Who Let Him Cultivate？

Chapter 34: The Little Medicine Kings

“Back when I roamed the Central Continent, I carved out quite the terrifying reputation. If some loudmouth hadn’t broadcasted my… *aphrodisiac* properties and forced me to seek asylum in the Dao Seeking Sect, I’d still be out there exploring.”

The Ginseng Baby sighed, its tone heavy with the weight of past glories. “My traveling companion was a heavyweight among you humans, too. Layman Gu Yue. When he dropped me off here, he promised to write me into his memoirs so the world would never forget me.”

Layman Gu Yue was a legendary wanderer in the Central Continent. He lived for the thrill of exploration, leaving his footprints across the Central Continent, the Demon Domain, and the Buddhist Kingdom. Myths of his exploits were scattered everywhere.

According to the rumors, he had once served as a historian for the Great Xia Dynasty, where he meticulously documented the Emperor’s civilian flings and tallied up his illegitimate children.

In the Demon Domain, he was abducted by a Dragon Clan princess and forced into an arranged marriage. He pulled a runaway-groom routine on the day of the wedding and was hunted all the way to the Buddhist Kingdom.

Once there, he slapped on some robes and impersonated a monk to run street scams. Whenever a mark cornered him with a logical fallacy or a question he couldn’t answer, he would press his palms together and solemnly declare, “The Buddha says it cannot be spoken.”

The phrase went viral, becoming a widely circulated proverb throughout the Buddhist Kingdom.

Layman Gu Yue eventually compiled his observations into a series of books that took the Cultivation world by storm. While no historical records explicitly stated his cultivation realm, Lu Yang figured the man had to be an absolute powerhouse. If his cultivation had been even a fraction lower, someone would have beaten him to a bloody pulp centuries ago.

The Ginseng Baby proved to be an excellent storyteller. Many of its tales were firsthand accounts, and it had even discovered several of the herbs currently residing in the Medicine Garden alongside Layman Gu Yue. Lu Yang trailed behind the walking root, nodding along, thoroughly engrossed in the lore.

The man and the ginseng soon arrived at a small hut woven from vibrant flora.

The closer they got, the thicker the air became. The ambient life force radiating from the structure was so dense it felt like wading through syrup.

A sudden, visceral spike of terror pierced Lu Yang’s chest.

“Something’s wrong!” Lu Yang gasped, clutching his shirt. Tremors wracked his frame, violent and entirely out of his control.

*Thump. Thump. Thump.*

His heart hammered against his ribs in a frantic, erratic rhythm. A high-pitched buzzing filled his ears, like a swarm of locusts trapped inside his skull.

He strained to listen, and a cold sweat broke out across his spine. Those weren’t insects.

They were *voices*.

Countless, tiny voices echoing from *inside his own body*. They were screaming. They said they were trapped. They wanted out. They demanded to be free.

The Ginseng Baby spun around, instantly realizing the crisis. It waved its little root-arms frantically. “Hey, hey, hey! We’ve got an outsider! Reel in your life force, you idiots! Hurry up!”

Lu Yang dropped to his knees, desperately circulating his qi to suppress his boiling blood. Slowly, agonizingly, the voices faded back into the dark recesses of his anatomy.

He collapsed onto the dirt, gasping for air as if he had just clawed his way out of the Nine Nether Hell. That wasn’t an illusion. His organs had literally been trying to secede from his body.

The Ginseng Baby dropped the empty Spirit Stone it had been carrying and waddled over, looking sheepish.

“My bad,” it said, patting Lu Yang’s knee. “I completely forgot you haven’t hit the Nascent Soul stage yet.”

Unlike human cultivators, Medicine Kings measured their power in years, not realms. The Ginseng Baby couldn’t sense Lu Yang’s exact cultivation level; it just thought he was a polite kid.

“What… what the hell was that?” Lu Yang wheezed, his eyes wide with lingering horror.

“Little Ba and that female demon have such ridiculously high cultivation bases that I forgot how our ambient life force affects normal humans,” the Ginseng Baby explained casually. “Our vitality is just too potent. It’s so strong that it forces every single one of your internal organs to develop its own independent will and become a brand-new entity. Until you reach the Nascent Soul stage—where your acupoints achieve Perfection and your golden body is flawless—you’re basically a walking existential crisis around us.”

Hearing the Ginseng Baby’s shouting, a horde of three-inch-tall herbs came bouncing out of the hut, swarming around Lu Yang.

“Ginseng King, is this a human? Why is he so tiny?”

“What do you mean ‘so tiny’? He’s exactly our height! Are you calling yourself tiny?!”

