Pseudo-Spirit Plant Matured

After finishing up, Zhang Lingshu and Zhang Yan returned.

After the two rested for a while, Zhang Wan drove them to do other exercises in the courtyard, tempering their bodies.

With Zhang Wan using his magical power to regulate their bodies, and the spirit meals made from pseudo-spirit materials that he had distributed to them at noon, there was no need to worry about injuring themselves through training.

Zhang Wan, meanwhile, sat to the side, flipping through the Extreme Spirit Planter inheritance.

Besides the two techniques, the inheritance also contained illustrated descriptions of all kinds of Postnatal low-grade spirit plants, totaling over a million words.

To become a truly qualified Spirit Planter,

one had to master the two techniques in the inheritance, but this spirit-plant knowledge also had to be memorized.

To cultivate spirit plants properly, relying solely on the Vitality Catalysis Technique and the Extreme Growth Technique would not be enough.

Those two techniques only accelerated the growth of spirit plants; they could not solve the other problems encountered during their growth.

If he did not want the spirit plants he had painstakingly cultivated to ultimately wither and decay, he also had to memorize the rest of that spirit-plant knowledge.

As he read through the knowledge, the panel also displayed the experience points required to remember it all.

Even things that merely needed to be memorized by rote could be mastered directly with experience points!

And the experience required was not particularly high—less than what was needed to master the incomplete versions of the techniques.

However, Zhang Wan did not spend any experience points on it.

Unlike the Vitality Catalysis Technique and the Extreme Growth Technique, where the sooner he mastered them, the sooner he could enjoy their benefits,

this spirit-plant knowledge could be memorized gradually.

He still had several years to spend at the academy, so he could completely commit all of it to memory during that time.

Although over a million words sounded intimidating, a Postnatal martial artist's memory was strong enough to retain it all with some effort.

At the same time, besides the two most important techniques, the Extreme Spirit Planter inheritance also recorded some other interesting minor methods.

Zhang Wan was quite interested in them as well, and whenever he had time, he would study one or two.

These minor methods were all quite useful when cultivating spirit plants, and they could also serve some purpose elsewhere.

Soon, twelve days passed, and the pseudo-spirit plants in Zhang Wan's room matured one after another.

There were nine clay jars in total, with one pseudo-spirit plant growing in each.

Among them, red fruit grew on red fruit trees. These red fruit trees were shaped like old trees, with sturdy, vigorous trunks and branches, yet they were not large, resembling potted plants. Still, they bore quite a number of thumb-sized red fruits.

As for earth fruit, its fruit grew buried underground. Aboveground was a creeping vine that covered the entire clay jar. Only after pushing aside the branches and leaves and turning over the soil could one find the fruit beneath.

Co-rice resembled rice, but its grains were far larger. Each grain of co-rice was about the size of a soybean, and even when plucked and eaten raw, it tasted quite good, with a sweet flavor. Moreover, every co-rice plant was laden with fruit, nearly a hundred grains in all.

Zhang Wan had secretly planted three jars of each of these three pseudo-spirit plants.

Once they matured, he picked them all, filling a small basin to the brim.

After washing them, Zhang Wan ate some of each. They tasted good, and a faint medicinal power circulated through his body, increasing his magical power.

The effect was extremely slight, but taking large quantities over a long period would produce a considerable benefit.

However, Zhang Wan also discovered a shortcoming in these three pseudo-spirit plants.

"The pseudo-spirit materials cultivated with the Extreme Cultivation Method seem to be slightly inferior in efficacy to those cultivated with the conventional method?" Zhang Wan had been eating spirit meals made from pseudo-spirit materials in the special dining hall for quite some time, so he knew the medicinal power of pseudo-spirit materials very well.

Those he had cultivated were slightly inferior.

Was it a problem with the Extreme Cultivation Method, or was it because the spiritual energy and spirit fertilizer were insufficient?

Zhang Wan could not be sure, but he felt it was probably related to extreme cultivation.

Shortening three or four months of growth to ten days or half a month naturally came with a slight price.

"That makes sense. After extreme cultivation, a spirit plant loses its potential for further advancement. For a spirit plant, that further potential should refer to its medicinal power."

This was a defect.

But compared with the time it saved, this tiny flaw was hardly worth mentioning.

He could simply eat two more to make up for the lost medicinal power. It would not affect anything.

After picking the fruit, Zhang Wan pulled out all nine pseudo-spirit plants from the jars as well.

These plants were useful too, and counted as a kind of resource.

But it was inconvenient for Zhang Wan to take them out now, while moving them over together after the pseudo-spirit plants in the spirit field matured would also be troublesome.

He simply turned all nine plants into fertilizer and scattered it back into the jars.

Then he added more spirit fertilizer, and planted the seeds of the three types of pseudo-spirit plants.

He had already planted some in the spirit field, but he had bought quite a few pseudo-spirit plant seeds back then. He still had plenty left, enough for his own use.

After harvesting one batch of fruit, Zhang Wan took another nine jars into his room—not just those nine jars.

That made eighteen jars planted with pseudo-spirit plants in total.

Zhang Wan did not intend to increase the number any further. Although the fruit harvested from eighteen jars was not enough to meet his needs, he could not possibly use his entire room to grow pseudo-spirit plants, could he?

There was no need for that, and it would be far too troublesome.

Zhang Wan stored the small basin of harvested fruit in his Storage Talisman. Whenever he wanted to eat some, he could simply take it out.

Nor did he plan to save any fruit as seeds.

The fruit cultivated with the Extreme Cultivation Method was somewhat inferior to the pseudo-spirit plant seeds he had purchased. If he used it as seed and cultivated it again, the plants that grew and the fruit they bore would be even worse.

The more generations it was iterated, the poorer the results became!

If he wanted to save seeds, he could just take some from the plants grown in the spirit field later.

The ones cultivated with the Extreme Cultivation Method could simply be eaten.

Soon, several months passed.

The pseudo-spirit plants in the spirit field gradually matured. They grew extremely well, bearing plump, fragrant fruit that was considerably better than those cultivated entirely with the Extreme Cultivation Method.

"Simply using the Vitality Catalysis Technique together with some other minor cultivation methods can also produce high-quality spirit materials, but the growth speed is much slower."

Zhang Wan compared the advantages and disadvantages of the various cultivation methods, accumulating experience as a Spirit Planter.

After harvesting the spirit materials, forty percent of the yield belonged to the academy.

That forty percent included not only the fruit that had grown, but the plants as well.

Zhang Wan did not falsify anything and paid the full amount.

What remained was enough to satisfy his own needs. Along with what he had secretly cultivated using the Extreme Cultivation Method, he even had some left over.

He had originally planned to take some to Yunmeng Market to sell.

But just after he finished harvesting, the other Postnatal martial artists at the academy came after hearing the news.

Although pseudo-spirit materials could not compare with Postnatal spirit materials, they still carried the word "spirit" and could be used for cultivation.

And when it came to cultivation resources, no one ever thought they had too many—only too few!

Although other people at the academy also grew pseudo-spirit plants, they were still far from meeting the demand.

Thus, as soon as Zhang Wan harvested his crop, the academy's Postnatal martial artists came looking for him.

There were familiar instructor martial artists as well as Postnatal students he knew.

They needed them, and Zhang Wan had extra, so he divided part of the harvest among them and sold it to them.

That saved him the trouble of going to Yunmeng Market to sell it himself.