The Cave of Ghosts and Gods

Although Li Boyang was now three and a half years old, he was already nearly a meter tall.

But compared with the statues of ghosts and gods on Flying Peak, his child-sized figure still seemed as tiny as an ant.

Seen from afar, those statues stood amid clouds and mist, their backs against Flying Peak's sheer cliffs, giving the distinct impression that they were looking down upon all living beings.

And among those sculptures, a cave leading straight into the mountain stood conspicuously along the path behind the mountain god's temple.

"Let me see. There shouldn't be any danger this time, right?"

Standing alone outside the cave, Li Boyang took the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron out of his pocket.

He lightly tossed the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron into the air, and only after determining that this trip held no danger did he cautiously enter the cave.

Over the three years since obtaining the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron.

Li Boyang had more or less developed the habit of performing a divination before doing anything.

Although Li Boyang was not the sort of fatalist who firmly believed that "Heaven's mandate cannot be defied."

Divining good or ill fortune before acting and making thorough preparations had still allowed him to avoid a great deal of unnecessary trouble.

It was through this that Li Boyang finally understood why those formidable figures in the classical myths of his previous life always liked to divine Heaven's will before doing anything.

There was no other reason. It was simply useful!

Of course, Li Boyang had already read through the Nine Chapters on Divination over these three years.

So naturally, his use of the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron was no longer at the elementary level, as Xiluo's was.

What had just looked like a simple divination of good or ill fortune had actually involved Li Boyang applying his knowledge from the Nine Chapters on Divination to predict the cave's terrain and topography, as well as what might happen next.

The Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron was essentially only correcting Li Boyang's judgments, ensuring that he had made no mistakes.

Should anything unexpected happen, Li Boyang would also be able to respond with the most timely and correct measures.

In other words, in a poor student's hands, the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron could only answer true-or-false questions, but in a top student's hands, it could solve the most complicated practical problems.

"That child... he really is getting bolder and bolder."

Only after Li Boyang's figure gradually disappeared into the cave did Xiluo quietly appear where he had been standing.

Although Li Boyang's discovery of the cave had been an accident, Xiluo had never let her guard down.

Because only she knew how terrifying the being imprisoned inside the cave was.

Compared with the being inside the cave, the ghosts and gods sealed on Flying Peak could practically be called as docile and harmless as domestic fowl.

Even the Witch of the Huai River from a thousand years ago had not sealed and suppressed it through sheer strength.

The only thing worth celebrating was that, after Li Boyang accidentally discovered the cave, none of the situations Xiluo did not wish to see had arisen.

On the contrary, Xiluo strongly suspected that some of Li Boyang's astonishing ideas and actions had actually been inspired by that terrifying being inside the cave.

Otherwise, the speed of Li Boyang's growth over these mere three years really made it hard to believe that he was still only a three-year-old child.

Inside the cave, in a quiet, narrow passage.

Li Boyang moved through it with light steps, seemingly completely unaffected by the darkness.

And the open vertical eye between Li Boyang's brows answered the question of why this dark environment did not affect him.

Not only that, Li Boyang could even clearly see the lifelike sculptures of ghosts and gods lining both sides of the passage.

Compared with the statues on the cliffs outside, the statues here were not particularly large.

The tallest were only six or seven meters high, while the shorter ones were merely two or three meters tall...

Most importantly, these statues inside the cave were not hideous. Instead, they conveyed a sense of solemn majesty, like true divine statues.

Drip... drip... drip...

Passing all those solemn statues of ghosts and gods, Li Boyang only gradually came to a stop when he heard the clear sound of dripping water.

This was the end of the cave, where clear mountain spring water dripped down stalactites into a rock pool nearby.

And near that rock pool, a Big Black Dog bound in chains was sleeping soundly, entirely unaware of Li Boyang's arrival.

"Ahem!"

Only when Li Boyang gave a soft, dry cough did the soundly sleeping Big Black Dog start awake.

Clatter...

As it tugged at the chains extending from the rock, they instantly broke into a jumble of clashing sounds.

There was not just one chain. Five chains bound the Big Black Dog's neck and four limbs, making even turning over difficult.

"Brat, when did you get here?"

Its canine eyes wide open, the Big Black Dog spoke in a low, hoarse voice.

"Just now. One second before you woke up."

With practiced ease, Li Boyang approached a slab of rock opposite the Big Black Dog, and his head of red hair instantly burst into flames.

Under that crimson firelight, the depths of the cave were actually illuminated as brightly as day.

And on that slab of rock, which covered no more than ten square meters, unsprouted rice seeds lay arranged in neat rows.

"This batch of seeds is all right, isn't it?"

Seeing this, the Big Black Dog slowly rose to its feet as well.

The seeds on this rock were not ordinary rice seeds, but large, plump seeds that Li Boyang had painstakingly selected.

Li Boyang had not been an agricultural expert in his previous life, nor did he understand hybridization techniques.

He had simply watched the people of Li Household Village toil all year long, only to harvest less than a hundred jin per mu, and kept feeling that there ought to be something within his power that he could do.

As for ways to increase the yield per mu?

They amounted to nothing more than reforming cultivation methods and selecting the most suitable quality seeds.

To be honest, Li Boyang did not know how a curved-shaft plow was constructed, nor did he think that copying the farming tools of his previous life would greatly improve conditions in Li Household Village.

After all, Li Household Village did not have even a single draft animal. Relying purely on human labor would hardly improve the efficiency of clearing land.

Fortunately, this was a world where gods truly existed, and Li Boyang happened to be on fairly good terms with Xiluo, the mountain god.

So, under Li Boyang's shameless, relentless pestering.

At the beginning of spring each year, Xiluo would helplessly hand over temporary use of the "Fang Boar" to him.

Besides that, Li Boyang would specifically select places with relatively fertile soil and help the villagers drive out the wild beasts and spirits entrenched there.

Thus, in less than three short years, the amount of farmland cultivated per person in Li Household Village had nearly doubled.

But this was already the limit.

Without the help of more advanced farming tools, no matter how intensively a person farmed, they could tend to no more than seven or eight mu of land at a time.

After a year of backbreaking toil, they could only just manage to keep themselves fed and clothed.

So naturally, Li Boyang thought of the famous hybrid rice from his previous life.

Compared with the people of this era, Li Boyang at least knew what quality seeds were, and how to select suitable seeds for planting the following year.

It might seem like mere common knowledge, but from Li Boyang's observations, no one in Li Household Village understood this.

Never mind specifically picking out the plump seeds; whether they would need to borrow seeds from another household the following year was itself an open question.

Even Chen Yun, who had always seemed very shrewd, only realized after Li Boyang pointed it out that those plump seeds could produce more grain the following year.

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