Who Let Him Cultivate？

Chapter 32: Ginseng Baby

Objectively speaking, burrowing through the dirt of the Medicine Garden was a brilliant tactical exercise. Not only would it allow him to master the spatial technique ‘Earth Shrinking,’ but he would also gain hands-on botanical experience, shoring up his glaring lack of herbal knowledge. Two birds, one stone.

Senior Sister is doing this for my own good.

Senior Sister is doing this for my own good.

Senior Sister is doing this for my own good.

After thoroughly hypnotizing himself into believing that his Senior Sister had arranged this grueling task out of the goodness of her heart, Lu Yang finally accepted his fate as a substitute earthworm.

Then, a sudden realization pierced through his forced optimism. Wait a minute. Earthworms didn’t have genders.

“Elder Ba,” Lu Yang asked, his expression perfectly blank. “Why exactly do these earthworms have a husband and a wife?”

Elder Ba stroked his beard with scholarly gravity. “Mortal earthworms lack gender, true. But that is merely a symptom of their primitive existence—oh, no offense intended toward them, of course. Sentient, shape-shifting earthworms are a different breed entirely. The Silver-Ring Heavenly King Earthworm is royalty among their kind, possessing a bloodline that suppresses all lesser worms.”

“I understand. Please, continue.”

Elder Ba sighed, his tone heavy with self-blame. “Originally, with the Silver-Ring Heavenly King Earthworm couple residing here, loosening the soil was never an issue. But alas, my loose tongue brought ruin. One day, I casually mentioned to the wife, ‘They say an earthworm can be cut in half and both halves will live. If you split yourself, couldn’t you work one day and rest the next, taking turns with the new you?'”

Lu Yang felt a muscle twitch in his jaw.

“She was deeply moved by my logic,” Elder Ba recounted solemnly. “She immediately cleaved herself in two, becoming two distinct individuals. They were utterly identical, like twin sisters. No, it was far more flawless than a mere cloning technique. I watched a single entity become two, completely unable to tell which was the original.”

“Fortunately, they could tell themselves apart.”

“However, when the husband returned home and found two wives waiting for him, he was completely dumbfounded. The two women cornered him and demanded to know: Which one do you love?”

Elder Ba shook his head. “The husband, being a straightforward man who despised deception, looked them in the eye and bluntly declared that he had always had a fantasy about sisters.”

“And thus, a bitter family civil war erupted. The three of them have been locked in a tragic, tangled web of love and hatred ever since. They simply have no heart left for manual labor.”

Lu Yang: “……”

He stood frozen, staring at the elderly man. A single bead of sweat rolled down his brow.

Absolute lunatics, he thought, his inner voice weary beyond his years.

“What exactly are my duties?” After a brief moment of silent judgment, Lu Yang forcibly calmed his mind. He was gradually adapting to the deranged thought processes of Cultivators.

Just minor details.

Elder Ba smiled, smoothing his white beard. “Just head inside; someone will guide you. But heed my warning: you are entering the Medicine Garden strictly to loosen the soil. If you dare pluck a single leaf, the Discipline Enforcement Peak will hold you accountable!”

The Discipline Enforcement Peak, governed by the Grand Elder, was infamous for being ruthlessly impartial. They cared nothing for personal connections or mercy.

Lu Yang thanked Elder Ba and stepped through the invisible threshold into the Medicine Garden.

The moment he crossed over, a medicinal fragrance slammed into him—dozens of times more potent than what he had smelled outside.

A mere few steps couldn’t possibly account for such a drastic shift in the air. Lu Yang immediately realized the truth. Elder Ba wasn’t just sitting by a gate; an intricate, massive Formation was layered over the entire garden, sealing it away from the outside world.

The Formation was designed to lock in the garden’s aura, but the medicinal fragrance inside was so overwhelmingly rich that even a grand array couldn’t contain it perfectly. A tiny trace had leaked out.

If just that leaked trace could extend a mortal’s lifespan, the miraculous effects of the undiluted fragrance inside were unimaginable.

Beyond the scent, the sheer density of the Spiritual Qi was staggering. Lu Yang stared at the glistening droplets resting on the broad leaves of the nearby plants. That wasn’t morning dew. That was Spiritual Qi, so thick it had physically condensed into water. Every single drop contained as much energy as a Low Grade Spirit Stone!

Lush, verdant life stretched out as far as the eye could see. Bizarre, alien flora that Lu Yang had never seen or heard of blanketed the earth. The herbs were meticulously organized into neat rows, sectioned off by variety, creating a dazzling patchwork of colors and energies.

Lu Yang stood perfectly still. He didn’t dare shift his weight, terrified that a careless misstep might crush a priceless botanical treasure.

