My Portable Spirit Farm: Rise of the Humble Servant

Chapter 175: The Spirit Vine Mutation

The warmth of the New Year’s Eve reunion still lingered in the air, but inside the meditation chamber, the atmosphere was heavy with tension. Chen Ping sat cross-legged, his brow furrowed in concentration.

He hadn’t ended his cultivation cycle early because of the holiday.

He was forced out by a crisis within the Jade Pendant Space.

It was an unforeseen anomaly, sudden and sharp enough to unsettle him.

A few days ago, Chen Ping had entered the dimension for his routine inspection, intending to water the spirit herbs. It was supposed to be a mundane task.

But as he approached the sector dedicated to the Five Elements Yin Spirit Vines, he sensed something wrong.

These vines weren’t his primary focus, but he never neglected his assets. He checked them daily.

Normally, these vines emitted a soft, rhythmic glow—like fireflies dancing in the dark, cycling through the five colors of the elements.

But now? The center of the patch was blinding.

A single vine, located dead center, was erupting with light. It didn’t glow; it blazed like a miniature, white-hot sun, drowning the surrounding area in harsh illumination.

Chen Ping recognized it immediately. It was the “Matriarch”—the original vine he had planted, boasting a medicinal age of nearly 300 years.

He had initially assumed this was natural progression. He thought that as the medicinal age increased, the elemental glow would intensify.

He was wrong.

This wasn’t growth. This was dominance.

Surrounding this radiant “sun,” within a radius of several zhang, was a scene of devastation.

Over a hundred other spirit vines—plants that should have been thriving—were dead.

Their tough vines were shriveled and gray. Their leaves had rotted away. The entire circle was a graveyard of withered husks.

Chen Ping crouched down, his expression grim. He reached out and touched a dead vine.

It crumbled instantly.

He pulled the root system up. It disintegrated into dust in his hand. He snapped a section of the vine; it was hollow, light as a feather.

“Sucked dry,” Chen Ping murmured.

His experience with spirit herbs told him the truth immediately. These plants hadn’t died of disease or age. Their essence had been violently extracted.

Alarm bells rang in his mind.

He turned his gaze back to the central, blinding vine.

It was monstrous. While its surviving peers on the periphery were only as thick as an infant’s arm, this mutant was as thick as a grown man’s forearm. Its surface had lost the texture of bark, replaced by a translucent, jade-like luster.

The vitality pulsing within it was terrifying.

Even ignoring the blinding light, the sheer density of Qi and life force rolling off it was suffocating.

Impossible, Chen Ping analyzed. Even with 300 years of age, a Five Elements Yin Spirit Vine shouldn’t possess this level of power. It shouldn’t be this… aggressive.

There was only one explanation.

It had cannibalized its kin.

It had plundered the life essence of over a hundred surrounding vines to fuel its own forced evolution.

“A mutant variant,” Chen Ping whispered, eyes narrowing. “And an apex predator at that.”

He didn’t know if this change was a blessing or a curse, but he knew one thing: he needed to save his remaining stock.

Moving gingerly to avoid the mutant’s “kill zone,” Chen Ping rapidly excavated the surviving vines on the outer rim. He transplanted them to the furthest corner of the Spirit Field, isolating the threat.

Only when the survivors were safe did he return to the mutant.

He stood a few steps away, probing it with his senses.

The medicinal potency was staggering. A conservative estimate placed it at ten times the strength of a standard 200-year-old vine.

But as Chen Ping extended his Divine Sense to inspect the internal structure, something shocked him to his core.

Something touched him back.

A consciousness.

It was weak, tender, and chaotic—like a newborn grappling with its first thoughts. But it was there, and it was reaching out.

Over the last few days, the signal had been static noise. Today, it formed coherent concepts.

A stream of fragmented, alien thoughts flooded Chen Ping’s mind:

“Innate… Spirit Root…”

“Unique…”

“Mature… Earth… Useless…”

“Parasitize… Living Being… Flesh… Symbiosis…”

Chen Ping froze.

A spirit herb developing sentience? That was the stuff of legends, reserved for supreme heavenly treasures. But the message it carried was even more insane.

It claimed to be an Innate Spirit Root—a unique entity in heaven and earth.

It declared that it had reached maturity. The soil, the Spirit Field, could no longer nurture it.

It demanded a host. It needed to root itself within a living body of flesh and blood, acting as a second, artificial Spirit Root to assist the host in cultivation.

If the host grew strong, it would grow strong.

A true symbiosis.

But beneath the offer lay a desperate, terrifying deadline. The infant consciousness pulsed with a frantic fear of death.

“Three days… No host… Wither… Die…”

Chen Ping tried to reason with it via Divine Sense. “The rules of this space are special. Time and energy here are abundant. You can survive here without parasitism.”

The reply was instant and stubborn, born of primal instinct.

“Rules… Internal… Irrelevant to outside… Broken limits… Price paid… Kin sacrificed… To live…”

“Mature… Wisdom… Incomplete…”

“Flesh… Only flesh sustains… Flesh power… Superior to Wood…”

The transmission was disjointed, but the logic was brutal.

Chen Ping pieced it together. This vine had broken the genetic limits of its species. The price for this evolution was the massacre of its kin.

But this new form was unstable. It had gained wisdom, but it had lost the ability to survive on soil and Qi alone. It needed the higher-grade vitality found in a cultivator’s biological system.

In its primitive worldview, “Flesh and Blood” was a higher form of energy than “Grass and Wood.”

Chen Ping pressed for details on the difference between the energy types, but the consciousness went blank. It didn’t know why; it just knew it was true.

Chen Ping withdrew his Divine Sense, his mind racing.

Innate Spirit Root?

Parasitic Symbiosis?

Three-day death timer?