My Portable Spirit Farm: Rise of the Humble Servant

Chapter 222: All Can Be Planted and Live!

The Dragon Tooth Peach Tree stood alone, an image of absolute desolation.

If Chen Ping hadn’t secured it when he did, it would have been dead within days. In truth, even if he had left it undisturbed in that medicine garden, its time was almost up. The only reason it had survived this long, Chen Ping suspected, was sheer biological stubbornness. Fueled by a trace of dragon bloodline, the tree possessed a baseline vitality that vastly eclipsed ordinary spiritual flora. That alone had allowed it to cling to life across the centuries.

“You’re a lucky bastard,” Chen Ping muttered, patting the gnarled trunk that vaguely resembled a dragon’s skull.

He quickly excavated a large pit in the Black Earth and carefully transplanted the tree. As a final measure, he watered the roots with a measured dose of his third-grade spiritual spring water.

Looking down at the stone basin, which now held less than half its original volume of the precious liquid, Chen Ping felt a sharp pang of heartache. Third-grade spiritual spring water wasn’t a mythical artifact, but it was agonizingly scarce. The Cultivation world’s demand for it was a bottomless pit. Even the few massive Sects that controlled third-grade springs rarely sold it. Beyond accelerating plant growth, it served as an incredibly stable buffering agent in Pill refinement, drastically reducing the failure rate of high-tier concoctions.

Pushing aside the sting of the expenditure, Chen Ping watched as the Dragon Tooth Peach Tree began to transform right before his eyes.

When he first unearthed it in the garden, its branches were barren save for a few scorched, brittle leaves, and its bark was a lifeless, dull gray. Now, aggressively nourished by the Black Earth’s primordial vitality, those sickly yellow leaves visibly unfurled, rapidly flushing into a vibrant, pulsing emerald!

The intricate, scale-like patterns etched across the gnarled, dark-gold bark sharpened, faintly shimmering with a restored spiritual light. The entire tree seemed to shake off centuries of agonizing slumber, radiating a sudden, overwhelming aura of ancient majesty. Standing beneath its sprawling branches, Chen Ping could actually hear the faint, rumbling echo of a dragon’s roar.

Truly miraculous.

With the peach tree secured, Chen Ping turned his attention to the Nine Curve Purple Ginseng.

This little fellow was also hovering at death’s door. He quickly planted it into the dark soil.

Its half-foot-tall purple foliage, which had been limply drooping against the dirt, immediately began to stiffen. The nine silver wave patterns—the Nine Curve Markings—that lined the leaves had been utterly dull. Now, while the plant wasn’t instantly lush, its purple hue deepened into a rich, royal violet, and the silver markings flared to life as if newly polished, pulsing with a faint, steady glow.

More astonishingly, the ginseng’s deep-buried roots began to wriggle like living worms, greedily tearing into the Black Earth to devour its primordial vitality. The plant’s desperate hibernation had been broken. Tiny, luminescent purple spores drifted toward it, heralding its absolute rebirth.

Finally, Chen Ping planted the Stardust Grass.

The transformation was just as dramatic. The sickly, withered yellow leaves rapidly regained their color. Deep within the leaf veins, the dormant silver specks ignited, shining with a brilliant, crystalline clarity that looked exactly like a miniature galaxy trapped beneath the surface. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Even the shriveled, rice-grain-sized green bud at the tip of the fragile central stem visibly swelled, practically humming with renewed life.

“Perfect. Absolutely perfect!”

Chen Ping grinned, a massive weight lifting off his chest. The Jade Pendant’s Black Earth had never let him down. Three priceless spiritual plants, practically dead on arrival in the outside world, were already exploding with vitality. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before they fully recovered and entered their next growth cycle.

“With these stabilized, my future in Pill refinement is wide open,” Chen Ping murmured, his eyes alight with anticipation. The Dragon Tooth Peach, Nine Curve Purple Ginseng, and Stardust Grass were all mythic-tier ingredients. You couldn’t just buy them; you had to stumble across them by sheer providence.

Satisfied, Chen Ping retreated from the Jade Pendant space.

The primeval forest remained completely still. Wasting no more time, he summoned his Demon Slashing Sword, transforming into a streak of blinding silver light that tore through the dense canopy. Reorienting himself, he shot toward the Qingyun Sect at maximum speed.

He was eager to get home.

Meanwhile, several thousand miles away.

