Chapter 54: Hide and Seek

The herb farm is more than ten miles away from the Herb Valley. In order to seize the time to plant medicinal herbs, houses were also built on the Herb Valley side, and the laborers ate and lived here.

It was still a large dormitory, and it was the kind where dozens of people lived in one room.

After working for a day, 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 middle, and earthen kangs (heated brick beds) laid on both the left and right sides. The kangs were two meters wide and fifteen meters long.

The temperature in the valley was still relatively low, especially in the morning and evening, so the positions against the inside were all occupied, and only the positions against the door and the window were still empty.

Hua Changxi had not been afraid of the cold since she was a child, and after she started cultivating, she was even less afraid. Seeing that more moonlight came through the window on the left, she decided to sleep in the position against the window on the left kang.

The bedding and sheets were ready-made and had a strong musty and strange smell; she didn't know how many people had used them.

There were too many people in the room, so Hua Changxi couldn't use the Cleansing Technique and could only fold the bedding and put it in the corner of the kang.

After tidying up, Hua Changxi went out of the room, preparing to fetch water for a simple wash. When entering and leaving the room, she sensed someone looking at her.

At first, she thought it was those male laborers who wanted to take advantage of her looking at her, but when she seized the opportunity to look back, she found that it was actually the one-armed man.

Knowing that the one-armed man was observing her, the alarm bells in Hua Changxi's heart rang. Only then did she suddenly realize that the one-armed man's reaction to seeing her was too calm.

This was not normal!

She had broken the one-armed man's pressure in the Medical Department's warehouse. Meeting again, even if the one-armed man didn't retaliate, he shouldn't have had no reaction to her at all.

The only explanation was that the one-armed man had shifted his attention to her into the shadows.

Was the one-armed man monitoring her?

Also, if she encountered someone who could compete with her again, she would also observe them in secret for a period of time.

Hua Changxi returned to the room, worried.

She didn't know how long the one-armed man would monitor her. With him watching her, how could she search for the Origin Spirit Grass?

Hua Changxi didn't want to lie on the foul-smelling kang. She had previously planned to sit cross-legged and cultivate, but now with the one-armed man watching her, she didn't dare to have any unusual behavior and could only endure the discomfort, forcing herself to lie on the kang.

The moonlight spilled onto her body. Hua Changxi slowly calmed her mood, stopped worrying about the one-armed man outside the room, closed her eyes, and began to run the Bird Breathing and Exhalation Method.

She discovered that when cultivating in the Herb Valley, the spiritual energy flowed particularly smoothly, and the cultivation speed was much faster.

A night passed, and Hua Changxi woke up to the sound of others talking. She took a look at the data: 【Realm: Qi Sea Realm 1850/】.

Improving by more than 100 realm points in one night was several times faster than in the Laborer Hall.

In the following days, Hua Changxi worked while secretly observing the one-armed man, discovering that he came down from the mountain in the west and entered the Herb Valley at the fourth quarter of the Si hour (10:00) every day, and left the Herb Valley to enter the mountain in the west at the beginning of the Xu hour (19:00).

This was his overt trajectory. In secret, every day during the Zi hour stage at night, he would come down from the Xishan and patrol the Herb Valley in secret, especially looking at the dormitory where she was.

After discovering this pattern, one night, when the one-armed man came down the mountain to patrol again, Hua Changxi quietly followed behind him and entered the mountain to the west of the Herb Valley together.

Knowing that there was a Grandmaster sitting in the Herb Valley, she didn't dare to follow too closely. From afar, she saw the one-armed man arrive at a stone cliff on the mountainside of the Xishan.

In front of the stone cliff was a flat stone platform, and behind it was a stone cave.

On the stone platform, a gray-clothed old man sat cross-legged facing the moon.

Hua Changxi guessed that this old man should be the Grandmaster surnamed You.

"Is he cultivating?"

Hua Changxi was somewhat helpless because she was from a wild background and didn't know how to judge whether others were practitioners.

"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 get it wrong?"

