The Eternal Farmer: I Trade My Harvest for Immortality

Chapter 243: Yellow Evil Sickness

As evening bled into the sky, Jiang Chen navigated the bustling streets toward the Fragrance Pavilion.

The city was a sea of unfamiliar faces. Among the crowds, he spotted a significant number of Immortal Sect disciples, their refined auras standing out against the grime of the mortal world. They were all here for the same reason: Huang Yuanhua’s cave dwelling.

Jiang Chen harbored his own curiosity about the place, but he had zero intention of setting foot near it. The memories of six months ago were burned into his mind—the successive shockwaves that had pulverized everything in their path. Trees, boulders, and men alike had been obliterated. It hadn’t mattered if you were in the Qi Condensation or Foundation Establishment stage; in an instant, everyone caught in that wake had been reduced to a fine, crimson mist.

Whether the cave was currently “safe” or not was irrelevant. He wasn’t going.

Twenty minutes later, he reached the Fragrance Pavilion. On the surface, little had changed. The atmosphere was just as heady, the wine just as sweet, though new faces had filtered into the ranks of the workers.

He saw Yue’er, the girl who had attended to him once before. When they had first met, her flirtations had been clumsy and transparent. Now, she was a master of the craft. A single, lingering gaze or a soft word from her was enough to leave a loose cultivator breathless with a sudden, sharp hunger.

Practice, it seemed, truly did make perfect.

Seeking a change of pace, Jiang Chen requested someone else—a girl he recognized from half a year ago named Xiao Taohong. She was petite and young, though the wide-eyed innocence she’d once carried had been replaced by a weary maturity. She had disappeared from the pavilion for a while, only to resurface this month.

Xiao Taohong approached with practiced grace, her right hand offering the cup while her left supported the base in a gesture of deep respect. “Immortal, please, enjoy the wine.”

Jiang Chen took a slow sip, his eyes studying her over the rim. “You vanished for a time. What brought you back to this place?”

Xiao Taohong’s hand trembled slightly. She opened her mouth to speak, then hesitated, her gaze dropping to the floor.

“If you’re willing to share the story,” Jiang Chen said tonelessly, “I’ll make it worth your while with extra Spirit Stones.”

Her head snapped up, eyes wide. “Is that the truth?”

Jiang Chen flicked his wrist, and a Low-grade Spirit Stone appeared in his palm. He slid it across the table. “For your trouble.”

Her fingers snatched the stone as if it might vanish. She tucked it away, then leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Six months ago, a couple came through here—a man and a woman who talked like saints but acted like snakes. They were scammers, plain and simple. I was a fool; I believed their lies and passed word of Huang Yuanhua’s cave dwelling to my old flame.”

She swallowed hard, a tremor in her voice. “He went. They all went. But it was a trap. Every cultivator who showed up was captured by a hidden force and forced into that cave as cannon fodder to spring the traps.”

Jiang Chen listened intently, the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place. He remembered that couple; he’d sensed a foulness in their subtext even then.

According to Xiao Taohong, the depths of the cave held something far more nightmare-inducing than a five-hundred-year-old Earth Dragon. The carnage had been absolute. Many died screaming, and the scamming couple had met an end so gruesome it defied description.

“If the place was such a slaughterhouse,” Jiang Chen asked, “how did you get all these details?”

Xiao Taohong checked over her shoulder before leaning closer still. “My old flame… he was lucky. He managed to crawl out and escape, but he was mangled. I spent months caring for him, spending every stone I had on healers and herbs. Eventually, I ran out of coin. I had to come back to the pavilion just to keep him fed.”

“And where is he now?”

Her expression dimmed. “He’s been rotting in bed for months. I don’t know if he’ll ever wake up.”

Jiang Chen felt a stir of professional interest. “I know my way around pills and pathology. Perhaps I should take a look? There might be a spark of life left to save.”

Xiao Taohong froze. Tears welled in her eyes, threatening to spill over. “Immortal… if you can truly save him, I… I am yours. You can do whatever you wish with me.”

She said it with a desperate, transactional bluntness that made Jiang Chen’s skin crawl with awkwardness. He cleared his throat and looked away. “I’m only interested in learning about the horror that outclassed an Earth Dragon.”

She wiped her eyes, giving him a shaky, grateful smile. “I understand. Once the hour of the Pig passes, I’ll lead you to him.”

The wait felt long. As the night deepened, the crowd in the pavilion thinned. Men departed alone or boarded the colorful flower carriages with girls on their arms. Finally, at the stroke of midnight, Jiang Chen and Xiao Taohong slipped out of the back exit.

They didn’t have to go far. Just across a narrow, muddy alleyway lay a cramped residential block—the slums where the pavilion’s workers were housed. Some of the more successful courtesans rented decent rooms, but the rest were packed into squalid, company-arranged hovels.

Xiao Taohong had once lived well on her lover’s hunting spoils, but half a year of medical bills had driven her into a rank, windowless Chamber. Outside, a stagnant drainage ditch sat choked with filth; even with the door shut, the air was thick with the sharp, acidic stench of urine.

The interior was worse. The air was heavy and turbid.

Jiang Chen’s eyes immediately fell on a narrow cot in the corner. Something lay there, though it barely registered as a human being. There was no warmth, no vibration of vitality—only an incredibly faint, flickering aura of life.

“That’s him,” Xiao Taohong sobbed, pointing a trembling finger.

Jiang Chen snapped his fingers. A spark of Qi ignited the wick of the oil lamp, casting a flickering, amber light across the Chamber. He stepped toward the bed.

As he drew closer, he felt it: a suffocating, dense pressure of Earth Qi.

The man on the bed was a vision of body horror. He was less a person and more a desiccated statue half-pulled from a kiln. His skin was a scorched, sickly yellow, hardened into something resembling parched terracotta. With every agonizing, shallow breath, a dry scritch-scratch echoed through the Chamber—the sound of stone grinding against stone. His hair was brittle, snapping like dry straw, and the bedsheets were covered in a fine layer of yellow grit and soil dust.

Xiao Taohong stood behind Jiang Chen, her breath hitching. “Immortal… do you see it? Can you tell what’s wrong?”

Jiang Chen didn’t turn around. He reached out, his fingers hovering just above the petrified skin. “Did you seek medical help?”

“I found several physicians,” she whispered. “Most took my Spirit Stones and ran. The few who were honest took one look and turned tail, saying the man was already a tomb.”

“In the circles of alchemy,” Jiang Chen murmured, “we call this the Yellow Evil Sickness. Or, more accurately, Earth Sha Sclerosis.”

“Is it… is it a plague?”

“Not quite,” Xu explained, his voice grim. “It’s a metaphysical corruption. He has been tainted by an overwhelming concentration of Earth Sha. It has quite literally begun to turn his flesh into clay.”

Xiao Taohong’s face went pale. She covered her mouth to stifle a scream. “Then… can a pill fix him? Is there a medicine?”

Jiang Chen turned back to her, his face a mask of cold reality. “There is not a single pill in this world that can cure this.”

Her heart plummeted. She collapsed against the doorframe, her world shattering. “What?”

Then, Jiang Chen let out a small, sharp grin. “Because this isn’t a medical problem. It’s a spiritual one. You don’t treat this with medicine—you cure it with a ritual of transformation.”