Repeated Experiments

While he was fretting over it.

Inside the Purple Mansion's Floating Island, Ye Qin suddenly widened his eyes. He had spotted another unbelievable phenomenon.

A thread of White Glow drifted along and accidentally brushed against the leaf of a little Dew Grass. The Dew Grass immediately absorbed the thread of White Glow. In that instant, it grew noticeably larger.

Could this little Dew Grass "eat" White Glow?

And could it grow rapidly by absorbing White Glow?!

Ye Qin was startled. He kept watching. When the little Dew Grass absorbed a second thread of White Glow, he stared blankly for a moment, then finally felt certain of his conclusion.

Little Dew Grass could grow on this barren Floating Island, as long as it had something to eat.

He was astonished by this major discovery.

At the same time, he had a vague feeling that this discovery could solve the problem of having too few little Dew Grass plants. Even if he couldn't gather any more from the mountain's sheer cliffs, he could grow them right here inside his Purple Mansion.

He also guessed where one of the seven threads of White Glow he had cultivated that day had gone. Most likely, these little Dew Grass plants had accidentally "eaten" it.

With this discovery, Ye Qin put all his effort into carefully observing each step of the little Dew Grass absorbing White Glow.

Ye Qin was now sixteen. After several years of training as a Herb Gathering Apprentice and a medicine-gathering trainee, as well as practicing the Sitting-in-Forgetfulness Sutra, his thinking had become quite meticulous. A little observation posed no challenge to him.

He used these few little Dew Grass plants to conduct a small cultivation experiment.

First, he took one of the little Dew Grass plants out of the Floating Island, ate it, and converted it into more than seventy threads of White Glow.

He had already completed this step.

Second, he had the four little Dew Grass plants left inside the Floating Island absorb White Glow, while he observed how they changed.

White Glow drifted aimlessly all over the Floating Island. It didn't actively move toward the little Dew Grass. Any thread that happened to touch one did so purely by chance.

For some reason, Ye Qin could move the little Dew Grass around the island, but he couldn't move the White Glow.

To help the little Dew Grass absorb White Glow, Ye Qin drifted all around the Floating Island, puffing with all his might to blow the White Glow toward it. Inside the Floating Island, Ye Qin was just a little ball of light. Catching White Glow was easy for him, but getting it close to the little Dew Grass was a difficult feat.

Third, he observed the results.

After a great deal of effort, he managed to get the little Dew Grass to absorb all seventy-odd threads of White Glow.

Ye Qin discovered that once the little Dew Grass grew to a certain size, it stopped growing and quickly flowered, bore fruit, and scattered seeds. The seeds then sprouted into tiny new plants, which could only continue growing after absorbing White Glow.

Fourth, he repeated the experiment.

Ye Qin continued by eating the second and third plants of little Dew Grass... to see whether repeated trials would produce any other changes. However, he always kept at least one plant as a mother plant to produce seeds, so the little Dew Grass would never die out completely.

After repeating the experiment, Ye Qin got a result that left him slack-jawed: he could eat little Dew Grass and convert it into vital energy (White Glow), which then traveled along his meridians into the Floating Island. The little Dew Grass inside the island could absorb White Glow, flower, bear seeds, and grow into new plants. What's more, they grew astonishingly fast. As long as they absorbed enough White Glow, they could grow to full size in almost the blink of an eye.

The cycle continued like this.

The final result was—five plants of little Dew Grass were still five plants of little Dew Grass. Not one more, not one less.

Ye Qin was dumbfounded and speechless.

He had spent nearly five or six days conducting this cultivation experiment, only to arrive at this conclusion. He was so frustrated he wanted to leap off a cliff. He also gave up hope of growing more little Dew Grass.

Of course, it wasn't entirely impossible to get more little Dew Grass.

Ye Qin would have to stop absorbing the seven threads of vital energy he cultivated each day and let the little Dew Grass absorb them all instead. That way, in about ten days, a new plant of little Dew Grass would grow.

But could he do something so foolish?

His cultivation speed was already slow enough. He ate the little Dew Grass to improve that speed. If he cultivated vital energy only to let the little Dew Grass absorb it instead of absorbing it himself, he'd be putting the cart before the horse.

What was the point of growing so many little Dew Grass plants? Was he going to sell them for money?

Ye Qin wanted something other than money. He wanted to practice the Sitting-in-Forgetfulness Sutra: Sitting and Forgetting Selflessness, and make his little white ball of light stronger. The more energy the little ball of light had, the greater its influence on him.

But faced with this "failed" cultivation experiment, Ye Qin could only suffer in silence.

Ye Qin still had one final question.

He had originally gathered only one plant of little Dew Grass. Why were there five inside the Floating Island a year later?

Ye Qin was certain the extra four plants hadn't grown because the original little Dew Grass had eaten the vital energy he cultivated.

Growing four mature plants of little Dew Grass required an enormous amount of White Glow—as many as two hundred and eighty threads. There was no way he wouldn't have noticed over all that time.

Just a few days earlier, even a single missing thread of White Glow had immediately put him on alert, prompting him to investigate. That was how he had accidentally discovered the five little Dew Grass plants growing in the cracks of the Floating Island's gray rock.

In other words, the original little Dew Grass must have "eaten" something else for some other reason, allowing it to become the five plants of little Dew Grass he saw now.

But what could that reason be?

The ball of light that Ye Qin had become floated inside the Floating Island as he racked his brains once more. He knew this had to be the key question. If he could solve it, he might find a way to grow large quantities of little Dew Grass.

His gaze repeatedly examined the gray rock where the little Dew Grass grew, the crevices between the stones, and everything else that seemed suspicious. The surroundings were all ordinary gray rock, with nothing particularly eye-catching. The rock had looked this way ever since the island first came into being.

Because the gray rock was so hard, the roots of the little Dew Grass only clung to its surface to keep the plants upright. Some fine, ordinary grains of sand remained on the ground, glittering like ordinary river sand.

Sand?!

As Ye Qin looked over the roots of the little Dew Grass again, his gaze suddenly narrowed.

These grains definitely weren't part of the Floating Island itself!

He remembered that when he had dug up the little Dew Grass, he had also dug out a large clump of soil around its roots. He hadn't realized that the soil and sand had been brought into the Floating Island along with the plant.

Ye Qin's divine sense stirred. He left the Purple Mansion and returned to the real world.

A grain of sand had also been moved out of the Floating Island, into his hand in the real world. He examined it, put one in his mouth, and bit down. Crack—it broke. It really was an ordinary grain of sand.

Why could these grains of sand enter the Floating Island so freely?