The Eternal Farmer: I Trade My Harvest for Immortality

Dream Island.

A single spirit talisman hovered high in the air, projecting a massive, crackling dome of lightning.

However, the barrier wasn’t designed to keep threats out. It was a cage.

Trapped within the dome were hundreds of people. The crowd comprised the core members of the four great aristocratic families—excluding the Long Clan—alongside a horde of independent rogue cultivators who had been bribed, coerced, or flat-out tricked into boarding the island.

“The perimeter is sealed! We can’t break through!”

“Zhao Qianyun, you treacherous dog! You’ll die a miserable death for this!”

“Let us out!”

The captives hammered against the lightning barrier, their voices hoarse with absolute, helpless despair.

Suddenly, the crowd fell silent as three figures approached the perimeter. Leading the trio was Zhao Qianyun.

The man’s age was impossible to determine. He was entirely swallowed by a voluminous black robe, his features obscured in supernatural shadow. He exuded an aura of suffocating, ancient malice. Zhao Qianyun addressed him simply as “Wu Lao.”

The woman appeared to be in her late twenties. Her skin was porcelain-white, and her eyes shimmered with a predatory, soul-snaring allure. She wore a diaphanous, dark purple gauze dress with an aggressively high-cut hem, leaving the pale expanse of her thighs completely exposed. She walked barefoot over the dirt, her toenails painted a glossy, venomous purple. The sheer fabric clung to her like a second skin, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.

In the criminal underworld, her name was infamous: Xiao Mei’er.

Zhao Qianyun stopped before the barrier and turned to his associates. “Wu Lao, Fellow Daoist Xiao. I have delivered the sacrifices, and the yield is far greater than anticipated. When does the ritual commence?”

Wu Lao didn’t even look at the screaming captives. “Patience,” he rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones. “The dragon vein was severed only recently. The subterranean Spirit Qi hasn’t fully dissipated into the surroundings. We must wait at least a few more days.”

Xiao Mei’er giggled, trailing a finger down Zhao Qianyun’s arm. “Exactly. What’s the rush?”

Zhao Qianyun slapped her hand away, his expression darkening. “For the past week, Fellow Daoist Xiao has done nothing but gorge herself on yin-yang essence, rapidly inflating her own cultivation base. Meanwhile, ever since I secured this island for you, I haven’t seen a single drop of the compensation we agreed upon.”

Xiao Mei’er sneered, her seductive facade dropping into open contempt. “Fellow Daoist Zhao, you’re just desperate to condense your Golden Core ahead of schedule. But really, a Human-Grade Golden Core? Any trash with enough pills can form one. Why are you acting so starved?”

Zhao Qianyun’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “Who told you I was settling for a Human-Grade Golden Core?”

Xiao Mei’er gasped in mock horror, pressing a hand to her chest. “Oh my! Don’t tell me the mighty Zhao Qianyun is aiming for an Earth-Grade Golden Core!”

Ignoring her, Zhao Qianyun turned to the robed man. “Wu Lao, we had a deal. I provide the livestock, you provide the Spirit Light Talisman to guarantee my survival through the Heavenly Tribulation.”

Wu Lao chuckled—a dry, rasping sound. He reached into his robes and produced a shimmering talisman. “You want it so badly? Take it.”

Zhao Qianyun froze, his eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated greed. He reached out with trembling fingers. “Thank you, Wu Lao! I—”

The moment his skin made contact with the talisman, an apocalyptic wave of profound frost erupted.

Zhao Qianyun didn’t even have time to scream. In a fraction of a breath, his entire body was instantly frozen into a solid block of blue ice. His facial muscles remained permanently locked in a grotesque mask of final, paralyzing terror.

Wu Lao withdrew his hand, his eyes burning with cold disdain. “Trash like you actually thought you were worthy of my Spirit Light Talisman?”

Mystic Heart City.

Jiang Chen, having just achieved absolute Perfection in the Major Rain Spell, didn’t immediately vanish into his pocket dimension. Instead, he stayed in his quarters, casually reviewing his other cultivation manuals.

He wasn’t in a hurry. The city was currently swarming with Golden Core masters, their Divine Senses constantly sweeping the city like an inescapable net. If he suddenly vanished from the material plane while under active surveillance, it would instantly arouse suspicion from Qin Hao and Chen Tian.

Patience is the ultimate concealment, he reminded himself.

He waited until the sun rose the following morning. As expected, Qin Hao remained in the city for diplomatic duties, while Chen Tian, Feng Lie, and the rest of the Golden Core strike teams mobilized for a new hunting expedition in the Canglan Sea.

Since Jiang Chen actively dodged front-line combat duty, he was officially assigned to the rear support division. Using the excuse of restocking supplies, he wandered into the newly reopened Shattered Demon Market.

The market’s landscape had completely shifted. The local merchants had fled; the stalls were now entirely manned by formal disciples from the various Immortal Sects. Thanks to the explosive surge of water demons and sea monsters migrating into the Canglan Sea, the market was overflowing with high-grade aquatic loot.

After making a show of browsing, Jiang Chen slipped into the Sea Demon Pavilion, rented a secure, private room, and locked the door. To be absolutely certain he couldn’t be tracked, he submerged himself in the room’s secluded bath, deployed the Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat, and dove to the bottom before finally slipping into his pocket dimension.

