The Eternal Farmer: I Trade My Harvest for Immortality

BOOM!

The impossibly heavy stone sarcophagus finally cleared the portal and slammed into the dirt of Jiang Chen’s pocket dimension. The impact triggered a localized earthquake, sending a violent shockwave ripping across the farm. The hundreds of Pattern Bone Puppets acting as pallbearers instantly shattered, their overloaded skeletal chassis detonating into clouds of bone dust.

Staring at the colossal monolith sitting in the middle of his property, Jiang Chen’s pupils trembled with raw adrenaline. “We actually dragged it out?”

This was the core artifact of a high-tier secret realm that only opened once every five hundred years. A realm strictly locked behind a Golden Core cultivation threshold.

And he had just strip-mined it from the comfort of his own basement using a hijacked drone army.

Despite his excitement, Jiang Chen’s paranoia kept him anchored. He didn’t approach the sarcophagus immediately. Instead, he funneled more Spirit Qi to revive a fresh squad of Pattern Bone Puppets, commanding them to pry open the seamlessly sealed lid.

They failed completely.

The lid wouldn’t budge. First, the Profound Yin Stone was simply too dense and heavy. Second, there was no physical gap, seam, or mechanical vulnerability to exploit. The sarcophagus was an absolute, flawless monolith.

Jiang Chen raised an eyebrow. “I dragged you across dimensions, and you’re going to give me trouble at the finish line?”

It was entirely expected. A sarcophagus of this scale, sealed by an ancient powerhouse, wasn’t going to pop open like a cheap puzzle box. If it could be breached with simple brute force, the Golden Core masters who explored the tomb in previous cycles would have plundered it centuries ago.

Fortunately, Jiang Chen was a polymath of top-tier auxiliary skills. He methodically rotated through his entire arsenal. He attempted runic decryption, localized artifact forging dismantlement, and even highly corrosive alchemical solvents.

Nothing worked. The sarcophagus absorbed or deflected every orthodox method he threw at it.

“Fine. If orthodoxy fails, we go unorthodox.”

Jiang Chen phased out of his pocket dimension and physically relocated his material body to the interior of a sunken shipwreck at the bottom of the Canglan Sea. He unsummoned the Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat, pulled it into his pocket dimension, and commanded its rudimentary machine spirit to attack the sarcophagus using its innate devouring and electrical discharge capabilities.

He didn’t actually expect it to work.

But incredibly, it did.

As the boat unleashed a sustained barrage of raw, highly concentrated lightning, the previously impregnable sarcophagus reacted. The monolith began to emit a low, resonant hum.

Moments later, the ancient, twisting runes carved into the stone began to strobe with sympathetic electrical currents, acting as if they were being forcefully rebooted by the external energy spike.

A series of sharp, heavy cracks echoed across the farm. The sounds grew louder, culminating in a violent, ground-shaking shudder.

The colossal lid automatically disengaged and slid back, slowly exposing the interior.

Jiang Chen braced himself for an apocalyptic eruption of toxic miasma or necrotic energy. To his absolute shock, the sarcophagus vented a wave of incredibly pure, cool Spirit Qi. It felt exactly like breathing in high-density Wood Spirit Qi—it was practically suffocating with life force.

He launched himself into the air, floating high above the monolith to peer safely inside.

The moment his eyes registered the contents, his pupils contracted to the size of pinpricks.

“Is that… Patriarch Carving Trace?”

“He looks completely fresh! That’s not a corpse!”

“Wait… is he still alive?!”

Jiang Chen stared in absolute shock.

The entity within the sarcophagus didn’t look like a resident of a 500-year-old tomb. He still possessed the overwhelming, suffocating majesty of a supreme powerhouse. He wasn’t lying down; he was seated in a perfect lotus position, his spine ramrod straight, projecting an aura so intense it felt like he might snap his eyes open at any second.

He wore a dark golden Daoist robe. The fabric was slightly faded by centuries of isolation, but otherwise pristine.

His physical preservation was flawless. His facial features were robust, his jawline sharp and imperious, and every single strand of hair at his temples was distinct. The only indicator of death was his skin—it was a flawless, bluish-white hue, resembling polished jade, completely devoid of human blood flow.

Visible on his exposed skin were the legendary “Carving Marks.”

They were the precursors to modern runes—more ancient, more primitive, and infinitely more profound. They appeared deceptively simple, yet every single stroke resonated with the absolute laws of heaven and earth.

Currently, the marks covering the Patriarch’s body were writhing and undulating like living parasites beneath his skin. It was an incredibly grotesque sight. The body radiated a massive, contradictory duality: it overflowed with boundless life force, yet simultaneously reeked of absolute, cosmic decay.

He was biologically dead, completely devoid of consciousness or a soul, yet his physical shell refused to die.

The interior walls of the sarcophagus were etched with runes infinitely more complex than the exterior. They appeared to be drawn with a mixture of pure essence blood and Netherworld Mud. The runes pulsed with a dark, wet red light, actively siphoning ambient Wood and Water Spirit Qi from Jiang Chen’s dimension to sustain the corpse.

