Chapter 42

One day half a month later, Song Qingming was making talismans at home when a voice requesting an audience from Song Qinghe suddenly came from outside the door.

Hearing this, Song Qingming hurriedly put down the talisman brush in his hand, put away the unfinished talisman-making materials, tidied up the desktop, and welcomed Song Qinghe in.

Seeing Song Qingming, Song Qinghe didn't beat around the bush and asked directly: "Qingming, I don't know if you have any magic tools for setting up a Spirit Gathering Formation on you now. In a mountain hollow on the west side of the Black Iron Mine these past two days, I discovered a place with very abundant spiritual energy, and there happens to be a spring eye on the side. I want to cultivate a few mu of spiritual fields there. Can you take action to help me set up a Spirit Gathering Formation?"

After Song Qinghe arrived at Mount Lingyuan, contrary to his usual behavior, he didn't go into closed-door cultivation all day, but instead wandered around Mount Lingyuan everywhere. Song Qingming looked at it somewhat strangely but didn't ask much. Only now did he know that he originally wanted to open up some spiritual fields here.

The Song family also had dozens of mu of spiritual fields on Mount Funiu, which could produce over ten thousand jin of spiritual rice every year. Thirty percent of these spiritual rice had to be handed over to the Xiaoyao Sect, and thirty percent had to be handed over to the main family, the Huang family. The Song family could only keep forty percent.

Apart from supporting the twenty-something cultivators in the family, they could also have a surplus of about two thousand jin or so. The Song family put these spiritual rice into Qinghe Marketplace, and every year they could create a profit of over two hundred spirit stones for the Song family, which could also be considered one of the Song family's important sources of wealth now.

"Seeing you wandering around to relax these past few days, I thought you weren't used to living here. So you were just unable to stay idle. It just so happens that I have a set of formation flags on me. I'll go with you to take a look in a while. Rest assured, the matter of setting up the formation will be left to me."

A Spirit Gathering Formation is an ordinary formation that gathers spiritual energy from spiritual veins, generally set up in spiritual fields and spiritual medicine gardens. Some cultivators also specifically set them up in their cultivation caves to facilitate having sufficient spiritual energy when breaking through cultivation or cultivation techniques.

The difficulty of setting up a Spirit Gathering Formation is not high. A low-tier formation master like Song Qingming could easily set it up. When he was still on Mount Lingyuan, he often helped other cultivators in the clan set up such formations, and he also kept a few sets of such formation flags on him.

Song Qingming followed his Sixth Brother and soon arrived at a mountain hollow not far to the west of the Black Iron Mine. This mountain hollow was located on the waist of the mountain on the right side of the mine, and from a high vantage point, one could just see the entire Black Iron Mine vein.

This place was several dozen zhang high from the bottom of the mine mountain, and the mountain wall was very steep. Ordinary mortals couldn't come up at all without relying on external force. Even those dozen or so innate martial arts masters with some cultivation techniques would be somewhat dangerous if they wanted to climb up.

Song Qinghe being able to find this place showed that he had put in a lot of effort in the dozen or so days since he arrived at Mount Lingyuan.

The mountain hollow was a triangular platform, only slightly higher at the sharp corner, about twenty zhang in size, and there was also a stream flowing slowly through it.

Spring water seeped out from the mountain crack at the sharp corner of the mountain hollow day and night, dripping and dripping, forming a thin, clear stream that flowed between the weeds and thorns on the rugged mountain rocks. After passing through the center of the mountain hollow, it fell along the cliff and finally gathered into Yueyahu several miles away.

Song Qingming carefully felt the spiritual energy of this place, which was indeed more abundant than at the foot of the mountain. As long as the platform was tidied up slightly, it was enough to open up two mu of spiritual fields.

Taking out five three-inch-sized formation flags from his storage bag, Song Qingming buried these formation flags separately three feet underground in several places on the platform, and then took out a first-tier formation disk and placed it in the center of the platform.

After casting a set of magic formulas, there was a fluctuation of spiritual energy on the platform ground, and the spiritual energy of the entire mountain was slowly guided by the Spirit Gathering Formation to surge toward this platform.

It wasn't until an hour later that the spiritual energy slowly stabilized. The two of them buried a dozen spirit stones into the ground where the spiritual fields were to be opened. After waiting for a month for the Spirit Gathering Formation to slowly refine the spirit stones here, the land here would seep into spiritual energy and become a first-tier low-quality spiritual field.

