“It seems my only option is to rely on the Black Earth. I must force the medicinal age of the Foundation Establishment ingredients to their absolute biological limit, then leverage the True Fire Alchemy Scripture to refine High-grade—or even Supreme-grade—pills myself.”

Chen Ping felt the weight of the pressure settling on his shoulders.

In the natural world, the main ingredients for the Foundation Establishment Pill had a hard ceiling.

Take the Sunflame Grass and Amethyst Flower, for instance. Once these plants went to seed, their medicinal potency locked in place. They would never improve further.

The limit was exactly one hundred years of potency.

The True Essence Fruit Tree followed a similar rule. A fruit could hang on the branch for a maximum of one century before dropping off on its own.

One hundred years. That was the cap.

With raw materials limited to this standard potency, it was physically impossible for Chen Ping to refine a Foundation Establishment Pill that exceeded the norm.

However, the Black Earth space offered a loophole.

In this dimension, medicinal potency could break through the theoretical upper limit.

The True Essence Fruit Tree was straightforward; since it was already a perennial tree, the fruit could simply remain attached, artificially accumulating age beyond the century mark.

But the other two—the Sunflame Grass and Amethyst Flower—were herbaceous plants. To break their limits, Chen Ping had to force them to undergo “Arborization.” He had to evolve them into trees.

This required time. A significant amount of it.

Although his parents’ lifespans had been extended to one hundred and twenty years, they had started as mortals. Their biological prime—the window where their bodies could withstand the violent shock of Foundation Establishment—would close in the next ten or twenty years.

The consensus in the cultivation world was brutal: once a cultivator passed eighty, the door to Foundation Establishment slammed shut forever.

He had to have a sufficient supply of High-grade pills ready before his parents hit that deadline.

Chen Ping’s eyes hardened with resolve.

It should be possible.

And if it isn’t… I’ll just have to go out and rob someone.

…

While Chen Ping stressed over logistics, Yuan Jingtian was living a life of carefree indulgence.

Fueled by the endless supply of pills and talisman materials Chen Ping provided, Yuan had returned to his cave dwelling and dived headfirst into the study of Talismans.

Surprisingly, the man had a genuine, albeit unorthodox, knack for it.

Combined with his willingness to burn through materials like waste paper—after all, he wasn’t paying for them—his progress was terrifying. In just six months, he had mastered the stable production of several Tier 1 Low-grade talismans, such as the Light Body Talisman and the Small Fireball Talisman. His success rate was shockingly high.

He hadn’t neglected his cultivation, either. With Chen Ping’s pills acting as a crutch, his cultivation had steadily climbed to the peak of Qi Condensation Level 7, just a hairsbreadth away from Level 8.

Chen Ping had visited him once. The cave dwelling was a disaster zone, buried under mountains of failed talisman paper. Yuan Jingtian himself had lost a significant amount of weight and sported deep, dark circles under his eyes, yet he had maniacally displayed his “masterpieces” with the energy of a mad scientist.

…

Having determined that High-grade pills were the only path forward, Chen Ping shifted the strategic focus of the Jade Pendant space entirely toward the Foundation Establishment ingredients.

It wasn’t just for his parents; he needed them too.

The Sunflame Grass, Amethyst Flower, and True Essence Fruit Trees were immediately upgraded to VIP status.

They were now exclusively irrigated with Tier 3 Spirit Spring water, enjoying an acceleration effect of nearly fifty times.

As for the secondary crops—the Cold Star Grass and Qi Gathering Grass trees—they were downgraded to Tier 2 water (forty times speed).

It couldn’t be helped. His supply of Tier 3 water was critically low.

To solve this bottleneck, Chen Ping began an aggressive search for a supplier.

Leveraging the network he had built through his black-market pill sales, he put out feelers, probing various circles for a source.

Finally, at a small, remote exchange gathering, he made contact with a representative from a cultivation clan known as the “Lin Family of Maple Stream Valley.”

