Chapter 52

Chapter 52: Gathering Moistwood Fruit

A tear?

Zhao Chun’s eyes widened. In more than two years of cultivation, she’d seen her share of strange phenomena. Even so, the idea sounded absurd—yet she found herself half believing it.

If something could pierce a world with a tear, it could only be a godlike immortal…

“It’s just the version most people repeat,” Meng Han said lightly. “There are other stories—devil calamities rising, earth veins splitting. Speakers talk without thinking, listeners take it to heart. Don’t worry about it.”

Cultivators lived long. Rumors like this were entertainment more than truth.

Zhao Chun nodded. Stories passed mouth to mouth had to be sifted carefully.

They continued inward. Ironwood shadows overlapped and shifted, and the paths underfoot seemed to rearrange themselves. Thankfully, they had bought a map in Fang Jing City, so they didn’t lose direction.

“Once we pass the Ironwood Maze Formation,” Meng Han said, “we’ll reach the outer layer of the Windflame Sect. The entrance is on the east side. That’s where the Outer Sect herb garden is. You can go have a look.”

The Windflame Sect was an old sect from a previous age. Many of its spirit plants and fruits were unique to that time. Some could be cultivated outside, but they always lost potency—missing the old-world essence.

When the Nine Sects looted these ruins, they hadn’t destroyed the foundations. The two herb gardens in the Outer Sect, and the ore veins spread below, were left with seeds and roots intact. That was why the ruins hadn’t become completely barren.

Zhao Chun couldn’t tolerate qi-boosting pills. The refining process drew on metal and fire energies, which stirred her dantian and disrupted her cultivation. Spirit plants and herbs tended to be wood-aspected—balanced and gentle. She wanted to gather them and use wood qi to temper the excess metal and fire within her.

It wasn’t a whim.

When she’d had three spirit roots, her wood root had served as a natural mediator. After it was stripped away, metal and fire grew too strong. Since breaking through to the sixth layer of Qi Refining, both had become even more active. She could still suppress them for now, but once she reached late Qi Refining… she didn’t know if she could hold them down.

The map’s notes mentioned a pale, greenish-white fruit called Moistwood Fruit. It grew on vines, rich with wood qi, often used as a primer for healing pills. Many wood-aspected cultivators ate it to nourish qi and vitality.

This trip, Zhao Chun’s first priority was the forging arts. Her second was to find wood-rich spirit plants to balance her energies.

She and Meng Han headed east.

With a half-smile, Meng Han said, “First time here, Junior Sister? You might not know—the Windflame Sect herb garden is huge, and it produces a lot. That’s why it attracts so many cultivators. Fortune has to be fought for.”

“But in the outer layer, most people are only at the Qi Refining Stage,” he added. “I won’t step in.”

Zhao Chun welcomed that. Meng Han had already helped her more than enough. Besides, a Foundation Establishment cultivator striking down Qi Refining cultivators would look like bullying.

“If Senior Brother isn’t seeking anything, then watch,” Zhao Chun said. “What I want, I’ll take with my own hands. Only then will it feel complete.”

She wanted, too, to see how strong she truly was—sixth layer Qi Refining, Swift-Stride Sword Method at great completion.

Meng Han laughed, delighted. “Good. ‘What I want, I’ll seize with my own hands.’ I’ve always despised people who rely on family elders for everything.”

He slapped his palm against his thigh. “Go on. Let me see what you can do.”

They reached the edge of the ironwood forest. A clear stream cut across the path, and the stone bridge that once spanned it had broken into two halves, ruins clinging to opposite banks as the current rushed between them.

Across the stream stood a tall stone gate. The writing on it had been eroded away, and vines and plants wrapped around its face. Zhao Chun could tell at a glance that it was real stone—not forged like the “trees” behind them.

She almost laughed at herself. The ironwood forest had influenced her too much. She’d started to assume the Windflame Sect was so extravagant that everything was forged.

Beyond the gate lay the herb garden. Calling it a garden was generous—it was closer to wild hills.

Spirit herbs had different habits. The Windflame Sect had carved out separate areas and laid small formations—some to draw wind and sand, some to draw moisture—so each kind of herb could thrive across the broad grounds.

Meng Han sat down casually at the edge of the gate and propped one knee with his arm. “I won’t go in. You can go alone. Come out when you think you’ve gained enough.”

