Chapter 128 – The Life of Zong the Runner, Spirit Rice Experiment a Resounding Success!

“Slaughtering an entire city just to refine a treasure — this old dog truly is vicious…”

Su Xing cursed silently in his heart, feeling that killing Old Dog Zong outright had been far too merciful.

He really should have used the Separation Fire Technique to torment him for forty-nine days before destroying his soul.

Su Xing then took out Old Dog Zong’s Diary and began flipping through it.

Unfortunately, Old Dog Zong had written far too many diary entries, most of which recorded trivial matters. With limited immersive simulation time remaining, Su Xing could only skim through the general contents, hoping to find useful information within.

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2758 — Slaughtered a sect, happened upon a secret technique for forming an Infant. Entered seclusion.”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2769 — Finally achieved Nascent Soul!”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2778 — Pursued and hunted. Fled for my life…”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2803 — Pursued and hunted. Fled for my life…”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2930 — Achieved Nascent Soul Great Perfection. Began searching for Nascent Soul Tempering Pills, seeking to form a superior-grade Nascent Soul!”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2933 — Found an alchemy grandmaster capable of refining Nascent Soul Tempering Pills. Killed him!”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2935 — Fled for my life…”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2940 — Broke through to Spirit Transformation!”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2963 — Returned to the sect. Slaughtered everyone!”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 3338 — Achieved Spirit Transformation Great Perfection!”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 3339 — The spiritual energy of heaven and earth grows ever thinner. Cultivators have no hope of achieving immortality. Consumed the Yellow Springs Pill and entered deep slumber, hoping to extend my lifespan and await new opportunities…”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 5077 — Was inadvertently awakened by a group of low-level Body Tempering cultivators. Enraged, killed them all!”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 5088 — There is no longer any spiritual energy between heaven and earth. No hope of attaining the Dao. Might as well cling to life…”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 5168 — Happened upon an old dragon. Joined the Advent Cult! In search of an opportunity for immortality…”

Su Xing let out a long breath upon reading this and murmured:

“Old Dog Zong — this guy was actually a monster who lived for over two thousand years?”

“Granted, he extended his lifespan by consuming the Yellow Springs Pill and falling into slumber… but living for over two thousand years is truly staggering!”

Looking over the full span of Old Dog Zong’s life, he was hardly a prodigy. He had reached Nascent Soul in his three hundreds and Spirit Transformation in his five hundreds — he had likely consumed no small number of life-extending elixirs to survive this long.

“This Old Dog Zong committed evil deeds his entire life, yet he was exceedingly cautious. He began fleeing from the Foundation Establishment stage onward, laying low all the way until Spirit Transformation, then returned to his sect and slaughtered every last member… Truly a case of a petty man’s revenge — five hundred years is never too late…”

Su Xing finally understood why Old Dog Zong had been so cautious.

“However, Old Dog Zong’s diary doesn’t seem to mention the Eternal Spring Art… Could it be that the sect he originally joined was the Eternal Spring Sect?”

“Or perhaps… this old dog obtained the technique when he destroyed someone else’s sect?”

Su Xing was somewhat curious. The Eternal Spring Art was the cultivation technique he was currently practicing, but unfortunately it could only be cultivated up to the Void Return stage.

And after this round, Su Xing would likely soon enter the Spirit Transformation stage, which meant he wasn’t far from reaching the Eternal Spring Art’s ceiling.

So Su Xing needed to find a way to obtain a more advanced cultivation technique as soon as possible…

Su Xing suddenly thought of something. Looking at the dates in the diary, he murmured:

“Immortal Martial Calendar… If I remember correctly, Great Xia should have an instance coordinate called the Immortal Martial Era — the Dharma-Ending Era, right? Perhaps Old Dog Zong was a person from that instance world?”

Su Xing pondered silently. Perhaps he could explore that Dharma-Ending Era instance in the future and obtain useful information.

Su Xing skimmed through the rest of Old Dog Zong’s diary.

Before long, the immersive simulation time ended, and Su Xing returned to the real world.

After returning to the real world, Su Xing turned his gaze to the simulation panel.

【You reviewed the treasures and diary left behind by Old Dog Zong, hoping to obtain some useful information from them.】

【Through this information, you did gain a deeper understanding of the cultivation world’s secrets. Unfortunately, most of Old Dog Zong’s magical treasures had already been destroyed.】

【You and Luo Shuying hid in the mountains for several days. During these days together, a man and woman alone in a pitch-dark cave, your feelings for each other grew even deeper.】

【After a few days, Lu Yuanwu arrived with several Martial Emperors and Legendary-stage powerhouses to escort you. You safely arrived at the Capital City of Great Xia.】

【After returning to the Capital City, you gave all the pills you had accumulated over the years to the Great Xia Military, adding tens of thousands of Grandmaster-stage powerhouses to Great Xia’s forces.】

【The Great Xia Military immediately placed great importance on this. You were hailed as a hero of the human race and successfully entered the upper echelons of Great Xia.】

【Faced with fame and fortune, you showed no interest. You merely exercised your authority to lease ten thousand mu of mountainous land in the outskirts of the Capital City, and mobilized your subordinates to begin developing farmland.】

【In the seventh year, you directed the development of the wasteland while simultaneously refining mid-grade pills such as Divine Power Pills, Dragon Spirit Pills, and Primordial Martial Pills.】

【You kept one hundred supreme-grade Divine Power Pills for your own use and gifted the rest to the Great Xia Military, adding several hundred Heavenly Kings and dozens of Martial Emperor-stage powerhouses to Great Xia’s forces!】

【As a result, your status within Great Xia and across the entire human race continued to rise, yet you devoted yourself entirely to attempting to cultivate spirit grain.】

