Chapter Nine: Spirit Stones

“I broke through by sheer luck,” Zhou Changwang said with a smile.

“You’ve mastered it?” Old Xu pressed further.

Zhou Changwang nodded.

Seeing this, Old Xu’s tone grew a little sour. “Who would’ve thought you’d have such a knack for the Geng Metal Finger Technique? If only you’d reached the fourth level of Qi Refinement and awakened your spiritual sense—not a single spirit pest in this field would escape your finger.”

“That’s not quite the case. The Geng Metal Finger is just one spell; it can’t get rid of all the spirit pests,” Zhou Changwang replied, shaking his head.

He’d spent years as an apprentice in the Hall of Spiritual Crops and hadn’t come away empty-handed. He knew well that there were countless types of spirit pests in the world, some so troublesome that even cultivators at the Foundation Establishment stage felt helpless against them.

His mastery of the Geng Metal Finger was best suited for clearing pests attached to spirit grain. For spirit herbs or other more precious spiritual materials, it would hardly suffice.

“Changwang, you know Old Xu here’s always treated you decently, right?” Old Xu’s eyes darted back and forth, and he suddenly grinned slyly.

“Just average,” Zhou Changwang cut him off quickly.

He’d heard this kind of opening too many times in his previous life—agree to that, and you’d find yourself caught in one trap after another, some of them even chained together and impossible to avoid.

“Well…” Old Xu’s expression froze for a moment, then he forced a laugh and continued, “It’s really nothing major. It’s just, the spirit pests in the fields keep multiplying. Your three acres are easy enough to manage, but with my ten acres, even three spirit pests per acre makes thirty in total. With these old bones and creaky limbs, how am I supposed to handle that? So, if you have time, could you lend a hand?”

“I can’t help you,” Zhou Changwang refused without hesitation.

You want me to work for free? This old fox must be dreaming.

“I’ll give you a low-grade spirit stone,” Old Xu blurted out, his face contorted with pain at the thought.

“For a day’s work?” Zhou Changwang cast him a sidelong glance.

“For ten days,” Old Xu answered without thinking.

His idea was simple: in ten days, the spirit rice would be ripe for harvest, and there’d be no more need for pest control.

“Not interested,” Zhou Changwang replied bluntly.

“Three days,” Old Xu gritted his teeth, reconsidering.

He truly was struggling now—ten acres of spirit fields, and even one or two pests per acre was enough to give him headaches. Once the grains set fruit, the pest numbers would only grow, and the ones migrating from Xu Zhong’s fields next door made his scalp tingle with dread.

Rather than hiring someone from the Hall of Spiritual Crops for three spirit stones just to have them work for a single day, it made more sense to let Zhou Changwang handle it and save some money.

“The spirit pests I kill belong to me,” Zhou Changwang countered.

“Deal,” Old Xu nodded, sighing with a mix of relief and resignation. “Changwang, I knew from the start you weren’t an ordinary fellow. Seems I was right…”

“Flattery won’t work. The spirit stone comes first, or I’ll worry you’ll renege on the deal,” Zhou Changwang replied with a deadpan expression.

He didn’t believe for a second he was anything special. Before transmigrating, his former self was utterly ordinary—even among spirit farmers, his Five Elements root aptitude was considered poor.

On the other hand, Old Xu was stingy to the bone, and Zhou Changwang truly feared that after the work was done, the old man would withhold the promised spirit stone. After all, since his rebirth, he still hadn’t seen what a spirit stone looked like.

“Really now, would I, Xu Fugui, ever default on a spirit stone owed to you?” Old Xu’s face flushed red with indignation, but after a moment’s hesitation, he tossed over a somewhat translucent block. “I just have three acres left to clear—take care of them for me, will you?”

He grinned, as if he’d somehow gotten the better end of the deal, and quickly pointed to the three acres of spirit fields nearby.

“No problem.” Zhou Changwang didn’t refuse. If the money was in hand, the work should be done.

Besides, he’d just finished clearing his own fields, and still had spiritual energy to spare. He’d been planning to hunt more spirit pests anyway, not wanting to waste his remaining strength.

After all, spirit pest meat wasn’t just delicious—it was infused with spiritual energy and could substantially speed up his cultivation progress.

More importantly, extra spirit pests could be traded for spirit stones…

The thought of spirit stones made him glance again at the block in his hand.

“So this is a spirit stone?” Zhou Changwang compared it to the image in his memory, and satisfaction welled up inside.

Clearly, this was indeed a spirit stone—a low-grade one.

It resembled some kind of jade, but was grayer and more opaque, shaped like a rectangle. It wasn’t heavy, a little over a hundred grams, but just holding it, he could feel the rich spiritual energy contained within.

He knew this was the standard: a single low-grade spirit stone, measured by weight. One hundred grams made one stone; two hundred grams, two. After all, spirit stones were, in a sense, consumables.

Cultivators could absorb the energy within a spirit stone directly, to cultivate or replenish their spiritual power. As the energy was consumed, the stone would naturally shrink and lighten.

Thus, stones weighing less than a hundred grams were called spirit stone shards, and used in market transactions much like small change in the mundane world.

Carefully, he put the spirit stone away, then stepped into Old Xu’s field to investigate.

Well-practiced by now, he quickly located his first pest—a spirit locust.

He hadn’t found any of these vicious insects in his own fields, but there was one here in Old Xu’s.

Looking at its wings, thin as a cicada’s, he found it unsurprising—spirit locusts could fly, after all. Where they landed was purely a matter of their preference.

Without hesitation, he held his breath and stopped two paces from the locust. Focusing his spiritual energy, he shaped it with his mind into a complex series of sigils.

One breath, two, three… five breaths later, he adjusted his finger, pointed, and struck.

A flash of golden light, swift and silent.

Geng Metal Finger: +1.

The locust’s head, no bigger than a human thumb, was blown to pieces, but its body tensed reflexively. With its scythe-like front legs, it slashed hard, cutting a gaping wound in the spirit grain stalk it clung to.

The upper half of the grain plant swayed and drooped, nearly snapping.

This was the most troublesome thing about spirit locusts—even in death, their instincts drove them to swing their forelegs and tear apart anything in their way. Add to that their high vigilance and the tendency to leap away at the slightest sign of danger, and it was no wonder spirit farmers dreaded finding them in their fields.