Chen Nianzhi nodded lightly. "Yes. A few days ago, I felt an insight—and broke through to the eighth layer of Qi Refinement."
At his words, his Sixteenth Granduncle's face lit up, eyes wide with excitement.
"Sixteen years old, and already at the eighth layer? Are we, the Chen Clan, about to see the birth of another Purple Mansion Ancestor?"
He laughed aloud, thrilled almost beyond reason. But after a moment, his excitement faded into a sigh.
"Ah… If this were sixty years ago, back in our clan's golden age, we'd have found a way to buy you a Foundation Pill no matter the cost.""But now…" He shook his head, expression heavy. "Now, we simply don't have the strength."
Chen Nianzhi listened quietly, not interrupting. He wasn't alive back then, but he knew the story.
The Fall of the Chen Clan
Sixty years ago, the Chen family had been at its peak—three Foundation Establishment ancestors, one of whom had even reached the ninth level, standing just a step away from forming a Purple Mansion.
Then came the Beast Tide Calamity.
Across the Chu Kingdom, countless sects and clans were swept into chaos. Even the mighty Qingyang Sect lost two of its Purple Mansion cultivators.The Chen Clan, too, was drawn into the war.
Hundreds of their cultivators were conscripted, only to face a third-rank Purple Mansion beast.Two of their Foundation Elders fell in battle, and nearly every cultivator perished.Only the then-young patriarch, Chen Changxuan, survived—weak, wounded, and burdened with rebuilding the ruins of his bloodline.
That one war had nearly erased the Chen Clan from the cultivation world.Even now, sixty years later, the family had yet to fully recover.
And just when things had begun to look better, Elder Qingmeng's failed Foundation attempt had plunged them into debt once more.It would be decades before the family could afford another Foundation Pill.
Chen Nianzhi frowned slightly. What troubled him wasn't merely the family's poverty.
He remembered something else.
In the Chu Kingdom, every century brought another Beast Tide—a cycle of destruction written into the land's fate.The last one had been sixty years ago.That meant the next would come in less than forty years.
Would the Chen Clan survive the next storm?
"Forget it," he murmured to himself. "When the sky falls, there will always be taller men to hold it up. I'll focus on cultivation. That's the only path that matters."
He pushed the thought away and led his Sixteenth Granduncle and the two cousins back toward the island.
The Harvest
Once they arrived, Granduncle Changlu's eyes widened in astonishment at the sight of the Spirit Peach Tree and the flock of young Purple-Feathered Geese waddling by the lake.
Chen Nianzhi had expected this.There was no hiding such things, so he told them everything openly.
"I discovered the Spirit Peach Tree by chance and transplanted it here," he explained."As for the geese—they were a migrating pair. I slew them when they attacked the Azure Spirit Fish, found a nest of eggs, and managed to hatch them."
When Nianqian and Nianyuan heard the timeline, realization—and regret—flashed across their faces.
They had guarded Linghu Isle for years and had never bothered to check the reeds carefully.If they had, they might have stumbled upon the same treasure.
"What rotten luck…" Nianyuan muttered bitterly.
Chen Nianzhi smiled faintly. He could guess their thoughts.Perhaps they might have found a few eggs—but with their early-stage cultivation, they could never have fought off two mid-stage Purple-Feathered Geese.
His Sixteenth Granduncle, on the other hand, was beaming like a man half his age.He ran a hand reverently along the Spirit Peach Tree's trunk and looked at the geese with undisguised joy.
"Nianzhi, you've been blessed by the heavens! With this tree and those spirit birds, you'll have hundreds of spirit stones in income every year!""Give it twenty or thirty years, and you'll have saved enough to buy your own Foundation Pill—even without the clan's help.""You're still young. You've got time on your side."
The old man clapped him on the shoulder, voice filled with pride.
After praising him for a while longer, he finally composed himself and turned to business.
The three had come to harvest the Spirit Rice, which had finally ripened.
The Spirit Rice Yield
The spiritual stalks were tough as bamboo, requiring cultivators to cut them.The four of them worked from noon until sunset, harvesting the entire field.
When the final sheaf was bundled, they counted the results: 162 jin of Spirit Rice—worth fifty-four spirit stones, twelve jin more than Chen Nianzhi had expected.
"So it's true," Granduncle Changlu said with delight. "The lake's aura makes the soil richer. The yield per acre is higher than even the fields on Qingyuan Mountain."
Indeed, the clan's seventeen acres on the mountain produced just over five hundred jin total—around seventy-five jin per acre.Linghu's three acres, by contrast, yielded eighty-one each.
Afterward, they also netted seventeen adult Azure Spirit Fish from the lake.These were prized ingredients in the Chen family's restaurant at Yuyang Market, often sold out within weeks—fetching premium prices among local cultivators.
"Cultivate well, Nianzhi," said his granduncle as they packed the catch. "Your time will come. The clan won't forget you."
That night, they departed—taking the rice and live fish with them.The fish would be sold alive, transported over thousands of miles in spirit water.For that, the clan rented a Firecloud Horse from the Zhang Family, one of the six great clans of Yuzhou.
The Firecloud Horse was a mid-grade first-rank spirit beast, capable of gliding short distances through the air and traveling over a thousand miles per day.With one of those beasts pulling their cart, the trip to Yuyang Market would take less than two weeks.
The Zhang Family made over three hundred spirit stones a year just by renting out their small stable of Firecloud Horses—a fortune that left other families green with envy.
Watching the fiery-maned steed disappear into the distance, Chen Nianzhi couldn't help but feel a twinge of admiration—then laughed softly at himself.
After all, with the Spirit Peach Tree yielding almost three hundred stones a year, and the geese soon to lay their first clutch of eggs, he wasn't doing so poorly.Even many Foundation Establishment cultivators didn't enjoy such steady income.
Two Years Later
Time flowed like the quiet ripples of the lake.On Linghu Isle, the seasons turned in serene succession—Morning meditations, feeding the birds, tending the fields, nurturing the herbs, and fishing beneath the peach blossoms.
Before he knew it, two full years had passed.
One dawn, after completing his Hongmeng Violet Qi cultivation, he opened his eyes.A stream of white mist escaped his lips—and a bright smile followed.
"It's done."
After fifteen years of cultivation, he had finally reached the ninth layer of Qi Refinement.
Eighteen years old, and already at the pinnacle of the Qi Refinement Realm—such a feat would draw astonishment in any sect across the Chu Kingdom.Now, with a few more years of tempering his foundation, he could begin preparing for Foundation Establishment itself.
Rising to his feet, still elated, he stepped outside—Only to find a messenger hawk perched patiently before his bamboo hut, its silver feathers glinting in the dawn light.
The bird had been waiting for him.