Carrying a Hoe to Cultivate

On the next day, they were missing Kirin so much that the couple were on their way back to Qi Shan right after dinner.

Mother Xia was standing in the yard, holding Xia Yi’s hand. Her eyes reddened. Xia Yi hurried and comforted her, “Mother. I will be back very soon. Don’t be upset.”

“Who’s upset? I never want you making all the fuss in front of me.” Although she was saying so, she still held Xia Yi’s hand tightly, not wanting to let go.

Seeing Xia Yi’s eyes peeking at the house every now and then, she sighed, “Just go. Your father will be alright shortly. Just don’t find him now. That will make him think too much.”

Xia Yi nodded and said gloomily, “Okay.”

Seeing Gu Wen Zhu’s spear was already in the air, Xia Yi thus released his mother’s hands and prepared to ride the magical item.

“Wait.” His mother cried. Then, she pulled out a square wooden box about the size of the palm and tucked it into Xia Yi’s hands. She gave a meaningful look towards Gu Wen Zhu, “Give him this.”

“What’s this?” The style of the box was ancient. It was heavy. He wanted to open the box out of curiosity but was stopped by his mother.

“This is for him. Let him open it. Don’t you do it before he does.”

Xia Yi put the box in his clothes, then he bent over to hug his mother, landing his head on her shoulder and swaying with her the same way when he was a child, “Mother, I am going. Please talk to father for me. Don’t let him get mad. We will be back to see you very soon.”

“Go, just go. Don’t waste your time here.” Mother Xia urged impatiently, but turned to wipe her eyes with her sleeve discreetly.

“Mother. We will leave now. After some days, I, your son-in-law, shall bring Yi to meet you.” Gu Wen Zhu pulled Xia Yi onto the spear, saying loudly to his mother.

Mother Xia’s face went stony.

In view of Mother Xia not paying him attention, Gu Wen Zhu smiled bitterly. With his will, the magical item began to float upwards.

“You are the daughter-in-law. Alright? Not son-in-law.” Seeing the magical item flying higher, Mother Xia talked loudly upwards, “I handed the token meant for our family’s daughter-in-law to Yi. He will give it to you.”

Upon hearing her words, Gu Wen Zhu froze, then he grinned happily, answering in a loud voice, “Yes. I know. Mother.”

His voice was loud and clear.

As the magical item was elevating in the air, Xia Yi recalled that box while he was waving to his mother. He swiftly took it out from his clothes. Carefully, he opened the cover of the box to see a piece of magenta flannel cloth. He lifted the cloth carefully and saw a phoenix jade hairpin designed for women.

He could tell its good quality just by looking at it. It shined warmly. It was transparent and flawless. Under the sunlight, it was as if there was light floating inside it. Inside the beak of the complicatedly designed phoenix was a shiny white pearl as large as a longan.

“Wow… My mother is really generous. This must be our family treasure.” Xia Yi was admiring the hairpin and wanting to pick it up to look at it closely, but Gu Wen Zhu grabbed the box from him.

Gu Wen Zhu carefully placed the flannel cloth back on and closed the box. After ensuring the box was safely in his clothes, he felt the box with his hand to make sure again that it was there and it would not fall out, “This is a gift from your mother. I must bring it back and keep it safe.”

Xia Yi could not help but laugh, “This is a gift from the mother-in-law to her daughter-in-law. Why don’t you take it out and put it on your head?”

Gu Wen Zhu laughed as well, “How can I put it on so casually? This is your mother’s love. She had been placing this in the house, waiting for her son to get married, and let you give it to your wife in person.”

Xia Yi immediately looked at the ground with a gloomy face.

Meanwhile, the two had risen to a high level in the sky. The houses underneath became smaller and smaller. Since Xia Yi’s eyesight had become so much better now, he could instantly see the couple of figures looking up into the sky longingly in the yard of the magistrate’s house.

It was father.

Xia Yi felt his nose getting sore and his eyes were starting to swell. Although he knew that people from the ground could only vaguely see a spot when they saw him, he still tried to wave his hands and shouted loudly, “Father. Mother. I will come back to see you after a while.”

Gu Wen Zhu pulled him into his arms and patted his back to comfort him.

The magical item rose into the clouds. They could no longer see the House of Wang Zhong. The spear speeded up and flew towards Qi Shan Sect. They were not in a hurry on their way back. They halted from time to time to see if there were some places with spectacular views, and they just descended to go sightseeing.

