Ever since the magistrate in Shining Crane City had mistaken him for a powerful cultivator, Fu Anwen had been pnning to gain his freedom by becoming the disciple of an "immortal master."

  The idea was simple. All he needed to do was let his mother know that he was going to become a cultivator, have his "master" blink out some martial arts techniques as gifts for his mother and the other dies, then blink away after saying goodbye. As for his ck of a spirit root, he could just say that he had a one-in-a-million special body constitution that the test hadn't been able to detect.

  Anyway, he did have a very strange body. It just wasn't one that allowed him to cultivate.

  As soon as he got back to the vilge and took a quick look around from his inner space, Fu Anwen realized something was wrong.

  His Aunty Murong was rushing through the forest like the wind, while his mother, her maids, and a host of other vilgers were calling his name while searching the vilge. It seemed like they'd noticed that he was gone.

  "Another stupid mistake."

  Fu Anwen shook his head at his oversight. Of course everyone would panic if they couldn't find him in the vilge!

  The difference between knowledge and experience was vast. He would need to try harder to think over as many possibilities as he could before taking action in the future.

  After quickly going over his options, Fu Anwen decided to initiate his pn a little earlier than he'd originally pnned.

  Boom!

  A thunderous sound echoed out from the center of Big Tree Vilge.

  The vilgers all turned their heads to see what had happened, only to discover that an enormous, rectangur stone monument more than thirty feet tall had suddenly appeared in the center of the vilge. Words were etched in giant letters on each side of the monument.

  [Fu Anwen of Big Tree Vilge has been accepted as the Stone Immortal's final disciple.]

  While the others were all in shock at the sudden appearance of the massive stone pilr, Fu Qingyu was instead focused on her son, who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere next to the stone monument.

  "An'er!"

  She quickly ran over and pulled him into a tight hug.

  "Where were you? You have no idea how worried I was!"

  Since Fu Anwen's arms were pinned to his sides by his mother's hug and his breath was being squished out, all he could do was loosely flop a hand in the general direction of the monument while nodding toward it with his head.

  In her panicked state of mind, Fu Qingyu hadn't even noticed the massive stone monument three feet in front of her. She looked up, finally noticing the stone monument for the first time. She backed away in shock, only to receive an even greater shock once she read the message.

  Fortunately for Fu Anwen, his mother's shock had caused her to loosen her hug just enough that he could finally breathe.

  "Senior Stone Immortal saw me while I was exploring the forest and said I'm a one in ten thousand years genius! I'm going to be a cultivator, mom!"

  "How is this possible? I thought you didn't have a spirit root?"

  She squinted her eyes.

  "And did you say you were exploring the forest?"

  Fu Anwen's eyes shifted back and forth.

  "No, you must have misheard me." He then leaned in and whispered, "And I have something even better than a spirit root, but my master told me not to tell anyone."

  Fu Qingyu looked around at the vilgers who were starting to gather around her and fshed a radiant smile.

  "Thank you for your help with the search, everyone. You have no idea how much it means to me. As you can see, An'er made it back unharmed. I apologize, but the two of us need some time to talk in private."

  Without waiting for a response, she turned around and hurried back home. As she sped away with her son in her arms, Fan Cheng, Fu Anwen's schor grandfather, could be heard loudly reading the monument's text to the assembled vilgers. A chorus of surprised shouts erupted in response.

  Once they were inside the house and the door was securely closed, Fu Qingyu sat down across from her son at the kitchen table.

  "Okay, little man. Tell me just what in the world is going on, right now!"

  ~-o-O-o-~

  That night, Fu Anwen was lying in bed, unable to sleep. He hadn't thought that lying to his mother would make him feel so terrible. When she'd started crying after he'd told her that he was leaving in the morning, he'd felt like the worst son ever.

  Still, he absolutely couldn't stay. His goals were going to require endless amounts of time and effort. He couldn't afford to spend years of his life in this tiny, remote vilge.

  It wasn't like he wouldn't visit in the future, anyway. His hidden house and the Farming Sect were only a few miles away from Big Tree Vilge.

  Fu Anwen turned his attention to the busy printing area in his inner space, where half a dozen copies of the Diamond Sword Arts series were quickly being stamped out using woodcuts. This set of martial arts techniques was specifically tailored for women and could be cultivated all the way up to Supreme Grandmaster.

