There were no rays of golden light, nor any exotic fragrance filling the air.
Lying quietly in the very center of the silk was a tiny jade gourd, only the size of a thumb, emerald-green throughout and crystal clear.
A faint, mellow sheen flowed across its surface. Even in the dim light of the ramshackle wooden hut, it was strikingly eye-catching.
One glance was enough to tell that this was no ordinary object.
Su Qiuran stared fixedly at the little green thing, her eyes growing wider and wider as her breathing instantly quickened.
Two seconds later.
"Holy shit!"
The resounding curse exploded through the wooden hut.
Su Qiuran was so excited that she pressed both hands against her wheelchair's armrests, actually lifting her backside half an inch off the seat. She nearly performed a medical miracle on the spot by jumping out of her wheelchair!
"The Little Green Bottle!?" Her voice shot up an octave as she snatched the jade gourd off the silk and cradled it in her palms, examining it closely.
"Is this fucking... really the Little Green Bottle?!" Su Qiuran could barely string her words together. She looked up at Lin He, her eyes almost popping out.
"Lin He! You bastard, you actually got the Old Devil Han treatment!? Accelerating spirit herb growth? Seizing the fortune of heaven and earth? We're going to strike it rich!!"
Watching his wife act as though she had never seen the world, Lin He leaned back smugly and crossed one leg over the other with practiced ease.
The rickety wooden stool creaked beneath his weight and nearly fell apart, but he paid it no mind.
"Keep it low-key, low-key." Lin He waved a hand, wearing an inscrutable look that begged for a beating.
Su Qiuran ignored him completely. She cradled the jade gourd as though it were her own son, her fingertips constantly stroking its smooth, mellow surface.
"Where did you get this treasure?" She swallowed, forcibly suppressing her excitement.
"If the Lin Household knew you had this thing, would they ever have let an illegitimate son like you leave?"
At that, some of Lin He's flippancy faded, and his gaze grew somewhat complicated.
"My mom in this life left it to me." Lin He sighed.
"It was a treasure passed down through her family. Those cultivators in the Lin Household had their eyes on top of their heads. They looked down on her, a mere mortal maid, and were even less likely to know she had something this good."
Lin He paused, looking at Su Qiuran as a smile curled his lips. "Before my mom passed away, she told me this treasure was a keepsake to be left to her future daughter-in-law. A shame she didn't live long enough to see me get married."
At the words "daughter-in-law," Su Qiuran's pale cheeks warmed slightly, and her gaze wandered.
She gave a light cough to conceal that trace of bashfulness, then stubbornly said, "Don't try getting cozy with me! Who's your wife? This was an arranged marriage. I haven't agreed to it yet."
"Yes, yes, whatever Young Miss Su says." Lin He cheerfully climbed right up the pole she offered.
"In a place like the Lin Household, where they devour people without even spitting out the bones, a Spirit Root-less good-for-nothing like me would've been skinned and had his tendons ripped out long ago if I'd dared show this thing.
"So I kept it hidden on me the whole time. I didn't even dare roll over in my sleep. I was just waiting until we settled down to take it out and share it with you."
Those words, "share it with you," truly touched a tender spot in Su Qiuran's heart.
She looked at the man before her, with his slightly roguish smile. Though they had been married without ever meeting or having a say, in these desperate circumstances, his trust, which held nothing back, suddenly gave her a warm sense of reassurance.
Touched or not, she could not forget the business at hand.
"How exactly do you use this thing?" Su Qiuran turned the jade gourd over and over, trying to find some mechanism, but the gourd was a seamless whole and would not open at all.
"No idea." Lin He spread his hands.
The two spent ages fiddling with it, trying every method they could: prying, smashing, and Su Qiuran even wanted to boil it in water. It still showed no response.
"How about... Blood-Drip Recognition?" Su Qiuran suggested tentatively. "Isn't that how all the webnovels do it?"
Lin He's eyes lit up. "Makes sense!"
They got straight to work. Lin He rummaged around the hut and finally dug a rusty shard of iron out of a pile of scrap metal in the corner.
"Here, one drop each." Lin He held out the iron shard.
Su Qiuran recoiled in disgust at the battered piece of iron covered in suspicious stains. "Don't come near me! Doesn't that have tetanus bacteria on it? If we get sepsis, we'll both go straight to the grand finale!"
"Then how do we do it? Bite our fingers?" Lin He gestured.
They exchanged a look and finally gritted their teeth, deciding to bite each other's fingers.
Amid two muffled cries of pain and mutual complaints of "Were you born a dog? Why'd you bite so hard?" two drops of crimson blood finally landed on the emerald-green gourd.
Drip.
Rather than sliding off, the blood instantly soaked into it like water dripping onto a sponge.
A faint red light suddenly flashed across the jade gourd's surface! Immediately afterward, the gourd erupted with a soft yet dazzling clear light, illuminating the entire dim, ramshackle wooden hut.
An immense stream of information shot into each of their brows with a whoosh.
With their eyes closed, they remained frozen for several full minutes before slowly opening them.
By then, the jade gourd's light had withdrawn, and it had returned to its original, unremarkable appearance.
Lin He and Su Qiuran exchanged a glance, each seeing wild joy in the other's eyes.
They had finally figured out exactly what the jade gourd did.
According to the information in their minds, this jade gourd could absorb the essences of the moon and the sun from between heaven and earth!
The function of the essence of the sun could be summed up in one word: acceleration! Whether it was an ordinary cabbage seed or an immortal herb rarely seen in a thousand years, a drop of the essence of the sun could drastically shorten its growth time.
As for the essence of the moon, its function was improvement! Used on plants, it could improve their varieties. Used on animals, it could cleanse their essence and marrow, purify their bloodlines, and even optimize their Spirit Roots!
For two good-for-nothings without Spirit Roots like them, this essence of the moon was nothing short of a great road to heaven, allowing them to defy the heavens and change their fates!
"Well, I'll be damned..." Lin He smacked his lips, his eyes burning. "With this thing, even if we had a pig, we could feed it into Marshal Tianpeng!"