"If it were me, I probably wouldn't last three months before going insane."
Lin Qing muttered under his breath, but he still forced himself to keep watching.
He could barely endure watching Immortal Herb Lin Qing's experiences in this condensed form, much less imagine what it had been like for the one who had lived through them.
What if?
What if something earth-shattering happened later on?
After all, he had become an Immortal Herb.
Sure enough—
[Year 1924.]
The scene finally changed slightly.
Blurry human figures appeared in the distance around the flower, seemingly moving about.
[Oh.]
The narrator's voice carried the faintest fluctuation, like a pebble falling into a still lake.
[Someone has come.]
"!!!"
Lin Qing's spirits abruptly rose, and he leaned forward.
After waiting all these years, finally...
[Year 1924, Day 1.]
The scene shifted, and heavy snow began drifting down from the sky.
[It's snowing. Absorb the essence of heaven and earth!]
Lin Qing: "???"
He was dumbfounded and nearly sprang out of his chair.
"No, didn't you just say someone came? Where are they? Where did they go?!"
"Explain yourself!"
But Immortal Herb Lin Qing in the light screen explained nothing and resumed his daily drivel.
[Year 1925, absorb the essence of heaven and earth.]
[Year 1926, absorb the essence of heaven and earth.]
[Year 1927...]
Lin Qing: "..."
He took a deep breath and resisted the urge to shut off the last words immediately.
His fingers tapped against the chair's armrest, but in the end, he decided to keep watching.
I refuse to believe it!
Could nothing have changed after all these years?
Time continued to race by on the light screen.
[Year 3000, absorb the essence of heaven and earth.]
[Year 5000, absorb the essence of heaven and earth.]
[Year 8000...]
"..."
Lin Qing's eyes had gone vacant from watching, and his entire body was beginning to feel numb.
These last words were practically mental torture.
The key was that this Immortal Herb brother never got tired of it.
He recorded it every day, and Lin Qing had been listening day after day!
That narrator's voice sounded like someone chanting scripture—flat, straightforward, and utterly emotionless.
Lin Qing was even starting to suspect the system was deliberately messing with him.
[Year 10001.]
Just as Lin Qing was about to give up, the scene changed again.
Several other plants had suddenly appeared around the flower, and... they seemed to be "talking."
[Oh-ho.]
The narrator's voice suddenly became a little livelier.
It was still flat, but at least there was finally some emotional variation.
[I can speak now!] [Only now did I discover that there were actually several plants around me that I could communicate with!]
"!!!"
Lin Qing abruptly sat upright, his eyes widening.
"Something big is finally happening!"
He felt like he was about to cry.
The ten thousand years of drivel had left his brain buzzing.
If something exciting did not happen soon, he was genuinely afraid he would fall asleep.
Inside the light screen.
The pale purple flower swayed gently.
The narrator's voice carried a trace of barely suppressed excitement.
[After communicating with the other plants, I finally learned what I am.]
In the scene, the flower's "gaze"—the direction faced by the eye pattern at the center of its petals—slowly swept over the surrounding area.
[So I'm not an ordinary flower.] [My name is the Truth-Seeing Profound Pupil Lotus, and I am an Immortal Herb!] [The kind of Immortal Herb that Tang San and the others once ate as immortal-grade medicinal herbs!]
"So it really is an Immortal Herb!"
Lin Qing's pupils suddenly contracted.
Truth-Seeing Profound Pupil Lotus?
Did an Immortal Herb with that name exist in the original novel?
He thought about it carefully. It seemed not.
But he knew very well just how significant the words "Immortal Herb" were.
The narration in the light screen continued, and the excitement in its voice gradually turned into something more complicated.
[And the place where I am...]
Now that he could finally "move,"
which really just meant using spiritual perception to look around at the flowers surrounding him.
The scene revealed an utterly bizarre landscape.
One half was icy blue, like a polar frozen river.
The other was fiery red, like a lava hell.
At the center lay a pool of spring water, its icy and fiery colors intertwining without blending, coexisting in eerie harmony.
[Is called the Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well!]
Lin Qing sucked in a cold breath.
The Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well!
Tang San's private herb garden!
The place known as a treasure basin, yet in reality a damned place that imprisoned countless Immortal Herbs while waiting for the Tang family to harvest them!
Especially during the era of Peerless Tang Sect.
The Immortal Herbs inside had all become Immortal Herb Soul Beasts with ten thousand years, or even a hundred thousand years, of cultivation and intelligence.
But they could not leave. They would never be able to leave.
The light screen swept across the plants nearby.
A grass entirely ice blue, with octagonal leaves.
A fiery crimson flower with brilliantly delicate petals.
A large pale pink flower radiating a hazy glow...
[Octagonal Mysterious Ice Grass, Infernal Delicate Apricot, Aromatic Silk Beauty...]
The narrator recited those names.
[They are precisely the Immortal Herbs such as Octagonal and Youyou, imprisoned by Tang San in the Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well in Peerless Tang Sect!]
"Damn!"
This time, Lin Qing was truly shocked.
He had originally thought it was merely an ordinary Immortal Herb, but he had not expected the point in time to be so bizarre.
[Damn it!]
The narrator's voice suddenly became furious.
It was the emotion that had been building up for ten thousand years finally finding an outlet.
[So the moment my cultivation finally reached the point where I could speak, I discovered that I was imprisoned in this godforsaken place and would never be able to leave!]
The Truth-Seeing Profound Pupil Lotus in the scene trembled violently.
The eye patterns on its black-and-white petals seemed to have been stained with a layer of blood-red.
[I tried sensing the poisonous barrier outside the Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well. It is a prison personally set up by Tang San after he became a god. Without ultimate elemental power, there is no way through it!] [And where would Immortal Herbs like us get ultimate elemental attributes? Even if we did, would our cultivation be sufficient?]
The anger in Immortal Herb Lin Qing's voice gradually turned into despair.
[I'm tired...] [I really don't want to live anymore!!!]
"..."
Lin Qing looked at the trembling flower in the light screen, his feelings a tangled mess.
Immortal Herb Lin Qing had been reborn as a flower—an Immortal Herb, no less.
He had spent ten thousand years alone in the Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well.
The moment he gained intelligence and learned to speak, he discovered that he was imprisoned.
And it was a permanent imprisonment, a prison personally created by Sea God Tang San.
"Isn't that experience way too miserable?"
It was so miserable that Lin Qing did not even know what to say.
Putting himself in its place.
If he had been trapped somewhere for ten thousand years while fully conscious and able to think, able to do nothing but bask in the sun and absorb essence every day, only to discover the moment he could speak that he would never get out...
He would probably go insane too.
Lin Qing's eyes flickered.
"But this guy should count as a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast now."
Though it was an Immortal Herb Soul Beast whose attack power was probably practically nonexistent, it still possessed a genuine hundred thousand years of cultivation.
And the name Truth-Seeing Profound Pupil Lotus did not sound simple at all.
"Truth-seeing... profound pupil..."
Lin Qing pondered those two words, and a thought suddenly surfaced in his mind.
Could it be related to abilities involving the mind, eyes, or something similar?
He stared at the Ash Urn on the table, beginning to feel somewhat expectant.
What would an Immortal Herb's relic be? The power of its original body? A Soul Ring, a Soul Bone, or some special ability?
Before you continue