My Portable Spirit Farm: Rise of the Humble Servant

Chapter 227: Heavenly Mountain Longevity Peach!

Chen Ping picked up the first of the final five boxes.

It was dense. Despite being the exact same size as the hundreds of boxes that came before it, the weight resting in his palm was significantly heavier.

He took a slow, steadying breath and eased the lid open.

An impossibly faint, almost imperceptible pulse of vitality wafted out, carried on a bizarrely mundane fragrance. It smelled exactly like a freshly cracked watermelon in the dead of winter—crisp, sweet, and instantly relaxing.

The scent lingered for only a fraction of a second before completely dissolving into the sterile air of the cave dwelling.

To catch the scent of a mortal watermelon in the Cultivation world… Chen Ping thought, a brief, nostalgic pang tightening his chest.

He refocused, his gaze dropping into the box.

Resting on a bed of bright yellow silk was… a peach?

It was no larger than an infant’s fist. The skin was an unnatural, sickly, ash-gray color, violently shriveled and entirely devoid of luster. It looked less like a piece of fruit and more like a fossilized husk that had been aggressively drained of every microscopic drop of moisture.

Yet, the silhouette was unmistakably that of a peach.

Chen Ping’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. A legendary name violently detonated in his mind.

The Heavenly Mountain Longevity Peach!

According to the ancient texts, this mythic flora only took root on the absolute highest, most lethal snow-capped peaks in the world. It spent centuries passively gorging on the essence of the sun and moon, inhaling the purest ambient Qi of heaven and earth.

It took a thousand years to mature into a tree, and another thousand years to bear a single crop of fruit.

Consuming just one Heavenly Mountain Longevity Peach permanently extended a cultivator’s lifespan by 30 years—half a Jiazi!

It was the ultimate, mythical holy grail for countless cultivators, especially the ancient, decaying monsters staring down the barrel of their impending mortality.

Chen Ping’s heart slammed into his throat. Gingerly, he extended a single trembling finger toward the husk. He just needed to confirm if even a microscopic fraction of medicinal potency remained.

As long as a single spark of vitality survived… the Black Earth could perform a resurrection!

He held his breath. The sheer, apocalyptic value of the peach was paralyzing.

The very millisecond his fingertip grazed the mummified skin—before he even exerted an ounce of pressure—the entire outer layer violently collapsed. It shattered like a brittle, million-year-old leaf, cascading inward with a dry, mocking rustle.

“Ah…”

A long, ragged exhale tore from Chen Ping’s lungs. An ocean of suffocating disappointment violently drowned the fragile hope in his chest.

Of course. 800 years was simply too long. Even a heaven-defying miracle of nature couldn’t survive the merciless, grinding erosion of time. Its spiritual essence had bled dry.

Another supreme treasure, reduced to absolute garbage.

Chen Ping felt a wave of regret so intense he wanted to drop to his knees and shatter the floor with his fists. It would have been infinitely better if he had never opened the box at all. Seeing a treasure capable of extending his life by half a Jiazi crumble to dust before his eyes was pure, unadulterated psychological torture.

Shaking his head bitterly, he grabbed the box, fully intending to hurl it and its worthless residue against the wall.

But as the box tilted, his eyes caught a microscopic anomaly in the pile of gray ash. His arm violently locked in place.

Beneath the dust, something was protruding. A tiny, smooth bump.

Chen Ping’s heart skipped a beat.

He completely stopped breathing. Moving with agonizing, surgical precision, he leveled the box. Using only the very tip of his index finger, he gingerly brushed away the top layer of dead ash and shattered skin.

His eyes bulged.

Incredible. Absolutely incredible. Calling it the mandate of heaven felt like an understatement!

Resting perfectly intact in the center of the dead ash was a pit the size of a thumbnail.

It possessed a flawless, crystal-clear texture, as if carved from the absolute purest diamond. But it wasn’t solid. Deep within its crystalline shell, a hazy, luminous mist slowly churned and rotated, glowing with an internal, ethereal light.

It pulsed with a microscopic, yet hyper-condensed aura of pure, unadulterated life.

It… was still alive.

It’s the pit. Chen Ping realized, his mind reeling. It’s the living, viable seed of the Heavenly Mountain Longevity Peach!

