Cultivating a Ghost God

Thanks to Li Yu, Li Boyang's family in this life could just about be considered a well-off household.

As a result, every spring, quite a few villagers came to Li Boyang's home to borrow seed.

After Li Boyang borrowed the Fang Boar to help the villagers reclaim farmland, the arrangement became an unspoken understanding.

Whenever Li Yu went hunting, the villagers would help him look after Chen Yun and her son.

The Li family, meanwhile, lent seed to villagers who had no grain to spare, helping them through the spring shortage.

The arrangement continued into the following year.

To the villagers' surprise, the fields sown with seed borrowed from Li Yu's family seemed to yield ten to twenty percent more grain than usual.

The villagers were ignorant, not fools.

Although they didn't know what was behind it, borrowing and exchanging seed with Li Yu's family seemed to become a trend.

Alongside this came increasingly outlandish rumors among the villagers.

For instance, Li Boyang really was the Mountain God's child.

Not only could he borrow marvelous treasures from the Mountain God, but even his family's seeds had been blessed by her.

Under normal circumstances, that was about as much as Li Boyang could have done.

After all, he had been an ordinary person in his previous life, not some agricultural expert or authority.

That was until Li Boyang once again saw the Fang Boar plowing a field.

It suddenly occurred to him that this wasn't Earth, so why did he have to follow the agricultural rules of his previous life?

Leaving everything else aside, Li Boyang could use the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron to help select good seed for the following year.

He only needed to give the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron a gentle toss, and he would have a rough idea of how many ears of rice a seed could produce the following year.

This way, Li Boyang could look beyond how plump the seeds were and draw out and enhance their potential to the greatest extent possible.

As the saying went, once one aperture opened, a hundred would follow.

Since the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron could be used to select good seed, couldn't he take other shortcuts as well?

And so a stone outcrop in the cave came to be used specifically for selecting and cultivating good seed.

"Everything looks pretty good, much better than I imagined."

Li Boyang gave the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron another gentle toss, a satisfied smile appearing on his face.

"Not only has the yield of this batch of seeds increased considerably, but their resistance to pests and extreme weather has improved too."

"The only pity is that they still take around 120 days to mature. There's no way to shorten it to 100."

Hearing this, the Big Black Dog rolled his eyes in a remarkably human manner.

"You want to create good seed that can produce three harvests a year? You sure dare to dream!"

"If I weren't here helping you tend them and speed up their growth, you wouldn't even have gotten these high-quality seeds."

Using Divine Abilities and Law Techniques to speed up plant growth was another of Li Boyang's accidental discoveries.

At the time, Li Boyang hadn't had any complicated plans.

He had only wanted the Heavenly Mandate Bone Plastron to help him find a place specifically for selecting and cultivating good seed.

Instead, by a strange twist of fate, he had found this pitch-black cave and met the Big Black Dog who had been suppressed inside it.

Breeding seeds in a pitch-black cave went somewhat against common sense.

But this world had supernatural powers.

Leaving the Big Black Dog's origins aside for now, he really did have a few tricks up his sleeve when it came to cultivating good seed.

"I could say the same to you..."

"If Xiluo weren't neglecting her proper duties, could you have found someone like me who was willing to talk to you?"

Li Boyang rolled his eyes back at the Big Black Dog and asked with a smile.

In theory, a Mountain God should have possessed the same ability as a Land God to speed up plant growth.

Unfortunately, Xiluo was an exception. She had put all her Innate Divine Abilities into flames.

On top of that, she was naturally careless and easygoing. Asking Xiluo to do something so delicate was simply asking too much of her.

"That's a different matter!"

"With my help, you've saved at least twenty years."

"The seeds here now have basically all reached their limits."

"Even if you keep selecting and improving them, you absolutely won't be able to find any better seeds."

At this point, the Big Black Dog paused for a moment.

"What's more, these seeds are very particular about soil fertility..."

"If they aren't grown properly, their yields will basically decline to their original level within two or three generations."

"As you'd put it, it's like rowing upstream: if you don't advance, you fall back."

Hearing the Big Black Dog so plainly seeking credit, Li Boyang smiled again.

"Even if you say that, there's no way I'm helping you break the seal, so give up on the idea!"

Although the Big Black Dog acted kindly and docilely, Li Boyang had never forgotten what kind of place this was.

"Our dealings have always been fair."

"You help me cultivate seeds, and I teach you cultivation."

"Since you really haven't slacked off, let's continue today's lesson!"

The Big Black Dog bared his teeth slightly and growled in a low, disgruntled voice.

"Teaching me cultivation?"

"You're obviously using me as a test subject!"

"You think I don't know that everything you gave that stinking cat came from what you learned experimenting on me?"

The Big Black Dog clearly had a great many objections to being used as a test subject while the results were handed over to Xiluo without reservation.

Why was that stupid cat so lucky? Why was she favored like that?

It had been that way a thousand years ago, and it was the same a thousand years later.

"Besides, does that stupid cat know what you've been researching behind her back?"

Faced with the indignant Big Black Dog, Li Boyang merely countered calmly.

"Xiluo is a very good elder, but you aren't."

"I haven't deliberately hidden my research from her. I just haven't fully mastered that power yet."

As if to confirm Li Boyang's words, the shadow beneath his feet suddenly twisted and swelled.

The next moment, his shadow detached itself from him and transformed into a pitch-black, savage-looking evil ghost, crouching behind him.

The evil ghost was no more than three meters tall, yet it radiated a chilling malice.

In particular, when it stared fixedly at you, even the Big Black Dog couldn't help shivering.

"Killing intent given form, Sha Qi made manifest..."

"You're transforming your shadow into a new Ominous Deity, and it clearly isn't very much under your control."

"Believe it or not, if I told that stinking cat about this, she'd lock you up in this Ghost God Cave at once."

Li Boyang gave a slight shrug and smiled noncommittally.

"You won't, because you're afraid of death."

"I just haven't fully mastered this power. That doesn't mean I can't use it to kill you."

As Li Boyang's words fell, the evil ghost behind him slowly rose to its feet.

The evil ghost had three eyes on its forehead, red hair like fire, and sharp teeth like fangs.

Merely by standing there, it rapidly filled the entire Ghost God Cave with a scorching heat.