"A person who can withstand the pressure of a seventh-rank martial artist but goes to be a laborer, this matter itself is not normal. Now that she has been punished to come to the Herb Valley, she doesn't make a fuss or think about leaving. The more composed that little girl is, the greater her plans. Keep watching; see what she actually wants to do."

Master You looked at the bright moon in the sky: "Besides medicinal herbs, what else is worth her coveting here in the Herb Valley?"

Hua Changxi listened to the conversation between the two, and her heart was not calm.

It turns out that in the eyes of smart people, her behavior was full of flaws everywhere.

Watching the one-armed man sit down beside Master You and also begin to sit cross-legged in meditation, Hua Changxi quietly retreated back to the Herb Valley.

Knowing that the Grandmaster and the one-armed man were monitoring her, Hua Changxi was not completely passive; she was also counter-monitoring the two.

Because the Herb Valley was very large and everyone was scattered far apart, Hua Changxi used the one-armed man's movement trajectory to avoid his monitoring and investigated the Herb Valley several times.

Unfortunately, she never found the Origin Spirit Grass.

At noon on the thirteenth of the third month, Hua Changxi returned from the fields for lunch and found that the one-armed man was actually not there.

This was rare. The one-armed man was a very serious and responsible person, and he was quite conscientious when patrolling the Herb Valley, never being late or leaving early. Why did he neglect his duty today?

"Why isn't Master Guo here?"

Hua Changxi asked the female laborer beside her casually, because she had helped the female laborer plant herb seedlings, and this person had taken good care of her these days.

"The day after tomorrow is the fifteenth."

"On the fifteenth of every month, Master You has to send herbs to the Medical Department. Master Guo should have gone to help Master You pick herbs."

Hua Changxi looked surprised: "What herbs need to be sent on the fifteenth of every month?"

The female laborer shook her head: "I don't know about that."

Hua Changxi couldn't continue to inquire, quickly finished her lunch, went to the steward to collect the herb seedlings to be planted in the afternoon, and then walked away quickly.

Placing the herb seedlings in the herb field she was responsible for, Hua Changxi didn't work but ran the Lingbo Micro-steps and quietly entered the Xishan.

During this time in the Herb Valley, because of playing hide-and-seek with the one-armed man, her Lingbo Micro-steps became more and more handy. Once spiritual energy gathered in her feet, she could run a hundred meters away in an instant.

Hua Changxi first arrived at the mountainside, didn't see anyone on the stone cliff, and didn't dare to rashly investigate the stone cave, so she could only wander around nearby.

After wandering around a few times, besides discovering some medicinal herbs needed by martial artists, she found nothing else.

Hua Changxi was unwilling to come for a trip and gain nothing, so she turned back to the stone cliff side.

"Why would the Grandmaster choose to live here?"

"Just because there is a stone cave here?"

The stone cave was installed with a stone door, and at this moment the stone door was tightly closed, so she couldn't go in to investigate, so Hua Changxi wandered around outside for a circle.

This turn immediately discovered the problem.

The spiritual energy here was so dense!

After starting cultivation, she had been thinking about a question: where did the spiritual energy come from?

Hua Changxi stood on the stone platform, closed her eyes, and ran the Bird Breathing and Exhalation Method. After perceiving the distribution of spiritual energy density around her, she immediately opened her eyes.

Hua Changxi walked to the edge of the stone cliff and leaned over to look down.

Just running the cultivation method, she discovered that the spiritual energy at the bottom of the stone cliff was the densest.

The stone cliff was not straight down but had an inclination of about twenty degrees. Looking from top to bottom, it was bottomless.

Hua Changxi weighed her own strength and felt that with the Lingbo Micro-steps she had mastered now, she could go down to investigate the truth.

Although Hua Changxi was not afraid of heights, when she thought about jumping down, her heart still felt tight, and she couldn't help but hesitate. But when she thought about how Master You usually guarded the stone cliff, if she didn't go down when he was away, she was afraid it would be hard to find an opportunity later.

