Translator: Cinder Translations
---
After dinner, the sun had already set, leaving only the afterglow to illuminate the earth.
Song Wen did not return to his quarters. Instead, he pretended to take a stroll for digestion, heading towards the west side of Qingping Mountain.
On the west side of Qingping Mountain, there was a spirit field spanning several hundred acres. Most of the Su family's spiritual herbs were grown there.
Song Wen had been with the Su family for over half a month now but had yet to visit the spirit field.
Perhaps for safety reasons, the spirit field was located at the foot of Qingping Mountain.
In the midst of the surrounding rugged mountains, there was a flat area of nearly a thousand acres, making the presence of the spirit field somewhat abrupt.
Around the edges of the spirit field stood stone towers. Shadows moved atop the towers—Su family guards stationed to protect the field.
Standing by a small pond a few miles from the spirit field, Song Wen gazed at the sunset, pretending to admire the view. In reality, he had already sent out six Sacred Gu.
With the help of the Gu, Song Wen surveyed the entire spirit field.
The spirit field, though said to span several hundred acres, was less than two miles across in diameter.
Even from several miles away, the entire spirit field was within Song Wen's spiritual sense range.
At the center of the field stood a row of low, wooden houses, old and shabby in appearance, much like the rustic huts farmers use for temporary rest in the fields.
There were ten such houses, four of which had a Foundation Establishment cultivator inside, each meditating in a cross-legged position.
One of them was at the late stage of Foundation Establishment, two at the mid-stage, and one at the early stage.
These four cultivators were the real force guarding the spirit field. The guards in the stone towers outside served mostly as lookouts.
The row of old wooden houses was meant to deceive intruders, giving the impression that there was no danger within, lulling them into a false sense of security. In reality, the true danger lay within those houses.
Though the spirit field was close to Qingping Mountain, the Su family still assigned four Foundation Establishment cultivators for long-term duty, which showed how much importance they placed on the field.
The Sacred Gu also discovered a hundred-meter-high cliff, carved into the side of Qingping Mountain near the spirit field.
On this cliff were a dozen cave entrances, neatly arranged, each about ten feet high.
Each cave entrance was protected by an array, preventing anyone from sensing what lay within.
Though Song Wen's spiritual sense couldn't penetrate the caves, he keenly detected faint traces of corpse energy lingering around the entrances.
The fact that corpse energy remained despite the array's isolation meant that the array was frequently activated, allowing the energy to escape.
Leaving two Sacred Gu clinging to the stone walls near the cave entrances to keep watch, Song Wen turned and headed back to his quarters.
There was an old saying, "Avoid suspicion." Though he was still several miles away from the spirit field, staying too long in the area could easily arouse suspicion.
Around midnight, one of the Sacred Gu returned to Song Wen's quarters.
The Gu informed Song Wen that the barrier protecting the cave entrances had disappeared.
Since the distance between the spirit field and his quarters was about seventy miles, beyond the range of his spiritual sense, the Sacred Gu had to come all the way back to deliver the message, while the other Gu took the opportunity to enter the caves.
Receiving this news, Song Wen slipped out of his quarters under cover of darkness, heading toward the spirit field.
When he was just a few miles from the field, he suddenly stopped at the edge of a dense forest.
He recalled that Su Shan had once mentioned that there were many traps and killing arrays hidden in the forests on Qingping Mountain. If one were to fall into them, even if they weren't killed by the arrays, they would still expose their whereabouts, drawing the attention of Su family cultivators.
Since there were traps in the forests of Qingping Mountain, it was highly likely that there were similar arrays in the forests surrounding the spirit field.
Flying over the forest directly would definitely not escape the notice of the guards stationed in the stone towers around the spirit field.
The forest, then, was not an option.
The only option was to find a place to hide and use the Sacred Gu to investigate everything inside the cave.
Song Wen looked around and his gaze fell on the small pond he had visited earlier that evening.
The pond wasn't deep, only about three meters, but it was enough to hide his body.
Song Wen did not enter the pond but used the Sacred Gu to sense everything happening inside the cave.
At that moment, the barrier at the cave entrance had not been reactivated, and the entrance remained wide open.
