My Portable Spirit Farm: Rise of the Humble Servant

Chapter 253: Spirit Field Problem?

On the flight back to Green Mountain, a stray thought crossed Chen Ping’s mind.

Last month, when Liu Xiaoyun had delivered the Tier 3 spiritual spring water, the disciple had casually mentioned that the members of the Spirit Plant Hall were desperate to finally meet their mysterious new Hall Master.

At the time, Chen Ping had been buried in the pressure of his impending breakthrough and had ignored the comment.

Now that his power was stabilized and his immediate crises were resolved, it was time to make an appearance.

He held the title and reaped the benefits. Nodding along to the appointment but acting as a permanent ghost was poor optics and bad politics. Furthermore, he suspected that by actually interacting with the Spirit Plant Hall, he might find a logistical solution to his ongoing auxiliary Spirit Grass shortage.

Three days later, Liu Xiaoyun arrived exactly on schedule, hauling the monthly ten pounds of Tier 3 spiritual spring water.

After securing the water, Chen Ping stopped the young disciple as he turned to leave.

“Xiaoyun. Prepare yourself. I’m going with you to inspect the Spirit Plant Hall today.”

Liu Xiaoyun froze. He blinked slowly, his eyes widening to the size of saucers before a wave of absolute, disbelieving ecstasy washed over his face.

“Hall… Hall Master! Are you serious? You’re actually coming to see everyone?”

He thought he was hallucinating. He had subtly brought this up half a dozen times, and Chen Ping had always responded with a wall of stony indifference. Liu Xiaoyun had already accepted the bitter reality that their new Hall Master was just a political figurehead who couldn’t care less about their rotting department.

The sudden reversal felt like a miracle.

“Naturally,” Chen Ping replied, a faint, polite smile touching his lips. “I was buried in Secluded Cultivation recently and couldn’t spare the time. My schedule is clear now. It’s time I met my subordinates.”

“Yes! Right away! This is fantastic!” Liu Xiaoyun stammered, his hands fluttering in excitement. “I’ll lead the way immediately! When the others find out you’re coming, they’re going to lose their minds!”

Chen Ping nodded. He summoned his flying sword and followed the practically vibrating Liu Xiaoyun away from Green Mountain, cutting through the sky toward the Spirit Plant Hall’s main compound in the Sect’s southeastern sector.

The main hall of the Spirit Plant Hall was a sprawling structure, but it felt hollow and desolate.

It was exactly as Liu Xiaoyun had described on the flight over. The disciples spent their lives kneeling in the dirt of their assigned Spirit Fields. Unless they were dropping off their miserable quotas or begging for new tasks, they had no reason to loiter in the hall.

The moment his boots hit the stone floor, Liu Xiaoyun whipped out a Sound Transmission Jade Slip. His voice cracked with barely suppressed adrenaline as he broadcast an emergency summons to every disciple on duty.

“Emergency! Everyone in the fields, drop what you’re doing and get back to the main hall! The Hall Master is here! Hall Master Chen is actually here!”

The broadcast rippled out. Within minutes, figures began sprinting back to the compound from every direction.

They were a ragged bunch. Most wore coarse, dirt-stained robes that smelled heavily of wet soil and cheap fertilizer. Their faces were a mix of deep exhaustion, confusion, and cautious curiosity.

Roughly 50 disciples quickly assembled in the massive hall.

Their cultivation bases were pitiful. The vast majority were stuck hovering around the mid-stage of Qi Condensation. They huddled together, casting nervous, sidelong glances at the imposing figure of Chen Ping standing at the head of the hall, whispering furiously among themselves.

“That’s our Hall Master?”

“He looks so young…”

“Wait. I know that face. I’ve seen him before…”

“Holy shit! That’s Elder Chen Ping! He took first place in the Qi Condensation bracket during the last Grand Competition! He’s the one who secured that massive bounty for the Sect!”

“It is him! Why the hell would a war hero get dumped as our Hall Master?”

“No wonder he’s been a ghost…”

Seeing the crowd settle, Liu Xiaoyun forcibly swallowed his nerves. He cleared his throat loudly, projecting his voice across the stone hall.

“Everyone! Quiet down! Standing before you is the official Hall Master of the Spirit Plant Hall, Elder Chen Ping! The Hall Master has been locked in deep Secluded Cultivation since his appointment, but today, he has specifically emerged to inspect the hall and meet with all of you!”

Chen Ping took a slow step forward. His cold eyes swept over the crowd, taking in the bruised faces, the calloused hands, and the desperate, guarded hope in their eyes. He raised a hand in a placating gesture, keeping his voice perfectly level.

“You have all worked hard, Junior Brothers. I have held the title of Hall Master for quite some time, yet I have neglected my duty to meet with you until today. The fault is mine.”

He intended to deliver a standard, bureaucratic speech, hand out a few empty platitudes, and then dig into their logistical supply chains.

He didn’t get the chance.

Near the front of the crowd, a young disciple with a square jaw and a face radiating blunt, stubborn aggression suddenly snapped. Without waiting for permission or a prompt, he violently threw his hand into the air, shoved his way out of the formation, and shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Hall Master! This disciple dares to ask a question! Has the Sect… has the Sect officially abandoned the Spirit Plant Hall?!”

The words hit the stone walls like a thunderclap.

The hall plunged into a deathly, suffocating silence. Every single pair of eyes snapped to the suicidal disciple.

Liu Xiaoyun’s face drained of all color. Cold sweat exploded across his forehead. He practically threw himself in front of Chen Ping, his voice a frantic, terrified hiss.