Bit by bit, they left the plains. Now there were mountains everywhere underneath them. The gigantic mountains were rough, unique and in layers. Everywhere was dense emerald green. There had been rain in some places. The water drops on the leaves reflected the sunlight. When the two passed the mountain tops, their views would be blinded by the colorful light.

If it happened, they would directly land to walk hand in hand. They sightsaw and they walked. The sky had darkened shortly, but they still had not met halfway. And so they just picked a dry and open place, prepared to rest for the night and continued their journey the next day.

Gu Wen Zhu let Xia Yi sit and wait for a while, and he himself went into the woods. Not long after, he was back with two chickens and a rabbit. There was a stream nearby, clean and clear. Gu Wen Zhu took the chickens and the rabbit to the streamside, defurring, cutting and cleaning up. Then he turned that hoe into a spear. He used it to carve a circle on a big rock with the slightest effort. After taking out the part in the middle, the rock had become a clean stone pot.

He got back to the open land to start a fire. Placing the stone pot on a shelf, Gu Wen Zhu began to boil the chicken meat and cooked them efficiently. The rabbit had been pierced through with the spear and placed on the shelf to roast it with fire. He then pulled out, from his clothes, a porcelain bottle which was likely to have cores inside it. He removed the bottle stopper and began to pour wine into the stone pot.

“Zhu. What is that?” Xia Yi asked curiously.

“I was afraid of you not getting used to the bland taste of food when we were out in the wild. When I came out, I filled up the bottle with some sauces.” Gu Wen Zhu was turning the rabbit and answering at the same time.

“I will go and look around again, see if there are any fungi or vegetables and stew them with the chicken. That would smell really good.” Gu Wen Zhu thus stood up to find mushrooms after saying so, Xia Yi hurriedly called out to stop him.

“179. Take two fruits of the heavens and Muge out. I am stewing some chickens.” Xia Yi told the system.

“Hm?” Stupefied for a second, the system then realised he was referring to radishes and onions.

The chicken was boiling in the stone pot with an alluring aroma of meat. Xia Yi gave Gu Wen Zhu the radishes and the onions, “Zhu. Don’t go. Use this.”

Gu Wen Zhu took the items and observed them repeatedly. He asked with hesitation, “This round thing, isn’t this the Muge that Elder Liu was talking about? It seems so special.”

“Go on and eat it.” Xia Yi turned the rabbit to roast the other side on top of the fire, “We have a lot of these at home. You sold a cart of these to the military camp last time.”

“A cart of these to the military camp?” Gu Wen Zhu was puzzled. He looked at the onion in his hands carefully, “But I don’t recall selling such things, I have never seen them before.” He saw Xia Yi not answering but gave him a mysterious smile in return, Gu Wen Zhu’s eyes brightened up instantly, “This is the vegetables from our lands. Their appearances have changed since we transmigrated here, just like Kirin?”

“Good thinking.” Xia Yi praised, “This is our onions.”

After saying so, Xia Yi laughed out loud merrily. “Our onions have become Muge on this side.”

“Where have you been storing those?” Gu Wen Zhu asked curiously, eyeing Xia Yi all over.

Xia Yi knocked his head straightly, “Stop thinking about it. Don’t you know better if I can store it on me? However, this is a secret. Don’t you ask about it.”

“Alright. I am not asking anymore.” Gu Wen Zhu smiled, and he really stopped asking.

179 sighed in relief in Xia Yi’s mind.

Gu Wen Zhu used his finger as a knife to initiate a light cut on the radish. The radishes were cut into small pieces by the wind created by his finger. He then put them into the pot and stew them with the chickens. He also cut the onions and stuffed them into the roasted rabbit.

Not long after, the rabbit and the chickens were ready. The couple sat beside the stone pot and began to eat the rabbit meat and drink the chicken soup. The chicken soup was very tasty with the freshness of the radishes. The rabbit, its skin roasted to a golden color, was crusty on the outside and tender on the inside. In no time, all the meat and soup, including those radishes and onions, had been devoured by the two.

After finishing the meal, the last light had disappeared between the mountains. The sky was all dark. Drops of rain began to fall from the sky some time later. Seeing the scale of the rain becoming larger, Xia Yi’s hair and shoulder becoming all wet, Gu Wen Zhu was about to find some bigger leaves in the woods to roof them.

Xia Yi pulled him back, “You do not have to go. I have a house.” He looked around and took out his half-finished winter gourd magical item.

