Half a Spirit Jade

The mist rising from the Sword Testing Platform condensed into frost crystals, and the scar at the back of Shen Yi's neck caught a pale golden gleam in the morning light.

Elder Xuanfeng's withered, branch-like fingers brushed against the spiritual soil staining the hem of Shen Yi's robe, shattering the five-colored micro-light into stardust within his palm.

"Healing the Soul-Devouring Orchid requires the accompaniment of the Seven-Star Begonia Formation." Shen Yi curled his finger and tapped the jade pendant at his waist. The seeds he had buried last night suddenly burst through the soil and grew wildly, twelve silver-white begonias blooming right by Leng Shuang's frost-covered boots. "As for Senior Sister Leng's Ice-Soul Sword..." Before he could finish his sentence, the dark gold patterns on the sword body suddenly slithered like snakes. Leng Shuang shrieked and let go, her treasured sword dropping with a clank, already overrun with verdant vines.

Hao Yu broke free from his muted acupoint and laughed heartily, only to be pinned at his laughing acupoint by Ling Yun's three silver needles, turning his face bright red from holding back.

Gao Yao was just gathering her torn lapels to speak when the bronze cauldron in the center of the Sword Testing Platform roared. Eighty-one sword scars emerged from the cauldron's body—the final round of trials had begun.

When the seven bronze puppets burst out of the ground, Shen Yi was licking a bead of blood seeping from the web of his thumb.

With every step these colossal entities, carved with Taotie patterns, took, the ground rippled with spiritual power waves.

Jian Chen's Drifting Cloud Sword had already pierced toward the glabella of the lead puppet, but upon contact, it was shattered into pieces. The backlash of the sword qi carved a cross-shaped bloody gash on his face.

"Junior Brother Shen, watch out!" Gao Yao's transmission bell deflected the puppet's sharp claws lunging toward Shen Yi, and spiderweb cracks instantly covered the surface of the bell.

Shen Yi spun and flicked three Dragon-Blood Vine seeds into the puppet's joint crevices. Amidst the bursting red mist came the sound of striking gold and stone. When the mist cleared, everyone saw him actually straddling the puppet's shoulder, holding the spirit stone that controlled the core right between two fingers.

"The brute strength of a farmer really comes in handy." He raised an eyebrow at the dumbfounded Jian Chen. The moment his blood-stained teeth crushed the spirit stone, the puppet army collectively pivoted, surrounding Leng Shuang tightly.

Amidst the gasps erupting from the spectator stands, Elder Xuanfeng's cane struck the ground heavily, and all the puppets turned into dust in response.

The true murderous intent descended at this moment.

The trial cauldron no longer spewed bronze puppets, but dark iron battle puppets wrapped in karmic fire.

Shen Yi's plainclothes was scorched with burnt holes in the blink of an eye, and the God-Level Farming System flashed frantically in his sea of consciousness: [Warning! Host's spiritual power is at only 19%. Forcibly ripening the Nine-Nether Underworld Lotus will cause spiritual roots to wither.]

He staggered to avoid the battle puppet's slashing strike, his back slamming into Gao Yao's warm embrace.

The porcelain bottle she shoved into his palm still carried her body heat, and the seven Rejuvenation Pills inside were radiating a scent of ambergris. "Don't push yourself..." Her voice was interrupted by the battle puppet's roar. Shen Yi pushed her back out of the battle circle with a counter-hand motion. He could no longer suppress the fishy sweetness rising in his throat, and the bloody froth he spat out actually condensed into a bloody begonia in mid-air.

The system prompt turned shrill: [It is recommended to immediately consume all spiritual power to plant a substitute grass doll.] Shen Yi wiped the blood that had blurred his vision and suddenly laughed out loud.

He remembered that torrential rain night when Gao Yao had clutched him, dying, and sprinted wildly through the spiritual fields. Back then, the system had similarly warned that his spiritual power was exhausted, but the raindrops dripping from the girl's hair, mixed with blood, seeped into the soil and unexpectedly nurtured the jade-pith ginseng capable of regenerating flesh and bones.

"I'll take this gamble." He tore off the hem of his robe to wrap around his cracked thumb, dipping his fingertip in blood to draw a talisman on his chest.

