The Path to Immortality Begins as a Sect's Menial Servant

Five days passed.

As usual, by evening, Li An closed his door tightly and started a fire to cook his meal.

To prevent the smell of his not-fully-ripe spirit rice from being noticed, he always mixed in a dozen or so mature grains.

Actually, the smell difference between the two wasn’t very strong—Wang Zilin and Zhang Susu wouldn’t be able to tell.

But being careful had already been carved into Li An’s bones—it was part of him now.

These past few days, Li An managed to harvest around 500 grams of spirit rice each night.

That was his limit.

Because he was extremely cautious—he only picked three to five grains from each rice stalk instead of plucking whole stalks.

And while picking, he used his nails to scratch out marks that looked like bite holes from insects or bugs, so the work was very slow.

Also, he wasn’t greedy. Mainly because spirit rice had a lot of impurities—the amount of spirit energy that could be extracted was limited.

At his current level, his body could only digest about 500 grams of spirit rice in a single day.

Any more would just go to waste—his body wouldn’t be able to absorb it.

This was still thanks to his past life’s cultivation experience. People like Wang Zilin, at this stage, would be lucky to absorb even 25 grams per day!

That’s the difference that resources make. If you used spirit stones instead, the speed of absorption would be many times faster.

Which meant cultivation would also progress much faster.

…

A big pot full of spirit rice was done cooking, and Li An scooped a bowl and started eating heartily.

The rice didn’t have the full fragrance of ripe grains and had a slight grassy taste—but Li An didn’t mind at all.

He finished the entire pot.

After checking his internal state, he found that under the nourishment of these daily pots of spirit rice, the small green sprout in his dantian had grown to the size of a pea.

But it was still just a sprout!

His damaged spirit root from the lightning energy had only recovered about 20% so far.

Very slow, but he was satisfied.

This fully proved how powerful the Life-Nurturing Immortal Forging Technique was.

After all, a damaged spirit root normally required a Grade-2 pill to even have a chance at recovery!

And a Grade-2 pill—someone like him, a Menial Servant, would never even see one. Even official outer disciples could barely hope to get one.

…

When night fell—

Just like always, Li An sneaked into the spirit fields.

After days of observation, he now had a good understanding of the entire layout of the fields.

The fields had a gathering-spirit formation around them to bring in spiritual energy and help the crops grow.

But the formations weren’t evenly spread—so the left side of the field was the weakest, and the spirit rice there was of the worst quality.

The right side was a little better. The center was the best.

Tonight, he went straight for the center, the main area and the heart of the formation.

Under the moonlight, the spirit rice looked tall and thick, with full, heavy grains.

Li An’s movements were smooth and practiced. He moved along the water channel, picking as he went.

“Huh?”

Suddenly, a green caterpillar landed on his sleeve and caught his attention.

It was a type of night-active bug that looked like a maggot in its larval form and like a moth when grown.

These bugs were normal in rice fields, but this one was fat, large, and faintly see-through. It had already started to absorb spiritual energy.

This wasn’t right—bugs like this rarely absorbed spirit energy. And it usually only happened after they matured. The current rice shouldn’t even be enough to support that process.

Li An stayed alert and continued moving forward along the water channel.

This area was very flat. The water in the channels barely flowed—it was almost still. But as he walked, his skin picked up on tiny movements in the water—like something ahead was sucking it in.

Li An followed the feeling and sensed thick spiritual energy gathering in one area. At the point where two water channels met, he heard a bubbling, gurgling sound.

It was a whirlpool!

Water from the fields was being sucked into it.

And along with the water, the spiritual energy of the whole field was being pulled away too—no one knew where it was going.

Around the whirlpool, the grass was covered with over a dozen fat caterpillars—all of them almost completely transparent, all full of spiritual energy.

“So someone’s stealing spirit energy!”

Li An suddenly understood.

There must be a hidden formation here, secretly drawing away some of the energy from the field’s gathering-spirit formation.

“This energy-stealing whirlpool is what caused the uneven spiritual energy in the field… and that’s why so many of these spirit bugs appeared!”

Li An frowned slightly. Who could be behind this?

He instinctively looked up toward the top of Spirit Plant Peak.

Fan Jie was the only possible person.

Stealing from his own post!?

Still, Li An didn’t feel like meddling.

Instead, he was quite happy—he picked all the spirit-infused bugs off the nearby grass.

In modern terms, these things were pure high-grade protein!

One thumb-sized bug contained about as much spiritual energy as 500 grams of spirit rice.

If it weren’t for the gathered energy here, the entire field probably couldn’t have produced so many spirit bugs.

To a beginner cultivator, these bugs were extremely valuable food. But for someone like Fan Jie, already at the middle of the Qi Refining Stage, they were useless.

Also, the bugs had a little bit of natural poison in them. Regular Menial Servants didn’t know how to eat them safely.