Thinking this way, Hua Changxi didn't hesitate anymore, jumped down, stepped on the cliff wall with both feet, and ran rapidly toward the bottom.

Although there was the cliff wall to borrow force, Hua Changxi still felt like she was doing a free-fall movement, and her legs ran as fast as wind-fire wheels.

At this time, Hua Changxi couldn't help but think that it would be good if she could control a sword or ride the clouds and mist.

It seemed like a long time had passed, and it seemed like only a blink of an eye, Hua Changxi saw the bottom of the cliff.

Because she couldn't control her speed, Hua Changxi hit the ground heavily in a prostrate position.

Hua Changxi was thrown into a grimace, her facial features distorted, and it took a while before she recovered and climbed up tremblingly.

The next moment, seeing the countless spiritual plants growing at the bottom of the cliff, the pain in her body was instantly healed.

Although these spiritual plants were all first-order spiritual plants, it still made Hua Changxi very excited.

"Master, what exactly are these fruits?"

"I don't know either."

"Master, the disciple sees that these fruits are fragrant..."

"What, do you want to eat?"

"Eating one or two, those above shouldn't know, right."

"Do you know what happened to the last person who had the same idea as you?"

"Killed by those above?"

"No, those above didn't even know he stole the fruit. But he still died. Within less than a breath of taking the fruit, he exploded and died."

"Ah~"

"That person was your senior brother, an eighth-rank martial artist."

"What, senior brother is dead!"

"Dead without a whole corpse. It's all because I was greedy; your senior brother was testing the medicine for me. You think why those above are so relieved to leave the Herb Valley for me to guard? Because these treasure herbs, I can watch but cannot eat; eating one is death!"

"How could it be like this?"

"......"

Hua Changxi listened to the conversation coming from far to near, her expression changed, and she hurriedly waved a spiritual energy. A gust of wind blew, blowing away the traces of where she landed, and then she flashed and hid in the grass a hundred meters away.

Soon, the figures of Master You and the one-armed man appeared in Hua Changxi's line of sight.

The two didn't find Hua Changxi and left the bottom of the cliff by stepping on the cliff wall.

Once they left, Hua Changxi raced against time to investigate the bottom of the cliff.

The one-armed man went up and would soon go to patrol the Herb Valley, so she had to rush back before he went to the Herb Valley.

Hua Changxi didn't care about the other spiritual plants at the bottom of the cliff and only focused on searching for the Origin Spirit Grass. Finally, she saw patches of Origin Spirit Grass in the southeast direction.

Besides the first-order Origin Spirit Grass, there were actually second-order Origin Spirit Grasses.

"Bang!"

The Shennong Cauldron was summoned, and Hua Changxi began to collect the Origin Spirit Grass rapidly. Every time she picked one, she would use the spell to seal the medicinal properties and spiritual energy of the pill, sealing the spiritual energy of the Origin Spirit Grass.

Hua Changxi planned to leave when the Shennong Cauldron was full, but who would have thought that hundreds of second-order Origin Spirit Grasses were all picked by her, and the Shennong Cauldron was not yet full.

"This....."

Hua Changxi didn't have time to investigate what was going on with the Shennong Cauldron and quickly collected the first-order Origin Spirit Grass again.

She didn't dare to pick too many, worried that Master You and the one-armed man would discover something unusual, so she stopped after picking three hundred first-order Origin Spirit Grasses.

Withdrawing the Shennong Cauldron, Hua Changxi prepared to leave the bottom of the cliff, but when she turned around, she saw a jujube tree, and the tree was full of red jujubes.

Seeing the jujubes, Hua Changxi's saliva began to overflow.

"Whoosh~"

A spiritual energy passed, and thousands of jujubes fell from under the tree with a 'swish, swish, swish'.

Hua Changxi summoned the Shennong Cauldron again, a whirlwind blew up, gathered the jujubes into a pile, and quickly loaded them into the Shennong Cauldron.

Not daring to stay any longer, Hua Changxi poured spiritual energy into her legs and climbed up rapidly, stepping on the cliff wall. ===== CHAPTER 55 =====