【You came to that ten-thousand-mu farmland and began devising ways to set up small-scale spirit-gathering formations.】

【You improved the formation eye of the spirit-gathering formation, using one spirit stone and one Spirit-Gathering Flower as the formation eye. The spirit stone released spiritual energy outward, while the Spirit-Gathering Flower absorbed that energy and released even more in return.】

【Through this continuous cycle, one spirit stone and one Spirit-Gathering Flower functioned like a spiritual energy perpetual motion machine, ceaselessly releasing spiritual energy outward.】

【But you quickly discovered that spiritual energy would continuously dissipate and be consumed. If there were too many living things within the spirit-gathering formation, consumption would exceed supply, and the spiritual energy would gradually diminish until exhausted.】

【You needed to find the right balance, keeping consumption slightly below supply. After some measurements, you determined that one Minor Spirit-Gathering Formation could cover a maximum area of three mu.】

【So in the fields on the outskirts of the Capital City, you laid down three spirit-gathering formations, took out seeds, and planted spirit grain across nine mu of land.】

【Over the next year, you cultivated while experimenting with spirit grain planting.】

【In addition, you continued planting Three-Tailed Phoenix Grass and Jade Bone Snow Ginseng daily in the Blessed Spirit Field.】

【The Three-Tailed Phoenix Grass was growing splendidly. In just seven years, it was nearly ready to sprout its first phoenix tail. You were overjoyed, estimating that it would certainly reach maturity within this simulation.】

【The Jade Bone Snow Ginseng, however, gave you some concern. It grew in extremely cold regions and required spiritual energy, but your Blessed Spirit Field enjoyed spring-like weather year-round and could not meet the Jade Bone Snow Ginseng’s growing conditions.】

【With no other choice, you brought Luo Shuying and traveled to one of the Seven Kingdoms and Twelve Domains — the Arctic Domain. Located in the far north, the Arctic Domain maintained temperatures below negative fifty degrees year-round, making survival nearly impossible for ordinary life.】

【However, as a Nascent Soul stage cultivator, you were long impervious to heat and cold. You found a secluded location in the Arctic Domain and planted the Jade Bone Snow Ginseng there, setting up a Minor Spirit-Gathering Formation specifically to supply it with spiritual energy.】

【After confirming the Jade Bone Snow Ginseng could survive, you returned to Great Xia.】

【In the eighth year, your spirit field experiment on the outskirts of the Capital City was complete. Comparing the spirit grain across the three spirit-gathering formations, you found that one had its spiritual energy completely depleted, while the other two still had abundant reserves.】

【You harvested the spirit grain from the remaining two plots and discovered that the yield per mu was approximately five thousand jin. Exceeding that amount would cause the spiritual energy supply to become insufficient.】

【At the same time, because real-world soil could not compare to the Blessed Spirit Field, only one harvest per year was possible.】

【Even so, you were extremely satisfied. One spirit stone and one Spirit-Gathering Flower could sustain three mu of spirit fields — that was fifteen thousand jin! Moreover, the Minor Spirit-Gathering Formation could operate for a very long time, maintaining itself for over a hundred years without issue!】

【You still had a thousand spirit stones in hand. An annual yield of fifteen million jin was entirely feasible!】

【The problem was that you didn’t have enough Spirit-Gathering Flowers. To plant a thousand mu, you would need at least three hundred Spirit-Gathering Flowers.】

【But your goal had been achieved. This spirit grain could be made available to all of humanity — a hundred-year undertaking, not something to rush. This time, you simply wanted to test whether cultivation in the real world was viable.】

【Over these years, you had long since planted spirit grain across all five hundred mu of wasteland in your Blessed Spirit Field. After six or seven years, you had accumulated thirty million jin of spirit grain!】

【You brought out this spirit grain and selected one hundred thousand youths under the age of eighteen with outstanding talent from across the nation!】

【These hundred thousand people had not yet awakened a class and were still ordinary people, but you would supply each of them with one hundred jin of spirit rice per year. You wanted to conduct a large-scale experiment to determine just how much spirit rice could help ordinary people.】

【The remaining spirit rice you partially kept for your own consumption, and the rest you entrusted to the Tarot Trading Company for sale.】

【You sold the spirit rice at a price of one hundred thousand yuan per jin. This price was not expensive — practically the same as giving it away for free.】

【But you had one requirement: purchasers must consume the spirit rice themselves, must have reached the absolute limit of their current level, and only those unable to advance could purchase it. Furthermore, each person could buy no more than twenty jin at a time.】

【Even with all these restrictions, the nearly twenty million jin of spirit rice was bought out in less than a month.】

【The vast majority of buyers were Class Users at the peak of Bronze rank, with no hope of breaking through to Silver-stage.】

【There were also quite a few Class Users at the peak of Silver rank, with no hope of breaking through to Gold.】

【Twenty million jin of spirit rice, sold to a total of one million Class Users. You had the Tarot Trading Company compile statistics on all these individuals, planning to conduct follow-up visits in several months to investigate their results and whether they had successfully advanced.】

【This was a massive undertaking, but you had sufficient resources, and the government cooperated wholeheartedly, knowing this was a matter that would benefit all of humanity.】

【The first results came from the one million Class Users who had purchased spirit rice while stuck at their bottlenecks.】

【In just half a year, your subordinates compiled all the data on these one million people and delivered it to your hands.】

【Among them, of the six hundred thousand Bronze-stage Class Users, three hundred thousand broke through to Silver-stage within one month of consuming ten jin of spirit rice. Within half a year, an additional 295,000 had broken through…】

【The overall breakthrough success rate exceeded 99%!】