The Eternal Farmer: I Trade My Harvest for Immortality

Jiang Chen sat cross-legged in the center of his Spirit Farm, drawing in the five elemental affinities of Spirit Qi.

Metal Spirit Qi remained the sparsest, offering only a meager trickle for him to absorb.

Water Spirit Qi, however, had grown increasingly dense ever since the golden band of light dissipated.

Nourished by the abundant water, the ambient Wood Spirit Qi had also thickened considerably.

Fire Spirit Qi remained unchanged—its potency scaling directly with the surrounding temperature.

Earth Spirit Qi served as the anchor, remaining the most stable and unwavering element of the five.

Yet, Jiang Chen’s cultivation method had evolved. Instead of immediately refining the inhaled Spirit Qi into his dantian, he directed the raw energy straight into his internal organs.

Wood nourished the liver.

Fire stoked the heart.

Metal tempered the lungs.

Water replenished the kidneys.

The five elemental energies cycled through his viscera, forming a symbiotic loop of nourishment. His essence, Qi, and spirit swelled to an unprecedented vibrancy.

Only after this visceral filtration process purified the energies did they trickle down into his Qi Sea, transforming into flawlessly refined spiritual power. This method yielded a massive leap in both the density and sheer quality of his reserves.

Over months of relentless accumulation, the five distinct spiritual powers within his Qi Sea had grown formidable. Previously, they had remained segregated, each dominating its own corner of his dantian. But now, as his Five Elements Spirit Roots approached Perfection, those boundaries dissolved. The energies merged into a swirling, five-colored liquid core that maintained a slow, harmonious rotation.

Only when he actively channeled a specific elemental technique would a single thread of power be drawn from the pool, like silk pulled from a cocoon.

More importantly, if one element ran dry, the cyclical nature of the five elements would instantly compensate. If his Wood Spirit Qi was exhausted, his Water Spirit Qi would seamlessly convert to replace it—Water feeding Wood.

This was the true terror of the Five Elements Spirit Roots: a near-total lack of elemental weaknesses. The energies fed into one another in an endless loop. As long as his reserves weren’t entirely drained, his engine would never stall.

Jiang Chen opened his mouth and inhaled deeply, drawing from the twenty acres of Spirit Farm stretching out before him. The spirit plants swayed in unison, exhaling a massive tide of rich Wood Spirit Qi.

Seizing the influx, he kickstarted the cycle: Wood fed Fire, Fire birthed Earth, Earth condensed Metal, and Metal birthed Water. The cascading reaction relentlessly stimulated his internal organs.

The liver, aligned with Wood, manifested its vitality in his nails and clarified his vision.

The heart, aligned with Fire, brought a healthy flush to his face and sharpened his sense of taste.

The spleen, aligned with Earth, enriched his lips and mouth.

The lungs, aligned with Metal, fortified his pores and cleared his nasal passages.

The kidneys, aligned with Water, brought a lustrous sheen to his hair and heightened his hearing.

Jiang Chen’s aura skyrocketed.

His eyelids fluttered as a piercing cyan light ignited deep within his pupils. He flexed his fingers, a translucent cyan halo shimmering across his fingernails. A healthy, ruddy glow spread across his cheeks, accompanied by a faint, metallic sweetness blooming on his tongue.

He swallowed instinctively, a soothing warmth sliding down his throat to settle in his core.

His breathing grew impossibly long and rhythmic. Each inhalation and exhalation produced a faint, serpentine hiss, while wisps of ethereal white vapor coiled around his nose. With every breath, the air cycled through his lungs before transforming into a refreshing, icy current that plunged into his kidneys.

His ears twitched as white halos pulsed around them, and his hair cascaded down his back, heavy and silken.

Time lost all meaning. Only when he hit an absolute, impenetrable bottleneck did Jiang Chen’s Adam’s apple bob. He exhaled sharply, expelling a mouthful of turbid, five-colored exhaust.

He slowly opened his eyes, the cyan light within them flashing like drawn blades. His physical and spiritual state had reached an unprecedented, flawless peak.

Jiang Chen gave a satisfied nod. “Foundation Establishment… Perfection.”

The recent explosion of ambient Water Spirit Qi, combined with the massive expansion of his personal space’s Spirit Farm, had provided an endless buffet of five-colored Spirit Qi. It was this sheer volume of resources that had finally pushed his cultivation to the absolute pinnacle of Foundation Establishment.