  Along with many other martial arts, he had casually created the Diamond Sword Arts during the long journey to Big Tree Vilge. While he couldn't say it was perfect, it was at least the most suitable martial arts in the Fu Kingdom for women to practice.

  For now, he was unfortunately unable to give the dies any medicine to aid in practicing the technique, but he did include a variety of suitable recipes for nourishing soups, body pastes, pills, and medicinal baths.

  After setting the st page into the space to dry, Fu Anwen finally fell asleep.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Fu Anwen pulled off his shirt, which was now covered in tears along with far too much of little Hua and Ying's snot, quickly changing into a fresh one.

  Everyone had said their goodbyes after breakfast. After a final hug from his mother and a promise to visit soon, he and the giant stone in the center of the vilge had both vanished.

  "It's just you and me now, Queen Fluffytail."

  The little fawn gnced over briefly before returning to her breakfast of mushrooms and potatoes.

  "First, we need to get the farms set up."

  The Farming Sect's first batch of disciples were going to be young children. Fu Anwen wouldn't ask them to do any farmwork for the first couple of years.

  The most important job for new disciples of any of Fu Anwen's future sects was to acquire an education. Learning how to read and do basic math first would make learning everything else far easier and more efficient.

  In the beginning, he'd handle all of the farmwork himself. In addition to his ability making every step completely trivial, he'd never pass up a hands-on learning opportunity.

  It's impossible to become a great farmer without actually farming, after all.

  After a handful of blinks, he passed through the enormous formation surrounding his new sect, which looked like a giant stone mountain from the outside, and arrived at the farms.

  The most important element of spiritual farming was pest removal. If not for Fu Anwen's lightning fast thoughts and ability to sense everything in a wide range around himself, this step would be incredibly difficult and time-consuming.

  Keeping a spiritual farm pest-free typically required constant attention throughout the day. On a farm filled with valuable spiritual crops, even a single invading bug could cause devastating losses if left unchecked.

  However, it only took Fu Anwen a few minutes to scour the entire area inside the formation for any bugs and small creatures, pull them into his space, then send them outside of the formation.

  The protective formation would prevent any new bugs from entering the sect's territory in the future.

  He then moved on to preparing the fields. In the beginning, only eight would be used, simply because there had only been enough gems left to create eight formations.

  The soil from these eight fields was pulled into the space, combined with high-quality soil that Fu Anwen had been stockpiling during his travels, and thoroughly mixed together. He then used rge stone sheets cut into various patterns to shape each field's soil according to the type of crop that would be grown there.

  The farming formations only had a single purpose; they pulled in and redirected spiritual energy to the spots on each field where crops would be pnted.

  Fu Anwen was going to start with two fields of rice, two fields of potatoes, three fields containing dozens of different types of fruits and vegetables, and one field of medicinal pnts, herbs, and spices. Basically, it was a hodgepodge of everything he'd been able to pick up since leaving the Jade Court.

  The pnting process was mostly the same as when he'd pnted crops inside his space. The only difference was that he had to precisely pce the seeds and sprouts exactly where the spiritual energy would be channeled by the formation. If any crops were even slightly mispced, they would grow into inferior, inedible mortal crops.

  After tasting mortal rice and vegetables, there was absolutely no chance Fu Anwen would make that mistake.

  The entire task only took a few minutes to complete. After blinking the prepared fields out of his space, Fu Anwen also blinked out to inspect them in person.

  "Perfect!"

  In truth, they really weren't perfect at all.

  There were two main paths to take when it came to growing spiritual crops.

  The first, which was the path Fu Anwen was following, was to use spiritual energy to enhance mortal crops. This would result in them growing rger, tasting better, and having far higher nutritional value than standard mortal crops.

  A person who regurly ate these spiritual crops, even if they only ate spiritual rice or spiritual broccoli, would never have to worry about having a nutritionally deficient diet. In fact, they would be far healthier than others who only ate the highest quality mortal food.

  Even for people without spirit roots, the spiritual energy in spiritual food was the best possible dietary supplement. It wouldn't allow mortals to elevate their life level like cultivators could, but avoiding sickness and remaining healthy well into old age would be no problem.

  The second path was to grow crops from heirloom spiritual seeds that had been cultivated over many generations. Even the worst heirloom spiritual crops would be many times better than spiritual crops grown from mortal seeds.

