Chapter 30: Planting level 1 flowers in level 4 farmland under the Elf Mother Tree is quite a struggle...
"Xiao Jiu! Xiao Jiu!"
Fu Yu was so frightened that her face turned pale: "Qian Chuan vomited—no, he spat out blood!"
Xiao Jiu was listening to the system talk about the farmland when she was shouted at. She turned her head and was stunned.
He rushed to Qianchuan's side in a panic, but before he could even call out to the system, he heard that familiar broadcast voice ringing out in the space.
[Ding—Pet information update complete]
Name: Qianchuan, Age: 3000
[Level: 69, Upgrade Value: 99%, Growth Value: 0%...]
The next second, Qianchuan, who had been in pain and bleeding profusely, suddenly perked up.
He looked down at his hands, and then his eyes lit up with surprise, his vertical golden pupils almost glowing: "My meridians have recovered!"
The nine little gluttons looked at Qian Chuan and tilted their heads in unison.
The Suanni Fuyu beside him looked completely bewildered.
The system finally appeared, beaming with pride: "Heh heh, see? That's the power of the adorable rural pet feature!"
The system wrote words with the red mist while explaining them in Xiao Jiu's mind.
Simply put, Qianchuan's previous state was actually different.
In the system's terms, it's called data locking; in the cultivation world's parlance, it means Qian Chuan's meridians are ruined and his cultivation path has come to an end.
Qian Chuan originally lived in that world where spiritual energy was depleted for thousands of years. During that long period of time, he survived solely by relying on his own powerful life force, which was the spiritual energy extracted from his meridians and organs.
His muscles and tendons had been atrophied from all this abuse.
Later, when he arrived at this spatial rift, although he was cured of his near-death injury by the help of the system, in essence, Qian Chuan's problems were always in a state of "treating the symptoms but not the root cause".
Under normal circumstances, let alone advancing and breaking through, he wouldn't even be able to cultivate by breathing in spiritual energy again.
But the system is a cheat.
Once the grain was swallowed, it immediately boosted Qianchuan's upgrade value.
For Qianchuan, this upgrade value represents the degree of integration of spiritual energy within his body. The closer a cultivator is to the ascension stage, the better their physical body and spiritual energy integrate.
The system recognizes level 99 as the maximum level, so if Qian Chuan, who is level 69, is converted into a cultivator, he would be a master at the Nascent Soul or Body Integration stage, and he's just a little bit away from advancing.
The further a cultivator progresses, the more difficult it becomes, regardless of whether they are human or demon cultivators.
However, this problem doesn't exist in the system at all; you just need to maximize your upgrade and growth values.
So, with the upgrade value already at 99%, how could the pet function allow Qianchuan to continue using those ruined meridians? Of course, it forcibly repaired Qianchuan's meridians.
Qianchuan's previous "blood spurting" was his body expelling waste on its own, just like the cleansing of essence and marrow when a human cultivator first introduces qi into the body.
Everyone was stunned for a moment.
The main problem is that all the system talked about all the time was planting flowers, and the shop was the same; it could only exchange for seeds and water, and overall it didn't show any extraordinary abilities.
The impact was so great that even Qianchuan himself was so surprised that he couldn't speak for a long time.
After a while, it was Fuyu who recovered first.
He asked in a sleepwalking voice, "So, what you told me about upgrading and breaking through back then, was it true?"
The system angrily replied: 【Of course it's true!】
It added: "[If your health is 100% and you have enough points, I can get you to 99 in no time.]"
Level 99 means immediately breaking through the void and ascending to the ultimate goal of cultivators like them.
Fu Yu immediately said, "I don't want to."
【Huh? Why?】
Fu Yu's voice lowered: "If I ascend, I can't stay here anymore... I don't want to."
In the cultivation world, "ascension" is actually crossing over to a higher energy level plane, namely the "immortal realm".
In cultivation, there is only ascension, not descent.
If one insists on "descending," then one can only dissipate all one's cultivation and be reincarnated, so Fu Yu's words are actually not wrong.
However, the system is indeed cheating.
What are you thinking about?
The system quickly typed: "[I can even sign contracts with mythical beasts. So what if you ascend? In our world, it's just evolution. Pets don't just disappear from the data after evolving; it's not like we're abandoning them.]"
[Let me make this clear first: my host is still here. Even if you reach level 10,000 or 1 million, you're not going anywhere.]
The threat was undisguised, but Fuyu laughed when he saw it.
The red at the corner of his eye curved into a beautiful arc with his expression: "Yes, I'll be wherever Xiao Jiu is. I'm not going anywhere."
