Chapter 74: Building a Greenhouse
Chapter 74: Building a Greenhouse
"However, I will wait for you to crave for it first."
It had been three days since that surprising morning when Dao Ming made this promise and almost disappeared from Xiang Ling’s life. In these past few days, she had only seen glimpses of him around the house except for the meal times, and while he was always present during meals, he kept ignoring her.
Xiang Ling hated to admit that for some reason, his actions were affecting her. The more he was ignoring her, the more she kept thinking about him. She wondered what sort of wolf spell that wolf shifter had cast over her to make her this insane.
"My Lady?"
Fu Xiao’s familiar voice ended the train of Xiang Ling’s thoughts. She turned her attention toward the girl to hear what she had to say.
"My Lady, we have reached our destination." Fu Xiao informed and received a nod of acknowledgment from Xiang Ling. Standing up, she climbed down from the carriage first before helping Xiang Ling.
Standing in front of them was a two-storey building. Xiang Ling and Fu Xiao headed inside and were immediately greeted by the shopkeeper who became surprised after he finally recognized Xiang Ling a few moments later.
Leaving the shocked man aside, Xiang Ling moved to check the array of seeds that were arranged around the room. There were seeds for everything - vegetables, fruits, flowers, herbs, tea and all. However, after checking the seeds, Xiang Ling realized that their quality wasn’t that great. Yet, she decided to buy them because she had her own way of increasing their quality.
On the other hand, the shocked shopkeeper finally came out of his trance and shook his head as he watched Lady Chen select all the low-grade seeds. Indeed, a trash couldn’t change into a Phoenix.
After selecting all the seeds that she needed, Xiang Ling made the payment and returned to the carriage with Fu Xiao. While they were on their way back to the Chen Manor, the news of her appearance in the seed shop spread throughout the city like wildfire.
* * *
Xiang Ling sipped the herbal tea and watched the servants working on the construction of the greenhouse behind the manor. So far, they had already built the structure and were now working on preparing the soil for farming.
"My Lady, we have finished plowing the field. What should we do next?" Uncle Sun asked for directions and received a big jar from Xiang Ling. "My Lady, this is...?"
"The soil here isn’t suitable for farming yet. We will need to add a lot of nutrients to it before we can grow the vegetables here. Add this mixture to the soil thoroughly and water the soil. We will leave the canopy of the greenhouse open tonight to let the soil absorb the moonlight." Xiang Ling explained the procedure to Uncle Sun who immediately nodded his head in understanding and returned to finish the work.
Xiang Ling, on the other hand, found herself wondering about another matter that was of grave concern. Barely nine days were left before the end of the month and she still hadn’t found a way to earn money. According to her deal with Xin Cheng, she had to return his money by the end of the month, and along with that, she needed money to pay salary to the servants and also to buy rations.
A deep sigh left her lips as she stood up from where she was sitting around a table that the servants had arranged under an old tree next to the greenhouse. She entered the manor through the back door and headed toward her courtyard. She needed some time alone to find a way to earn money.
Once she was inside the protective walls of her bed-chamber, she quickly entered her space. She appeared outside the Summer Cottage and instead of heading inside, she made her way to the Herb Valley.
Just like she had predicted, the Heavenly Empress took the bait and released the Herb Valley from the seal instead of the three back caves. Truth be told, those three caves weren’t hiding any rare treasures. There was a hot spring, a vegetable and fruit field, and the family of a rare spirit beast that she contracted during her hundredth birthday.
But it was a secret only Xiang Ling knew about. The Heavenly Empress had no clue what treasures were hidden inside those caves and because of the protective barrier around them, Little Pink couldn’t enter those caves either. In the end, they could only imagine what kind of treasures must be hidden in the caves for Xiang Ling to trade the Herb Valley for them.
Knowing the personality of the Heavenly Empress, Xiang Ling knew that Her Majesty would never let her get access to any treasures inside her space that easily, and just as she predicted, the Heavenly Empress unsealed the Herb Valley instead of the caves.
Since she had access to unlimited spiritual herbs of all kinds, Xiang Ling wondered if she could use her talent of alchemy to earn money. But there was a problem, the cultivation culture was very limited in the Mortal Realm. Only one out of a thousand mortals chose the path of cultivation and thus, the market of alchemy was very limited.
Pondering on the issue for a little bit longer, Xiang Ling finally deduced a plan.
"Little Pink." She called out to the little spirit beast and let the Divine energy of the space carry her message to wherever the spirit beast was. Within seconds, the little beast was fluttering its wings in front of her.
"Little Pink, don’t you want me to accept you as my spirit beast? I have a task for you. Complete it and I will reconsider." Xiang Ling proposed the idea and watched the spirit beast’s eyes twinkling with excitement.
"Whatever Master wants, Little Pink will do it." The beast chirped excitedly.
"Go out and find all the possible information about the Herb Halls in Dongzhi City. See if any of them is hiding some secrets that are worth paying attention to."