"Scripture of Longevity"

For the next stretch of time, Long Xuan stayed in the herb garden, studying the optimal dosage and interval for Ripening Liquid on each kind of spiritual herb, recording the data he obtained on paper.

There were over a hundred kinds of spiritual herbs in the garden. This was destined to be a long process. Fortunately, a large white hen kept him company in the garden, so it was not too boring.

The hen was used to eliminate pests. Crops needed pesticides when they grew bugs, and spiritual herbs likewise attracted pests, requiring insect-killing powder purchased from the merchant guild.

Because Old Long had left the original owner to fend for himself, he had completely let himself go and messed around blindly in the herb garden. He had actually saved the Spirit Stones meant for insect-killing powder and bought a large hen instead.

It was a case of stumbling into luck. Chickens raised in the countryside could rid ordinary crops of pests; every villager knew that. But that only applied to ordinary crops.

How could the insects born from spiritual herbs be simple? Logically speaking, after a hen ate a Spirit Insect, not only would it fail to digest it, it would instead be parasitized.

Yet after languishing for a time, this hen not only pulled through but evolved into a spirit chicken, becoming a little expert at pest removal. The original owner had been quite lucky.

At that moment, Long Xuan watched the large white chicken pacing back and forth through the herb garden, quietly marveling.

The white chicken held its head high and puffed out its chest, imposing and spirited. It waddled along, its head bobbing with every step. Intelligence gleamed in its eyes; after evolving into a spirit chicken, its intellect seemed to have increased as well.

It scratched about in the soil, and before long, it dug out a fat, plump bug from the earth and swallowed it in a single gulp.

The progress above the white chicken's head instantly changed from 99.3% to 99.4%. It was clearly about to reach adulthood.

Seeing this, Long Xuan lightly stroked his chin, his gaze thoughtful.

The white chicken had eaten many things, yet only a small number of fat bugs affected its maturity.

By using those changes to feed the spirit chicken different foods, he could completely determine which foods helped it the most, then formulate chicken feed that could drastically shorten a spirit chicken's growth cycle.

Long Xuan was naturally not interested in making chicken feed. At that moment, he thought of another use for his golden finger—by the same logic, he could raise gu and insects.

Raising Spirit Insects made money no slower than growing spiritual herbs.

Spirit Insects were used to refine gu, and the higher a Spirit Insect's maturity, the higher the success rate of gu refinement.

Rare Spirit Insects were even more difficult to encounter than to seek. Every one could sell for an astronomical price, but few people understood how to breed them.

The same kind of Spirit Insect, when raised by different gu cultivator Lineages, could have completely different growth periods.

Some gu cultivator Lineages had more advanced feed, allowing them to raise Spirit Insects several times faster than other gu cultivator Lineages.

Naturally, that gu cultivator Lineage would earn more money and enjoy greater profit margins. By cutting prices, it could completely crush its competitors and monopolize the market for that species of insect.

As long as one developed excellent feed for a particular insect species, the profits would be absolutely staggering.

At that instant, Long Xuan decided he wanted to raise a kind of Spirit Insect.

If raising insects was already like this, then raising gu needed no further explanation.

The more powerful the gu species, the longer its maturation period. Many heaven-defying gu species required a thousand, or even ten thousand, years to mature. How could gu cultivators, with their brief lifespans, wait that long?

Yet the combat strength of a mature gu insect and a juvenile was as different as heaven and earth. Gu cultivators had no choice but to rack their brains for methods to shorten their gu insects' maturation periods.

More often than not, the method of raising a powerful gu species was far more precious than the Gu Recipe itself.

Refining gu was difficult for gu cultivators, but raising gu was even harder. The resources consumed in feeding them could even exceed the cost of refining the gu.

Many gu cultivators had worried themselves gray-haired while researching ways to shorten gu insects' maturation periods, exhausting all their resources in the process.

But Long Xuan no longer had any such concerns. No matter what gu species he blood-contracted in the future, he could formulate the feed most suitable for it.

Reducing a gu species that took ten thousand years to mature to a hundred years—or even less than a hundred years—was no dream. This was practically cheating. Long Xuan's heart surged with excitement.

"I've nearly finished researching the limits of Ripening Liquid for every kind of spiritual herb. As long as I use it according to the methods I recorded, this herb garden's yield can generate another fifty percent in profit."

"With such a high share, I'll definitely have the money to refine my first gu insect."

Long Xuan excitedly clenched his fist, his eyes shining brightly.

Caught up in his excitement, he reached toward the chicken coop, intending to fish out a few spirit chicken eggs to celebrate.

Come to think of it, he really was curious what eggs laid by a spirit chicken tasted like. The spirit chicken eggs were round and smooth, large and white, filled with abundant spiritual power and nutrients. They looked delicious enough to make his mouth water.