After discussing the pet function, the system contacted Qianchuan: "Qianchuan, while you still have points, do you want to level up to 70?"
Just like the breakthrough to the Great Perfection stage in the cultivation world, in the system's pet upgrade system, if you go from a single-digit 9 to another level, you need growth value.
Growth value must be increased using corresponding items, the most common of which is the "Universal Evolution Fruit" in the shop.
When Xiao Jiu first signed the contract with Taotie and Taotie hatched, the system automatically gave her a reward, one of which was a universal evolution fruit.
But before long, Xiao Jiu fed the fruit to Taotie as a snack, so if Qian Chuan needs it now, he'll have to exchange for some more.
However, Qianchuan thought for a moment and said, "No need, I've been like this for so long, there's no rush. Give it to the system, yourself, and Xiao Jiu first."
The system was immediately moved: Qianchuan is really reliable!
It muttered to itself, "If it were that Suanni..."
Sure enough, the next second Suanni said to Qianchuan, "Wow, you're really carefree. If it were me, I would definitely ask the system to change it for me right away, so I can eat my fill."
System: [Okay! Come on, let's sign the contract!]
The Suanni turned its head left and right: "Huh? Why can't I hear anything all of a sudden?"
System: [I clearly used text!]
Suanni: "Oh, then I can't see it."
system:......
I just want to spank the cat's butt every day.
The system tried to remain calm, then smeared a cloud of mist onto the Suanni's rear end before running off to talk to Xiao Jiu: "[Host, we still have points. Shall we go upgrade the farmland?]"
Four plots of farmland are still too few. If we could double that, the points after each harvest would also be doubled.
Xiao Jiu nodded.
Because it had been upgraded once before, Xiao Jiu didn't bite her tongue when she gave the instructions this time.
"upgrade."
[Objective: Level 2 farmland, Quantity: 4, Upgrade options: Level, Quantity]
"quantity."
The system wanted to double the number, but as the number of existing farmlands increased, the points consumed also increased, so they only temporarily increased the number of farmlands to six.
Upgrade complete. Points deducted: 4500. Remaining points: 15000.
If you have enough points, then of course you should level up again.
Upgrading a level 2 field to level 3 costs 200 points per field, while upgrading from level 3 to level 4 costs 500 points per field.
The system did the calculations and decided to let Xiao Jiu upgrade Tian to level 4 in one go.
After the upgrade was completed, Xiao Jiu still had a little over 10,000 points left, so she naturally exchanged them for a bunch of pet food blocks.
Twenty yuan per person, the same for everyone.
At first, Qian Chuan was worried that he might continue to bleed after eating, or that his spiritual energy would become too abundant. However, after realizing that he felt nothing after eating a piece, he asked the system if continuing to eat would waste his upgrade points since he was already at level 69.
System: [It's not a waste. It will be accumulated as upgrade points, and you can use it directly after breaking through level 70.]
Qianchuan: "Then..."
The system guessed what he wanted to say and quickly followed up: "[There are indeed limitations; there's a cap on the amount you can accumulate. But don't worry, your current level 69 has a high accumulation cap; you can easily consume several thousand more.]"
So Qianchuan readily accepted Xiao Jiu's kindness.
After everyone had eaten and drunk their fill, it was time for the familiar routine: planting flowers and accumulating points.
From the system's perspective, it naturally wants to grow alienation points. Although the flowers grow strangely and are difficult to harvest, the price of alienation flowers is really high.
But right now it has no idea whether there are any patterns to the mutation and spiritualization of this flower, nor does it know what the specific conditions for its emergence are, so it can only plant and try as it goes.
The difference between level 4 farmland and level 2 farmland is huge.
Level 4 farmland is about ten times the size of level 2 farmland, and the soil color is also darker. According to the system, this is because the farmland growth buff is more effective.
When selecting seeds, the system shared its opinion with everyone this time.
It plans to temporarily refrain from trying new flowers, so that once this planting is complete, it can use the existing data as a basis to roughly calculate the patterns of alienation and spiritualization.
They currently have data on three types of flowers.
The morning glory and sunflower have both their alienated and spiritualized forms unlocked, while the pansy's spiritualized form is currently unknown.
Coincidentally, the same flower is grown on two separate farmlands.
[Because the farmland has been upgraded, its area has expanded, and its growth buffs have been strengthened, the host simply cannot manage it all on their own. I need your help.]
Everyone readily agreed, and even Suanni, the only one without a contractual relationship with Xiao Jiu, did not refuse.
Suanni didn't really take this help seriously.
As for planting flowers, he had seen Xiao Jiu and Taotie do it several times before, it was a piece of cake.
