Cultivating to Become a Great Celestial Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Harmed by Insect Pests

Su Tingyun was able to see it using her spiritual consciousness.

Since she was able to see it, maybe she could try touching it and pinching those gold colored bugs to death like ants? In the past she just concentrated her attention and wished really hard to see the situation on the other side of the array as if her life depended on it. In the end she really was able to see it, so she has always felt that whenever she experienced this out of body experience, things would happen as long as she wished for it.

She was just like the God in her own world. God said let there be light, and then there was light! It was just that sadly, this kind of state couldn't be controlled, so she couldn't tell when it would occur.

Su Tingyun focused all of her attention onto that bug. The gold colored bug continuously enlarged in her consciousness and gradually, she seemed to have ended up in a strange space. Inside this space, other than that gold colored bug, there wasn't anything else around! Su Tingyun seemed to be able to see even its antennae and mouthparts; she could see it chewing the Purple Costus Roots. She imagined herself reaching out her fingers and squeezing that bug to death. After a unknown amount of time, Su Tingyun saw the bug that was originally chomping down suddenly stop. It nervously looked around and it revealed a look of fright. Then in the next instant, it really died!

Su Tingyun followed up her victory by pressing on with her attack and continued to crush all the other gold colored little dots to death. Once she finished, before she could even relax a breath in relief, she suddenly felt a head-splitting headache. In the next second, a lacerating pain transmitted from within her body and Su Tingyun's sight turned dark. In the next instant, she sat straight up on the stone bed, turned to her side, stretched her head over the side of the stone bed and puked.

This one puke was quite world-shaking. She vomited to the point everything in her stomach was cleanly vomited up, but still felt nauseous as if she needed to forcefully vomit out all five visceras and six bowels. Those who know nothing have nothing to fear.(This is just a saying about ignorance) At this time, Su Tingyun was completely unaware that she had just achieved something the majority of cultivators could never achieve in their entire lifetimes. A cultivator that had just entered the first stage of Qi Condensation had learned, on their own, how to manipulate a spiritual consciousness attack.

Su Tingyun didn't know how long she'd vomited for. In any case, she didn't have a single shred of energy left by the end. Her head felt like it was bored through with a drill and her brain felt like it was twisted then smashed. She was in so much pain that she couldn't sleep at all and just lay there with her eyes open till dawn arrived. However, she still didn't have the energy to go out even after the day broke. She forced herself to up, but as she was walking she would continuously sway left and right. After cleaning up the vomitted mess with great difficulty, Su Tingyun felt like there was no way she could move anymore.

She laid down again. After a long time, she finally fell asleep, and with this one sleep she slept an entire day and night.

The next time she woke up, Su Tingyun felt that her headache had eased quite a bit. She rubbed her eyes, then looked towards the Purple Costus Root on the table. In the end her body suddenly froze, her brain was practically about to explode! Didn't she painstakingly kill all those gold colored little bugs? Why is the Purple Costus Root still dying?

This Purple Costus Root's leaves had all turned black and there was no life in it at all anymore.

Su Tingyun was worried to death. She was worried that she might have missed something that day and didn't pick out all the inflected Purple Costus Roots. If that was the case, her field was definitely done for. Su Tingyun hurriedly rushed to her field, no longer caring about her headache or the fact that her legs were completely weak anymore. When she saw the completely matured, verdant and lush field of Purple Costus Roots, the stone over her heart fell to the ground and she took a deep breath.

Right now all the Purple Costus Roots were matured. She didn't waste anymore time and quickly plucked all the Purple Costus Roots in the field and stored them in the boxes that Manager Song had specially distributed. Box after box, she stacked the medicinal grass up next to the side of the field, creating a small hill. Manager Song didn't give her a spatial universe bag so Su Tingyun could only polish herself by running back and forth several rounds in order to bring these one hundred boxes back to the pavilion building.

It wasn't due to the fact that they were too heavy though, but rather because the boxes were too smooth. If she carried too much they would definitely fall onto the ground and break.

Just as Su Tingyun lifted up about thirty boxes and was just about to leave, Manager Song brought people over again. They didn't enter the medicinal field but through some unknown technique, Su Tingyun was able to hear their words even while standing by the field.