When the seventh battle puppet's giant axe swung down, everyone saw an emerald-green halo burst around Shen Yi—that was not spiritual power, but the purest vitality of vegetation and trees.

In the spectator stands, Elder Xuanfeng shattered a teacup.

The broken porcelain cut his palm, and right where the drops of blood fell, twin Yin-Yang lingzhi mushrooms grew in mutual bloom.

The elder's murky pupils reflected the miraculous scene within the battle circle: tender green vines sprouted from every wound on Shen Yi, blooming with hemostatic flowers whenever the battle puppets severed them; the blood he coughed up landed and formed formations, and the withered Dragon-Blood Vine seeds reborn as chains within the blood formation.

"This isn't cultivation technique..." Jian Chen's treasured sword began to tremble again. "It's all living things protecting their master!"

When the last battle puppet crashed to the ground, Shen Yi knelt on one knee on the cracked bluestone bricks.

The talisman on his chest had already faded, and only the golden udumbara flower blooming at the center of his chest proved that what had just happened was no illusion.

Gao Yao's hurried steps into the battle circle were blocked by Elder Xuanfeng. The elder's withered, thin palm pressed down on Shen Yi's crown, but retracted instantly as if electrocuted upon probing—what surged from the depths of that spiritual platform was not true qi, but the breath of fertile soil wrapped in starlight.

"Tomorrow at the hour of Chen, come to the back mountain forbidden area." Elder Xuanfeng's voice transmission carried a tremor, and when Shen Yi looked up, he only saw the elder's hunchbacked figure fading into the morning mist.

He propped himself up on his knees, wanting to stand, when he suddenly noticed a warm object tucked into his sleeve—it was half a piece of spiritual jade carved with twin lotus flowers in mutual bloom, with delicate marks resembling someone's bite marks along the edge.

Shen Yi rubbed the tooth marks on the spiritual jade in his sleeve with his thumb, only to be snapped back to reality by Hao Yu's earth-shaking sneeze.

This burly man, who always loved to tie his wine gourd at his waist, was rubbing his red nose tip, his cuffs stained with the lapis lazuli powder kicked up when the Sword Testing Platform cracked, looking as if he had just been fished out of a dye vat.

"Junior Brother Shen's trick of transforming vegetation is truly wondrous!" As Hao Yu spoke, he sneezed again, shaking three silver needles from his lapel, which Ling Yun coldly pinched between her fingertips. "It's far more pleasing to the eye than Senior Brother Jian Chen's Drifting Cloud Sword Scripture." He deliberately bit down hard on the word "pleasing," prompting Jian Chen, who was currently bandaging his wounds, to fiercely grip the bandage, staining the plain silk with a gruesome, blooming plum branch in crimson blood.

Gao Yao trotted over holding a medical box, wisps of lingering emerald spiritual energy trailing from her skirt hem.

As she squatted down, Shen Yi caught the familiar scent of honeysuckle mixed with hemostatic powder. The girl's slender fingertips brushed across the flayed wound on his collarbone, startling the vine hemostatic flowers into shivering off showers of golden powder.

"Does it hurt?" Un-dried tear droplets still clung to her eyelashes, looking exceptionally bright against Shen Yi's roguish smile.

A crisp sound of a teacup dropping suddenly came from the spectator stands. Leng Shuang rose, clutching the broken half of her Ice-Soul Sword sheath. Right on the rush mat Elder Xuanfeng had just been sitting on lay a bronze command token engraved with a Taotie pattern.

"Please be at ease, everyone." Elder Xuanfeng's voice came from the clouds, his green-robed wide sleeves sweeping a sky full of stardust as they landed in the center of the Sword Testing Platform.

The elder's withered, thin palm cradled seven glazed lamps, and what leaped within the lamp wicks were the remnant souls of the karmic fire from the battle puppets just now. "Can Little Friend Shen explain why the puppet's core contained the Demonic Realm's Heart-Devouring Gu?"

Amidst the uproar of the crowd, Shen Yi leisurely fished a sunflower seed from his storage bag.

The moment the seed shell fell into the gap between the bluestone bricks, a dozen fluorescent grass shoots burst from the soil, illuminating the bronze command token in stark clarity—stuck to the depression of the Taotie pattern was a speck of cinnabar, precisely the virgin cinnabar Leng Shuang had applied to her Ice-Soul Sword sheath this morning.

