"I've... reached the Qi Refinement First Layer!"
Su Qiuran's voice still echoed through the little wooden cabin, brimming with irrepressible elation.
She took a deep breath, seemingly studying the faint spiritual power circulating inside her.
Lin He stood beside the stove, spatula still raised in his hand. At her words, he froze for a moment, then broke into a grin, showing two rows of white teeth.
"Not bad, wife! You've already reached the Qi Refinement First Layer?" Lin He set the spatula aside and walked over, looking her up and down.
"So you're one of those legendary immortals now? Quick, quick, show me some Palm Lightning! Or conjure up a fireball!"
Su Qiuran rolled her eyes irritably and rubbed between her brows. "Stop running your mouth. What immortal? I've only just crossed the threshold of the Qi Refinement First Layer. I can barely circulate a tiny amount of Spiritual Qi."
"Conjure a fireball? If I really forced it, I might manage a spark to singe your nose hair."
She glanced down at her legs, her gaze dimming slightly before quickly returning to calm.
"Besides, my legs are still the same. I can't feel a thing."
Seeing this, Lin He dropped his playful grin, crouched beside her wheelchair, and patted her shoulder.
"You have to eat one mouthful at a time and walk one step at a time. This is only our first pot of rice. What's the hurry? As long as we're headed in the right direction, you'll stand again someday."
Su Qiuran nodded, her gaze returning to the large bowl on the table, still steaming.
The half bowl of spirit rice she had just eaten had produced immediate results, like a pole casting its shadow the moment it was planted.
Lin He stood up and looked at the spirit rice left in the pot. The translucent, fragrant grains looked as though they had been carved from some supreme-quality jade.
He couldn't help swallowing.
"Let me see what this is all about," Lin He muttered, picking up his chopsticks and putting a small bite into his mouth.
With one bite, fragrance indeed filled his mouth. The rice was soft and sticky without losing its chew.
Yet, aside from tasting good... there was nothing else.
Lin He closed his eyes and spent a long while carefully feeling for a response.
Once that mouthful of spirit rice reached his stomach, it was no different from eating fine northeastern rice in his previous life. Other than whetting his appetite, it produced no fluctuations of Spiritual Qi that he could sense.
"That's bizarre." Lin He opened his eyes and smacked his lips helplessly. "This spirit rice really is just carbohydrates to me. Not the slightest reaction."
Watching his deflated expression, Su Qiuran couldn't help chuckling. "You can't even absorb essence of the moon. It stands to reason that the gentle Spiritual Qi in this rice wouldn't do anything for you."
"It looks like you'll have to follow this pure body cultivation path all the way into the dark."
"All right, all right." Lin He pushed the bowl toward her. "The rest is yours. Eat up while it's hot."
Su Qiuran didn't stand on ceremony. She picked up the bowl and slowly chewed her way through every last bit of the remaining spirit rice.
With every bite, she could clearly feel strands of gentle, pure Spiritual Qi emanating from her stomach, flowing along her meridians as though they knew the way, surging toward her dantian to be greedily absorbed by her spirit root.
After the last bite, Su Qiuran set down her bowl, but her brows furrowed slightly.
"What's wrong? Did you eat too much?" Lin He leaned closer nervously. "Does this spirit rice have some kind of side effect?"
"No." Su Qiuran shook her head, a trace of puzzlement in her eyes. "It's just... my absorption efficiency seems abnormally high."
"Abnormal? How so?" Lin He pulled over a bench and sat down.
Su Qiuran carefully recalled the common knowledge about cultivation she had heard at the Su Household.
"Normally, for an ordinary cultivator with a low-grade spirit root in the early stage of Qi Refinement, absorbing and converting thirty percent of the Spiritual Qi in one jin of Low-Grade Green Jade Spirit Rice would already be considered good."
"The remaining seventy percent would be lost through breathing or excretion. That's because their spirit root isn't high enough in quality, and their meridians aren't sufficiently resilient or wide."
She paused, her tone turning somewhat strange. "But just now... I took in practically all the Spiritual Qi contained in that spirit rice. Not the slightest bit was wasted."
"It's as though... my spirit root is a bottomless pit, and one with an incredibly strong suction at that."
After hearing her out, Lin He rubbed his chin and smacked his lips. "That's a good thing! A hundred percent absorption means you're exceptionally gifted!"
"But I used to be a cripple. Even my spirit root had withered," Su Qiuran countered, her brows knitting tighter.
"Oh, what's there to agonize over?"
