Chapter 88: Egg Hatching and Cultivation Progress
Chapter 88: Chapter 88: Egg Hatching and Cultivation Progress
"Are we making a move?" a low voice murmured, drowned out by the bustling noise just as Chen Mo navigated through the crowd and headed out.
For the brothers Wei Zhengming and Wei Zhenggong, they had never laid a hand on a Spirit Plant Cultivator in all their years. It wasn’t out of fear, but pure disdain! How much profit could a Spirit Plant Cultivator possibly yield? Killing eight or ten of them might not even equal the wealth of an ordinary Loose Cultivator. The effort expended was completely disproportionate to the reward.
However, someone who could haul two to three thousand catties of grain to sell perhaps shouldn’t be lumped in with ordinary Spirit Plant Cultivators. The brothers hesitated.
Wei Zhengming pondered for a moment before gritting his teeth. "Let’s do it! Even if he only has a single Low Grade Spirit Stone left on him, it’s still a profit!"
With his older brother’s approval, Wei Zhenggong was itching to get started. The two cracked their knuckles and quickly gave chase, but upon exiting the Marketplace, their target was nowhere to be seen.
"Brother, where is he?"
"Stop wasting time with words! After him!"
They pursued him for a while longer, but found absolutely no trace. The fat sheep they had their eyes on was gone!
"Impossible, this is the only path he could have taken!" Wei Zhengming still refused to believe it. With their strength at the Qi Refining Fifth Layer and Qi Refining Fourth Layer, how could they fail to catch up to a mere Spirit Plant Cultivator?
While they wallowed in frustration, Chen Mo was already sitting comfortably at home. He had brewed a pot of Immortal Peak tea and was playing with the Demon Beast Egg in his hands.
"Can this thing really be hatched?" he wondered aloud.
"CLUCK! CLUCK CLUCK!"
Beside him, Kang bobbed its head. Its beady chicken eyes remained fixed on the Demon Beast Egg in Chen Mo’s hand, a glistening string of drool leaking from its beak.
"Get lost and go play somewhere else! This is far more valuable than you are!" Chen Mo scolded. This fellow actually wanted to eat a Demon Beast Egg? Was it not afraid of eating itself to death?
"Though, if I used this egg to make pancakes, it might actually taste really good." For some reason, this thought popped into Chen Mo’s mind. Having farmed and raised livestock for so long, everything looked edible to him... Perhaps this was a custom from his homeland. To determine if a thing was good, the first question to ask was always whether it could be eaten. If it could, it was good. If it couldn’t... no one would care about it at all.
"You want to eat the egg?"
Kang nodded vigorously.
"Look, if you eat it now, you only get one egg. But if we hatch it and let it lay even more eggs later, wouldn’t you be able to eat a whole lot of eggs?"
Kang’s eyes lit up at Chen Mo’s logic, and it nodded even faster. It tilted its head back and gestured wildly, then pointed a claw at its own rear end while making a flurry of "CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK" sounds.
"You want to hatch it?"
It nodded.
"Are you kidding me?"
Kang stepped forward and pawed at Chen Mo’s arm a couple of times, putting on a look that clearly screamed, "I’m serious, bro, trust me!"
Twenty taels of Spiritual Sand! If the egg ended up getting eaten by a chicken, his regret would be boundless. But when it came to incubating eggs, Chen Mo was genuinely out of his depth. This sort of thing was originally a chicken’s job anyway.
"Are you sure? If you eat it, I’m cutting off your food for three months!"
Kang nodded rapidly, giving a look that said, "Rest assured."
After agonizing over it for another moment, Chen Mo ultimately chose to trust it. Having spent day and night together for nearly three years, his bond with Kang far surpassed the value of twenty taels of Spiritual Sand.
Seeing him hand the egg over, Kang opened its beak, caught it in its mouth, and immediately dashed out the door.
"Holy shit!" Chen Mo failed to react in time, and the chicken’s silhouette vanished! "You little—!"
He hurriedly gave chase.