The moment he materialized, he paused.

The gathering area in front of the Seal Bone Tomb portal looked like a chaotic dumping ground.

A small army of Pattern Bone Puppets stood in dormant rows, taking up most of the space. Piled around them were jagged mounds of raw resources: sand crystals, five-colored stones, and heavy sacks of five-colored gold dust.

However, Jiang Chen’s eyes locked onto the centerpiece of the loot pile.

It was a massive, heavy coffin lid.

With a casual flick of his wrist, telekinesis ripped the slab from the pile and floated it directly in front of him. He scrutinized it intently.

The runic patterns etched into the stone were undeniably from the Seal Bone Tomb. Because the artifact predated the current era by over a millennium, the syntax was brutally complex, ancient, and highly esoteric.

“This is way above my current level of array comprehension,” Jiang Chen muttered, running a hand over the cold stone. “This isn’t just a burial slab. It’s a targeted sealing barrier. What the hell did the puppets drag this off of?”

He hadn’t checked his spiritual link with the portal in days, and he didn’t have the time to review the puppets’ memories right now. He needed to irrigate the crops and get back to the material world before his absence was noted.

Standing at the edge of his fields, Jiang Chen triggered the Major Rain Spell.

He channeled the vast reserves of Water Spirit Qi from his dantian. Instantly, the air grew heavy with moisture in the pocket dimension.

Thick, oppressive storm clouds rapidly materialized out of thin air, blanketing the sky and casting the farm in deep, heavy shadow. The spiritual pressure dropped noticeably.

A moment later, the heavens opened up.

A curtain of fine, shimmering rain cascaded down, every single drop glowing with pure, liquid Spirit Qi. The rhythmic pitter-patter against the leaves filled the air, instantly washing away the stagnant scent of dirt and replacing it with an intoxicating, vibrant spiritual freshness.

The Spirit Farm drank greedily. A glossy, bioluminescent sheen coated the stalks of the spirit rice, and the heavy grain panicles visibly swelled with vitality. The dense black soil absorbed the deluge perfectly, becoming rich and loamy without turning into useless mud. The Perfection-tier spell was flawlessly balanced.

Leaving the storm to run its self-sustaining cycle, Jiang Chen walked over to the swirling gray vortex of the Seal Bone Tomb portal. He peered through the shimmering threshold, checking the status of his puppet forces.

Compared to his last inspection, the ranks of the Pattern Bone Puppets had been severely thinned. Many of the surviving units were missing arms, legs, or massive chunks of their skeletal frames.

They hit heavy resistance, he concluded. The Seal Bone Tomb opened only once every five hundred years; while it was an untouched treasury of heavenly resources, it was also a slaughterhouse of ancient, self-activating defenses.

Deciding to escalate his scouting efforts, Jiang Chen summoned Crow Five, his most intelligent avian construct. He mentally seized control of their spiritual links, awakening another hundred dormant Pattern Bone Puppets.

He updated their primary command: “Prioritize all artifacts, structures, and information related to sarcophagi. Extract targets directly to the portal if logistical weight permits.”

Crow Five fluttered down, perching securely atop the skull of the lead puppet. The skeletal strike team marched uniformly into the gray vortex, vanishing into the abyss.

Time bled away as the torrential Spirit Rain finished its cycle.

Just as Jiang Chen was preparing to recall Crow Five and withdraw his consciousness, the shared vision from the raven flared. The strike team had broken through the outer perimeter and discovered something massive.

Deep within the tomb, the macabre architecture opened up into a sprawling, subterranean plaza. The ground was littered with thousands of identical, runic coffin lids and shattered sarcophagi, stacked like firewood in a catastrophic warehouse.

But dominating the absolute dead center of the plaza was the primary target.

It was a gargantuan stone sarcophagus.

The dimensions were absurd: nearly a hundred feet long, thirty feet wide, and over twenty feet tall.

Jiang Chen’s breath hitched as he recognized the material. It was carved from a single, seamless monolith of Profound Yin Stone.

Profound Yin Stone was an ultra-rare mineral forged exclusively in the absolute zero depths of subterranean Yin eyes. It was harder than forged iron and constantly bled a bone-shattering, supernatural cold. The market rate for a piece the size of a fist was several hundred Mid-grade Spirit Stones.

To carve a sarcophagus the size of a building out of a single, flawless block of Profound Yin Stone was a display of wealth and power so obscene it bordered on madness.

Unlike traditional noble tombs, the sarcophagus featured no decorative reliefs or artistic carvings. Instead, every square inch of the monolith was violently scored with ancient, aggressive runes. The jagged script twisted and writhed across the stone like fossilized serpents, giving it the appearance of a desperate, panicked sealing formation rather than a memorial.

Carved deeply into the head of the sarcophagus was a single, massive character: SUPPRESS.

The flanks of the stone were plastered with repeating, frantic variations of IMPRISON, LOCK, and SILENCE.

But the foot of the sarcophagus was the most terrifying.

Carved into the stone, glowing with a faint, sickening pulse, was the largest character of all: LIFE.