The Eternal Farmer: I Trade My Harvest for Immortality

Chapter 297: The Poplar Tree Becomes a Spirit

Thunder Marrow Pill: High Quality.

Piercing Sun Pill: Top Grade.

Barrier Breaking Pill: High Quality.

Looking over the results of his massive pill-refining session, Jiang Chen analyzed the data. He had forged four distinct types of pills today.

The Warm Sun Pill and the Piercing Sun Pill had both achieved absolute Top Grade quality, instantly elevating their respective system formulas to the Masterful tier.

However, the Thunder Marrow Pill and the Barrier Breaking Pill—both of which heavily relied on the volatile Thunder-attribute properties of the Red Gold Thunder Marrow Grass—had fallen slightly short. They only achieved High Quality, locking their formulas at the Expert tier.

Jiang Chen nodded slowly. It makes sense. Although I possess the mutated Thunder-Fire Spirit Root, my affinity leans heavily toward Fire. I don’t possess a pure, true Thunder Spirit Root. The subtle elemental imbalance restricted the final quality.

He stared at the thirteen pills neatly lined up on his workbench, his hyper-rational mind churning. “If my mechanical execution is this flawless, then my failure to Awaken the official ‘Alchemy’ skill definitely has nothing to do with a lack of practice or technique. I must be missing a fundamental, esoteric requirement.”

He categorized the haul:

Five Warm Sun Pills: Glistening amber, resembling rich honey steeped with autumn maple leaves.

Three Thunder Marrow Pills: Dark, brooding purple, their surfaces webbed with faint, crackling, lightning-like veins.

Four Piercing Sun Pills: Brilliant, solid gold, looking exactly as if they had been dipped in molten sunshine.

One Barrier Breaking Pill: Pitch-black, its surface scored with intricate, spiderweb-like fractures.

Thirteen pills across four complex formulas. And the absolute worst among them was still High Quality.

If word of this leaked to the outside world, the resulting chaos would be unimaginable. To the entire Azure Realm, Jiang Chen was nothing more than a talented but utterly mundane Spirit Farmer. In the eyes of the Cultivation elite, a farmer was meant to toil with his face in the mud and his back to the sky, endlessly fussing over dirt and crops. The idea that a dirt-grubbing farmer was casually forging batches of pills that would make a dedicated Alchemist weep with envy?

It was a total absurdity.

“System,” Jiang Chen commanded.

[Consume 4 years of Lifespan to upgrade the Thunder Marrow Pill formula to the Masterful tier?]

[Consume 6 years of Lifespan to upgrade the Barrier Breaking Pill formula to the Masterful tier?]

“Do it.”

He naturally wouldn’t refuse. Upgrading a pill formula didn’t just passively enhance his mechanical refining knowledge; it directly and permanently elevated the baseline efficacy of the pills he produced.

A moment later, the two formulas locked into the Masterful tier.

Satisfied with his night’s work, Jiang Chen meticulously cleaned the Starfall Mystic Gold Cauldron, organized his workbench, and ascended the stairs from the basement lab.

Stepping outside, he realized it was already the dawn of a new day.

The sun had yet to breach the horizon, but the heavy clouds to the east were already painted with a wash of pale, bruised gold. The nocturnal chorus of cicadas and frogs had faded, replaced by the crisp, isolated coo of an early morning dove. A cool, refreshing breeze swept through the courtyard, tousling his hair and instantly washing away the mental fatigue of his long refining session.

His courtyard was teeming with life.

In the irrigation pond, the Light Spirit Turtle was in full slacker mode, floating flat on its back with all four limbs splayed out, letting the gentle ripples rock it to sleep. The aggressive Red-Tailed Carp were already hunting, violently breaching the surface to snatch low-flying insects. The prized Dragon Carp, however, remained elegantly poised near the edge, staring up at Jiang Chen with wide, expectant eyes, waiting for their morning feed.

Over by the doghouse, Da Huang merely poked his massive head out. He looked entirely suspicious of the early hour, clearly wanting to trot over for a head scratch but too lazy to actually leave his warm den.

The Pearl Chickens, however, were wide awake and foraging. Jiang Chen counted them—two roosters and nineteen hens. A full flock of twenty-one.

Yet, the original, mutated Pearl Chicken—the very first one he had ever raised—stubbornly kept its distance from the rest of the flock, pacing the fence line with an air of aristocratic disdain.

Jiang Chen took in the chaotic, vibrant scene and let out a soft chuckle. “The flock is getting too big. Even though I can still pick out the original by its aura, I should probably give it a proper name to set it apart.”

Zhenzhen? Zhuzhu? Or just Pearl?

After a moment of idle thought, he shook his head. “Forget it. I’ll decide later.”

Tossing the trivial thoughts aside, he began his morning chores.

Since he had completely clear-cut his five acres of Spirit Farm the day before—and safely transplanted the precious Variant Mother Rice into his dimensional space—he didn’t need to waste time pulling weeds. When it came time to prep the soil for the next cycle, he would just use his Fire Qi to execute a clean slash-and-burn. It was vastly more efficient.

For now, his only manual labor consisted of shoveling out Da Huang’s pen and cleaning the chicken coop.

As he approached the massive Poplar tree anchoring the center of his courtyard, he stopped dead in his tracks. Something was wrong.

The tree had changed again, but this time, the transformation was entirely negative.

