Chapter 412 - 305 Planting in Spring_2
Chapter 412: Chapter 305 Planting in Spring_2
The technique for cultivating this Rank-2 Spirit Rice was acquired by Zhou Shengqing at a great price in an auction held by a large trading union during the time when he was traveling in the territories outside the Eastern Wilderness and the Five Elements Sect had not yet split up.
In the Tianhe Realm, there are two ways to trade the Methods of Cultivating Spiritual Plants.
One is licensing, and the other is outright purchase.
The former is akin to Back to Sky Valley’s Rank-3 Coiling Dragon Spiritual Rice. Each year, they purchase rice seeds from the Star Heaven Trade Union. This fee is for the licensing, which grants them the exclusive rights to cultivate and sell within the Eastern Yi Territory.
The latter method of outright purchase is exemplified by the Divine Wood Sect’s Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice. This was a Secret Technique inherited from a Sect within the Eastern Yi Territory. If it wasn’t for the Sect’s Foundation Establishment elder being grievously injured and needing Spiritual Medicine in exchange for treatment, this technique would not have been auctioned off.
After Zhou Shengqing acquired this inheritance and brought it back to the Sect, he was praised by the then-living Hun Yuan elder.
According to this inheritance specifically for Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice, it’s possible to raise ordinary Yubud Lingmi to Rank-3 if Rank-3 Spiritual Bamboo can be found.
The value of Rank-3 Spirit Rice is vastly different.
From the experience of the Tianhe Realm, if a Gold Core cultivator wishes to advance to “Nascent Soul Formation”, strengthening their qi and physical body can increase their rate of success.
And only Spirit Rice of Rank-3 and above can be beneficial to these Gold Core cultivators.
The Xiao Nanshan was an experimental ground for raising Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice to Rank-3. Unfortunately, the cultivation method for this kind of Spirit Rice was too complicated and required a full ten-year cycle to mature.
By the time the third trial cycle was underway, the Hun Yuan elder had passed away.
After the splitting of the Five Elements Sect and Zhou Shengqing busying himself with seclusion to advance to Perfect Core Formation, he no longer had time to pay attention to this matter.
It wasn’t until Chen Mobai successfully established his foundation and chose Xiao Nanshan as his own Daoist training ground.
The Sect Leader, Meng Hong, naturally knew about the origins of Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice. He also knew that Chen Mobai, aside from sword training, had a love for farming. Thus, he gave all the data on the Sect’s experiment on cultivating Rank-3 Spirit Rice to Chen Mobai.
However, this data was incomplete.
Originally, in order to cultivate Rank-3 Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice, the Spirit Plant Masters of the Earth Vein, Water Vein, and Wood Vein of the Five Elements Sect tilled sixty acres of Spirit Field in Xiao Nanshan of the Giant Tree Ridge.
After the big event of the sect’s splitting, the Spirit Plant Masters of the three veins naturally each chose their own sides. The Divine Wood Sect’s version was written from the memories of their vein’s Spirit Plant Masters, kept only for passing down.
It is said that they actually succeeded in cultivating two stalks of Rank-3 Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice, but it was unknown whether it was by chance or they had truly mastered the trick. Moreover, this key technique was held by the core Earth Vein Spirit Plant Master and the Divine Wood Sect did not have it.
This is why the Divine Wood Sect showed no interest in raising Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice to Rank-3. They knew it would consume a huge amount of resources and success was not guaranteed.
The inheritance of Rank-2 Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice cultivation is accessible even to cultivators who have established their foundation.
Only the scrolls pertaining to Rank-3 Spirit Rice are treasured in the transmission department. Chen Mobai, considered to be at the core of the Divine Wood Sect’s future, naturally had easy access to this kind of information.
Even so, Sect Leader Meng Hong specifically reminded him.
He told him to prioritize sword training. While Rank-3 Spirit Rice is important, the sect’s stockpile of Spirit Stones is adequate, and they can still purchase Coiling Dragon Spirit Rice for the two Core Formation elders. Most importantly, he must not delay his main cultivation due to this.
Chen Mobai was somewhat touched by this.
At least, Meng Hong, the Sect Leader of the Divine Wood Sect, truly treated him as a future leader of the sect, and his treatment was no different from his fellow disciples.
For this reason alone, Chen Mobai set a small goal.
He wanted to apply his talent for farming to the Divine Wood Sect, so that everyone in the sect could have access to Rank-2 Spirit Rice.
This is also why Chen Mobai has been extremely diligent in agricultural studies for the past two years.
Lin Wenkang, his Agricultural Studies teacher at Dance Tool Dao Academy, was extremely pleased with this and imparted all his knowledge, believing Chen Mobai would become a leading figure in the cultivation farming field.
Having completed reading the Divine Wood Sect’s treasured data on Rank-3 Spirit Rice and combining it with the extensive knowledge available from the cultivation schools, Chen Mobai now understood all the concepts behind the Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice cultivation inheritance.
