My Portable Spirit Farm: Rise of the Humble Servant

Following Scarred Bear’s directions, Chen Ping stepped into the gaping maw of the Abandoned Pit.

A blast of hot, fetid air assaulted him, thick with the cloying stench of rot. It was suffocating.

Behind him, the mine shaft narrowed rapidly. The darkness swallowed the daylight, leaving only a dim, yellow patch of illumination fading in the distance.

Then, absolute gloom took over.

A faint glimmer of spiritual light ignited at Chen Ping’s fingertip, barely pushing back the heavy shadows around his feet.

The tunnel was rugged and uneven. Black, stagnant sludge pooled on the ground, squelching beneath his boots and releasing a heavy, metallic stench of blood and rust.

The deeper he went, the fouler the air became.

Shadowy figures began to emerge from the gloom. Miners. Emaciated, their bodies ravaged by severe poisoning.

They huddled in small groups, their faces masks of deathly stillness. Unlike the miners in the active tunnels who worked with desperate urgency, these people had no drive.

By being sent here, their fate was already sealed.

All that remained was numbness and the wait for death.

The passage began to branch, turning into a labyrinth of despair.

Chen Ping moved silently, discerning his direction as Scarred Bear’s fearful voice echoed in his mind.

The very bottom. The eastern branch. The end…

He turned into a particularly narrow side passage. The rough rock walls scraped against the gray cloth of his robe. Ahead, the sound of dripping water echoed like a ticking clock in the dead, hollow silence.

Finally, the tunnel ended.

His spiritual light illuminated a small recess in the wall, a hole barely large enough to accommodate a human being.

In the corner, atop a heap of dried mining slag, lay two tattered straw mats. They were so filthy their original color was lost to time.

Curled upon them were two figures. In the faint light, they looked like two discarded piles of dry bones.

Chen Ping’s breath hitched in his throat.

That man… that figure hunched so terribly… was that his father, Chen Dashan?

In his memory, his father, while not tall, was as solid as a rock.

Now, only a gaunt skeleton remained, draped in a layer of withered, papery skin. He was hanging onto life by a thread.

One of his legs was twisted at a grotesque angle. Beneath the tattered trouser leg, the ankle and calf were covered in dark purple bruises and flesh festering with gangrene.

A rag hung from his shoulders, revealing a chest where every rib stood out in stark relief. His skin was a deathly waxy yellow, a map of deep and shallow scars. His face was a skull, cheekbones protruding sharply, eye sockets void of life.

His lips were dry, cracked, and purple-black. His breathing was so faint it was almost imperceptible.

Curled up beside his father was a withered woman.

Was that his mother, Lin Shi?

She was even smaller than his father, shrunk into a trembling ball.

Sparse, dry hair clung to bloodless cheeks. Her eyes were closed, the sockets deeply sunken above green-black circles.

At the corner of her mouth, a trace of dark brown filth remained. She lacked the strength to even wipe it away.

Her bony, stick-like hand rested limply on her abdomen. Her wrist and arm possessed an eerie, dull sheen. Under the skin, bluish-black veins pulsed faintly, as if poison were flowing through her body like slow-moving sludge.

Chen Ping stood frozen a few steps away. The spiritual light in his hand trembled, casting erratic shadows on his deathly pale face.

What kind of life have they been living?

This wretched reality was a hundred times crueler than his worst nightmares.

An icy chill shot from the soles of his feet straight to the crown of his head, nearly freezing his blood.

It felt as if hot, coarse sand were packed into his throat, choking him.

He opened his mouth, wanting to call out “Father, Mother,” but no sound emerged.

Immense grief, like a giant invisible hand, clenched his heart and crushed it.

He stumbled forward, his knees crashing onto the cold, hard ground with a heavy thud.

The sound startled the curled-up Chen Dashan. His eyelids struggled to peel open. Dull, lifeless eyes rolled vaguely, landing on Chen Ping’s face.

He stared for a long time. The gaze held only numb exhaustion and silence, as if his soul had long since drifted away.

Beside him, Lin Shi stirred. She forced her eyes open with equal difficulty.

Her gaze swept over Chen Ping’s youthful face. A flicker of faint, distant confusion passed through her eyes, as if recalling a memory from a previous life.

Her lips moved, but only a weak, breathy hiss emerged.

“Fa… ther… Moth… er…”

Chen Ping finally forced the words from his constricted throat. His voice was as hoarse as sandpaper.

He practically crawled to the edge of the straw mats. He reached out a trembling hand, wanting to touch his father’s withered hand, but he froze, terrified he might crush the brittle bones.

That hoarse call pierced through the haze.

Chen Dashan’s dull eyes suddenly focused, locking onto Chen Ping’s face. Deep within the numbness, a faint spark of life began to rekindle.

His dry lips trembled violently. A wheezing rattle came from his throat.

“Is that… Ping’er?”

Those few words exhausted the last of Chen Dashan’s Physical Strength. They were spoken with trembling disbelief.

Lin Shi’s body shook violently. Her vacant eyes suddenly blazed with astonishing intensity, fixed on her son.

“Ping’er? My Ping’er?”

Her bony hand summoned a burst of desperate strength from nowhere, shooting forward to grab him.

Chen Ping clasped his mother’s cold, twig-like hand. With his other hand, he firmly gripped his father’s bony arm.

Scalding tears could no longer be held back. They gushed forth, falling onto the mining slag, kicking up tiny puffs of dust.

“It’s me! Father! Mother! It’s Ping’er! Your son has returned! I’ve come back!”

He choked on the words, his voice breaking.

The dullness in Chen Dashan’s eyes was washed away by wild joy. He clutched his son’s arm fiercely, using every ounce of his remaining life force.

“Good… good… good…”

He repeated the word over and over, old tears mixing with the grime on his face.

“Worth it… It was all worth it…”

He spoke haltingly, every syllable accompanied by a heavy gasp.

“That year… letting you go… we made the right choice! The right choice!”

Lin Shi struggled to sit up. Chen Ping quickly used his Qi to carefully support her feather-light body.

Her bony hand trembled as it reached up to touch his cheek. Her fingertips were ice-cold.

“You’ve grown taller… and… and sturdier…”

She gazed at her son’s face with boundless affection, trying to etch his features into her soul.

“Mother always knew… my son would amount to something… that you could survive… could come back alive… and come back healthy!”

Her voice grew faint, but it was filled with satisfaction and pride.

Chen Ping held his parents’ emaciated bodies tightly, feeling their weak heartbeats against his chest.

Listening to their repeated words of “the right choice” and “amounting to something,” his heart felt as if it were being sliced by a thousand dull knives.

They only knew he had become a disciple of an Immortal Sect, bringing glory to the family.

How could they know how many times he had vomited blood in the filthy corners of Servant Peak? How many times had he struggled on the brink of death, relying on the meager resources from the Jade Pendant to survive?

Every time he faced death, the image that kept him going was his parents.

He had imagined they suffered. But he never imagined this. This was Hell on Earth.

If not for the Jade Pendant, the final outcome for all three of them would have been sealed: to die like dogs under the crushing weight of this world.

A sky-scorching fury suddenly erupted from the depths of his heart, instantly evaporating his tears.

He gently laid his mother down and stood up.

His eyes were no longer sad. They were pools of icy, absolute killing intent.

“Father, Mother, wait here. Your son is going to kill Scarred Bear.”

He turned to rush out of the recess.

To hell with the so-called opportunity. He wanted none of it.

Today, blood must flow.