Lin He slapped his thigh. "Isn't this how all the webnovels go? Maybe you were originally some genius who only appears once in ten thousand years, with something like a heavenly spirit root. But something happened when you were little-someone plotted against you, or your constitution was so special that you suffered heaven's wrath, leaving you disabled and your spirit root completely ruined."
"Now the Jade Gourd's essence of the moon has cleansed your essence and marrow and activated your spirit root, so your original talent is naturally showing itself!"
Listening to Lin He's nonsense, Su Qiuran couldn't help rolling her eyes hard.
"Read fewer novels. Reality isn't that dramatic."
Su Qiuran spoke irritably, yet a faint ripple stirred in her heart.
Although Lin He's words were outlandish, on careful thought, they really were possible.
"Who cares whether it's dramatic? Either way, it's a tremendous blessing for us."
Lin He chuckled, stood up, and stretched. "Since this spirit rice works so well, we'll have to increase production."
"These five jin alone will probably only be enough for you to stabilize your Qi Refinement First Layer cultivation."
As he spoke, he turned toward the large bucket in the corner.
A little under half a bucket of diluted spirit water mixed with essence of the sun remained at the bottom. Growing that small patch earlier had used only a little over half.
"Perfect. When I harvested earlier, I left a handful of the best-looking spirit grain unhusked. We can use it as the next generation of seeds."
Lin He walked over to the bucket, lifted it, and gave it a shake. "I'll dig another patch in the backyard and smash up two more Low-Grade Spirit Stones for base fertilizer. Let's see whether our own second-generation seeds, together with this diluted essence of the sun, can produce another crop."
"All right, give it a try." Su Qiuran nodded. "But keep it hidden. Golden Lake Village may be remote, but if we make too much of a commotion, someone might notice."
"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. Goudan, come on! Time to work!" Lin He whistled.
Goudan, who had been gnawing a bone under the table, immediately let out a "ga," wagged his short yellow-and-black tail, and eagerly trotted after Lin He.
Carrying the bucket and a chopping knife, Lin He walked into the backyard.
The wasteland he had just reclaimed still looked somewhat untidy.
He took a deep breath, his chopping knife flying, and soon dug out another patch of loose soil roughly two-tenths of a mu in size.
He took two Low-Grade Spirit Stones from inside his robe.
Crack! Crack!
With two crisp reports, Lin He smashed the Spirit Stones to pieces with the back of his chopping knife.
The tiny crystals gave off a faint glow. He mixed the Spirit Stone powder evenly into the soil.
Then he took out the handful of spirit grain he had saved for seed.
These second-generation seeds were countless times better than the old, shriveled ones. Every grain was full, round, and so vividly green it seemed ready to drip.
Lin He carefully sowed the seeds, then covered them with a thin layer of soil.
"It all comes down to this." Lin He rubbed his hands together, picked up the dipper, scooped some diluted essence of the sun from the wooden bucket, and slowly poured it over the freshly sown soil.
The soil quickly absorbed the dipperful of water.
Lin He and Goudan crouched beside it, their large and small eyes fixed on the ground.
One breath... two breaths... three breaths...
Suddenly, a faint rustling came from the soil. Then tender green shoots thrust their tips out of the dark brown earth, vying with one another like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.
"Holy shit, it really works!" Lin He's eyes lit up. He hurriedly scooped up a second dipperful and sprinkled it evenly over the patch.
Like drought-stricken plants greeting a welcome rain, the shoots shot upward at a speed visible to the naked eye.
In the blink of an eye, the rice stalks stood over half a foot tall, their leaves a lush, dripping green, with even a faint sheen flowing over them.
Without pausing, Lin He poured on the third dipperful.
The rice stalks began putting out ears, clusters of green flower buds rapidly taking shape.
By the time he finished pouring the fourth dipperful, the entire little spirit field was laden with heavy ears of rice.
Compared with the first batch of spirit rice ripened from old seeds, this crop grown from second-generation seeds had not only sturdier plants, but longer, denser ears as well.
Lin He reached out, pinched off a grain, and peeled away the husk. The rice revealed inside was translucent, its green so rich it almost seemed about to drip, and its fragrance was countless times stronger than before.
"We're rich, we're rich..." Looking at the little patch of verdant spirit rice, Lin He grinned so widely that the corners of his mouth nearly reached the back of his head.
He stood up and was about to fetch a sickle from the cabin to harvest when a cold gust suddenly blew from the reed beds, carrying a faint fishy scent of water.
Lin He's movements paused slightly. His keen instincts, tempered twice by essence of the sun, instinctively alerted him to something amiss.
He turned his head and looked past the low backyard fence toward the thick reeds swaying in the wind a short distance away.
Something seemed to be moving in there.