When he saw a green winter gourd house appearing out of nowhere, Gu Wen Zhu, astonished, asked Xia Yi, “Yi. What’s this? Your magical item?”

Xia Yi felt that his magical item was nothing when compared with Gu Wen Zhu’s. It was difficult for him to say it out loud. So he answered vaguely, “This is not even close to a magical item. It’s a, um, a tent, a house that can be moved from place to place.”

But the rain stopped as soon as the winter gourd house was out.

The moon had risen above the branches of the trees. The autumn bugs began to chirp. Xia Yi leaned onto Gu Wen Zhu’s chest. The two hugged each other and sat on a huge stone on the cliff. He closed his eyes, feeling the soft wind brushing onto his face, listening to the sounds in the night.

It was as if his sense had been sharpened to an extreme. Apart from the sound of wind, water, the trees rustling and all kinds of animals and insects, he could also hear the sound of the flowers and the grass. The root and the stem of the plants, lively and full of energy, were growing and pushing outwards from under the ground. There were as if different frequencies around him, strange sounds from the sky, from beneath the ground, from nature, from space.

Xia Yi was thunderstruck. He thus sluggishly opened his eyes. He was about to tell Gu Wen Zhu about his weirdest feelings, but the scene in front of him shocked him so much that he could not say a word. He saw countless spots of light surrounding him and Gu Wen Zhu, floating slightly in the air. They were as if surrounded by millions of stardust, or countless numbers of fireflies.

He did not know how long those lights had been there. Those lights had become a strip of light, floating and surrounding the two slowly. Everything in his view, including the cliff, the ground, the trees, the flowers and the grass, even the mountains and the streams, were all having these spots of light rising up from them and moving their way towards the two of them.

Xia Yi stared at the strange view speechlessly. He wanted to call Zhu but felt that something was not quite right. Normally, Gu Wen Zhu would have known already if there was something strange. Instead, he was not saying a thing and he kept sitting there holding him.

Xia Yi immediately turned to see Gu Wen Zhu sitting there with closed eyes. Then he exhaled in relief. His chest was moving up and down. His breath was calm. He seemed like having a small break but also seemed like meditating. Then he realized what was wrong. The stripe of light formed by the spots of light floated and twisted towards Gu Wen Zhu and went into his body, as if there was some magnetic force.

The sleeves of Gu Wen Zhu’s were also swaying vigorously even though there was no wind.

The sleeves were flying as if blown by strong wind.

“179. 179. What’s going on with Zhu?” Xia Yi called out to the system in panic, “Take a look at him quickly.”

“Don’t panic. Host. Gu Wen Zhu is only entering the cultivating meditation mode without noticing. He is absorbing the spiritual energy from the heavens and the earth and synthesizing them into his.” 179 swiftly replied, “Don’t bother him. Just protect him.”

Cultivation. Cultivation. This is cultivation.

Xia Yi was puzzled and excited at the same time. As soon as he heard that Gu Wen Zhu should not be interrupted, even his voice conversing with 179 in his mind had been lowered and turned into whispers, “179. These spots of light are spiritual energy and these are becoming Zhu’s energy?”

“Ah. Nope. These have no effects on his sexual ability.”

“I am panicking. I want him to have more, but I also want him to finish earlier.”

“It is impossible to make him ejaculate early.” 179 answered seriously, whispering.

Xia Yi was shocked. What had this system been thinking all day long? With more and more light rising from the mountains, and there were even spots of light coming a long way from the other end of the sky, Xia Yi began to become more anxious.

Gu Wen Zhu was like a huge air exhauster right now, all the light strips had been absorbed into him without limitation, and the process was speeding up. Xia Yi stared at Gu Wen Zhu without blinking, wanting to see the change on his face. If something was wrong with Gu Wen Zhu, if he showed a painful expression, he would shake him and wake him up right away with no hesitation.

Going off the deep end might even be better than this, being blown up by this spiritual energy and becoming human fireworks. But the look on Gu Wen Zhu’s face was calm with a vague soft glow. It was like a layer of photoshopped effect. His nose was straight under a layer of blurriness. His hair was dark and black, making his outline more distinguished.

Waiting anxiously, Xia Yi was not in the state of mind to appreciate the beautiful scene in front of him. He waited eagerly for Gu Wen Zhu to awake from his meditation state. An unknown amount of time had passed. He only knew that the sky had become brighter with whiteness appearing at the far end of the sky.