The Spirit Plant Master who initially created the Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice was a genius.
The Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice seed is actually a Rank-1 Yubud Lingmi, a type of spirit rice which is considered the most widely sown and technologically advanced spirit rice in the Tianhe Realm.
The seven major factions of the Eastern Wilderness, as well as various immortal cultivating families and small sects, all have extensive experience in cultivating Yubud Lingmi and are able to harvest a significant amount each year.
However, this spirit rice has one weakness—it can’t withstand the spiritual energy from Rank-2 Earth Veins.
So, it can only be sown in Rank-1 Spirit Fields.
The creator of Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice, however, had a whim. He wondered if he could filter the spiritual energy from Rank-2 Earth Veins in some way to make it bearable for the Yubud Lingmi, thus promoting its rank.
After decades of grafting and sowing experiments, Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice was created.
The spiritual energy from Rank-2 Earth Veins is absorbed and transformed by the Jade Bamboo, becoming incredibly pure and gentle.
And the seeds enshrined within the sections of the Jade Bamboo, under the nourishing effects of bamboo dew and bamboo spiritual energy, will undergo peculiar changes. After ten years of nurturing, these seeds will upgrade to Rank-2 Spirit Rice.
Following this theory, if there’s a Rank-3 Spiritual Bamboo suitable for Yubud Lingmi, it is indeed possible to cultivate Rank-3 Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice.
It’s no wonder that Hun Yuan was thrilled that Zhou Shengqing could buy this spirit plant legacy.
However, from the Immortal Sect’s perspective, it is indeed a wrong approach.
To cultivate Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice, the initial process requires the consumption of earth- and spiritual energy to nourish the Jade Bamboo’s growth. After the spirit rice seeds are sealed inside, it needs to absorb the essence of Jade Bamboo. After two transformations, the energy consumption is one and a half times that of the Sect’s Rank-2 Spirit Rice, and the maturation time is rather long.
For the Spirit Plant Masters of the Immortal Sect, who meticulously cultivate every inch of the land and spiritual energy, Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice is naturally seen as the wrong path.
After discovering this, Chen Mobai specifically consulted the Agricultural Studies teacher from the Daoist Academy, Lin Wenkang, and received several suggestions.
Softening earth energy, maturing in stages, and improving the rice varieties, and so on.
However, to definitively solve this problem, the best method is to improve the rice varieties.
That is, by cross-breeding the Yubud Lingmi with another spirit rice that can endure Rank-2 earth energy. The combined seed variety, after several rounds of practical planting and cultivation, should select the most suitable, the fullest, and the most vigorous seeds.
The process and methods are relatively simple. With Chen Mobai’s top-class agricultural foundation from the Daoist Academy, he does not need Lin Wenkang’s help to write a full thesis and method for improving rice varieties.
However, the most difficult yet tedious and detailed part is the subsequent practical planting and cultivation.
To obtain accurate and comprehensive experimental data and samples, and eventually derive the most suitable variety, the more types of cross-bred rice varieties, the better.
During this process, it is necessary to have many people to record data and supervise them.
The more seeds are planted, the more Spirit Fields are needed, and the more Spirit Plant Masters are welcomed.
Unfortunately, Chen Mobai’s dream of improving rice varieties using the power of the Agricultural Studies Class could not be realized as the Daoist Academy’s experimental fields were full of more precious Rank-3 and 4 medicinal herbs, leaving only a tiny piece for Spirit Rice.
As a second-best option, he could only experiment at Xiao Nanshan.
Luckily, Zhuo Ming was talented. After Chen Mobai explained the knowledge of cross-breeding and cultivating different rice varieties once, she understood everything.
Seeing as all the major firms in the Tianhe Realm pay great attention to high-quality Spirit Rice, Chen Mobai chose local rice varieties from the Eastern Wilderness to cross with Yubud Lingmi.
After Chen Mobai secured Xiao Nanshan, he, under his own name, had for the past two years consistently posted tasks in the Spirit Treasure Pavilion to acquire all kinds of Spirit Rice varieties.
With the power of the sect, apart from the ten core acres of Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice cultivated following the standard method, the other fifty acres were all sown with various kinds of Spirit Rice bought by Zhuo Ming, as arranged by Chen Mobai.
These varieties of Spirit Rice varied in terms of rank, some mature in half a year, some take a full year, and some even take two to three years.
Last year, Chen Mobai’s Rank-2 Spiritual Wine made from Jade Bamboo Spirit Rice was crossbred with a Rank-1 Premium variety called Precious Ginseng Spirit Rice. After adding in Rank-2 yeast from his hometown, and fermenting it with over a hundred ingredients from Hundred Herb Elixirs and Restoring God Soup, he was incredibly lucky and successfully brewed two jars.