Just as Zhou Xuan was growing suspicious, Zhou Ye shook his head beside him and quietly corrected him. "Brother Xuan, this isn't Spirit Rice."
"It isn't?"
Zhou Xuan froze. He examined the grains again. In both appearance and the Spiritual Energy they gave off, they were indistinguishable from the Spirit Rice described in the classics.
"Definitely not."
Zhou Ye sounded certain.
"I've never seen real Spirit Rice, but I've heard people talk about it. If this were genuine Spirit Rice, how could the people at the Herb Garden bear to throw it away? They'd have treasured it like a priceless gem. There's no way they'd send it here."
That made a lot of sense.
Zhou Xuan furrowed his brow slightly. He picked up a jade-colored grain about the size of a peanut from Zhou Ye's cloth bundle and studied it closely between his fingers.
As his Divine Soul had unexpectedly awakened and grown stronger, his senses were far sharper than before.
He sent a thread of awareness into the grain, carefully sensing the structure of its Spiritual Energy.
Before long, he noticed something was wrong.
The Spiritual Energy contained in the grain was pure, but abnormally agitated and unstable.
It was like a herd of wild horses crammed into a tiny cage, charging about wildly, brimming with violence and destructive force.
The grain itself had been permeated by Spiritual Energy until it was crystal-clear, but at its core, it was still made of ordinary stuff.
It simply couldn't bear or harmonize Spiritual Energy. It was like a fragile clay pot forcibly filled with far more potent liquor than it could hold, ready to burst at any moment.
This wasn't a spiritual object nurtured by heaven and earth. It looked more like a failed product someone had artificially forced into existence.
A thought struck Zhou Xuan. He immediately issued a command to the system in his mind.
"System, scan this object."
[Beep! Detected Spirit-Infused Mutant Rice (failed product)!]
[Item Description: An attempt to induce a spiritual mutation by using ordinary rice as a base and forcibly infusing it with Spiritual Energy through a special Formation. Its ordinary nature cannot bear the Spiritual Energy, causing the energy within to become disordered and violent. It cannot be eaten directly and is harmful to cultivators.]
[Can be absorbed and converted into Gold Touch Value. Conversion value per grain: 0.01–0.03 points.]
Just as he'd thought!
Looking at the detailed information on the system panel, Zhou Xuan understood at once.
Spirit-Infused Mutant Rice. The name fit perfectly.
He immediately understood why it had been thrown into the Miscellaneous Affairs Department.
Rice with such violent Spiritual Energy inside it wasn't just useless for improving one's constitution. If an ordinary person ate even a single grain, that violent energy would likely tear through their Five Viscera and Six Bowels on the spot and make them explode.
Even a Body Tempering Realm cultivator wouldn't dare try it lightly.
To everyone else, this stuff was poison.
But to Zhou Xuan, who had a system, what was this if not little nuggets of Metal, glittering one by one?
Each grain could be converted into 0.01 to 0.03 points of Gold Touch Value!
That might seem insignificant, but there was a lot of it!
Zhou Xuan's eyes lit up. He looked up at Zhou Ye, his breathing growing quick.
But before that, he still had one enormous question.
Who had come up with such an outlandish idea—artificially cultivating ordinary rice into Spirit Rice?
The cultivation system of this world had developed over countless millennia. Spirit-plant cultivation had its own mature body of theory.
Spirit Rice was Spirit Rice; Mortal Rice was Mortal Rice. They were different at the level of species, like humans and demonic beasts—two entirely distinct forms of life.
Trying to cultivate Mortal Rice into Spirit Rice was no easier than expecting a piece of ordinary iron to grow into Mystic Iron just by watering and fertilizing it.
It completely defied common sense in this world.
The idea was strange, steeped in the flavor of a scientific experiment.
Could there be another transmigrator in this Sect?
The thought had barely surfaced when Zhou Xuan's heart gave a hard thump.
He immediately scanned his surroundings warily, as if a pair of eyes were watching him from the shadows.
But soon, he shook his head and dismissed the idea.