"Old Madam Wei, your medicinal field wasn't infected?" Manager Song's tone was urgent as he asked. The three people next to him were wearing the same color and style of gown as him, they were probably the other managers of this Heaven Jade Pavilion, Su Tingyun thought.

"No." Su Tingyun opened a box and took out some just plucked Purple Costus Roots for them to see, "They're fine, it's truly the old heavens' providence!"

Manager Song saw clearly the freshly plucked Purple Costus Roots whose spiritual energy was reaching the summit of the first rank. He felt that this Old Madam Wei's luck wasn't just an average amount of good. They had gone with Manager Xu to other spirit fields and nine-tenths of them had already been infected. Furthermore, everyone worked together to think of ideas but they still couldn't find the root of the problem.

"You're planning to carry them back right now? You don't have a spatial universe bag?" The lowest rank spatial universe bag only costs a few pieces of low rank spirit stones. Of course, it can't carry a lot, but it was an essential item for cultivators. Manager Song never thought that she wouldn't even have a spatial universe bag so naturally he didn't prepare one for her. "Right now, all the spirit herbalists are assembling at Spring Water Pavilion, you should go as well! I'll help you pack away this medicinal grass and hand them up for you when the time comes."

He didn't wait for Su Tingyun to agree. She only felt that there seemed to be a hand that pushed her directly out of the field. But after getting out, she discovered that Manager Song and the rest were quite far away from her. Furthermore, a faint, strange whirlwind had appeared, separating them.

"Your field wasn't infected so your body is naturally fine as well. For the time being, don't come too close to us."

Su Tingyun followed Manager Song and the rest to Spring Water Pavilion. She didn't know how to fly and was sent up by them using a cool breeze. That feeling of being suspended in midair was quite mysterious; when she had the chance she definitely had to learn and try it for herself.

At this time, there were several hundred cultivators gathered in Spring Water Pavilion. They were separated into left and right sides. The left side had a bunch of cultivators, but the right side barely had ten people.

The left side was making a racket and arguing quite fiercely while the few on the right side were whispering like they were conspiring some great national plot. It was very clear that the left side was the infected side and the right side was the still normal side. Su Tingyun looked closely and saw that Qi Suzhen wasn't in the crowd. Wonder how that female cultivator was doing right now?

Following Manager Song's instructions, Su Tingyun walked towards the right side. When she went over, a cultivator shone a mirror-like artifact at her for a long time before she was met with everyone's inquiries.

"Grannie, is your field alright as well?" The person speaking was a youth with ordinary features. His face carried a bit of a smile as he extended his hand and pointed towards the stool next to him, "Grannie, come over and sit."

"En, thanks ah." Su Tingyun walked over and had just sat down when she heard a rather handsome little pretty boy that was sitting on the other side raise his voice to ask: "Old woman, what did you plant?"

One gave a call of grannie, one gave a call of old woman. The first impression that the two gave Su Tingyun was different as heaven and earth. Even though the handsome but effeminate pretty boy was much better looking and could probably be a celebrity in her previous world, but ever since she saw her family's putative husbandT/N, just based on outer appearance Su Tingyun felt like everyone else became mud, the mud on the ground.

And as for Su Lijiang, he's that cloud in the sky.

"Purple Costus Root."

Su Tingyun replied honestly. The result was that she heard the other side laugh, "Didn't I just say so? This time, the lower rank the plants are, the harder it is for it to get infected. They're all low level spirit herbalists, the plants they planted were also low rank medicinal grass, what kind of good idea can we hope to come out of them?" His voice had just fallen when the expressions of the people on the right side all turned quite unsightly. One of the ordinary youth's among them's face turned completely red and he said a bit resentfully, "We've been helping you guys think of ideas this entire time. Zhang Hao, how could you say things like this!?"

"Isn't everything I said the truth?" Zhang Hao gave a cold humph and extended his hand to point over one by one, "Second rank, second rank, third rank… Out of your group, the best medicinal plant is only one that just reached third rank, and it's even the worst of the third rank. Right now another trash first rank Purple Costus Root came, isn't this completely obvious? The infection this time only targets high ranked medicinal grasses. Your fields not getting infected has nothing to do with your planting ability, but instead the fact that your abilities are too weak to plant high rank medicinal grasses!"

