Chapter 22: Enchanted Everwood Farm
The Everwood farm was enchanted, offering various benefits to the Spirit farmer who cultivated their Spirit plants and herbs within its confines.
Firstly, the growth period required for all the 1st Order Spirit plants was directly reduced by half. If a particular kind of Spirit grass previously took about a month to mature in the outside world, then it would only take about 15 days to mature in the Everwood farm.
This was not a time dilation power but a wide-area growth-enhancement Spirit spell that automatically cast on all the plants being cultivated inside the Everwood farm. As such, Aksai didn't have to worry about overusing his lifespan while staying inside the farm.
Aksai was sure that the Everwood farm would also have beneficial effects on the processes of talisman-making, array formations, elixir refining, and other such fields that made use of the plants and herbs as their base ingredients.
After all, most of these processes were also time-bound due to various reasons and raw ingredient pre-process stages involved. However, he hadn't tested the theory yet due to his lack of information related to the field.
The second boon the Everwood farm provided to its owner was related to his Spirit spells. Any Spirit Spell that he cast inside the farm would only consume half of his Spirit essence while doubling the effects of the Spirit spell. This enhancement would be especially apparent when it came to Spirit spells related to Spirit farming.
For example, Aksai had three major Spirit spells that he often used while tending to his Spirit farm in the outside world. The first Spirit spell was Spirit Rain, which allowed him to summon a small cloud of water in the air.
This grayish cloud would nourish the Spirit plants by drizzling them with water containing Spirit essence. The cloud covered an area of around seven cubic meters, and the rain duration produced by it was about 2 minutes.
When Aksai cast the same Spirit spell inside the Everwood farm, the coverage and the duration of the Light Spirit Rain spell doubled while his Spirit essence expenditure halved.
The same was the case when he cast his other two fundamental Spirit Spells related to Spirit farming: Basic Earth Control and Basic Wood Expedite.
The use of the Basic Wood Expedite spell was especially groundbreaking for Aksai in the Everwood farm because it allowed him to expedite the maturity process of any plant using his Spirit essence, taking the expedited growth even further.
The Everwood farm already had a wide-area expedition spell cast on all the plants planted inside it. When coupled with the Basic Wood Expedite spell, the effects of the newly planted herbs could be imagined.
When Aksai first cast the Basic Wood Expedite spell on a regular Spirit plant, he felt as if he were watching a time-lapse video depicting a plant's journey from a sprouted shoot to a mature plant. It was a mesmerizing and pleasantly shocking scene even for an Immortal cultivator like Aksai.
Most importantly, the plants expedited to maturity inside the Everwood farm did not suffer from malnourishment. They appeared as if they were organically grown to maturity under optimal care and nourishment.
These advantages might seem small and inconsequential at first. However, only a true Spirit farmer like Aksai could understand how wondrous they actually were.
Many of Aksai's farm-related activities required him to use these three fundamental spells frequently. In the outside world, he often had to take short breaks to recover his Spirit essence using the Basic Greenwood Tantra before resuming his activities.
The process was time-consuming and tiring. Once he started working on his Spirit farm, it took until evening to complete the day's tasks.
However, farming inside the Everwood farm felt like playing the same game in easy or even beginner's mode. Aksai not only felt less tired but also discovered that he could accomplish more and get double the results in half the time. Moreover, the quality of the plants produced inside the Everwood farm was always top-notch.
He didn't even need to worry about the Spirit bugs that often spoiled the produce if he wasn't careful in tending to his farm in the outside world. A seamless no-nonsense Spirit farming experience.
Aksai often entertained thoughts of abandoning the outside world and focusing solely on farming inside the Everwood farm for a long time. However, he decided to suppress these feelings until he obtained sufficient resources to sustain himself inside the Everwood farm.
First and foremost, Aksai needed the last three layers of the Spirit Refining cultivation technique.
Secondly, he needed to acquire 1st order inheritances related to talisman-making, elixir concoction, array formations, etc.
Thirdly, he needed a stable channel to sell the Spirit plants outside to earn wealth.
Fourth, he needed to find a better land to act as an anchor for the Everwood farm. Aksai could tell that the Everwood farm mimicked the environment he was in outside the isolated zone.
Currently, it mimicked the relatively barren environment of his Spirit farm in the outside world. Although the Everwood farm had started to assimilate with the relatively rich environment of Lakir City after he came inside it, the upgrade wasn't enough and future-proof for Aksai's upcoming plans. Not to mention, he didn't want to stay in Lakir City in the first place.
To make full use of the Spirit farm, Aksai needed to settle in a region that was on high-grade 1st-order Spirit vein. It would be even better if he were to find a 2nd order Spirit vein region to settle in.
Only such an environment in the outside world could produce a conducive effect inside the Everwood farm for a lot of his Spirit plant projects in the future. Although Aksai knew that obtaining the right to live on a 2nd-order Spirit vein region was outside his capacities, he could still find some way around when it came to the high-grade 1st-order Spirit vein.
As long as he checked all these boxes, Aksai was ready to turn the Everwood farm into his "man cave", remaining inside like a big old turtle refusing to come out of its shell unless absolutely necessary.
However, Aksai realized that gathering resources for his peaceful farming life wasn't as easy as he thought it would be.
The recent fight with Nesha made that apparent to him.