Spirit Awakening

Upon arriving at the Merit Affairs Hall, Dong Lin looked through the tasks related to pest removal in spirit fields.

Besides the tasks issued directly by the sect, there were also many private pest-removal jobs, and their offers were not low.

For an acre of ordinary spirit rice fields, the price for a single pest removal generally hovered around five Low-Grade Spirit Stones.

Though the price seemed low, pest removal usually only required driving the strange insects beyond the boundaries of the spirit field.

Of course, they could not be driven into someone else's spirit fields, or it would easily breed resentment.

A harvest of spirit rice that matured once every six months could only earn a little over two hundred Low-Grade Spirit Stones even in a good year.

With so many upfront costs, the profit from spirit fields was squeezed down to almost nothing.

That was especially true for those who wanted to offset sect missions through farming spirit fields.

They had to hand over nearly half their harvest, meaning that after farming for an entire year, they could earn roughly two hundred Spirit Stones.

Yet the costs alone came to nearly a hundred Low-Grade Spirit Stones. If too much was spent on pest removal,

then the field would become a losing business.

No wonder no one in the sect thought highly of farming spirit fields. There was simply too little profit in it.

The price of spirit rice was relatively transparent. Unlike pill refining or artifact forging, where a slight markup could sometimes bring enormous profits,

spirit rice was the most basic food for cultivators, and its price was fixed. With little room for income to change,

everyone could only increase revenue and reduce expenses, putting more effort into saving costs.

Driving away spirit insects was one relatively cost-effective way to do that.

Dong Lin had only just begun farming, so he was quite diligent in protecting his spirit rice. He could not bear to watch strange insects ruin his food.

Experienced old spirit farmers, on the other hand, generally only came by once every half month.

After all, the few strange insects that appeared in a field would not cause widespread damage to the spirit rice in just a few days.

Their impact on the final yield was nearly negligible.

Generally, spirit fields needed pest removal for ten months out of every year.

That meant twenty pest-removal sessions a year. Some professional pest exterminators would take on such work,

charging ninety or ninety-five Spirit Stones a year to handle all pest-removal tasks for a single acre.

The spirit farmer only needed to fertilize the field on time and maintain its fertility to harvest a full yield of spirit rice.

Though each acre did not earn much this way, as long as one contracted enough spirit fields, the yearly income would become quite considerable.

For higher-grade crops, such as Blood Jade Spirit Rice, Dragon Fang Spirit Rice, and Black Jade Spirit Wheat,

the strange insects within them were correspondingly much stronger.

If one happened to encounter a second-stage vicious insect, one's life could be in danger.

Pest removal for these higher-grade crops cost far more, generally around thirty Low-Grade Spirit Stones per session.

From this alone, it was clear that such high-grade spirit crops brought considerable returns and must have sold for high prices.

As for spirit medicine fields, there was even less need to mention them. Some were hidden in remote locations, and reaching them alone required considerable effort.

However, spirit medicine fields were generally watched over by dedicated personnel and would not hire pest exterminators from outside, since wealth tempted the heart.

Few spirit medicine growers were willing to show the medicine fields they cultivated to outsiders.

Spirit medicine fields were extremely valuable. Even major cultivators in the Foundation Establishment Realm often lacked the qualifications to touch that area.

Aside from unified sect cultivation, if an individual wanted to cultivate a medicine field, the effort and costs required would be astronomical.

Ordinary people could hardly afford the expense of maintaining a medicine field.

Thus, pest-removal tasks for spirit medicine fields were pitifully scarce.

Of the only three available, two involved sect medicine fields, while the other was a private medicine field pest-removal task posted by a sect elder.

As for why the elder did not personally handle such a precious medicine field, that was unknown.

The price for removing pests from medicine fields was generally frighteningly high, usually around fifty Mid-Grade Spirit Stones.

This depended on the value of the spirit medicines in the field, as well as the grades and numbers of strange insects commonly found there.

Dong Lin did not need to consider medicine fields, and even high-grade spirit fields carried some danger.

Dong Lin still decided to proceed steadily and took interest in a pest-removal task for a spirit field cultivated collectively by the sect.

It was a long-term task, with every ten acres treated as one unit.

The pest exterminator who accepted the task was required to remove pests from the spirit fields once every ten days for one year.

The reward was one hundred sect contribution points, equivalent to one thousand Low-Grade Spirit Stones.

It was a decent task and had been rated as a high-grade Yellow-rank mission.

Dong Lin was greatly tempted. Ten acres was just right; any more would affect the progress of his cultivation too much.

After all, the Dao Xuan Heart Sutra had not yet reached the introductory level. He could not spend too much time on such trivial matters.

Tasks like this were generally reserved for cultivators in the Foundation Establishment Realm.

For ordinary Qi Refining Stage cultivators, clearing all the strange insects from ten acres of spirit fields in a single day was simply asking too much.

After all, sect tasks like this offered generous rewards.

But if one breached the contract, the penalty was also frighteningly high.

If they could not repay it, they would be seized by the Law Enforcement Hall and forced to perform labor missions to pay off the debt.

Time flew by like running water.

In the blink of an eye, winter had arrived.

It had been Dong Lin's ninth month in this world.

After two months of focused cultivation, he had finally managed to barely reach the introductory level of the Dao Xuan Heart Sutra.

Such talent truly left Dong Lin helpless.

Even a foundational cultivation technique was this difficult to cultivate.

If he obtained the top immortal arts of this world in the future, would it not take years just to reach the introductory level?

Only after entering the Dao Xuan Heart Sutra did Dong Lin understand its wondrous qualities.

On top of Dong Lin's original divine sense, the strength of his divine sense had nearly doubled.

Moreover, the cultivation technique operated automatically, tempering his divine sense at every moment and strengthening his spiritual awareness.

Dong Lin's divine sense had undoubtedly entered the Mid-Stage Spirit Awakening Realm.

In terms of specific strength levels, cultivators who had just awakened their spiritual sense generally possessed divine sense strength of one.

At the Mid-Stage Spirit Awakening Realm, divine sense strength was two.

At the High-Stage Spirit Awakening Realm, it was four.

Dong Lin's divine sense was clearly no longer merely at two. It had nearly reached a strength of three.

That level of strength was nearly comparable to that of a cultivator who had just entered Foundation Establishment.

This was the foundation of a top immortal sect like the Heaven Sect.

The cultivation world divided the realm of divine sense cultivation into three stages.

They were the Spirit Awakening Realm, the Sea-Opening Realm, and the Primordial Spirit Realm.

The Spirit Awakening Realm awakened spiritual sense, allowing one to step onto the path of immortality and continuously strengthen it to raise one's power.

The Sea-Opening Realm, as its name implied, opened the Sea of Consciousness. It was the mark of major cultivators in the Golden Core Realm, where one first beheld one's true self upon opening the Sea of Consciousness.

Once the Sea of Consciousness was opened, spiritual awareness would no longer be easily exhausted. One could sense and control heaven and earth across vast areas, and cast large-scale spells that transformed the world.

Yet for some unknown reason, Dong Lin's divine sense seemed to possess a Sea of Consciousness already, constantly replenishing itself whenever it was consumed.

As long as he did not use it explosively, even if he used it for days and nights, the strength of his divine sense would not be affected.

As for the realm of the Primordial Spirit, that was a unique realm possessed only by Nascent Soul patriarchs.

When the Nascent Soul formed, the Primordial Spirit appeared. From then on, one could roam freely across heaven and earth, unrestrained, flawless, and unstained.

Some even abandoned their fleshly bodies to cultivate the Nascent Soul alone, thereby gaining new life.