Zhao Chun smiled and took her leave. She stepped into her footwork and, in a few movements, had already crossed dozens of meters.

Meng Han lifted an eyebrow, watching. Her movement was clean. She trained hard.

He pulled a cushion from his pouch and settled into meditation. Few Foundation Establishment cultivators came to the Windflame Sect’s outer layer, so he could afford to relax.

Inside, Zhao Chun had no such luxury.

She entered a water-gathering spirit field and found a crowd of cultivators fighting to harvest spirit rice. Blades flashed. Golden stalks fell in great swaths.

The Windflame Sect had planted spirit rice and spirit herbs together.

Zhao Chun edged closer and saw that this spirit rice was larger and plumper than what her sect grew. Light flowed over the husks. It had already stepped halfway into the realm of spirit herbs.

A sign at the field’s edge explained: Minor-Medicinal Spirit Rice. Because it was grown in vast quantities within the herb garden, it absorbed faint medicinal properties. Low-level cultivators who ate it year-round could nourish their bodies, preserve youth, and extend life.

Only the Windflame Sect could afford such extravagance—feeding rice with medicinal essence. In the Ling Zhen Sect, spirit rice and spirit herbs were planted separately to keep ordinary plants from interfering with herb potency.

After all, Heng Yun today was no longer as spiritually rich as it had been in the old days.

Still, spirit rice wasn’t precious. Most of the harvesters were rogue cultivators in the first or second layer of Qi Refining—people who struggled, who couldn’t compete for true herbs. So they gathered rice instead.

Zhao Chun wasn’t interested.

According to the garden map, a waterfall lay where two forests met. Wood qi was strongest there—and the Moistwood Fruit vines she needed grew along the stone walls.

She circled two low hills before the waterfall finally appeared. Jade-green water poured down the cliff and struck the rocks in frothing white spray. Along both sides of the fall, winding vines clung to the stone.

Moistwood Fruit.

Others had arrived ahead of her. Cultivators climbed and picked. Near the bottom were a few at the third layer of Qi Refining; higher up were fourth and fifth. Only two people were at the sixth layer.

Spirit fruit didn’t wait for anyone.

Zhao Chun launched herself off a rock, twisted off a fruit with each hand, and tossed them into her bag.

Moistwood Fruit was a mid-grade Mortal Rank spirit herb. Its age was judged by how much green showed on its skin. Pure white meant ten years. A quarter green meant twenty. Half green meant fifty. Fully jade-green meant over a hundred, with significantly stronger effects.

The lower vines held mostly ten- and twenty-year fruits—left for early-stage Qi Refining cultivators. Zhao Chun competed for fruits above fifty years. Anything below that did little for a mid-stage Qi Refining cultivator.

Her Serpent-Form Step was at minor completion. Her Swift-Stride Sword Method was at great completion—and because the method’s foundation was sword footwork, her speed surpassed even many late-stage Qi Refining cultivators.

The moment she joined the scramble, the difference became obvious.

Wherever Zhao Chun passed, others might as well not exist. She took fruit after fruit, leaving empty vines behind. At first, people avoided her. Then they watched her climb higher, stripping entire stretches clean, and anger began to burn.

She was too overbearing. Too greedy.

If Zhao Chun heard them, she would have laughed. Fortune was never gentle. If you had the skill, take it. If you didn’t, you weren’t entitled to complain.

She kept two bags at her side: an ordinary cloth pouch and a storage spirit tool. Most of her harvest went into the storage tool, only a portion into the cloth pouch. She moved so fast no one saw her hands clearly—only her pouch swelling and swelling as jealousy sharpened around her.

Zhao Chun climbed higher still. She brushed aside a layer of overlapping vines, and a blue-green glow flashed.

A cluster of Moistwood Fruit—fully jade-green.

Hundred-year fruit.

Five or six in one bunch.

The watchers around her were already many. When they saw, someone shouted, “Hundred-year spirit fruit! She got it!”

Zhao Chun’s hands moved like lightning. She snatched the entire cluster and kicked off the cliff wall, flipping away from the waterfall—

And two figures surged toward her, blades gleaming, killing intent sharp enough to cut.

The only two sixth-layer Qi Refining cultivators on the cliff.