“Hall Master! His name is Zhou Xiangyang! He’s brand new! He’s not even a formal disciple yet, just a probationary! He doesn’t understand the hierarchy, he’s just an idiot, please don’t kill him—”

Chen Ping blinked, genuinely surprised. In a Sect obsessed with rigid hierarchy and brutal punishment for insubordination, he hadn’t expected to be directly challenged by a grunt within the first three minutes.

He raised a hand, cutting off Liu Xiaoyun’s panicked groveling. He looked down at the trembling but defiant Zhou Xiangyang. His face remained an unreadable, emotionless mask.

“Oh? A bold claim. Explain your reasoning.”

Seeing that Chen Ping hadn’t instantly vaporized him for the insult, Zhou Xiangyang’s terrified adrenaline morphed into raw, burning indignation. He squared his shoulders, his voice booming with years of suppressed rage.

“Hall Master! Look at what we’re forced to grow! We are farming the cheapest, most pathetic, low-tier weeds in the Sect! And even then, our yields are absolute garbage! Why? Because our Spirit Fields are dead!”

He jabbed a finger toward the doors. “The Sect lists those fields on the registry as Tier 2 and Tier 3 Spirit Fields. It’s a lie! The ambient Qi is practically nonexistent, and the soil is completely stripped of nutrients. The crops take forever to mature, and when they do, they’re stunted and toxic! We have worse growing conditions than the dirt-farming Rogue Cultivators scratching out a living in the mortal world!”

His voice cracked. “We break our backs from dawn until dusk. We bleed into that dirt. And what do we get? The Contribution Points we earn from our miserable harvests aren’t even enough to buy the pills we need to maintain our own cultivation! What the hell is the point?!”

“And the manuals!” Zhou Xiangyang roared. “The Sect issues us the ‘Basic Spirit Planting Technique.’ It’s garbage! You can’t grow anything of value with it! We beg for advanced nursing techniques, and we get stonewalled! But the worst part? We’ve filed hundreds of reports about the dead soil. We’ve begged the Sect to allocate resources to re-fertilize the land and repair the shattered earth veins beneath the fields. Do you know how many times they’ve responded? Not once! Complete silence!”

He glared directly into Chen Ping’s eyes, his face flushed a violent red, his chest heaving. “Hall Master! Maintaining the integrity of the Spirit Fields is the Sect’s absolute baseline responsibility! By letting the land rot and ignoring our reports, aren’t they just locking us in here to die? Haven’t they already abandoned us?!”

Zhou Xiangyang finished his tirade, standing rigid, fully expecting to be executed.

The hall was entirely soundless.

The other disciples kept their heads bowed in terror, but Chen Ping noticed the detail. Dozens of them had their hands clenched into tight, trembling fists.

Zhou Xiangyang hadn’t just spoken for himself. He had ripped open the festering wound of the entire department.

Chen Ping remained silent, his brows knitting together in a dark frown.

He truly hadn’t cared enough to investigate the internal logistics of the Spirit Plant Hall. He had assumed they were just a low-prestige department. He hadn’t realized they were actively being starved to death.

A sudden, chilling realization hit him.

My fifty acres on Green Mountain. I’ve dumped premium fertilizer on them, I’ve used advanced techniques, and the yield is still pathetic. I thought I was just a terrible farmer. The root of the problem wasn’t me. It was the land itself. It wasn’t just his mountain. The entire agricultural infrastructure of the Qingyun Sect was undergoing a catastrophic collapse.

He looked down at the exhausted, dirt-stained disciples. Their eyes were terrified, but staring at him with a desperate, pathetic glimmer of hope. He let out a slow, quiet sigh.

As a Hall Master, his negligence was indefensible.

He locked eyes with Zhou Xiangyang, his expression hardening into cold steel.

“Your name is Zhou Xiangyang. I have heard every word you said, and I have committed them to memory. As your Hall Master, I have been derelict in my duties. I was ignorant of the rot within this hall.”

His gaze swept over the silent crowd like a physical weight.

“But I am here now. The integrity of the Spirit Fields dictates your ability to cultivate, and it dictates the absolute foundation of this Sect. This ends today.”

He turned on his heel, his robes snapping sharply.

“I am going to the Elder’s Hall. I am going to stand before Headmaster Li Lingfeng, and I will extract a very clear answer as to why our fields have been allowed to die, and why you have been ignored. Wait here for my return.”

Hearing a powerhouse like Chen Ping make such a violent, unequivocal promise, the suffocating despair in the room shattered.

To the Sect, they were expendable grunts whose reports were thrown into the fire. But Chen Ping wasn’t a grunt. He was an Elder. He was a war hero. If he kicked the door down, the upper echelon would be forced to listen.

Zhou Xiangyang’s knees nearly buckled. He slammed his fists together in a brutally deep salute, his voice thick with tears.

He was a man who truly loved the soil.

“Thank you, Hall Master!”

Chen Ping gave Liu Xiaoyun a curt nod, strode out of the main hall, and summoned his sword. He shot into the sky like a ballistic missile, carving a direct path toward the peak of Green Cloud Peak.

He was going to demand answers from Headmaster Li Lingfeng.

Hundreds of acres of Sect land, built on foundational Tier 2 and Tier 3 earth veins, had mysteriously degraded into toxic Tier 1 dirt.

What the hell had caused the collapse, and why was the bureaucracy actively covering it up?

More importantly, Chen Ping was furious. The harvest of his own fifty acres on Green Mountain was tied to this conspiracy, and no one was going to screw with his resource pipeline and get away with it.