The next moment, he found that Kang had placed the Pentagonal Heavy Lizard’s egg in the chicken coop. It was using its powerful claw to press down on the head of another chicken, forcing the other bird to sit on the egg.
"CLUCK! CLUCK CLUCK!"
Good heavens! So it had intended to make the other chickens incubate it.
The poor Spiritual Bird, which had been raised alongside Kang, looked incredibly wronged, but it didn’t dare voice its complaints. The most ridiculous part was that it was a rooster! Forcing a rooster to incubate an egg—only Kang was capable of such a stunt.
As for the hens? With its vast harem of seventy-two concubines, how could Kang bear to make them do such menial labor?
"CLUCK... CLUCK CLUCK." Kang turned around, looked at Chen Mo, and patted its own breast with a wing, assuring him that everything was under control.
Chen Mo didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but he could only let it be.
Returning inside the house, he lit an oil lamp and took out the *Huai Mountain Qi Cultivation Technique* from his Storage Ring to read it carefully.
After a brief skim, Chen Mo gained a general understanding of the text. This was a Cultivation Technique created by the founding patriarch of the Cyan Yang Sect. It was originally designed to solve the immense difficulty of breaking through the Golden Core Dao by utilizing an extended lifespan for slow, steady progression.
However, this path seemed to have failed. Those who were capable of forming a Golden Core would eventually do so; those who were incapable would never succeed, no matter how long they lived. Therefore, this Cultivation Technique ultimately capped at the Foundation Establishment Realm. Since the creator himself hadn’t formed a Golden Core, how could he have written any subsequent stages?
As a result, the *Huai Mountain Qi Cultivation Technique* was merely considered one of the Cyan Yang Sect’s Twelve Techniques and failed to rank among the One Absolute and Three Extremes!
For the current Chen Mo, however, being able to reach Foundation Establishment was more than enough. There was no point overthinking the future. A journey had to be made one step at a time, just as a meal had to be eaten one bite at a time. Having worked as a Spirit Plant Cultivator for so long, he had deeply internalized the concepts of the Celestial Dao and natural laws. Even planting a crop of Spirit Rice required patience; one could never skip the stages of sprouting, growing, maturing, and forming ears.
Under the dim light of the oil lamp, Chen Mo calmed his mind and immersed himself in the mental methods of the *Huai Mountain Qi Cultivation Technique*. He focused on feeling the differences in how this method absorbed Spiritual Qi and nourished the physical body.
Finally, after a full night of trial and error, the energy pathways he had cultivated with the *Qi Cultivation Technique* gradually altered their circulation, beginning to adapt to the new method.
For the next consecutive week, Chen Mo endured the agonizing transition of changing his Cultivation Technique. His experience bar remained completely stagnant, eventually plummeting to "0." If he hadn’t already broken through to the Qi Refining Fourth Layer, the 300 experience points he had amassed in the Third Layer might have been completely wiped out!
Not only that, but his body also suffered intense discomfort. He alternated between extreme chills and fevers, feeling incredibly weak. Song Yunxi had warned him in the past that unless absolutely necessary, a cultivator shouldn’t rashly switch their Cultivation Technique. A mild consequence would be a regression in realm, while a severe consequence would be damage to the Inner Mansion!
Finally, on the eighth day, a trace of newborn Spiritual Qi was generated within Chen Mo’s body. The Spiritual Qi of heaven and earth began to gather, flowing along his meridians and ultimately converging in his Dantian.
However, there was a distinct difference from the *Qi Cultivation Technique*! After the Spiritual Qi pooled in his Dantian, a portion of it fed back out, further nourishing his physical body. At this moment, Chen Mo finally understood why this Cultivation Technique could prolong one’s lifespan.
However, the trade-off was a slowed pace of cultivation. Chen Mo made a rough estimate. Previously, accumulating 300 experience points would only have taken him two years. Under the *Huai Mountain Qi Cultivation Technique*, it would likely take three! And that was just the leap from the Qi Refining Third Layer to the Qi Refining Fourth Layer.
Now, if he wanted to break through to the Qi Refining Fifth Layer, it would probably take him a full five years!