“It’s obviously human magic. Their spells are wild. What’s so weird about shrinking? I’ve seen them use magic to change genders and turn into Demon Beasts!”

“This guy’s cultivation seems pretty low. Has he even reached the pregnancy stage yet?”

“It’s the *Nascent Soul* stage, Kirin King. Your memory is absolute garbage.”

“He looks like he’s going to pass out. Let’s carry him inside.”

The little Medicine Kings chattered over each other, their high-pitched voices buzzing unpleasantly in Lu Yang’s ringing ears. Before he could protest, the three-inch-tall squad hoisted him over their heads with terrifying, effortless strength and marched him into the hut.

Outside, the towering Enlightenment Tree King scratched its massive trunk with a branch, its leaves rustling in disappointment. It was simply too big to fit through the door.

Once inside, Lu Yang realized the hut wasn’t actually built from flowers. It was constructed from ancient, dead wood. The sheer, overwhelming vitality of the little Medicine Kings had forced the dead timber into a perpetual state of spring, sprouting fresh leaves and vibrant blossoms that completely masked the original logs.

Away from the concentrated aura outside, Lu Yang finally caught his breath. He slowly pushed himself up and took a good look at the Medicine Kings surrounding him.

Coincidentally, he didn’t recognize a single one of them.

“Human, what is your name?” asked a silver sprout with three tender leaves. Specks of starlight glimmered across its surface, swirling like a miniature galaxy trapped in the foliage.

“Junior Lu Yang,” he replied, dipping his head respectfully. Going by age, these little plants weren’t just his Seniors; they were Seniors to the Sect Leader himself. “May I ask, Senior, who you are…?”

“That’s the Three-Leaf Star Herb. We just call him Star King,” another herb interrupted, speaking a mile a minute. It was a mesmerizing seven-colored flower. Its petals perfectly matched the five elements, while its center was a swirling Taiji pattern of black and white. It looked less like a plant and more like a masterwork ink painting, so beautiful that Lu Yang felt his consciousness slipping just looking at it.

“And I am the End-of-Ages Flower! Just call me End King,” a third voice chimed in, refusing to be ignored. “Everyone says I’m the most beautiful flower in existence. Honestly, I think it’s just haters jealous of my charm, trying to set me up for a fall. As a humble Medicine King, I’d rank myself a solid second…”

The End-of-Ages Flower kept chattering, but Lu Yang had stopped listening.

He stared at the flower. His pupils dilated. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead all over again. He didn’t know what the End-of-Ages Flower looked like, but he absolutely knew the name.

“The End-of-Ages Flower?” Lu Yang’s voice cracked. “The mythical bloom that only opens when the world ends and all living beings are reduced to ash? The flower that literally freezes time itself?!”

His panic was entirely justified. According to the ancient texts, the blooming of the End-of-Ages Flower was synonymous with the apocalypse. It was a hard reset for reality itself.

But wait. If it was sitting right here, fully bloomed… why hadn’t the world ended? History had zero records of a server-wiping cataclysm!

The End-of-Ages Flower scratched its nectar-filled head with a leaf, looking genuinely distressed. “Yeah, some people say that. But I distinctly remember blooming during a super peaceful era. Everyone was chilling and getting along. I didn’t see any disasters. Honestly, the whole ‘apocalypse’ thing is probably just a rumor.”

Lu Yang opened his mouth to question this blatant disregard for the laws of reality, but another voice cut him off.

“Lu Yang, why are you in the Medicine Garden? Did Little Ba send you to harvest us?”

Lu Yang looked down. Standing near his knee was a three-inch-tall emerald Kirin. It looked as though it had been carved from the most flawless jade in existence, radiating an otherworldly perfection.

Lu Yang’s jaw dropped. “A Kirin?!”

A Kirin wasn’t just a Demon Beast. It was *the* Demon Beast. The most mysterious, mythical creature in the world. Finding even one was statistically impossible; they were rarer than cultivators at the Tribulation Transcendence stage. They existed only as fragmented myths in the oldest, dustiest scrolls.

And the Dao Seeking Sect just had one casually hanging out in a hut?

The sheer depth of the Sect’s hidden foundations was terrifying.

The Ginseng Baby patted Lu Yang’s leg, snapping him out of his shock. “Relax, kid. That’s the Kirin Immortality Herb. What you’re looking at is just its Dharma form. Your cultivation is way too low to perceive it properly. Once you hit the Soul Formation stage and unlock your Heavenly Eye, you’ll be able to see its true body.”