"These were Precious Chickens, no ordinary fowl. They possessed spiritual awareness, and mating and breeding were extremely difficult, as was hatching their eggs, so every effort must be made to care for them."
"Chicken feed should consist of spirit grain bran, spirit bean cake, spirit stone powder, spirit fish bone powder, and other ingredients containing small amounts of Spiritual Qi, mixed in set proportions. From time to time, someone will deliver Discarded Spirit Insects for them to eat..."
"Roosters take approximately three years to mature, hens approximately four."
"Once mature, hens lay approximately one egg every three to seven days."
"Each month, two healthy, fully grown roosters, two healthy, fully grown hens, and two hundred Precious Chicken eggs must be offered as tribute!"
"Proper care will be rewarded!"
"Failure to supply the full tribute will be punished!"
After tidying the room, he read through the chicken-raising instructions over and over until he had committed them entirely to memory.
Only then did Wang Ba leave the room.
Old Sun and his little folding stool were gone. He seemed to have returned to his own room.
Wang Ba had no desire to talk to the old man, either.
Following the directions Steward Li had given him earlier, he went down from Mountain Manor alone and took a look around West Garden Market at the other end of the valley.
West Garden Market was not a market where cultivators traded, but a trading place for mortals.
After all, cultivators also had many friends and relatives who could not cultivate. These people followed the cultivators into the sect and needed to make a living, too.
West Garden Market had come into being to meet that need.
Wang Ba made several rounds here, and it certainly opened his eyes.
Although this was a place for mortals to trade, it was under the sect's jurisdiction, after all, and good things belonging to cultivators would always turn up.
There were even people selling Precious Chickens, Treasure Pigs, and Colorful Ducks.
Unfortunately, Wang Ba could not afford a single one of these things.
Even the cheap ones cost hundreds or thousands of taels of silver.
The expensive ones even required Spirit Stones to purchase.
He also saw people peddling cultivation methods for cultivators.
Of course, he could not afford those, either.
After wandering around for half the day, he bought only cooking equipment, a stove, and some rice and grain.
That left him completely cleaned out.
He did not have a single coin left.
Fortunately, after joining the sect, even a menial servant like him would receive some money from the sect at regular intervals.
It was very little, though, probably only enough to cover his food and daily necessities.
He hauled everything back with considerable effort.
Then he found an axe for chopping firewood at Mountain Manor, chopped some wood, and lit the stove.
It was not until nightfall that he finally got a meal.
There was only rice, with no other dishes, but after a busy day, Wang Ba still ate with relish.
He had come to terms with it. Since he had no affinity with the path to immortality, he would work hard in the sect for now and strive to land a position as an outer sect deacon in a few years.
He had heard Steward Li mention it before.
Some outer sect deacon positions required cultivation, while others could be held by mortals.
After all, there were plenty of miscellaneous tasks in the sect, and few cultivators willing to do them.
Once he had status and savings,
he would go down the mountain and take a few concubines.
Then he would not have come for nothing.
After dinner, he got up and went for a walk outside Mountain Manor to help digest his meal, mainly because the pungent smell of chicken droppings in the bedroom was rather hard to endure.
He had no idea how Old Sun had put up with it.
As he tilted his head back and silently watched the brilliant river of stars overhead,
a streak of sword light shot into the sky in the distance!
Immediately afterward, an enormous human figure appeared, suspended in the night sky, and let out a long cry with his hands clasped behind his back.
His voice shook the nine heavens.
"My Dao is complete!"
Heavenly thunder rolled, and the river of stars dimmed!
A few breaths later, voices offering congratulations rose one after another, resounding throughout the Eastern Saint Sect.
"I wonder what realm that is."
Wang Ba gazed enviously at the brilliant lights in the distance.
Straining his eyes, he could faintly make out streaks of sword light and treasure light converging.
"What a pity..."
Wang Ba lowered his head, his eyes filled with desolation.
