Chapter 3

“The sensory-enhancing herbal bath must be expensive—I’m sure my father worked for nothing this month.” Su Jin frowned, her small brow furrowed with worry.

“Mm-hmm, thirty-five spirit stones per bath. But it guarantees you’ll sense spiritual energy on your first day of cultivation under the instructor’s guidance, and absorb it smoothly to produce your first strand of magic power. Sensing spiritual energy on day one versus later days makes a huge difference in your results.”

“And the higher your score, the more likely you are to earn rewards from the clan school. Maybe you can even recover a few spirit stones for your father’s bath costs.”

“There are rewards in the clan school? Like spirit stones?” Su Jin’s eyes instantly lit up.

“Yes. Top students in your class, or among the top few in your grade, get all kinds of rewards—some are spirit stones, others are spiritual items. In short, all of it’s money.” Su Jian, noticing Su Jin’s sensitivity to spirit stones, immediately devised a subtle incentive plan.

“Then I’m going to take the herbal bath.” Su Jin dashed off at once.

The bath was already prepared—if she didn’t use it, it would be wasted. So this time, she was determined to soak thoroughly and earn back a few spirit stones for her father tomorrow.

Su Jian watched her sprint away with such enthusiasm and smiled along.

He thought: That’s right—children need this kind of drive.

After the herbal bath, Su Jin soaked in a basin of clean water, then pulled out a small jade vial containing the spirit liquid her father had prepared for her.

There were exactly thirty drops inside.

Su Jin dripped one drop into the basin, just enough to turn the water slightly into spirit water.

She then took out the red ginseng seeds she had received today. This packet contained two hundred seeds, all carefully soaked in the basin filled with spirit spring water.

After three or four days, when the seeds sprouted, she would transplant them into the spirit field behind the courtyard.

All the harvest from the three mu of spirit field behind Su Jin’s home belonged to her family alone.

This was tied to how her Su clan had once contributed greatly to the sect in establishing this immortal city. When the Su family first settled here, every household received a courtyard with a small plot of spirit field.

Su Jin’s great-great-grandfather died fighting here, so his descendants were granted a courtyard with three mu of spirit field.

Before she passed away, Su Jin’s mother had specifically left a small patch of land along the edge of the spirit field empty, intending for Su Jin to use it for her school assignments.

After reviewing today’s lessons, Su Jin was about to sleep when she decided to check on the seeds in the basin again.

This time, she noticed that among the uniformly sized red ginseng seeds, one seed was unusually tiny—slimmer than the others by at least three or four rounds.

“Is this… a seed that never properly developed?” Su Jin picked it up.

Holding the seed, she felt it lacked vitality—it didn’t stir with the eager urge to sprout like the other seeds after soaking in spirit spring water.

It seemed to want nothing but to keep sleeping.

It wasn’t even clear if this thing would sprout at all!

“That won’t do at all.” She’d just brought the seeds home, and now one was already falling behind—how could she complete her class assignment?

Su Jin thought for a moment, then decided to give the tiny seed a little boost.

She found an empty flowerpot on the windowsill, planted the seed inside, then snapped her fingers. A pale golden light shot from her brow and settled over the pot, forming a hemispherical shield three feet in diameter at the base.

With the shield in place, Su Jin clearly sensed the tiny seed shifting—from wanting to sleep, to wanting to wake up.

Su Jin had a feeling the seed would sprout by morning.

Hehe, her little Wu Tian was truly a precious thing that accelerated spiritual plant growth.

Cough cough, Su Jin’s mother possessed the bloodline of an ancient Wood Witch; legend says the Witches were primordial immortals of humanity who, in ancient times, walked their own cultivation path by observing heaven and earth.

In this world, folk tales abound, many of them tied to the Witches.

For reasons unknown, the Witches vanished long ago—but their bloodline endured.

Su Jin’s mother came from a Wood Witch tribe deep in the mountains, marrying into the Su family through alliance.

Su Jin inherited her mother’s bloodline, and from birth, she was born with a small space tied to her—the Wood Witch’s “Little Wu Tian.”

This Little Wu Tian, it is said, only manifests in descendants with strong Witch bloodlines—a gift bestowed by the primordial Great Witches.

But the ancient era is so distant from now.

The Little Wu Tian of ancient Witch descendants reportedly emerged with three or four mu of space and stood one or two zhang tall. But Su Jin’s awakened Little Wu Tian, at birth, was only one foot in diameter and one foot high.

After six years of nurturing, its base had grown to only three feet in diameter, and its height to three feet.

The moment Su Jin learned to speak and communicate with her mother, she showed her this little toy.

Her mother burst out laughing.

She never imagined her child’s Little Wu Tian would be this tiny.

If her bloodline wasn’t strong, why did she have a Little Wu Tian at all? But if it was strong, why was it so small?

After much thought, Su Jin’s mother abandoned the idea of taking her daughter back to her maternal clan to show the last remaining Witch elder.

Forget it—the Witches are utterly extinct. Let her daughter follow the current path of cultivation.

Still, this was a birthright of the Wood Witches. This little shield, no matter where placed, if planted with spiritual plants on soil, accelerated their growth—and it grew with the child. A cultivable, growing space was still a fine treasure.

Having settled the seed, Su Jin crawled into her small quilt and fell asleep quickly.

In her dream, a massive star shimmering with blue light drew ever closer to her.

In her dream, she lay on a green meadow, peacefully basking in the star’s radiance as she slept.

No matter how exhausted or drained she was the night before,

as long as she slept well, Su Jin would wake up the next morning fully restored, brimming with energy.

She even felt that being bathed in this light every night made her a little smarter each day.

But tonight, as Su Jin slept, something unusual happened.

Her Little Wu Tian had somehow slipped into her dream—and had taken root beside her.

It raised a small golden shield. Half-asleep, Su Jin sensed something breaking through the soil beneath that shield.

Overcome by drowsiness, she didn’t question how the Little Wu Tian had entered her dream—she simply fell asleep.