows was opening the Heaven and Earth Bridge.

In essence, it meant questioning the heart, understanding the heart, and Seeing One's True Nature.

Yet even most modern people who had read since childhood could not accomplish this.

Many modern people drifted through their entire lives in a daze, working nine to five and muddling through. They had no dreams of their own and no steadfast convictions.

What about the ancients, who had never even read a book?

Without reading, they could not even understand the world!

Some even drew lines around the ground and imprisoned themselves, never leaving their village for their entire lives. They guarded their tiny plot of land, a simple, foolish innocence showing in their eyes.

That was why they had to read. Otherwise, they would not make it through the trial of questioning the heart, the hurdle of opening the Heaven and Earth Bridge.

In more highbrow terms:

Perhaps you could not spare enough time to travel across the earth, weather the leaden dust, and witness the blooming flowers.

But when you read ten thousand books, read the biographies, philosophies, lives, paths, and beliefs of other ancients, you could experience again and again, through their lives, the sorrow and great love they had endured.

Then, one morning, you would put down the book and let out a long sigh: "All scrolls are not me. Only then do I know I am me."

In that way, you would succeed, finally witnessing the vast, magnificent world beneath Heaven.

"This game is seriously highbrow."

Su Yu Niang suddenly stood there in a daze. She raised her head and gazed at the vast sky above the Mountain Villa, her eyes filled with shock. "Cultivating the Dao, cultivating the Dao... This is what the Dao truly is."

Ning Zheng looked at her and shook his head.

Cultivation was far too difficult. It could not be accomplished in a month or a day.

Still, it was a good thing for them to cultivate. They would not succeed anyway, and there were two major benefits.

First, the wages they received—Magic Coins—would have somewhere to go.

Second, although they would possess no cultivation level, their bodies would be elevated after being tempered by spiritual energy. They would become excellent high-grade forging materials, and their bodies would make people crave them a little.

Wouldn't that mean the blacksmiths forged iron to earn money, used it to improve their bodies, and then, after they died, their bodies became forging materials again? Wouldn't the money ultimately be spent back on the Mountain Villa?

"Wherever you earn money is where you spend it, and you can't take a single cent with you?"

Ning Zheng stroked his chin and secretly calculated the figures.

Besides, although breakthroughs at high realms could easily take several years or even more than a decade, they might still be able to enter the lower realms! Even becoming the lowest-level auxiliary cultivator would be useful.

One had to know that the immortal cultivation world had many noncombat secondary professions.

Their Mountain Villa followed the path of the Artifact Refiner. Besides that, there were spirit farmers and alchemists.

Spirit farmers were the most numerous in the immortal cultivation circles.

They mainly cultivated Spirit Rice.

But even that required one to reach the First Body of the Five Bodies Realm, open the Three Flowers on the Crown, and enter the sect as a cultivator before one was qualified to become a spirit farmer.

Since different varieties of rice seeds produced different kinds of Spirit Rice, this region belonged to the minority Rice Miao Tribe. Witchcraft was passed down among them, and local customs ran deep. Their native specialty was a type of Spirit Rice called Wine Rice.

This Wood Spirit Root would display a corresponding Innate Divine Ability: Top Rice Flower. It would grow golden wheat-sheaf hair resembling delicate braids, giving the person a distinctly ethnic appearance.

This was the specialization of Spiritual Roots. Some Spiritual Roots were plants found only in specific regions.

Every day, spirit farmers had to meditate in a seated position, absorb the essence of the sun and moon, use spiritual wisdom to birth the Top Rice Flower, then wash and nourish their hair with spirit water, fertilize and tend it, and remove pests and mites.

It was said that some impoverished spirit-farming couples woke every morning with the first ray of sunlight. They ate breakfast by embracing each other's hair and gnawing wildly, without even removing the husks.

Their guiding principle was simply frugality.

Clearly, spirit farmers had a hard life too.

Moreover, once one became a spirit farmer, one could not change one's Spiritual Root. One would remain a noncombat spirit farmer for life.

When other cultivators passed through this region, they would also be astonished. They would say things like, "The natives here are so savage. They can grow Spirit Rice on their heads?" "They open rice flowers instead of the flowers of essence, qi, and spirit?" "We must respect local customs." "Take two pounds of the local specialty rice home."

Regardless.

Spirit Rice, Magic Coins, and Meat Fields were known as the three foundational cultivation resources.

Ning Zheng had never eaten Spirit Rice or Meat Field. He currently cultivated using only Magic Coins, so his cultivation speed was truly not fast.

To put it another way, excluding the special ability granted by his Luck Value, at his current realm, he was equivalent to an ordinary spirit-farming rogue cultivator who could be found anywhere outside.

Ning Zheng looked at Su Yu Niang, who was struggling to read and trying to understand the books, and sighed.

"Although the possibility is slim, if she really can succeed, perhaps I can find a Spiritual Root for her and let her try cultivating this sort of noncombat spirit-farming Spiritual Root, growing a head of dazzling golden rice-flower braids in twin tails."