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Chapter 108: Looking For Seeds
When Chu Liang opened his eyes early in the morning of the next day, he sensed that something was amiss.
The first thing he did was put down the spirit beast egg. He had been holding and incubating the egg all night as he slept, diligently and attentively fulfilling his duty as a "mother."
Then he stood up, walked to the window, and looked at the golden rain drizzling outside...
Again...?
Why does this golden rain keep coming here?
Everyone in the Mount Shu Sect was watching the golden rain, and many of its members had some complaints.
Why is it raining at Silver Sword Peak again?
Could it be that the True Dragon is psychic and wants to drown Mount Shu's tyrant by flooding Silver Sword Peak?
The disciples of Shu Mountain couldn't help but pray, Oh, True Dragon, please open your eyes and take a proper look.
This amount of rain won't drown her, so why don't you send the rain elsewhere and let the rest of us experience it too?
By the time Chu Liang finished washing up, the rain had stopped. Like before, it hadn't rained for long, and it hadn't been heavy either. Nevertheless, the raindrops all contained the dragon's essence.
Chu Liang went out to look at his small garden of Golden Vein Flowers. He'd planted a batch of Dragon Breath Golden Vein Berry plants the day before, and from those ten or so plants, he harvested a total of thirty-odd berries.
There was a limit to the plants' efficacy to produce fruit. Due to the limited fertility of the soil, the plants could not produce fruit every day—perhaps once every seven days at most. That was why the flower garden was currently barren aside from the beautiful but useless flowers.
Chu Liang surveyed the surrounding land with his eyes. He thought that if he were to expand the size of the flower garden by seven times, it would be possible to have daily harvests by implementing a rotation system. Moreover, implementing a crop rotation system would make this an ecologically sustainable agricultural development.
Chu Liang felt very familiar with the whole process, starting from sowing seeds to harvesting the fruit. However, he had no idea why that was the case since he had never done any farm work before.
After envisioning the appearance of the large flower garden he would have in the future, Chu Liang left Silver Sword Peak. There was something he had to do today.
He flew straight to Red Cotton Peak and arrived at the Mount Shu Sect's little marketplace. It was still bustling with business as usual with plenty of familiar faces.
Upon seeing Chu Liang, they greeted him cordially.
"Hey! It's been ages since I've seen you around here!"
"Lately, there have been several others selling tea too. Their teas are cheaper than yours but not as delicious..."
"I just love the way you taste![1] Uh... I mean, the way your fruit tea tastes."
"..."
Chu Liang responded to each of them with a smile. It seemed that he'd already built a name for himself as a fruit tea seller, but unfortunately, he was already preparing to phase out his fruit tea business.
Chu Liang spread out a small blanket on the ground and set up the little sign he had prepared.
"Promotional event: buy a fruit tea, get a free berry.
"Silver Sword Peak's special Dragon Breath Golden Vein Berries: may nourish women's skin and boost men's sex drive."
Those who had followed Chu Liang over with the intention of buying his fruit tea felt rather baffled when they saw the sign.
"What does this mean? Berry..."
"I'm referring to this fruit," Chu Liang replied. He took out a berry and placed it next to the fruit tea. Then he said with a smile, "Buy a jar of fruit tea, and you'll get a free berry. Try it out."
"Hehe, that sounds good."
Everyone expressed their approval.
After all, they had been planning to buy fruit tea anyway, so it was obviously a better deal with a complimentary gift. Moreover, the free berries looked pretty good; they were nice and plump as well as large.
"Wow, there are different flavors of fruit tea today," someone exclaimed, pleasantly surprised as if they had won the lottery.
The line in front of Chu Liang's stall gradually became a very long queue. After buying the fruit tea, Chu Liang's customers didn't walk far before consuming the Golden Vein Berry in their hand.
"It's so sweet! I've never eaten such a delicious berry before!"
"As expected, it tastes really good, and I can even sense that it has a subtle amount of spiritual energy... There's even a bit of... Is this a dragon's qi?"
"It doesn't have a lot of spiritual energy, but it should indeed be effective for skincare. Moreover, dragon qi can indeed strengthen your qi and blood. It seems these berries truly do have those effects!"
"..."
Following the string of surprised cries, more people gathered around Chu Liang's stall yet again.
"How much are you selling these berries for? I want to buy some more," everyone requested.
Chu Liang smiled, shook his head, and said, "Apologies, the berries are just complimentary gifts today. You can only get them if you buy the fruit tea."
Upon having their request declined, complaints rose among these customers. They couldn't buy any more fruit tea because Chu Liang had placed a purchase limit on it, so there was no way for them to taste those berries again.
Some of them tried to buy the berries from those who had bought fruit tea after them, but the price that they offered for a single berry wasn't appealing enough to entice anyone to make the trade. Instead, it made those who had yet to eat a berry even more curious about its taste, increasing their desire to eat one and find out for themselves.
