Chapter 54: Hide-and-Seek
The Medicine Farm was more than ten li away from the Medicine Valley. To save time for planting medicinal herbs, houses were also built in the Medicine Valley, where the laborers ate and slept.
It was still a communal sleeping area, the kind where dozens of people shared one room.
After a day’s work, Hua Changxi ate dinner and entered the room where the female laborers lived.
The room was fifteen meters long and six meters wide, with the door in the center. Both sides were furnished with heated brick beds. The beds were two meters wide and fifteen meters long.
The temperature in the valley was quite low, especially in the early morning and evening. Therefore, the spots further inside were all taken, leaving only empty spaces near the door and windows.
Hua Changxi had never been afraid of the cold since she was young, and even less so after she started cultivating. Seeing that the moonlight from the left window was brighter, she decided to sleep on the left heated bed by the window.
The bedding and sheets were ready-made, and they had a strong smell of mold and other odors, as if they had been used by countless people.
With too many people in the room, Hua Changxi couldn’t use the Pure Body Technique. She could only fold the bedding and place it in the corner of the heated bed.
After tidying up, Hua Changxi left the room, intending to fetch water for a simple wash. As she entered and exited the room, she sensed someone observing her.
At first, she thought it was those male laborers who wanted to take advantage of her, but when she seized an opportunity to look back, she realized it was the one-armed man.
Knowing that the one-armed man was observing her, Hua Changxi’s alarm bells rang. It was then that she suddenly realized the one-armed man’s reaction to seeing her was too calm.
This was not normal!
She had broken through the one-armed man’s oppressive aura in the Medical Affairs Department Storeroom. Meeting him again, even if he didn’t seek revenge, he shouldn’t have had no reaction to her.
The only explanation was that the one-armed man had shifted his attention to the shadows.
Was the one-armed man monitoring her?
It made sense. If she encountered someone who could contend with her again, she would also observe them secretly for a while.
Hua Changxi returned to her room with a worried heart.
She wondered how long the one-armed man would monitor her. With him watching her, how could she find the Spirit Grass?
Hua Changxi didn’t want to lie on the unpleasant heated bed. She had planned to meditate and cultivate earlier, but now with the one-armed man watching her, she dared not make any unusual moves. She could only endure the discomfort and force herself to lie down on the heated bed.
The moonlight fell on her, and Hua Changxi slowly calmed her emotions. She stopped thinking about the one-armed man outside the room and closed her eyes, running the Little Bird Breathing and Exhalation Method.
She discovered that cultivating in the Medicine Valley made the Spiritual Energy flow exceptionally smoothly, and her cultivation speed had also increased significantly.
After a night passed, Hua Changxi woke up to the sound of others talking. She glanced at her stats: 『Realm: Qi Sea Realm 1850/100000』.
She had gained over 100 Realm Points in one night, which was several times faster than in the Labor Department.
For the next few days, Hua Changxi worked while secretly observing the one-armed man. She noticed that he descended from the West Mountain into the Medicine Valley every day at 10:00 AM （ and left the Medicine Valley to enter the West Mountain at 7:00 PM （.
This was his overt movement pattern. In secret, every night around midnight, he would descend from the West Mountain and secretly patrol the Medicine Valley, especially checking her dormitory area.
After discovering this pattern, one night, as the one-armed man descended the mountain for his patrol, Hua Changxi quietly followed him into the mountains west of the Medicine Valley.
Knowing that there was a Grandmaster guarding the Medicine Valley, she didn’t dare to follow too closely. From a distance, she saw the one-armed man arrive at a stone cliff halfway up the West Mountain.
In front of the stone cliff was a flat stone platform, and behind it was a stone cave.
On the stone platform, an old man in grey robes sat cross-legged, facing the moon.
Hua Changxi guessed that this old man was likely the Grandmaster surnamed You.
“Is he cultivating?”
Hua Changxi felt a bit helpless. Having come from an unconventional background, she had no idea how to determine if someone was a cultivator.
“Master.”
Hearing the one-armed man’s address to the old man, a look of surprise flashed in Hua Changxi’s eyes.