Xia Yi was sitting opposite Gu Wen Zhu. He had been looking at him all night. He did not go to the toilet nor change his position once. Just when he wanted to ask 179 about how much time was further needed, he heard Gu Wen Zhu exhale a breath of uncleanness and slowly opened his eyes.

At the moment he opened his eyes, there was light in his eyes, shadows moved around in his eyes and hid away. Xia Yi was stunned, then he shouted loudly, “Zhu. You are awake.” He pounced on him with a surprised expression.

He did not know he would feel stiff in his bones and sore in his muscles. He could not tell if his legs were cold or numb because they almost lost sensation. Therefore, his pouncing did not land on Gu Wen Zhu but made him fall onto the ground instead.

Xia Yi expected himself to hit the ground but, instead, he fell into a warm hug. He did not even see Gu Wen Zhu move, and he had already been there beside him to hold him in a split second.

Gu Wen Zhu had Xia Yi in his arms. He could feel that his clothes had been wet by dew, cold and damp. He hurried and used his spiritual energy to evaporate the moisture around him.

The temperature in the mountains varied largely from day and night. Even though Xia Yi had been nervous all night long and had not noticed the coldness, when he was finally relaxed now, he felt the cool temperature abruptly and began to shiver.

Trembling, he buried his head against Gu Wen Zhu’s chest, asking, “Zhu. How does it feel? Nothing abnormal?”

Gu Wen Zhu hugged him affectionately, with a self-condemned expression. Looking around, he carried Xia Yi in his arms and went inside the winter gourd house on the side.

There was a tapestry on the floor inside the winter gourd. It was warm and dry inside, with a sweetness of vegetables and fruits lingering in the air. Gu Wen Zhu kneeled on the ground and placed him onto the tapestry. He removed his shoes and socks, then placed his cold bare feet on his chest, rubbing them with his hands.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Gu Wen Zhu, with a stern face, was angry and sorry, “You could have come inside and sit here. Look at how cold you are. Your feet are like ice cubes. You can look at me here. It’s the same. You have to be careful not to catch a cold.”

Although his face was stern, his movements were gentle. In a short period of time, Xia Yi could feel his legs again, feeling like his blood circulation had been restored.

“Zhu. Feel it. Is there anything different with your body?” With the urge to know, Xia Yi was both excited and looking forward to Gu Wen Zhu’s response.

Frowning, Gu Wen Zhu was thinking. Then Xia Yi felt a flow of warmth had been poured into his legs which were held by Gu Wen Zhu. It was like two fires burning just warmly under his feet. The warmth swirled for a couple of rounds. After the palm of his feet had become warmer, they thus traveled all the way up through the calves to his body.

With his whole body warmed up, Xia Yi felt very comfortable. He moved a little and leaned onto Gu Wen Zhu lazily just like a cat. His voice was lazy as well, “Zhu. You are good. Now you can both control water and temperature. You can make it warm when it is winter and make it cold when it is summer.” Then he looked up slightly with a comfortable expression, his half opened eyes sparkling, “Feel it. Quick. See if you can have some sort of breakthrough, open up some circulation of energy, achieve some state and stuff.”

The cultivation world is like this. Xia Yi had not cultivated before, but he had read a lot of those novels.

The stories were all like that. He waited for Gu Wen Zhu to feel the change in his body, but, instead, he felt a pair of hands moving around on his body. There were calluses on his fingertips, making the skin he touched shiver.

F**k, I am telling you to feel yourself, not telling you to feel me. Xia Yi intended to speak, but his mouth had been blocked.

After a while, Gu Wen Zhu’s slightly panting voice rang beside his ears, “I cannot feel. I need you to feel it for me.”

In a daze, Xia Yi felt like he was floating in a wave of heat.

That heat wave was brought by Gu Wen Zhu. It flowed from his abdomen to his limbs. His whole body had been washed by it. He felt that his body had been cleansed from inside out and became brand new again.

After the surge of energy going through his body, it had been transported back to Gu Wen Zhu through XX, then he accepted another new wave of heat rushing against him. The process kept repeating.

An idea suddenly came to Xia Yi’s mind. He felt that this fitted the description in a certain kind of novel, making him feel more conscious. Words in bloodred appeared in his mind:

Converse sexually to absorb the opposite energy and enhance their powers.

Ah, no. Nope.

Converse mentally to absorb the opposite energy and enhance their powers!