Beside a massive, crystal-clear lake thick with ambient Qi, the air violently rippled. Two figures stumbled out of the spatial tear, crashing into the muddy bank. It was Han Liren and Han Jingying.

“Pfft!”

The second Han Liren’s boots hit the dirt, the catastrophic backlash of his divine ability caught up with him. He violently vomited a massive spray of black blood, his stolen face instantly draining from a sickly flush to a corpselike yellow.

His aura plummeted. The cultivation he had so aggressively forced to the fifth layer of Foundation Establishment popped like a ruptured lung, violently crashing back down to the third layer—and it felt even more unstable than Han Feiyu’s original baseline. He swayed violently, his knees buckling.

“Big Brother!” Han Jingying shrieked instinctively. She lunged forward to catch him, but her hands froze inches from his robes.

A chaotic storm of emotions warred in her eyes: terror, hesitation, and a bone-deep, festering hatred.

Han Liren swatted his hand dismissively, rejecting the help. Han Jingying flinched backward as if burned, tears immediately welling in her eyes as she put distance between them.

Han Liren paid her no mind. Gasping for air like a drowning man, he wiped the bloody spittle from his chin and swept his predatory, sunken eyes over the surroundings. They were in a completely unpopulated, primal mountain range. The Qi density was acceptable. For now, they were safe.

“Forcibly deploying that divine ability overdrew this vessel’s vitality. I severely underestimated that brat,” Han Liren rasped. His voice carried the greasy, youthful pitch of Han Feiyu, but the cadence was ancient, exhausted, and dripping with venom.

He collapsed into a cross-legged sitting position, forcefully regulating his chaotic breathing until a sliver of color returned to his stolen cheeks.

Remembering the final clash—how Chen Ping had suddenly detonated a peak sixth-layer Foundation Establishment aura, forcing Han Liren to cannibalize his own soul origin with the Soul Siphon Wave just to survive—a suffocating wave of humiliation and dread crushed his chest.

“That Junior… where exactly did he crawl out from?”

Han Liren’s sharp, reptilian gaze snapped to the trembling, tear-streaked Han Jingying.

“Jingying. Tell This Seat the truth. What is this rat’s full name? Which Sect claims him? How did Feiyu cross paths with him? Speak. Do not omit a single detail.”

Han Jingying violently flinched. She dropped her gaze to the mud, refusing to meet the ancient monster’s eyes. Her voice trembled perfectly.

“Re… reporting to Ancestor. This person… his surname is Chen, given name Ping. As for his exact origins… Jingying truly does not know. Big Brother… seemed to have met him by chance while traveling. Big Brother only told me that this Chen Ping possessed a highly mysterious background, threw money around carelessly, and was… a useful pawn. Big Brother did not elaborate further.”

She clung to Han Feiyu’s dying words like a lifeline. She also knew, with terrifying clarity, that Chen Ping literally held her soul hostage. She absolutely would not utter a single syllable of truth.

Han Liren was a centuries-old monster. Did she really think he couldn’t spot a lie? Her rapidly shifting eyes and wooden tone screamed deception.

A flash of murderous rage sparked in his eyes, but as he looked at the terrified girl wearing his descendant’s face—and remembered he was currently wearing her brother’s—he forced the fury down. The girl was still a useful tool. Pushing her to the breaking point right now was tactically unsound.

“Hmph. Fine.” Han Liren scoffed derisively. “That rat cannot escape This Seat’s grasp. Once This Seat recovers a fraction of his strength, I have my ways.”

His mind raced. Once his foundation stabilized, he would seek out old acquaintances or hire experts specialized in divination and tracking. No matter the cost, he would drag that thieving little bastard out of whatever hole he was hiding in and butcher him!

Especially because of that specific, highly classified spiritual seed locked inside the stolen Storage Ring. The very thought of losing it made his chest ache with a phantom pain.

“Go. Catch some spirit fish from the lake. This Seat requires blood essence to repair this vessel’s deficit,” Han Liren ordered, dismissing her entirely.

“Yes,” Han Jingying whispered. She turned mechanically and walked toward the water’s edge.

The moment her back was to the old ghost, the terror in her eyes vanished, instantly replaced by a cold, absolute, and festering hatred.

She clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms, her teeth grinding together so hard they nearly cracked. She would never, ever forget her brother’s murder.

She would endure this degradation for now. She would survive, and she would grow stronger. And one day… she would slaughter this parasitic old ghost, and she would butcher Chen Ping. All of them.