The Path of Immortality: Starts With Creating Water Bear Gu

For the next period, Long Xuan stayed in the medicine garden, studying the optimal amount and best intervals for applying the ripening liquid to each type of spiritual herb, recording the results on paper.

The medicine garden housed over a hundred types of spiritual herbs, making this a long and arduous process. Fortunately, there was a large white hen in the garden to keep him company, so it wasn't too dull.

This hen was originally bought for pest control. Just like crops need pesticides when they get pests, spiritual herbs also need pest control, for which one has to buy insecticide from the Chamber of Commerce.

The original owner, left to his own devices by Elder Long, went wild in the herb garden and saved the spirit stones meant for insecticide powder to buy a hen instead.

As it turned out, this was a stroke of luck. Chickens raised in rural areas have the ability to control pests in crops, something every villager knows, but that usually applies only to regular crops.

The pests on spiritual herbs are not simple. Normally, a hen eating spiritual pests would not digest them and would instead be parasitized.

However, this hen, after a period of lethargy, not only survived but evolved into a spirit hen, becoming an expert in pest control. The original owner had good luck.

At this moment, Long Xuan watched the large white hen strolling around the medicine garden, secretly amazed.

The hen strutted confidently, with an imposing air, its head bobbing as it walked, eyes gleaming with intelligence, as if its IQ had also increased after evolving into a spirit hen.

The progress bar on the hen's head instantly changed from 99.3% to 99.4%, indicating it was nearing maturity.

Seeing this, Long Xuan thoughtfully stroked his chin.

The hen had eaten many things, but only a few fat insects affected its maturity.

By observing these changes and feeding the spiritual hen different foods, he could determine which foods most benefited its growth, and formulate a feed that could significantly shorten its maturation period.

Long Xuan wasn’t interested in making chicken feed. Instead, he thought of another application of his special ability: breeding spiritual insects.

Breeding spiritual insects could be as profitable as cultivating spiritual herbs.

Spiritual insects are used for refining Gu (a type of magical talisman), and the higher the maturity of the insect, the higher the success rate of refining.

Rare spiritual insects are exceedingly valuable and sought after, but few know how to breed them.

Different Gu-cultivating families raise the same species of insect with varying growth times.

Some families, with superior feed, could reduce the growth period of their spiritual insects by several times compared to others.

This allowed them to dominate the market, undercutting competitors by reducing prices and achieving a monopoly.

Discovering the best feed for a particular insect species could be extremely lucrative.

Long Xuan quickly decided he wanted to start breeding a type of spiritual insect.

Breeding Gu insects was even more complex. The more powerful the Gu species, the longer its maturation period, with some taking thousands or even tens of thousands of years to mature, far exceeding the lifespan of Gu practitioners.

However, the combat power of mature Gu insects far surpassed that of their immature forms, compelling Gu practitioners to find ways to shorten their maturation periods.

The methods to breed a powerful Gu species were often more valuable than the Gu recipes themselves.

Gu practitioners found it hard to breed Gu, often spending more resources on feeding them than refining them.

Many practitioners went gray with worry and exhausted their resources trying to find methods to shorten the maturation periods of Gu insects.

But Long Xuan had no such concerns. In the future, regardless of which Gu species he blood-bound, he could formulate the perfect feed for it.

Reducing the maturation period of a Gu species from ten thousand years to a hundred years or even less was not a dream. This was like having a cheat code, and Long Xuan was excited.

"The optimal use of ripening liquid for each spiritual herb has almost been figured out. Using it as recorded, the output of this medicine garden can increase profits by another fifty percent."

"With such high returns, I now have enough funds to refine my first Gu insect."

Long Xuan clenched his fists excitedly, his eyes shining.

In his excitement, he reached for the hen's nest to grab a few spiritual eggs to celebrate.

He was curious about the taste of these spiritual eggs, which were smooth, round, white, and large, brimming with spiritual energy and nutrition. They looked delicious, making his mouth water.

However, as soon as his sneaky hand touched the smooth eggs, the hen immediately sensed it and pecked at his hand aggressively.

"shoo, shoo, how dare you..."

...

Spring came and went, flowers bloomed and withered.

A year passed in a flash, and the medicine garden was now a sea of colorful spiritual flowers, swaying with the wind and filling the air with a dreamlike fragrance.

Next to the flower sea, Long Xuan lay on a rocking chair, with papers filled with Chinese characters and a cup of tea on the table beside him. He leisurely read a book, enjoying the breeze.

His previously thin frame had filled out considerably over the year, likely due to eating too many spiritual eggs.

The large white hen was also plump and strong, patrolling the medicine garden for spiritual pests, which it devoured as soon as they appeared.

Long Xuan had given it a resounding name. Influenced by his habit of calling chickens "Chicken bro" in games from his past life, he named it "Chicken bro" even though it was a hen.

Having Brother Chicken around saved Long Xuan a lot of work, as it handled pest control and saved money on pesticides.

For the hen, the garden was a buffet, providing ample nutrition and allowing it to lay at least one egg a day, all of which ended up in Long Xuan's belly.

At the moment, he was reading a book titled "Eternal Life Sutra," a cultivation method for longevity.

Longevity methods were widespread in this world, easily accessible to all, and almost everyone had a copy.

This dissemination was deliberate by Gu-cultivating families, intended to extend the lives of ordinary people so they could work longer and produce more food.

The "Eternal Life Sutra" had ten levels, with each level extending lifespan by ten years.

The original owner of Long Xuan's body had poor cultivation aptitude and slow progress, but he was a prodigy in cultivating the widespread "Eternal Life Sutra."

Gu cultivation levels were divided into Spirit Gathering stage, Marrow Cleansing Stage, Spiritual Sea stage, and Soul Projection stage from low to high.

Each major realm was subdivided into Initial, Middle, Late, and Peak stages. The Soul Projection stage, being the highest in this region, was also called the Gu King.

At fifteen or sixteen, the original owner was only at the initial stage of spirit gathering stage, indicating his average talent.

This world, like traditional cultivation worlds, valued purity. The purer the attribute, the faster the cultivation speed.

A single attribute was a heavenly-grade aptitude with the fastest cultivation speed, dual attributes were earth-grade, and so on.

The original owner had five attributes: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. His aptitude wasn't the worst, but it was ordinary, and as a scattered cultivator with no resources, slow progress was understandable.

But where there are weaknesses, there are strengths. When one door closes, another opens.

The original owner was poor in cultivation but had extraordinary talent in health-preserving methods.

While other mortals struggled to reach the fifth level of the "Eternal Life Sutra" in their lifetime, he had reached the tenth level before adulthood, extending his lifespan by a hundred years.

Long Xuan accidentally discovered that the progress bar of the "Eternal Life Sutra" was not at 100% but at a mere 10%.

Driven by curiosity, he tried to continue writing the method according to the previous pattern. Though he lacked the ability to create techniques, he had a correction tool.

If the progress disappeared, he had guessed wrong and would rewrite it; if it remained, he had guessed correctly and could continue.

After a year of intensive effort, he successfully extended it to twenty levels, with each level from the eleventh onward adding a hundred years of lifespan.

How much each subsequent level added remained unknown—maybe a hundred, two hundred, or even more.

However, a rare twenty-level technique showed only 20% progress, indicating severe incompleteness.

He knew that in this world, the "Eternal Life Sutra" genuinely only had ten levels, and no technique exceeded ten levels in this region.

Long Xuan felt a headache. It took a year to guess just 10% of the content, and the more complex and profound it became, the longer it would take to extend further, beyond his current knowledge.

He couldn't imagine how long it would take to complete the "Eternal Life Sutra" to 100%—hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of years?