Before long, Chu Liang had sold all of his fruit tea, but the main topic of conversation being discussed in the market wasn't the fruit tea. Instead, it was the berries.
Purely in terms of the amount of spiritual energy it contained, the Golden Vein Berry certainly wasn't in the same league as treasures of nature like spirit plants and spirit herbs. Nevertheless, Chu Liang hadn't categorized the berries as being in the same vein as those treasures of nature, nor had he boasted that the berries had some miraculous effects.
Chu Liang had categorized the berries as health supplements. If a person were to consume the supplements, they might enjoy some benefits. However, if they didn't consume the supplements, they definitely wouldn't get any benefits. In such a situation, the words on Chu Liang's sign, "may nourish women's skin and boost men's sex drive," were particularly eye-catching. Who could deny themselves of the possibility that those effects could be real?
"Apologies, everyone. Currently, I have a very limited stock of the Dragon Breath Golden Vein Berries, so I can only provide them as complimentary gifts with the fruit tea. However, I'll soon be taking steps to increase my supply, so I'll be selling many more berries here in the future. I hope you'll look forward to it," Chu Liang announced nonchalantly.
After that, he turned and left Red Cotton Peak.
Chu Liang had gotten a good response from the market regarding the Golden Vein Berries. So, the next step in his plan was, just as he'd mentioned to his customers, to increase the supply.
...
If the thorny black balls were to gain a sense of rationality many years later and could remember their history, there would surely be a certain fiend featured in the legends that they passed down.
There was a forest, not far from Mount Shu, that was completely bereft of signs of human habitation. In that desolate forest, the great ancestors of the future thorny black balls were brutally massacred. The name of the fiend who had killed them... was the Great Devil King Chu Liang.
Chu Liang filled the sky with silver swordlights and used them to violently attack the peaceful thorny black balls, who kept themselves isolated from the rest of the world. He pursued them relentlessly, unwilling to let them go.
The thorny black balls had reason to suspect that Chu Liang was a psychopath who amused himself with slaughter. They would never know... that this great devil killed them just because he wanted some seeds.
Despite that seemingly trivial purpose, Chu Liang's serious opinion of these thorny black balls was that they were much more troublesome than lantern monsters. They ran very quickly and were quite agile too.
As soon as Chu Liang killed one of them, the rest of the thorny black balls behind it would immediately treat their back as their front and flee in that direction. Chu Liang chased them into the depths of the forest, where he barely managed to kill over ten of the thorny black balls.
Right when Chu Liang was hesitating between continuing the chase or calling it a day, he suddenly stopped in his tracks. He saw a rather shocking scene in the depths of this dense forest.
In the middle of it was a colossal three-zhang-high black tree, with an extremely thick trunk and sharp branches that sprawled out without restraint. Its thorn-like branches didn't have a single leaf, but they were covered with thorny black balls.
The tree exuded a ghostly qi all over; it was totally unlike a tree in the mortal world. Chu Liang was unsure of the tree's species, so he called it a ghost tree for now.
So, it turns out that the thorny black balls are actually the fruits of this ghost tree?
In that case, it's no wonder the rewards for killing them were seeds. The thorny black balls were plants to begin with!
However, the thorny black balls on the ghost tree's branches didn't have a spiritual nature and were incapable of movement. They were very different from those thorny black balls that were scuttling around in the forest.
If one were to examine the immobile thorny black balls closely, they would realize it was because they lacked a soul.
Chu Liang surmised that when the thorny black balls on the ghost tree's branches matured, they would fuse with a bodiless ghost. Then they would transform into the scuttling thorny black balls that Chu Liang had encountered. Another possibility was that the thorny black balls on the branches needed to fuse with wandering souls to mature.
In any case, this was where the thorny black balls were born.
This tree was a ghost tree. Nonetheless, it was located far from humans and its surroundings were devoid of animal presence, so Chu Liang had no intention of doing anything to it.
Firstly, the ghost tree didn't present any threats, so its presence in this forest was of no consequence. If there was no need for it, Chu Liang had no intention of attacking the ghost tree, which was producing the thorny black balls. In fact, if it wasn't because he had been suddenly attacked in the bee cave, he wouldn't have hastily killed the queen bee, which in turn resulted in the death of his fruit tea business.
Secondly, Chu Liang had a faint feeling that even if he were to take action, he might not be able to defeat the ghost tree. It appeared to be brimming with yin qi. The ghost tree remained deathly still at present, but Chu Liang had no idea what kind of bizarrely powerful strength it might unleash if it were to get enraged.
Of course, if Chu Liang were to return to Mount Shu and inform the sect's elders, they could find a way to deal with this ghost tree. Nevertheless, Chu Liang ultimately chose to leave the tree alone because he wanted to spend more time with the thorny black balls.
During every encounter Chu Liang had had with the thorny black balls, he had appeared as if he wanted to kill every last one of them. However, if he were asked to root them out completely, he would definitely be against it.
That would just be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I'll do anything but that.
1. I guess this person was missing the eye candy. ☜
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