Chapter 3754 — Spirit Herb Cultivation
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Watching Wei Zhao and the others in the distance, relaxed and chatting and laughing, Meng Jueming pinched his chin and curled his lip in a cold sneer: Let you lot enjoy your triumph a while longer. Before, I had no time to bother with you, and that's how you slipped through the cracks. Next—there'll be time enough for you to cry!
Setting aside Wei Zhao, that troublesome thorn in the side, if it were only those two newcomers Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai, Meng Jueming had never once taken them seriously. Dealing with those two was, in his eyes, no more than reaching out and taking what was his—a trifling matter.
As was customary, only after all the newcomers of the Three-Tiered Pavilion had gathered did the Pavilion Master, Hu Yunfeng, appear to announce and reaffirm the rules of the coming assessment stages. And just like the first stage, the pressure-resistance trial, the venue for this third stage was likewise not the Welcome-New Pavilion, but the Pill Hall.
More precisely, however, the third stage was not to be assessed at the Pill Hall either. The Pavilion Master Hu Yunfeng merely led all the newcomers to the Pill Hall as a formality, so that each of them could select a few spirit herb seeds and carry them back to cultivate and nurture on their own.
As everyone knew, any cultivator in the world of cultivation must deal with all manner of pills—the only difference being in how many.
Some, blessed with deep backgrounds and superior conditions, could eat pills as though they were rice; others lacked such advantages and could only scrape and save, hoarding resources to trade for a single pill at the most critical juncture to aid a breakthrough; and still others, like Wei Zhao, were alchemists themselves, able to refine all manner of pills on their own.
In short, no matter which sort one was, across a long cultivation career one would inevitably require the aid of spirit herbs. Otherwise, in this present age where spiritual energy grew ever thinner by the day, to break through purely by one's own diligent cultivation was utterly unrealistic. Even if it could be done, it was only by a very few with extraordinary talent; the other ninety-nine in a hundred could not do without pills of every kind.
But to refine pills, apart from requiring dedicated alchemists, the most crucial element was still the common and uncommon spirit herb materials. Without a full complement of spirit herbs to serve as ingredients, even a Pill God like Zhang Lifeng would be a clever housewife who cannot cook a meal without rice.
Yet every spirit herb belongs among the treasures of heaven and earth. Even the commonest, lowliest spirit herb is only so relative to other spirit herbs; compared with ordinary plants, it remains an exceedingly rare and precious thing. To gather them in great quantity was simply impossible—to say nothing of rare varieties like the Heart-Devouring Linglong Grass.
Naturally, the method of artificially cultivating spirit herbs arose in response.
Yet though spirit herbs are plants like any other, their demands upon their growing environment are far more exacting than those of ordinary grasses, trees, and flowers. Even when cultivators devote vast effort to tending and nurturing them, the survival rate remains forever pitifully low, and their growth cycles are generally exceedingly long. All too often, after decades of painstaking labor, a single careless moment leaves them withered and dead, and all that heart's blood is poured down the drain.
Still, after thousands upon thousands of years of accumulated experience, the cultivation world of Cloud-Tier Island had by now distilled a highly mature method for planting and nurturing spirit herbs.
Not only was the survival rate greatly improved over former times, but with the addition of artificial ripening techniques, even their growth cycles had been drastically shortened. Many common spirit herbs could thus be cultivated on a massive scale, guaranteeing their supply.