The Lin Family was a mid-sized clan that occupied a valley blessed with a Tier 3 Spirit Spring Eye. Selling the water was one of their primary revenue streams.

Chen Ping played his hand, displaying several bottles of top-tier Marrow Cleansing and Qi Gathering Pills.

The Lin representative’s eyes lit up instantly.

For a clan like theirs, a stable channel for premium consumption pills was worth its weight in gold. It saved them the massive expense of training their own alchemists or paying retail markup at major apothecaries.

After several rounds of intense bargaining, a deal was struck.

Chen Ping would provide a fixed monthly quota of High-grade pills. In exchange, the Lin Family would supply a fixed quota of Tier 3 Spirit Spring water at a 10% markup over market price.

It was a win-win.

Chen Ping secured a stable, untraceable source of high-energy water—enough to concentrate entirely on his Foundation Establishment crops.

The transactions were conducted with professional paranoia. Every month, a different low-level cultivator from the Lin Family would handle the exchange at a varying location, minimizing the risk of exposure.

With the injection of Tier 3 water, the growth of the main ingredients accelerated beautifully.

But Chen Ping was not one to rest on his laurels. He knew the cardinal rule of investment: Never put all your eggs in one basket.

The crops in his space were his safety net, but he wanted to accelerate the process by purchasing additional mature plants or seeds from the outside world. He needed to increase his base stock to shorten the “Arborization” accumulation phase.

However, reality delivered a crushing blow.

Over the past year, Chen Ping had utilized multiple aliases to scour marketplaces, auctions, and even the shady underbelly of the black market. He had offered premium prices, practically begging for a seller.

The result? Zero.

He hadn’t been able to buy a single blade of Sunflame Grass or a single petal of an Amethyst Flower.

The occasional rumors of stock always turned out to be baseless noise or outright scams designed to lure desperate cultivators into traps.

After extensive probing and piecing together fragments of information, Chen Ping finally understood the grim mechanics of the market.

1. Extreme Scarcity The main ingredients for Foundation Establishment had draconian environmental requirements. Wild growth nodes were incredibly rare and located in dangerous, monster-infested zones.

2. Institutional Monopoly The primary supply came from Secret Realms and Spirit Herb Gardens strictly controlled by the major Sects and Great Clans. Ninety-nine percent of the harvest was consumed internally. These organizations had their own disciples to advance; not a single leaf was allowed to leak into the public market. People like Chen Ping, who managed to “smuggle” herbs out of a Secret Realm, were statistical anomalies—fish that had miraculously slipped through the net.

3. Strict Containment The flow of these resources was policed with military severity. Disciples leaving exploration zones were subjected to rigorous strip-searches. Major Sects used specialized Dharma Treasures to scan Storage Bags specifically for these contraband herbs. If caught privateering strategic resources, the punishment ranged from cultivation crippling to summary execution. Under such high-pressure tyranny, almost no one dared to smuggle.

4. Cultivation Difficulty Even if one had the seeds, growing them was a nightmare. They required precise Qi concentrations, specific soil pH, and symbiotic flora. Large Sects burned mountains of resources to simulate these micro-climates just to keep a few plants alive. The cost-to-yield ratio was terrible. Private entities simply couldn’t afford to grow them, and those who could—like the clans—hoarded the output for their own heirs.

“Monopoly. Control. Cost.”

Chen Ping let out a bitter, helpless laugh. He finally understood why the market was barren.

His success in smuggling the herbs out of the Secret Realm had been entirely due to the Jade Pendant space shielding them from detection.

He recalled the exit inspection where the elders had used a specialized Dharma Artifact to scan everyone. At the time, he had assumed they were looking for spies or demonic artifacts.

He was wrong.

They were hunting for this.

“It seems I really am on my own. I have to rely on these precious babies in my space.”

Chen Ping abandoned the fantasy of external procurement.

He placed his entire future, and the fate of his parents, on the forty Sunflame Grasses, thirty Amethyst Flowers, and the handful of True Essence Fruit Trees thriving in the Black Earth.