Chapter 161: Rules
Lu Chengjing’s mind suddenly flashed with this sentence. The faint touch brought a subtle itch, surging from the skin and flesh of his palm to the tip of his heart, trembling lightly with the heartbeat.
The cold black eyes suddenly melted like ice and snow, followed by a soft smile rippling out like ripples.
He responded in a low voice: “Mm, a tacit understanding of hearts.”
Shang Wan secretly tsked. He was indeed very easy to coax.
She stopped the hand writing on his palm and asked: “If the Lin Family wanted to report to the authorities, they should have done so long ago. Why drag it out until now?”
“Actually, I lean more toward the second possibility,” Lu Chengjing said. “The timing is just right.”
Shang Wan played with his fingertip, pinching it. “You mean, in a few days, the Lu Residence will send someone over?”
“If what Lu Chengyuan referred to is really this matter, the ones coming next won’t be people from the Lu Residence,” Lu Chengjing said, his lips pressing slightly together, his tone certain. “It will be officials.”
Shang Wan was eager to try. She remembered that false accusations meant getting beaten with a plank.
·
The next morning, Shang Wan received a big surprise.
It wasn’t Yuan Yuan wetting the bed, but another spiritual field added in the space.
This way, there were now four spiritual fields in the space.
Shang Wan sank her consciousness into the space, looking at that spiritual field and pondering endlessly.
Before, she had guessed that the pattern for spiritual fields increasing was one added every fixed interval of time, with at most a day or two of variance. But this newly added spiritual field clearly didn’t fit that pattern.
It hadn’t been long; the interval was not even half of the time before the third spiritual field appeared.
What exactly was the mechanism for the spiritual fields increasing?
She pondered on her own for a while with no clue, so Shang Wan decided to pool ideas and called over the informed people for a small meeting.
“Perhaps it’s related to the crops planted,” Lu Chengjing proposed a guess. “Before, you only planted bok choy. Now you’re planting herbs; maybe planting more kinds of herbs can increase the number of spiritual fields.”
Shang Wan felt this guess wasn’t very reliable. “Some herbs can be used as vegetables too, like that wild vegetable Xiao Huan picked last time. Shi Tou said eating it prevents indigestion.”
Shi Tou said: “Could it be that planting the same crop increases it slowly, while planting different crops increases it faster?”
Shang Wan thought about it and felt this possibility existed.
She had always been planting bok choy before. Only after the second spiritual field appeared did she start planting herbs. Right after, the third and fourth spiritual fields appeared one after another, with the intervals getting shorter each time.
“Xiao Huan, what do you think?”
Xiao Huan’s focus was different. She guessed: “Could it be related to the use of spiritual spring water?”
After being injured and losing too much blood, the little girl’s face had visibly slimmed down, and her voice was weak and feeble when speaking.
Shang Wan felt heartbroken looking at her and pondered making something tasty to nourish her.
But she only knew how to make dark cuisine, feeling that eating it wouldn’t nourish but would instead weaken.
Xiao Huan coughed lightly twice, suppressing the itch in her throat before saying: “The space should be an integrated whole. Before, sis only used spiritual spring water for drinking and putting into ointment. Recently, you’ve started using it to plant herbs. Compared to before, the amount of spiritual spring water used has increased a lot, which might affect changes in the spiritual fields.”
Shang Wan recalled and felt this guess was possible too.
Right after transmigrating, there were only a few drops of spiritual spring water, so it had to be used sparingly. Later, the spiritual spring water increased, so she no longer had to be stingy worrying about running out, and the usage naturally increased.
She said: “I think there’s another possibility: random appearance.”
Shang Wan knew her own situation. Before transmigrating, her space ability was level ten, with a vast spiritual field that stretched as far as the eye could see.
Her guess was still related to time.
Flying from the southern hemisphere to the northern required adjusting to jet lag, so after transmigrating from one world to another, couldn’t her ability adjust to its own time difference?
Just like loading a game progress bar, it had to load bit by bit.
She suspected her current ability was still in the loading process, manifesting wherever the progress bar had reached.
Hearing the unfamiliar term, Lu Chengjing asked: “What does random appearance mean?”
Shi Tou and Xiao Huan also looked at Shang Wan blankly.
Shang Wan thought about it and felt verbal explanation was too vague, so she got up, took a piece of cloth, and demonstrated for the three people.
“Think of the space as this teapot.”
Shang Wan spread out the cloth, completely covering the teapot on the table, then grabbed the left side of the cloth and slowly pulled it left, gradually exposing the teapot with her action.
“This cloth is like the passing days. The longer the days, the more of the teapot is revealed, until it’s fully exposed.”
With her words, Shang Wan pulled the entire cloth off the teapot, revealing the complete teapot.
The three people stared at the teapot, digesting Shang Wan’s words, with no one speaking for the moment.
Shang Wan poked the cloth with her index finger, spinning it, waiting for the three to slowly accept it.
Suddenly, Lu Chengjing raised his eyelids, his calm gaze fixed straight on Shang Wan, and asked: “How do you know there was originally a whole teapot?”
Shang Wan: “…”
Don’t be so perceptive!
“I guessed.”
The black eyes were like a deep bottomless pool. Lu Chengjing stared fixedly at Shang Wan for a moment before shifting his gaze away without pressing further.
Shang Wan secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
The four discussed for about half an hour. Besides the earlier guesses, they proposed several more. Shang Wan decided to verify each one.
The increase in spiritual fields was nothing but beneficial to her. If she could master the pattern or rule for spiritual fields increasing, she might even use it in reverse to add to her planting endeavors.
·
“I’ll take Yuan Yuan out for a stroll and pick up Xiao Huan’s medicine on the way.” Shang Wan bent down to pick up her own child.
“Wait for me, I’m going too.” Chu Xu had been bored stiff for a long time, but he was afraid of running into assassins and didn’t dare go out alone. Now that Shang Wan was going out, he immediately chased after her.
For Chu Xu, even the prosperity of the capital city had grown tiresome, so this small village really had nothing worth strolling.
But after being cooped up too long with only a few people at home coming and going, suddenly seeing a fresh face still excited him a bit.
A stranger suddenly appeared in the village, following beside Shang Wan, so everyone was curious and asked Shang Wan about it.
Shang Wan said: “He’s my maternal family nephew. Just call him A Nian.”
“A Nian is a nice name. How old is he?”
“Six years old.”
“This child is so fair and lovely, he looks a bit like the Xiucai Scholar’s Wife.”
“They’re all family; how could they not look alike?”
“Scholarly families are different; even this doll is more handsome than our kids.”
“Oh my, this little face, so chubby and pinchable; it makes people like him just looking.”
A group of uncles and aunts crowded over, touching his head and pinching his cheeks, doting on him as if he were something rare.
Chu Xu couldn’t handle this enthusiasm at all and kept hiding behind Shang Wan with his face covered.
Only after everyone left did he poke his head out, covering his flushed little face and muttering: “So scary.”
The young master was always surrounded and protected by people wherever he went, watched over like the apple of their eyes. When had he ever been treated like a good-luck charm to touch?
Shang Wan amusingly ruffled his head, her almond eyes curving slightly. “Does your face hurt?”