“This… this…”

A tidal wave of euphoria violently obliterated Chen Ping’s carefully constructed stoicism. In that split second, the hardened, paranoid cultivator vanished, replaced by a giddy child. He literally bounced on his heels, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

He had stared straight into the abyss of absolute disappointment, only to be violently yanked back by the greatest miracle of his life!

The pieces instantly clicked into place. He understood exactly why the flesh of the peach had been so catastrophically degraded. Over the agonizing span of eight centuries, the fruit had deliberately cannibalized its own spiritual essence and vitality, funneling every last drop into its core—the pit—just to keep that single, fragile spark of life from guttering out.

The seed wanted to live. It wanted to root. It wanted to erupt into a towering Heavenly Mountain Longevity Peach tree!

The fruit itself was a mythic treasure simply because eating it granted half a Jiazi of life. But the true, world-shaking value of the Heavenly Mountain Longevity Peach was its role as the absolute core ingredient in refining the legendary Tier 4 Pill: the Jiazi Pill!

A single, standard Jiazi Pill added a full, unconditional 60 years of life out of thin air. And if a master alchemist managed to refine a Middle Grade, High-grade, or Top Grade batch? The lifespan extension scaled exponentially!

For ancient cultivators screaming against the dying of the light, the Jiazi Pill was the ultimate artifact for Defying the Heavens to change fate.

And Chen Ping now held the seed to cultivate the primary ingredient.

“I knew it! You hit rock bottom, you bounce back!” Chen Ping finally roared, his voice cracking with borderline manic joy. Clutching the crystalline pit, he threw his head back and laughed, the booming sound echoing wildly across the Jade Pendant space.

Every ounce of paranoia, every drop of suffocating anxiety from the tomb, was violently scrubbed clean by this heaven-defying haul.

What could possibly be more intoxicating to a cultivator than the tangible hope of Immortality? Lifespan was the ultimate currency. It bought time, it bought higher realms, it bought a longer, bloodier path to the apex!

The intrinsic value of this single, thumb-sized pit astronomically eclipsed the combined worth of the 3 million Spirit Stones’ worth of ash he had just opened!

It took Chen Ping several minutes to physically rein in his hyperventilating joy, though a manic, irrepressible grin remained plastered across his face.

He moved immediately. He selected an isolated, pristine patch of Black Earth, deliberately distancing it from his other crops. A mythic tree that dictated life and death required absolute, segregated sovereignty over its soil. It needed to be highlighted as the absolute apex of his garden.

Chen Ping gingerly pressed the crystalline pit into the dark loam. He followed it with a heavy, meticulous drenching of Tier 3 spiritual spring water.

Watching the liquid vanish into the soil, Chen Ping crossed his arms. The smile on his face was identical to an old, weathered farmer admiring a field of golden, ready-to-harvest grain.

With the Longevity Peach tree taking root, the future was blindingly bright.

Once his heartbeat finally returned to a normal rhythm, Chen Ping pivoted to the second imperial green box.

Having just pulled a mythic, lifespan-extending seed, his expectations for the remaining four boxes were dangerously maximized.

He picked up the second box. It was staggeringly heavy—far denser than solid jade had any right to be.

The exact millisecond he popped the lid, a catastrophic, bone-shearing wave of pure, concentrated killing intent violently erupted from the box!

Every hair on Chen Ping’s body stood on end. He involuntarily stumbled backward, his internal true essence automatically detonating to form a defensive screen against the sheer, suffocating aura of death.

Resting on a bed of crimson silk was a short sword, roughly one foot in length.

The blade was incredibly narrow and forged from a metal that was a light-devouring, abyssal blue. A ghostly, pale luminescence flowed constantly along its razor-sharp edge. The crossguard was brutally simplistic and ancient, while the hilt was tightly wrapped in long-tarnished, dark-gold wire.

It didn’t blind him with explosive spiritual light. Instead, the weapon possessed a terrifying, hyper-compressed, and perfectly restrained Pressure. The sheer sharpness radiating from the dormant blade made it physically difficult for Chen Ping to draw breath.

“A Dharma Treasure!” Chen Ping gasped. “This is a genuine, authentic Dharma Treasure flying sword!”