"The Elder might as well ask when Senior Sister Leng's sword tassel was changed to be woven from demonic silkworm silk." As Shen Yi spoke, he flicked out a strand of spiritual energy. Leng Shuang's waist jade pendant shattered in response, rolling out three unconscious Heart-Devouring Gu worms.

Amidst the bursting gasps from the spectator stands, Jian Chen suddenly violently lashed out, the fragments of his Drifting Cloud Sword turning into a rainstorm assaulting Leng Shuang's face.

Elder Xuanfeng's cane struck the ground heavily, and time seemed frozen in amber.

Shen Yi narrowed his eyes at the shattered blade suspended right at the tip of Leng Shuang's nose, reaching out to catch the wine gourd that had slipped out of Hao Yu's sleeve.

As the amber liquid swept across mid-air, the vines around his wrist suddenly surged, binding Leng Shuang—who was attempting to crush a teleportation talisman—into a tight dumpling.

"Senior Sister's Ice-Soul Sword technique seems even more afraid of daylight than demonic cultivators?" A wisp of solar essence fire ignited at Shen Yi's fingertips, instantly reducing the remnant scroll of the Yin Talisman Scripture hidden in Leng Shuang's sleeve to ashes.

Gao Yao gently tugged at his blood-stained sleeve and shoved a Rejuvenation Pill into his mouth, her fingertips effortlessly brushing past the spiritual jade in his palm without leaving a trace.

Elder Xuanfeng's glazed lamp suddenly blazed with brilliant light, and chains formed from karmic fire dragged Leng Shuang underground.

Jian Chen clutched his wound and tried to argue, but was struck on the forehead by a jade slip flying from the elder's sleeve—it was precisely the playback shadow-stone rubbings of his transaction with the demonic cultivator last night.

"When the morning sun rises tomorrow, the Hall of Discipline will give you all an explanation." When Elder Xuanfeng turned around, Shen Yi noticed that the withered branch pinned in the elder's hair was actually sprouting pale yellow flower buds.

The elder's meaningful gaze swept over Shen Yi's blood-stained lapel, and he suddenly flicked a finger at his glabella: "When you cultivate the Planting Spirit Art to the seventh level, remember to go to the back mountain to feed those E-beasts."

When the bonfire of the celebration banquet was lit, Hao Yu was gripping a roasted spiritual chicken leg and gesturing at Shen Yi's heroic feat of riding the puppet.

Ling Yun's silver needles pinned down his wildly waving, greasy hand this time, provoking roars of laughter from everyone.

Shen Yi leaned against the millennium-old ginkgo tree, watching Gao Yao surrounded by female disciples asking for instruction on hemostatic formations. The wooden hairpin in her hair was precisely the one he had carved from thunder-struck peach wood.

"Aren't you going to see what's hidden in the spiritual jade?" The system suddenly popped up a prompt box in his sea of consciousness, and Shen Yi belatedly felt around his sleeve pocket.

The jade stone, stained with the body heat of both of them, revealed tadpole-like runes, which turned out to be a starmap of the ancient Agricultural God's sacrificial ceremony.

Just as he was about to inspect it closely, seven shooting stars streaked across the sky, their falling direction pointing precisely toward the back mountain forbidden area.

When Gao Yao came searching with her lotus lantern, Shen Yi was teasing a fairy crane with a grasshopper woven from spiritual grass.

Dewdrops clung to the girl's temples, and the scent of honeysuckle was mixed with a faint trace of cinnabar: "Elder Xuanfeng asked me to bring a message—the Yin-Yang lingzhi mushrooms in the back mountain need to be divided."

Shen Yi smiled and tucked the spiritual jade back against his heart, and the ginkgo leaves suddenly stirred without wind.

The Shennong Hoe, which had been dormant for a long time in the system warehouse, emitted a humming sound. He tilted his head and drank the last drop of wine in his gourd, watching the stars connect into unfamiliar totems in the night sky.

As the fairy cranes beat their wings and swept across the lunar wheel, he suddenly felt his palm grow warm—the tooth marks on that half-piece of spiritual jade fit the starmap at a certain spot with absolute perfection.