So no one ever harvested them.

Which worked out perfectly for Li An!

As long as the energy stayed unbalanced, these bugs would keep showing up in the fields.

“The more bugs there are, the worse the infestation gets—and the harder it will be for anyone to notice I’m stealing spirit rice!”

Li An felt reassured. After gathering all the bugs, he went back to picking rice.

…

The next day—

Early in the morning, Fan Jie came down the mountain. He had business outside the sect but stopped by to check the progress of Li An’s group.

“Hmm… Wang Zilin, right? Your Cloud-Walking Rain-Summoning Technique is looking pretty good.”

“Zhang Susu is not bad either.”

Wang Zilin had made the most progress, followed by Zhang Susu. This made Fan Jie quite pleased.

Especially now that Zhang Susu had entered the Qi Refining Stage—her skin looked more radiant, her body more graceful after being nourished by spirit rice. Fan Jie looked her up and down more than once, clearly enjoying the view.

“Li An—what about you?” Fan Jie turned toward him.

“Reporting, Immortal Master. My spirit root is still damaged, so I haven’t entered the Qi Refining Stage yet…”

Li An’s expression was awkward.

“Still not in the Qi Refining Stage?!”

Fan Jie’s face twisted with anger. “You’ve got only half a month left, and you still haven’t reached Qi Refining? Did you come to my Spirit Plant Peak just to freeload?”

Li An lowered his head, silent.

“Don’t think being quiet gets you off the hook. I’m telling you right now—Spirit Plant Peak doesn’t feed lazy or useless people. If you can’t join the farming crew in half a month, I’ll cut all your rations and kick you out!”

“Got it?”

Li An answered, “I understand.”

Fan Jie gave a cold snort. “I’m heading out for a while. None of you are allowed up the mountain while I’m gone. If I catch anyone, I’ll break your damn legs.”

With that, he left Spirit Plant Peak.

“Li An, your spirit root still hasn’t recovered?” Zhang Susu asked.

Li An gave a bitter smile and shook his head. “Not yet… I’ll keep trying.”

Then he went back to his room.

“Susu, don’t bother with him anymore. I heard that fixing a spirit root requires a Grade-2 pill. He’ll never get one in his life. He’s just a waste…”

“Come on, let’s practice the Cloud-Walking Rain-Summoning Technique together. I think I’ve made progress—I’ll share what I’ve learned…”

Outside, Wang Zilin’s cheerful and proud voice echoed faintly.

…

That night’s dinner was especially delicious.

Dozens of spirit bugs were cooked with spirit rice. The rice had a light meat fragrance to it.

The spirit energy and life energy from this one pot of rice was equal to about half a month’s worth of spirit rice.

After finishing it, the Life Seed in Li An’s body visibly grew larger—now about the size of a peanut.

Its top even started to poke upward, like a sprout ready to break through.

…

Another ten-plus days passed.

Only three days remained in their one-month "newcomer period."

That evening, after dinner, Li An checked his dantian—and finally smiled with satisfaction.

Inside, a small green sprout had broken through the surface—it now had a tiny leaf.

His damaged spirit root, nourished by the Life Seed, had finally recovered!

It was a miracle!

Even with a Grade-2 pill, repairing a spirit root would usually take at least six months.

“With the Life Seed, my vitality and recovery ability have greatly improved. Even if I never cultivate again, I could easily live to 120 years old as a regular person.”

Li An whispered, then took out the small fragment of spirit stone.

It was a low-grade spirit stone, and its energy wasn’t very abundant.

Li An was sure this piece was about one-third of a full stone.

The three of them were supposed to receive three full stones per month—but Fan Jie had stolen two and split one into thirds to give them.

So shameless.

Still, it should barely be enough to enter the first stage of Qi Refining.

Li An began absorbing the rich energy in the stone, circulating the Life-Nurturing Immortal Forging Technique and refining the energy into his body.

Five days passed.

Li An finally succeeded in reaching the Qi Refining Stage—first level.

“The Life-Nurturing Immortal Forging Technique really is… quite slow.”

Li An opened his eyes, looking complicated.

Even Zhang Susu and Wang Zilin, who weren’t that talented, only spent seven days total—two of which were spent on actual cultivation.

But he had taken much longer…

Still, what satisfied him was the purity of his spirit energy—it had no impurities at all.

After all, the road of cultivation was long and full of hardships. Li An had long since trained himself to be steady and calm. Falling behind others didn’t bother him.

At the same time, he activated his Life Seed and made his spirit root appear damaged again.

This was one of the Life Seed’s special abilities: it could disguise and hide his real state and energy.

…

Fan Jie had been away for more than half a month and still hadn’t returned.

Finally, three days later at noon, he came back.

“All of you—come out and gather!”

(End of Chapter)