Probably not.
The cultivation world was fraught with danger. Without a Metal Finger to rely on, a transmigrator would face hellish odds from the very start.
Even if the other person really was a transmigrator, Zhou Xuan couldn't act rashly and expose himself without solid proof.
Besides, this line of thinking—crossbreeding, inducing mutations, cultivating new varieties...
A cool, stunningly beautiful figure rose unbidden in Zhou Xuan's mind.
Liu Ruyan!
He suddenly remembered that back when he was still in the mortal world, before he'd embarked on the path of immortality, Liu Ruyan had admired him and tried to curry favor with him. He'd told her a great deal about the knowledge from his previous life.
Among it had been the concept of crossbreeding rice to increase crop yields.
Liu Ruyan had listened intently back then, even pressing him for many details.
Could it be her?
Once the thought occurred to him, Zhou Xuan felt it was highly likely.
That woman would stop at nothing to pursue the Great Dao and grow stronger.
She could have learned such inconceivable knowledge from him, and given her personality, it was entirely possible she'd found an opportunity to experiment after joining the Immortal Gate!
"That woman really is a genius. She wants to learn everything and dares to try anything."
Zhou Xuan cursed her silently, finding the whole thing absurd even as he couldn't help admiring her drive.
Still, she would never have imagined that the failed products she'd gone to so much trouble to create would end up benefiting him.
Zhou Xuan forcibly pushed the tangled thoughts aside. This wasn't the time to think about them.
His mind was full of those 0.01 to 0.03 points of Gold Touch Value.
He looked at Zhou Ye, his eyes burning with excitement. "Zhou Ye, you said you found a batch of waste material brought over from the Herb Garden?"
"Right, right!" Zhou Ye nodded repeatedly.
"Is there a lot of this rice?" Zhou Xuan pressed.
Zhou Ye was puzzled by Zhou Xuan's unusually excited demeanor, but he answered honestly anyway.
He scratched his head and tried to remember. "When I found it, it was packed in several huge sacks, piled in a pit. I'd guess there were enough to fill two or three carts."
Two or three carts!
Zhou Xuan's heart gave a heavy thump.
If one cart held a thousand pounds, how many grains of rice were in a pound? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?
And how many would there be in two or three carts?
How much Gold Touch Value would it all convert into? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand?
He could hardly breathe. The happiness had come so suddenly that he felt dizzy.
It was a veritable Metal mine!
With this batch of Mutated Spirit Rice, he wouldn't just be able to make a run at the Qi Refining Realm. He might even gather nearly enough of the ten thousand Gold Touch Value needed to upgrade his Spirit Root next time!
"Where is it? Take me there, now!" Zhou Xuan could no longer hold back. He grabbed Zhou Ye by the arm, ready to make him lead the way.
"Brother Xuan, Brother Xuan, don't rush!" Zhou Ye was startled by his reaction and hurriedly held him back.
"What is it?" Zhou Xuan asked with a frown. He didn't want to wait another second.
A troubled, apprehensive look crossed Zhou Ye's face. He lowered his voice and leaned close to Zhou Xuan's ear, speaking in an odd tone. "Brother Xuan, that place is a little creepy."
"Creepy?"
"Mm."
Zhou Ye nodded hard, his face pale.
"The rice is fine. It's just piled there. But next to the sacks, they'd thrown away lots of other plants. They look like failed products from the same attempt to cultivate the rice."
"And then?" Zhou Xuan pressed.
Zhou Ye swallowed. His voice dropped even lower, trembling slightly. "Then today, when I went over to pick up more of that rice, I got a little too close..."
"Those plants can move!"
"They can move?" Zhou Xuan stared at him.
"Yeah!"
Zhou Ye spoke with lingering fear.
"There was one that looked like a vine. As soon as I got close, it sprang up like a snake and nearly whipped me in the face!"
"And some of the plants that looked like flowers could open their mouths and try to bite people!"
After hearing Zhou Ye's description, Zhou Xuan was completely stunned.
Plants that bit people?
Before you continue