The next logical step was condensing a Golden Core, but he wasn’t about to rush. Jiang Chen was a man of calculated risks; without a one hundred percent success rate, he wouldn’t dare attempt the breakthrough.

Even a monstrous genius like Chen Tian had been forced to rely on a mountain of external aids—the Rain Pavilion’s defensive formations and the Flying Serpent of the Black Lake—just to survive the apocalyptic final strike of the turbid thunder.

If a Three Spirit Root cultivator faced such a catastrophic tribulation, the heavenly punishment awaiting a Five Spirit Root would be nothing short of absolute annihilation.

Jiang Chen analyzed his current portfolio. My Wood Spirit Root handles insect cultivation and spirit farming.

My Fire Spirit Root mimics the Crow Venerable’s techniques and powers my alchemy.

My Earth Spirit Root is dedicated to formations and body refining.

My Metal Spirit Root is locked into the sword cultivator path and artifact refining.

And my Water Spirit Root, naturally, is my foundation as a talisman master.

Five Spirit Roots. Five distinct professions. Five paths of power.

Anyone else—even a heaven-defying protagonist like Long Ao—would be committing cultivation suicide by attempting to master all five simultaneously. The sheer volume of time, resources, and comprehension required to dual-cultivate, let alone penta-cultivate, was mathematically impossible for a normal human.

But Jiang Chen operated on a different set of rules. He possessed a practically infinite Lifespan, and his system allowed him to bypass the grind, instantly maxing out cultivation techniques, spells, and auxiliary skills.

As a consummate master of time management and efficiency, it was only logical to squeeze every ounce of utility out of all five Spirit Roots before attempting to form his Golden Core.

Currently, his Water Spirit Root’s talisman crafting was already maxed out. That left only the Metal Spirit Root’s sword path, and the Earth Spirit Root’s formation mastery.

With a thought, a pale, spherical object materialized in his right palm. It was the Bone Sword Orb he had looted from the corpse buried beneath the poplar tree spirit. He hadn’t found the time to process the loot until now. There was no better moment to integrate it into his arsenal.

Jiang Chen immediately activated the Carved Gold Art. He extracted pure Metal spiritual power from his Qi Sea, injecting it ruthlessly into the Bone Sword Orb.

The artifact initially fought back, stubbornly clinging to the faint, lingering spiritual sense imprint of its deceased owner. But against the overwhelming density and supreme quality of Jiang Chen’s Foundation Establishment Perfection spiritual power, the dead man’s will was quickly crushed.

With a sharp hiss, the final trace of the old imprint evaporated. The Bone Sword Orb ceased its resistance, eagerly accepting the influx of new energy.

Wasting no time, Jiang Chen decisively stamped the artifact with a dual imprint of his own blood and spiritual sense, seizing absolute administrative control over the weapon.

An instant telepathic connection snapped into place. The Bone Sword Orb felt like an extension of his own nervous system—a third hand, a phantom limb that he could manipulate with frictionless ease.

With a casual flick of his wrist, the Sword Orb shot forward, spinning rapidly. As it flew, it began to spit out razor-sharp streams of white sword Qi.

At first, it was just a single, faint stream—barely a threat. But within seconds, the output multiplied exponentially, filling the air with a dense barrage of lethal energy. A relentless, tearing chi-chi-chi echoed throughout his vast personal space as a localized storm of flying swords crisscrossed in a deadly grid.

Jiang Chen’s eyes gleamed as he calculated the destructive yield. “If a single Sword Orb can lay down this much covering fire… what if I had ten? Or a hundred?”

The thought immediately brought Qin Hao to mind. The man was the undisputed number one Golden Core sword cultivator in the entire Cloud Sea Sect. His signature Magical Artifact was a bizarre, sunflower-shaped construct designed to store and rapid-fire hundreds of miniature flying swords.

In combat, it functioned like a rotary mechanism of death, unleashing a honeycomb payload of countless sword lights. The kinetic roar of its barrage maxed out both lethality and sheer, overwhelming spectacle.

A predatory grin spread across Jiang Chen’s face. “I can reverse-engineer Qin Hao’s design. I’ll forge my own Spirit Weapon—a heavy-duty Magical Artifact. The more Sword Orbs I load into it, the more terrifying the explosive output will be.”