So Suanni simply said, "I have a condition: five grain blocks."
System: [OK.]
The system agreed very readily.
Five hours later...
The Suanni threw down the little shovel in its mouth and started rolling on the ground on its back, yelling, "I quit! I quit!"
System: [As promised, five grain blocks.]
The mention of this incident infuriated Suanni, who slapped the line of red misty words with his hand: "You didn't say this flower would grow this long! Ah, I know, you definitely did it on purpose!"
System: [Yes.]
Suanni: ?
Because the farmland has a growth buff, the plants planted there don't need to be watered, fertilized, weeded, or pest-catching; they can grow well on their own.
The problem is that the growth buff effect of level 4 farmland is a bit too good.
Morning glories and pansies are among the easiest flowers to grow, and they are only level 1 flowers. They don't have high requirements for the environment, which makes level 4 farmland feel like "over-supplementing" these flowers.
Among them, the morning glory and sunflower, which have the fastest growth cycle, start to sprout almost as soon as they are planted.
The sunflowers are alright, but the morning glories are climbing plants. Before, they would at least obediently climb up the bamboo strips, but now they just whip their branches around like whips, and if you're not careful, they get tangled up with the plants next to them.
Under normal circumstances, the vines would simply twine around, since they're all going to grow anyway.
Here, however, these intertwined flowers extend along each other's stems and burrow directly into the soil. Once they're inside, they don't even grow leaves, let alone bloom. When dug out, they look like a ring woven from vines, which is quite strange.
The system provides a solution: to turn over the soil between the plants.
In the system's terms, this is called "resetting the effective range." Through this external operation, farmland can automatically define its boundaries, thereby limiting the tendency of individual plants to climb outwards.
The problem is that the growth buff for farmland is always active, so the soil in the farmland will automatically revert to its original state.
This requires repeatedly resetting the area; simply put, it means constantly turning over the soil.
The Suanni had been running around for several hours with a small shovel made from bamboo tube pieces in its mouth. The thought of working so hard for half a day to get only five grains made the Suanni feel like it was losing out.
The system is still writing: 【But you chose to manage the morning glories yourself~ Meow Meow has to keep her word~】
The Suanni was so angry that the fur on its neck stood on end.
Just as he was about to jump up in anger, a small, bluish-gray hand reached out from behind the morning glory beside him.
The hand reached out to the Suanni and gently scratched the area between his eyebrows with its short little finger.
The Suanni immediately grabbed the hand and started biting and nibbling, but it didn't use any force at all, and the owner of the little hand was unaware of it. So, after getting his hand covered in saliva, he continued to pet his head without realizing it.
The Suanni, its face covered in drool: ......
What's causing this feeling of being both angry and exhausted?
After petting the Suanni for a while, the owner of the small hand suddenly said, "System, Flower, don't move?"
He was asking if he could stop the flowers from moving around.
The system immediately replied in Xiao Jiu's mind: [Of course. It's like this because there's too much energy right now. If you plant a plant that requires a lot of energy next to it, these morning glories will grow obediently.]
"Seed, or exchange?"
The system hesitated: [Sorry, host, I'm afraid that won't work. One or two high-level flower seeds won't achieve the desired energy balance, and if too many are added, the different seeds will fight and won't grow together.]
Xiao Jiu thought for a moment, then looked up at the sky: "Me, the mall?"
Xiao Jiu's online store?
That's a good idea. After all, there are plenty of special items available in Xiao Jiu's shop, and Xiao Jiu can exchange for things that the system can't.
The system checked the balance and found that there were still over 4,000 points left.
It thought for a moment, even if the plants Xiao Jiu exchanged weren't very useful, these morning glories and sunflowers would be ripe soon, and it could earn more points by selling them, so it wasn't a big problem.
After all, this was the first time its host had taken the initiative to suggest going to the mall!
The system only regretted not giving the host enough points to make extravagant purchases and couldn't bear to stop it.
So it cheerfully replied: "[Okay, go ahead and change it.]"
Ten minutes later, Xiao Jiu came out holding a snow-white tree branch.
[Points deducted: 3000 points, remaining points: 1200 points]
Having been mentally prepared, the system remained quite calm: [Host, what is this?]
Xiao Jiu: "Tree!"
system:?
The system quickly opened the data, and then was almost blinded by the explanation.
[A broken branch of the Elven Mother Tree: The Elven Mother Tree is a sacred object of the Elven race. Even a broken branch contains magical power, capable of sprouting and growing again in an environment rich in energy.]
Their regenerated forms are very popular with animals, and are mostly used as shelters by the creatures of the Bright Forest.
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