  The problem with the second approach was that it was only an option for certain major sects or families. It was impossible to purchase seeds for heirloom spiritual crops, as a family's entire livelihood often rested on just the sales of a single spiritual crop.

  Any spiritual crops sold by these groups would be altered to make them incapable of reproduction.

  Even if someone did manage to get their hands on usable heirloom seeds and started growing their own, they could only hope that the family or sect that controlled that particur crop never found out. If they did, the consequences could be imagined.

  If Fu Anwen wanted to grow heirloom spiritual crops, he would either need find a way to acquire them from one of these groups or cultivate his own. In time, he was certain to follow the tter path, but he'd also keep a look out for any opportunities to safely obtain heirloom spiritual seeds.

  At least for the time being, he and his sect would have to make do with the lowest quality spiritual food.

  After making some adjustments to the nd around the sect, most involving fttening the ground and filling in holes left behind after plucking hundreds of trees into his space, Fu Anwen decided to spend the rest of the day exploring.

  For every cultivator and martial artist, the four most important things were wealth, companions, techniques, and location.

  Wealth referred to resources that were needed to advance one's strength. This was the most important requirement for any practitioner, and it also happened to be what Fu Anwen cked the most.

  At the top of his list, he was in dire need of gems. The Farming Sect still needed hundreds of formations for its many fields and buildings.

  The fact that he hadn't managed to find a single spiritual pnt in the wild was also depressing. Even the stupid bear he'd killed had been able to find spiritual pnts to eat, and quite a few of them, judging by its size.

  Ores, pnts, gems, money—the list went on and on. With his ability, all of these were easily obtainable. He only needed time.

  Companions referred to having a master to offer guidance, fellow sect members to share experiences and train with, and anyone else who could help one advance in some way.

  This was one of Fu Anwen's main reasons for starting his sects. On his own, learning every skill and practicing every technique would be impossible.

  But what if he had hundreds of disciples? What if had thousands?

  His dream was to eventually control dozens of sects, each with tens or hundreds of thousands of disciples, spread across the entire world.

  By then, every technique could be tested. Every path of growth could be perfected. Every grain of rice and ear of corn could be cultivated to be the absolute tastiest!

  Methods referred not only to cultivation and martial arts techniques, but also to knowledge of and recipes for medicine, alchemy, formations, and other pursuits that could help one gain strength and stay alive.

  This was Fu Anwen's greatest strength. His mind contained a massive library of techniques perfected and refined from many centuries of a great schor's work. He wasn't foolish enough to cim that he was in possession of the world's best methods, but in the Fu Kingdom, at least, he was certainly unmatched.

  That said, he was always interested in adding more books to his mental library.

  Land referred to any pce suitable for helping one gain strength. It could be a location with high spiritual energy for a cultivator or a massive section of farmnd to grow spiritual medicine for use in alchemy.

  At Fu Anwen's current level, his current tiny speck of dirt in the middle of the wilderness with barely any spiritual energy suited him just fine. As a martial artist, he didn't have nearly as much use for spiritual energy as a cultivator.

  With a goal in mind, he slowly blinked away into the forest. Today, he would thoroughly scour the territory surrounding the Farming Sect and Big Tree Vilge, leaving no valuable materials uncimed.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Nothing!

  After over ten hours spent looking over every inch of nd within ten miles, all he'd managed to find was a small hidden base containing a few bck-cd martial artists. Judging by the identification medallion each of them carried, they were secret protectors sent to protect Fu Anwen and his mother.

  Actually, the truth was that he'd seen two spiritual pnts.

  The problem was that those two pnts had already been collected by those stupid martial artists!

  "Bunch of jerks! My formation's good enough to protect Big Tree Vilge on its own! What are you good for, aside from stealing my spiritual pnts? Hurry up and go back to the Fu Kingdom!"

  Fu Anwen kicked his feet in bed and yelled angrily at the bck-cd martial artists, who had no idea that they'd upset the little boy.

  Not that they would have cared. Between two valuable spiritual pnts and Fu Anwen's happiness, their choice was obvious.

  "Whatever. I didn't need those stupid pnts, anyway."

  After sulking for a while, he soon got over the pain of losing the first two spiritual pnts he'd ever seen. After all, tomorrow was going to be a big day.

  Disciple recruitment day!

  With a belly full of bear cw, Fu Anwen faded into sleep. His dreams were filled with endless scenes of his Farming Sect's disciples growing the rgest, most delicious spiritual crops in the world.