The saddest thing a person could face was all that splendor having nothing to do with them.
After that jolt, although he had planned to return to his room and rest, he no longer felt the slightest bit sleepy.
He simply gave up on sleeping, took an oil lamp, and counted the chickens at Mountain Manor one by one.
It took him a long time to finish counting all the chickens at Mountain Manor.
There were 37 roosters.
There were 70 hens.
Because of the darkness, he could not clearly determine their maturity or egg production.
But those numbers immediately put Wang Ba on his guard.
These numbers aren't right!
These Precious Chickens are extremely difficult to breed.
Going by how long roosters take to mature... if the full tribute has to be supplied every month, there need to be at least thirty-six pairs of roosters of different ages in months!
Likewise, hens mature in four years, so at least forty-eight pairs are needed to maintain a steady cycle.
Yet neither the number of roosters nor the number of hens matched up!
This meant that if they were not paired and bred in time, he might well be unable to supply the full tribute in as little as two years.
And failure to supply the full tribute had only one outcome: punishment!
The yellow paper did not specify what the punishment would be.
But Wang Ba had absolutely no desire to test the rules with his own hide.
No! I need to check how the hens are laying, right away!
He could cope with the shortage of chickens for now, but if egg production was also off, that would be an immediate problem.
Now thoroughly wide awake, Wang Ba could not even spare any distaste for the smell of chicken droppings. He reached straight into a corner to catch a hen.
In his previous life, he had learned a trick from his mother for feeling whether a hen was carrying an egg.
All he needed to do was feel between its belly and thighs to tell whether it was about to lay.
But what happened was something he had never expected.
His grab caught nothing but air!
The large hen sprang up and fluttered onto the eaves like a flying bird.
Its agility was utterly at odds with its bulky body.
"Cluck, cluck..."
Standing on the eaves, the large hen actually turned back and clucked at Wang Ba, as though mocking his poor technique.
Yet Wang Ba could do nothing about it.
He was only an ordinary mortal and could not fly up there.
Though he gritted his teeth in frustration, fortunately, he did not dwell on it and shifted his attention to another hen.
But the result was the same.
Refusing to believe it, he tried another dozen or so times in succession.
To his speechless dismay, he failed to catch a single chicken!
It's not that I'm incompetent. These Precious Chickens are just too good at running!
Wang Ba stubbornly defended himself inwardly.
But these Precious Chickens truly were no ordinary chickens. Their speed and strength were far beyond those of any chicken he had seen before.
Still unwilling to give up, he tried another seven or eight times, only to fail again.
All he achieved was getting himself covered in a foul stink.
"Stop trying. You can't catch them."
An aged voice suddenly sounded behind Wang Ba.
Wang Ba turned and saw Old Sun draped in a heavily patched Daoist robe, shaking his head.
"Sorry for disturbing you, Old Sun. I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd check how the chickens were laying..."
Wang Ba spoke apologetically.
Old Sun paid him no heed and walked over to another corner on his own.
He shakily extended a hand.
Then, before Wang Ba's astonished eyes, his hand darted out like lightning and easily caught a large hen by the wing.
He twisted its wings together behind its back, then tossed it to Wang Ba.
"Practice the Body-Strengthening Scripture more. That thing strengthens your body."
Old Sun's face showed little expression, but he spoke nonetheless.
"Thank you, Old Sun!"
Wang Ba hurriedly caught the large hen.
His feelings were incomparably complicated.
He was both shocked that Old Sun had hidden his true abilities and distressed by his own helplessness.
He could not even catch a chicken.
Yet he had actually dreamed of seeking immortality and pursuing the Dao.
It was just as well he had extinguished such thoughts.
Wang Ba silently mocked himself.
Meanwhile, his fingers slid down along the large hen's rounded belly...
[Target lifespan: 19.2 years] [Current remaining lifespan of main body: 71.7 years] [Available expenditure items: none] [Extract/deposit?]
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