Tucked into the corner of the sarcophagus lay a single jade pendant, cleanly fractured into three pieces. Its function was entirely unknown.

Jiang Chen’s eyes ignited with a terrifying, predatory light. “If I refine the corpse of Patriarch Carving Trace into a puppet… my combat parameters will shatter the ceiling.”

His puppetry skill was already maxed out at the Miracle Hands tier. He possessed the technical knowledge to orchestrate the modification. More importantly, the Patriarch was definitively dead, and his corpse was fully contained within the absolute safety of Jiang Chen’s pocket dimension. There were zero external variables to threaten the operation.

Without a second of hesitation, Jiang Chen initiated the refinement protocol.

He retrieved three sticks of Soul-Severing Incense from his Jade Green Gourd, ignited them, and planted them at the base of the sarcophagus. Instantly cycling all five elemental energies from his dantian, he generated physical tethers of Spirit Qi, binding the Patriarch’s limbs and torso.

With a heavy heave, he hoisted the corpse out of the sarcophagus, stripped it of its dark golden robes, and suspended it spread-eagle in mid-air.

He moved with surgical precision. Using his spiritual energy, he drew Binding Spirit Talismans directly into the air, slamming them onto the corpse’s facial features and sealing its nine orifices.

Next, he produced a block of Green-Patterned Wood. With a sharp gesture, the wood splintered into three perfectly tapered spikes. He drove the wooden nails directly into the crown of the Patriarch’s skull in a triangular formation.

He retrieved a lock of his own hair—prepared specifically for high-tier binding rituals—soaked it in his personal Spirit Qi, and meticulously wound it around the wooden spikes, wrapping it tighter and tighter until the entire crown was covered in a dense, biological net.

Finally, he drew his newly acquired masterpiece: the Three-Aperture Spirit Brush. He coated the bristles in his own essence blood and began agonizingly inscribing the puppet control matrix directly onto the Patriarch’s skin.

Entangling Silk Talismans on the wrists to hijack motor functions.

Qi-Guiding Talismans over the heart to override the internal energy engine.

Mind-Binding Talismans directly between the eyebrows to establish absolute neural subjugation.

The process was excruciatingly long, demanding absolute, uninterrupted focus. Jiang Chen didn’t care. Safe within his pocket dimension, he poured every ounce of his mental processing power into subjugating the ancient powerhouse.

When Jiang Chen dragged the brush through the final stroke of the Mind-Binding Talisman on the Patriarch’s brow, a cosmic anomaly occurred.

A microscopic, nearly invisible thread of pure golden light materialized out of the void and struck the fresh blood-rune.

Special Effect 5 Triggered: Talisman Inscription Attracts Response from the Laws of Heaven and Earth.

The Mind-Binding Talisman instantly reacted to the golden light, automatically extruding microscopic golden tendrils that aggressively burrowed into the Patriarch’s flesh, forcibly intertwining with his ancient Carving Marks.

Within the golden threads, the faint, holographic projection of the character [LOCK] manifested. The system’s intervention completely bypassed the standard stabilization phase of the refinement process, instantly establishing an unbreakable, absolute seal over the corpse.

It was as if the laws of heaven and earth themselves actively endorsed Jiang Chen’s shameless recycling of the ancient powerhouse.

Instantly, Jiang Chen felt a seamless, telepathic synchronization lock into place. The Patriarch’s body was no longer a corpse; it was an exact extension of his own will. A single thought would translate into immediate, devastating physical action.

His system interface updated with the final specs.

Puppet: Patriarch Carving Trace

Effect 1: Carving Mark Power

Effect 2: Talisman Power

Effect 3: Remnant Body Power

Special Effect 1: Shared Perception. Absolute telepathic synchronization between puppet and Master.

Negative Effect 1: Must be returned to the Seal Bone Tomb once every seven days to sustain biological integrity.

Negative Effect 2: Combat output is hard-capped by the Master’s current cultivation realm. Maximum output restricted to Golden Core baseline.

Jiang Chen raised an eyebrow, a mix of awe and slight disappointment crossing his face. “I thought I just secured an apocalyptic trump card, but the hardware is bottlenecked by my own software.”

Despite the realm restriction, a perfectly synchronized Golden Core proxy was an unimaginably massive upgrade to his arsenal. But raw combat power wasn’t his immediate priority.

He needed to survive his impending Heavenly Tribulation. He needed the Golden Light Talisman.

Without hesitation, Jiang Chen issued his very first telepathic command to his new masterpiece.

Instantly, a specific Carving Mark on the Patriarch’s left hand began to violently writhe. The flesh split open, and ten distinct strands of golden thread erupted into the air.

Guided by Jiang Chen’s will, the threads rapidly wove themselves into complex geometric patterns, solidifying into ten perfectly crafted, high-tier spirit talismans!