“Master, that Hua Changxi has been no different from other laborers these past few days. Did we make a mistake?”
“Someone who could withstand the pressure of a Seventh-Rank Martial Artist running off to be a laborer is inherently abnormal. Now that she’s been punished and sent to the Medicine Valley, she’s not causing trouble or trying to leave. The more well-behaved that girl is, the greater her ambition. Keep watching her and see what she’s trying to do.”
Elder You gazed at the bright moon in the sky: “Besides medicinal herbs, what else in the Medicine Valley is worth her coveting?”
Hua Changxi listened to their conversation, her heart unsettled.
So, in the eyes of intelligent people, her actions were full of flaws.
Seeing the one-armed man sit down beside Elder You and also begin to meditate cross-legged, Hua Changxi quietly retreated back to the Medicine Valley.
Knowing that the Grandmaster and the one-armed man were monitoring her, Hua Changxi was not entirely passive. She was also counter-monitoring the two.
Because the Medicine Valley was vast and everyone was dispersed, Hua Changxi used the one-armed man’s movements to evade his surveillance and explored the Medicine Valley several times.
Unfortunately, she never found the Spirit Grass.
On the afternoon of the thirteenth day of the third month, Hua Changxi returned from the fields for lunch and found that the one-armed man was surprisingly absent.
This was peculiar. The one-armed man was a very diligent and responsible person, extremely dedicated to patrolling the Medicine Valley, never late or leaving early. Why was he absent from his post today?
“Why isn’t Master Guo here?”
Hua Changxi casually asked a female laborer next to her. Because she had helped the female laborer plant medicine seedlings, this person had been taking good care of her these days.
“It’s the fifteenth in two days.”
“Every fifteenth of the month, Elder You has to deliver medicine to the Medical Affairs Department. Master Guo must have gone to help Elder You gather herbs.”
Hua Changxi showed surprise: “What kind of medicine needs to be delivered on the fifteenth of every month?”
The female laborer shook her head: “I don’t know about that.”
Hua Changxi didn’t want to pry further. She quickly finished her lunch, collected the medicine seedlings to be planted that afternoon from the steward, and then left in a hurry.
After placing the medicine seedlings in the medicine field she was responsible for, Hua Changxi didn’t start working. Instead, she activated the Lingbo Microsteps and quietly entered the West Mountain.
During this period in the Medicine Valley, playing hide-and-seek with the one-armed man had made her Lingbo Microsteps increasingly proficient. As soon as Spiritual Energy gathered in her feet, she could run a hundred meters in an instant.
Hua Changxi first reached the mountainside. Not seeing anyone on the stone cliff, she dared not rashly investigate the stone cave and could only wander around the vicinity.
After circling a few times, she only found some medicinal herbs needed by martial artists and nothing else.
Hua Changxi was unwilling to come all this way for nothing, so she returned to the stone cliff.
“Why would a Grandmaster choose to live here?”
“Just because there’s a stone cave here?”
The stone cave had a stone door installed. The stone door was tightly shut at the moment, so she couldn’t enter to investigate. Hua Changxi wandered around the outside.
As she walked around, she immediately discovered a problem.
The Spiritual Energy here was so dense!
After she started cultivating, she had been pondering one question: where did Spiritual Energy come from?
Hua Changxi stood on the stone platform, closed her eyes, and ran the Little Bird Breathing and Exhalation Method. After sensing the distribution of the surrounding Spiritual Energy concentration, she immediately opened her eyes.
Hua Changxi walked to the edge of the stone cliff and peered down.
After running her cultivation method, she discovered that the Spiritual Energy below the stone cliff was the densest.
The stone cliff was not straight down but had an inclination of about twenty degrees. Looking down from above, it was bottomless.
Hua Changxi weighed her own strength and felt that with the Lingbo Microsteps she had mastered, she could go down and investigate.
Although Hua Changxi was not afraid of heights, the thought of jumping down made her heart tighten, and she hesitated. But then she thought that Elder You had always guarded the stone cliff, and if she didn’t go down when he wasn’t around, it would be difficult to find another opportunity later.