Yet just as his thieving hand touched one of those smooth eggs, the white chicken immediately noticed. It lowered its head and viciously pecked at his hand.

"Shoo, shoo! How presumptuous..."

Spring came and went, flowers faded and bloomed.

In the blink of an eye, a year had passed. Colorful spiritual flowers blossomed throughout the herb garden, weaving together into a dazzling sea of color. When the wind blew, a wave of intoxicating floral fragrance swept through the air, making one feel as if one had entered a dream.

Beside the sea of flowers, Long Xuan reclined in a rocking chair. Papers covered in Chinese characters and a cup of tea sat on the table beside him. He held a book in his hand, reading leisurely as a light breeze blew over him. He was utterly content.

His originally thin frame had filled out considerably over the past year, likely because he had eaten too many spirit chicken eggs.

That large white chicken had likewise eaten itself plump and fat. It was currently patrolling the herb garden back and forth, searching for Spirit Insects that had appeared on the spiritual herbs. The moment one showed itself, it would be swallowed in one bite by the sharp-eyed chicken.

Long Xuan had given it a resounding name. Influenced by how he had always liked calling chickens in games Chicken Bro in his previous life, he named it Chicken Bro in memory of that life, despite Chicken Bro being female.

With Chicken Bro around, Long Xuan had saved himself quite a bit of work. He no longer needed to eliminate pests, and he even saved the money for pesticides.

This place was practically an all-you-can-eat buffet for it. It received ample nutrition every day and ate until it was stuffed. It laid at least one egg a day, all of which naturally ended up in Long Xuan's stomach.

The book in his hands at that moment was a health-preserving cultivation method with the three words "Scripture of Longevity" written on its cover.

Health-preserving cultivation methods were as common as cabbages in this world. Every mortal could easily learn them, and nearly everyone possessed a copy.

This was also deliberately spread by gu cultivator Lineages, their purpose being to let mortals live a few more decades so they could work more and grow more food for them.

The "Scripture of Longevity" had ten levels. Every level cultivated increased one's lifespan by ten years.

The original owner's cultivation talent had not been good, and his cultivation speed had been slow. Yet when it came to the common "Scripture of Longevity," he was a genius seen only once in a century.

From low to high, gu cultivator realms were divided into the Spirit Gathering Stage, Marrow Cleansing Stage, Spiritual Sea Stage, Spirit Severing Stage...

Each major realm was further divided into four minor stages: early, middle, late, and peak. Since the Spirit Severing Stage was the strongest in this region, it was also known as the Gu King.

Yet the original owner was already fifteen or sixteen years old and had only reached the lowly early Spirit Gathering Stage. His aptitude was plain to see.

Like traditional immortal cultivation worlds, this world valued purity. The purer one's attributes, the faster one cultivated.

A single attribute was heaven-grade aptitude, with the fastest cultivation speed. Two attributes were earth-grade aptitude, with the next-fastest speed.

The original owner possessed five attributes—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. His aptitude was not the worst; it could only be called ordinary. Coupled with being a Rogue Cultivator without cultivation resources, his slow cultivation speed was understandable.

But where there was a weakness, there would surely be a strength. When heaven closed a door, it also opened a window.

The original owner was poor at cultivation, but he possessed extraordinary talent for cultivating health-preserving methods.

Other mortals found it difficult to break through even the fifth level of the "Scripture of Longevity" in their entire lives, yet before he had even come of age, he had already cultivated it to the tenth level, gaining a hundred years of lifespan out of thin air.

Long Xuan had also discovered by accident that the progress displayed on the "Scripture of Longevity" was not 100%, but a mere 10%.

Driven by curiosity, he followed the pattern from before and tried to continue writing it. Naturally, he lacked the ability to continue a cultivation method, but he had a mistake-corrector.

If the progress disappeared, it meant he had guessed wrong, so he would delete it and rewrite it. Conversely, if it remained, that meant he had guessed correctly and could continue guessing.

He had worked himself to the bone for an entire year, and he had actually succeeded in continuing it to the twentieth level. Starting from the eleventh level, each level added a hundred years to one's lifespan.

If he continued deducing it further, he did not know how much lifespan each level would add. It might still be a hundred years, or two hundred years, or perhaps even more.

Yet a rare twenty-level cultivation method showed only 20% progress. It was equivalent to a severely incomplete fragmentary cultivation method. It was truly bizarre.

He knew full well that the "Scripture of Longevity" truly had only ten levels in this world. There was not even a cultivation method exceeding ten levels anywhere in this entire region.

Long Xuan felt a dull ache in his liver. Deducing just 10% of the content had taken him an entire year of grueling effort. The content after that was more complex and profound, already so abstruse that his current knowledge could not continue the deduction. It would clearly require even more time.

He truly did not dare imagine how long it would take to deduce the "Scripture of Longevity" to 100%—a hundred years, a thousand years, or even ten thousand years?