Just a few days ago, its canopy had been lush, vibrant, and sprawling. Now, the heavy green leaves were rapidly yellowing and dropping. The proud, umbrella-like spread of its branches had visibly shriveled inward, giving the massive tree a distinctly pitiful, withered, and helpless appearance.

Even more alarming, Jiang Chen could sense its internal Qi. The tree had previously been brimming with incredibly dense Wood Spirit Qi. Now, the reservoir was completely halved. It was being drained.

Jiang Chen instantly cycled the Green Lotus Art, projecting his Cultivation alongside the System’s diagnostic overlay to analyze the anomaly.

Target: Poplar Tree (Awakened Spirit)

Status: Spirit Gathering

Negative Status: Critical Spirit Qi Deficiency

Jiang Chen’s eyes widened slightly.

When he had first moved into this courtyard, it had been nothing more than an exceptionally large, mundane Poplar. Slowly, over the years of absorbing ambient Cultivation energy and surviving in the harsh environment of the Azure Realm, it had miraculously achieved a true Awakening. It had become a plant spirit.

But why is it suddenly hemorrhaging its Spirit Qi?

Jiang Chen frowned. He instantly unfurled his Divine Sense, casting it outward like a net over the courtyard.

Nothing. On the surface, the courtyard was entirely peaceful and completely devoid of hostile signatures.

But Jiang Chen’s hyper-rational mind knew better. The absolute absence of a surface anomaly only meant the threat was hidden deeper.

Without hesitation, he shifted his internal flow, cycling the Thick Earth Bearing Things Art. He routed the heavy Earth Qi from his dantian down through the soles of his boots, forcefully plunging his consciousness deep into the subterranean bedrock.

As his seismic perception slid down along the massive taproot of the Poplar tree, he hit something vile.

It was a squelching, pitch-black tentacle.

Jiang Chen’s eyes snapped open, a cynical, exasperated sigh escaping his lips. “You have got to be kidding me. Is my entire property built on a graveyard?”

He had assumed the blackened corpse buried beneath the rocky hill was an isolated incident. Clearly, that assumption was dead wrong.

Marching to the far side of the Poplar tree, he raised his hands. Channeling his Earth Qi, he didn’t dig; he simply commanded the soil to part. Layer by layer, the dirt neatly peeled back, revealing a perfectly sheer, five-meter-deep vertical shaft.

Looking down, he could clearly see the Poplar’s thick roots violently entangled with a writhing mass of black, necrotic tentacles.

Compared to the massive, worm-like appendages he had encountered beneath the rocky hill, these tentacles were significantly thinner and more insidious, acting like parasitic vines slowly bleeding the Poplar tree dry.

To avoid startling the parasite, Jiang Chen didn’t immediately sever the connection. Instead, he maintained his precise control over the Earth Qi, slowly and methodically parting the soil deeper and deeper.

At exactly eight meters down, the source was exposed.

It was a second blackened, desiccated corpse.

Like the first, it was curled into a tight fetal position, with the parasitic black tentacles sprouting directly from a tumorous mass in its abdomen. However, because it had been actively siphoning the dense Wood Spirit Qi from the awakened Poplar tree, this corpse looked significantly more ‘plump’ and hydrated than the one beneath the hill.

And, exactly as Elder Mu and Senior Brother Zhu had hypothesized, a charred fragment of a Life from Death Tree was clutched tightly in its rotted hands.

It was another failed resurrection. The chaotic energies of the Raging Spirit Storm had corrupted the Cultivator’s rebirth, twisting them into a parasitic, mindless abomination.

But as Jiang Chen scrutinized the corpse, his hyper-rational observation caught a glaring anomaly.

Directly at the base of the skull, perfectly bored through the occipital bone, was a smooth, thumb-sized circular hole.

Jiang Chen’s breath hitched as an obscure passage from an ancient Sect text flashed through his mind.

When a beast achieves Demonic Ascension and wishes to speak, it must first completely refine the horizontal bone in its throat. However, when a true Sword Cultivator reaches the pinnacle of their art, they may carve away their own occipital bone to house and refine a Lifebound Sword Pellet.

Jiang Chen stared at the corpse, his heart suddenly hammering. Could it be? This Cultivator wasn’t just a Spirit Farmer with a Wood Spirit Root. He was a dual-cultivator. He was a Metal Spirit Root Sword Cultivator!

Thoroughly intrigued, Jiang Chen expanded his Divine Sense to its absolute limit, frantically scouring every millimeter of the eight-meter crater, desperately searching for the legendary artifact.

Ten minutes passed. He found absolutely nothing but dirt and rotting flesh.

“Damn it,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Guess my theory was wrong.”

Refusing to waste any more time, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers. A concentrated, roaring tongue of crimson fire shot down the shaft.

The flames instantly engulfed the blackened corpse and the writhing tentacles.

The parasitic entity violently thrashed. A horrifying, high-pitched squeal—sounding like a cross between a dying pig and snapping wet leather—echoed up the shaft as the entity burned.

But the struggle was brief and meaningless against the pure, incinerating power of the Nine Flames Mystic Art. In seconds, the abomination was reduced to fine, drifting gray ash.

As the ash settled, a sharp clack echoed from the bottom of the pit.

Two objects had survived the inferno.

The first was the expected, charred fragment of the Life from Death Tree.

The second… was a perfectly smooth, brilliantly gleaming, silvery-white bone pellet.