After walking a hundred meters into the cave, a massive chamber, over ten acres wide, appeared in front of him.
On the ground of the chamber, faint, glowing light emanated.
Upon closer inspection, the glow came from palm-sized lingzhi mushrooms.
These lingzhi mushrooms were not growing on the ground, but on human skulls.
Each lingzhi was attached to a complete human corpse, specifically growing from the left eye socket of the skull.
These lingzhi were exactly the "Yellow Essence Mushroom" that Song Wen had been desperately searching for.
The corpse energy Song Wen had detected at the cave entrance had come from these bodies, along with the stench of decaying flesh.
The degree of decay on the corpses varied—some still had decayed, blackened flesh, while others were nothing more than white bones.
Inside the abdominal cavity of some of these skeletons was a bowl-sized, underdeveloped infant skeleton.
It turned out that these corpses used to cultivate Yellow Essence Mushroom were all women who had been pregnant!
The Yellow Essence Mushroom mushrooms parasitizing these corpses varied in age.
The age of the Yellow Essence Mushroom was not determined by their size but by their color.
When newly sprouted, the Yellow Essence Mushroom was pale yellow. As it matured, the color darkened, turning from yellow to brownish-yellow. At this point, it had reached around ten years of maturity and could already be used as a spiritual herb for refining pills.
As it aged further, the brownish-yellow turned to dark brown, then to dark red, and finally to jet black. This color signified that the Yellow Essence Mushroom was over a thousand years old.
In the cave, there were more than a thousand Yellow Essence Mushroom mushrooms, but most were relatively young, aged between ten to forty years.
Considering that these mushrooms were carefully cultivated by the Su family, their actual age might be longer than their natural growth period, indicating that the Su family had likely started cultivating them within the last decade or so.
Moreover, Song Wen noticed that these Yellow Essence Mushroom were not identical to the three he had obtained from the man with the mustache.
These mushrooms carried a peculiar trace of vitality, something ordinary Yellow Essence Mushroom did not possess.
This vitality was like the energy of a rising sun, brimming with life. It was also reminiscent of the first sprout breaking through the frozen ground in early spring, full of vitality.
In the cave, two late-stage Qi Refining cultivators from the Su family were performing a Wind-Clearing Technique in various corners of the chamber.
Gentle breezes swept through the cave, driving away the corpse energy and foul stench, and drawing in fresh, clean air from outside into the chamber.
Seeing this, Song Wen understood the purpose of the dozen or so cave openings on the cliff—they were designed to ventilate the chamber.
Though the Yellow Essence Mushroom grew on human corpses, they couldn't endure long-term exposure to corpse energy, or they would rot and wither.
After about fifteen minutes, the foul and rotten air in the cave was entirely replaced by clean air, and the two cultivators stopped casting their spells.
They then began inspecting the growth of the Yellow Essence Mushroom one by one.
One of them used spiritual power to lift a skeleton that had already weathered. His movements were slow and gentle, as if he was afraid of accidentally breaking the fragile bones.
Of course, he wasn't concerned about damaging the bones but about harming the Yellow Essence Mushroom parasitizing the skeleton.
The Yellow Essence Mushroom on this particular skeleton had an estimated medicinal age of around seventy years.
The base of the Yellow Essence Mushroom was connected to many white fungal filaments. These filaments, like the root systems of vine plants, were exceptionally developed, intricately entangled, and tightly wrapped around the entire skeleton, as if to extract the very last bit of nutrients from the bones.
(End of the Chapter)
---
For More Chapters & Exclusive Releases!
Join my Pa.treon at (pa treon . com / CinderTL)
Read Ahead: Up to Chapter 374 as of 16Nov24
Bonus Mass Releases
Explore More: 2 Other Stories with 1000+ Chapters, totaling over 1.16M+ Words 💥
Support Tiers: Early Access $5 | General Support $1
Your support makes all the difference 😊
Let's Stay Connected
For update notifications, reviews, or to chat, join me on Pa.treon for FREE.
Please share this story with friends and review on WebNovel and Scribblehub if you're enjoying it. Thanks!