With that thought, Hua Changxi no longer hesitated. She leaped, her feet stepping on the cliff face, and she rapidly ran downwards.
Although she used the cliff face for leverage, Hua Changxi still felt like she was in freefall, her legs running as fast as wind wheels.
At this moment, Hua Changxi couldn’t help but wish she knew how to wield a sword or ride the clouds and drive the fog.
It felt like a long time had passed, or perhaps it was just the blink of an eye, when Hua Changxi saw the bottom of the cliff.
Because she couldn’t control her speed, Hua Changxi crashed heavily onto the ground, face-first.
Hua Changxi’s face contorted in pain, and it took her a while to recover before she shakily got up.
The next moment, upon seeing the countless Spiritual Plants growing at the bottom of the cliff, her pain instantly vanished.
Although these Spiritual Plants were all first-tier Spiritual Plants, they still made Hua Changxi extremely excited.
“Master, what are these fruits?”
“I don’t know either.”
“Master, disciple finds these fruits to have a fragrant aroma.”
“What, you want to eat them?”
“Eating one or two, the higher-ups probably wouldn’t know, right?”
“Do you know what happened to the last person who had the same idea as you?”
“Killed by the higher-ups?”
“No, the higher-ups didn’t even know he stole the fruits. Yet, he still died. Less than a breath after consuming the fruit, he exploded and died.”
“Ah~”
“That person was your Senior Disciple Brother, an Eighth-Rank Martial Artist.”
“What, Senior Disciple Brother is dead!”
“He died without a whole body. It’s all my fault for being greedy. Your Senior Disciple Brother was testing the medicine for me. Why do you think the higher-ups entrusted the Medicine Valley to me with such confidence? Because these precious medicines, I can guard them but not eat them. If I eat them, I die!”
“How could this be?”
“.”
Hua Changxi heard voices approaching and her expression changed. She quickly unleashed a surge of Spiritual Energy, creating a gust of wind that dispersed the traces of her landing. Then, she flashed away and hid in the grass a hundred meters away.
Soon, Elder You and the one-armed man appeared within Hua Changxi’s sight.
The two did not discover Hua Changxi and stepped on the cliff face to leave the bottom of the cliff.
As soon as they left, Hua Changxi began to frantically search the bottom of the cliff.
The one-armed man had gone up and would soon go to patrol the Medicine Valley. She had to return before he went to the Medicine Valley.
Hua Changxi ignored the other Spiritual Plants at the bottom of the cliff and focused solely on searching for Spirit Grass. Finally, in the southeast direction, she saw patches of Spirit Grass.
Besides the first-tier Spirit Grass, there were even second-tier Spirit Grass.
“Bang!”
The Shen Nong Cauldron was summoned, and Hua Changxi began to quickly gather the Spirit Grass. With each plant she picked, she used a spell to seal the Spiritual Energy of the Spirit Grass, preserving its medicinal properties.
Hua Changxi planned to fill the Shen Nong Cauldron and leave. Who would have thought that she had picked all the hundreds of second-tier Spirit Grass, and the Shen Nong Cauldron was still not full.
“This…”
Hua Changxi had no time to ponder the Shen Nong Cauldron’s situation and quickly gathered the first-tier Spirit Grass.
She didn’t dare to pick too many, fearing that Elder You and the one-armed man would discover something amiss. After picking three hundred first-tier Spirit Grass, she stopped.
After retracting the Shen Nong Cauldron, Hua Changxi prepared to leave the bottom of the cliff. As she turned, she saw a jujube tree laden with bright red jujubes.
Seeing the jujubes made Hua Changxi’s mouth water.
“Whoosh~”
With a surge of Spiritual Energy, thousands of jujubes fell from the tree with a rustling sound.
Hua Changxi summoned the Shen Nong Cauldron again. A whirlwind stirred, gathering the jujubes into a pile and quickly filling the Shen Nong Cauldron.
Not daring to linger any longer, Hua Changxi infused her legs with Spiritual Energy and rapidly climbed upwards along the cliff face.