After ordinary land becomes a spiritual field, it can be used to plant spiritual items such as spiritual rice. Spiritual fields have abundant spiritual energy, which can also shorten the maturation time of spiritual items.

Spiritual fields, like spiritual veins, also have levels of high and low. Like the lowest-tier first-tier low-quality spiritual fields that Song Qingming and the two refined, plus the care of spiritual plant masters, they could only shorten the maturation time of spiritual items by ten or twenty percent. If they could be directly planted on second-tier spiritual fields, they could at least shorten the maturation time of spiritual items by thirty percent.

Low-quality spiritual fields can only plant some spiritual rice and spiritual herbs that are relatively easy to mature. Low-tier spiritual rice matures about once a year and is the spiritual item that is easiest to obtain income from in spiritual fields. It is a type of spiritual item that all low-tier spiritual plant masters in the cultivation world like to plant.

Other first-tier spiritual herbs or spiritual medicines generally take over three years to mature. Planting some along with spiritual fields, after a long time, will also be a quite good income.

The Song family's spiritual fields on Mount Funiu only dared to plant some first-tier spiritual rice and medicinal herbs. After all, planting high-value spiritual items often attracts the prying eyes of other high-tier cultivators. Without sufficient strength to guard them, even if you have spiritual medicine seeds, you still wouldn't dare to plant them on a large scale, otherwise, you would easily be targeted and bring about the disaster of extermination. In Qinghe County, only those few Foundation Establishment families dared to cultivate some second-tier spiritual medicines at home.

Spiritual trees and medicinal herbs in the cultivation world are all divided into grades according to their age. Those with a medicinal age of within two hundred years are first-tier spiritual medicines, those over two hundred to one thousand years are second-tier spiritual medicines, and those over one thousand to two thousand years are third-tier spiritual medicines. There are not many places in the entire State of Wei that can plant third-tier or higher spiritual medicines. It is said that the Xiaoyao Sect's spiritual medicine garden also stores a fourth-tier spiritual medicine that is already over two thousand years old.

After Song Qinghe opened up this spiritual field, he also became busy. With Song Qingming's help, the two spent a few days opening up a dozen-zhang-long staircase on the mountain wall, which would be convenient for the mortals below to come up in the future. To cultivate spiritual fields, relying on cultivators alone would definitely not be enough. They also had to use some mortals to help do some trivial matters. The Song family's dozens of mu of spiritual fields on Mount Funiu also used hundreds of mortals to help cultivate.

It took a day to move two mortal families from Yueyahu to the platform to help Song Changqing manage the spiritual fields here. Being able to help the immortal master cultivate fields made the two mortal families selected very happy. In the future, following the immortal master, as long as they were diligent and tried their best to work, maybe one day they would be able to get some rewards of immortal spiritual items.

After the spiritual energy in the spiritual fields stabilized, Song Qinghe opened up a new cave on the side of the mountain on the platform, moved directly from the mine vein at the foot of the mountain to the platform. Apart from needing to patrol the mine vein daily, he basically stayed on the platform on weekdays, apart from cultivation, he was busy in the spiritual fields.

After Song Qingming helped him set up the Spirit Gathering Formation, he soon received the dozen or so spirit stones Song Qinghe used to purchase this Spirit Gathering Formation. Although Song Qinghe broke through to the fourth layer of Qi Mount Mount Lianhua later than Song Qingming, he didn't have the embarrassed look Song Qingming had just after breaking through at all.

The reason for this was that he had a cultivator father to help him. Song Qinghe was the son of Second Uncle Song Changwu. After embarking on the path of cultivation, although his spiritual root talent was very poor, he had never lacked resources for cultivation. He himself was also a spiritual plant master. On weekdays, relying on helping the family manage spiritual fields, he could earn some spirit stones, and coupled with his father's subsidy, his life was much better than those brothers of Song Qingming who had to rely entirely on themselves.

Although Song Qinghe invested a cost of dozens of spirit stones to refine these two mu of spiritual fields, as long as he cultivated spiritual items with heart for a few years, once the quality of the spiritual fields stabilized, even if he left this place and sold the spiritual fields to others or handed them over directly to the family, he would also be able to obtain a quite considerable income.

For a profession like a spiritual plant master, it was still relatively easy to earn spirit stones in the early stages. Whether it was planting spiritual items or cultivating new spiritual fields, they were all very stable sources of income.

It was just that spiritual plant masters generally hid in spiritual fields all year round, were not good at fighting or hunting monster beasts, and their combat power would be a cut lower than other cultivators. Most cultivators who chose this profession were people who could endure loneliness.

(End of chapter)