Crouching down, he carefully inspected a row of plants until he finally spotted something recognizable. It was a small herb with three distinct leaves. The veins running through it were translucent, looking exactly like veins of solid ice, and it radiated a biting, localized chill.

Ice Soul Grass. Lu Yang recalled his lessons. A flower that aids those cultivating ice-attribute techniques, drastically increasing their Spiritual Qi absorption rate.

Each Ice Soul Flower was planted several feet apart. If they were clustered together, their ambient temperatures would merge, effectively freezing the plants to death in their own localized blizzard.

Lu Yang remembered this plant vividly. Not long ago, he had sparred with a training puppet and had been beaten to a bloody pulp. Afterward, the puppet had unceremoniously slapped a poultice of Ice Soul Flowers onto his wounds. The freezing sting was burned into his memory.

As for the rest of the flora, he was completely clueless.

“Hey. Who are you?”

The voice was sharp and entirely lacking in manners. Lu Yang instinctively snapped his head around, scanning the dense foliage, but saw no one.

“Who’s speaking?”

“Hey! Look down, you giant oaf.”

Lu Yang lowered his gaze. Hopping impatiently near the toe of his boot was a three-inch-tall Ginseng Baby. It glared up at him, clearly offended that Lu Yang had required a verbal prompt to notice its existence.

“You humans are so stupid! Why didn’t you know to look down? I actually had to remind you!”

Its two thick, chubby root-legs carried it in a rapid patter around Lu Yang’s boots, while thinner root tendrils flailed up and down like arms. The natural wrinkles and grooves on its main body shifted seamlessly, forming a remarkably expressive, human-like face.

“Youngster, who are you?” the Ginseng Baby demanded, crossing its root-arms in a posture of absolute, elderly authority.

A ginseng that had lived long enough to gain sentience and form a body was undoubtedly ancient. Lu Yang didn’t dare show disrespect. He offered a polite bow to the tiny root. “I am Lu Yang. I have accepted a Sect task to loosen the soil in the Medicine Garden.”

“Oh. So you’re just the new dirt-turner.” The Ginseng Baby let out a very human sigh of relief. It had assumed this was yet another detestable human sent to harvest them.

After all, every single herb in this Medicine Garden was under its personal care.

“If you made it inside, you must have gotten Little Ba’s permission. Come to think of it, aside from Little Ba and that female demon, it’s been quite a few days since we’ve seen an outsider.”

Lu Yang blinked. To this tiny creature, the venerable Elder Ba was just ‘Little Ba’—a junior.

But it made sense. What did Cultivation realms matter to a sentient plant? In the world of herbs, hierarchy was dictated purely by who had survived the longest. This little root probably looked down on every single master in the Dao Seeking Sect.

Lu Yang was well aware of the garden’s strict protocols. The flora here was too precious. If an Elder needed an ingredient, they had to submit a request to the garden’s keepers, who would harvest it themselves. No one else was permitted entry. If not for this bizarre punishment, Lu Yang would never have set foot inside.

He did wonder, however, who the ‘female demon’ was. Was she the other keeper of the Medicine Garden?

The Ginseng Baby planted its tendrils on its non-existent hips, scowling up at him. “Why do you humans have to grow so ridiculously tall? It hurts my non-existent neck to look at you.”

Lu Yang, who was also finding it exhausting to hold a conversation while bent completely in half, silently agreed. Channeling his Spiritual Qi, he activated the ‘Inch Transformation’ technique. His bones shifted and compressed with a sickeningly smooth crunch, his perspective plummeting until he stood exactly three inches tall, eye-to-eye with the root.

“Oho!” The Ginseng Baby jumped back in surprise, its wrinkled face breaking into a wide, delighted grin. “You’re a sensible youngster! Much better than Little Ba.”

It was a rare treat to find a human willing to meet it on its own level. The Ginseng Baby despised having to crane its entire body backward just to make eye contact, especially since its head and torso were a single, fused lump without a neck.

“Listen up!” the Ginseng Baby declared boldly, stepping forward to slap Lu Yang on the shoulder with a damp, earthy tendril—a profound gesture of its approval. “From now on, in this Medicine Garden, you roll with me!”

“I have a few chores to finish first,” the Ginseng Baby said. “You follow me. Once I’m done, I’ll take you to meet the other Medicine Kings.”

Herbs that gained sentience were classified as ‘Medicine Kings’—the absolute pinnacle of botanical treasures. Even top-tier, world-dominating Sects would be lucky to possess just one, and if they did, they would enshrine it like a founding ancestor.

Yet, based on the Ginseng Baby’s casual tone, there was a whole gang of them wandering around this garden.

Lu Yang secretly clicked his tongue. The hidden foundations of the Dao Seeking Sect were truly terrifying.