"Precisely, bunch of useless trash." Everyone felt not only disdain, but resentment and envy in their hearts towards the people on this side.. Now that someone had taken the lead, quite a few people joined in the sneering.

"Your mouth is full of bullshit, continuously babbling nonsense!" The person that spoke was a middle-aged woman. She put one hand on her hip as she fiercely cursed back at Zhang Hao. Zhang Hao was immediately ticked off but just as he was about to cross over the boundary, several managers moved to stop him. In the end he said with a dark expression: "Xu Niangzi, just you wait!"

"This ma'am will wait to see how you get punished by Master Feng once you're unable to submit  the medicinal grass!" Xu Niangzi also had a fiery temper. It was just that after she finished speaking, all the people on the right said 'crap' in their hearts.

Su Tingyun knew that what this Zhang Hao said was completely unfounded. Even her Purple Costus Roots had been infected. It had nothing to do with being low a rank medicinal plant. Those gold colored bugs were probably hard to discover, causing plants to be infected when they were transported on a person's body. She asked how these few uninfected cultivators usually worked and found that they were all extremely attentive: they'd always wear different clothes everyday when they headed out to tend to their medicinal fields. This way, it effectively prevented their clothing from being infected by those gold colored little bugs.

Because Su Tingyun's medicinal farm wasn't infected, she was quickly accepted by the people on the right side. No one looked down on her lack of ability and she easily blended in.

"Qi Suzhen's field of medicinal grass was the first to be infected. Afterwards, she rubbed the medicinal grass juice on her body and through coming into contact with Niu Hanshan, infected his medicinal fields. Then, Niu Hanshan asked Manager Xu to come look at the cause of the disease. Manager Xu also frequently checks on the medicinal fields inside the valley, that's probably why he ended up infecting a lot of medicinal fields." Su Tingyun made these connections as she casually asked around.

That ordinary youth was called Xu Zhen. At this time, he made a silencing motion and said, "Don't mention these things."

"Then that means it was spread through people ah." Su Tingyun lowered her voice to ask. The voice of this body of hers was quite rough. When she lowered her voice to speak, Su Tingyun felt like her rough voice was not much different from a middle-aged guy, practically causing her to jump in shock.

"But Manager Xu and the rest also went to our farms, and our farms are fine." Xu Niangzi added.

"Maybe they went to your fields later so their bodies already didn't have any bugs?" Su Tingyun immediately made another speculation.

"Bugs? What bugs? Are you saying that those were caused by insect pests?"

So it turns out that they still hadn't found the cause of the infection even now. Su Tingyun silently sweated in her mind. And these people were actually spirit herbalists, they were farming professionals. Unexpectedly, they still hadn't figured out exactly what was causing mischief. A certain amount of pride subconsciously arose within Su Tingyun.

However, she did know to be low-key as a person. So she forced couple laughs and said: "Could it be that it's not insect pests? I saw that all those medicinal grass died strangely so I thought there were bugs."

"Actually, we all think it's bugs, but no one has found any."

And only high level poisonous insects could cause this much damage to the medicinal fields in such a short time.

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Credits: Translated by Chiyomira, Proofread by Sigil

[Chiyomira’s Corner]
T/N – In regards to the term 便宜相公 which I translated before as husband of convenience since I couldn't confirm the meaning of the term through searching: I finally found the meaning of it when I came across a similar term, which was 便宜老爹(literally 'convenient dad') in a different Chinese novel. So basically, this term has a background meaning of 'you got it without having to work for it'.

In the past, a 'convenient dad' referred to the scenario in which a mother got pregnant but her husband didn't want her anymore. So she gave the child to a different man that had feelings for her, and that man becomes the 'convenient dad'. It also refers to when the other person recognizes you as a big brother or big sister on their own accord, not caring if you agree or not.

In cultivation terms, after you transmigrate your father doesn't have true blood (spiritual) relationship with you. But you still have a father and son/daughter relationship with him. So in this kind of situation you can call him a 'convenient dad'.

But since 'convenient husband' sounds not quite right and doesn't encompass the main meaning which is pretty much 'so-called', I'm using a synonym of supposed which is putative. The dictionary defines it as "generally considered or reputed to be", i.e. the putative father of a boy of two.

And that's it for my commentary~ I hope I didn't ramble on too much.

Chapter end