The Heavens: A Qing, the Yue Girl at the beginning

"snack?"

Some people who were hard of hearing misheard and continued to ask, suspecting that Zhao Qing was trying to demonstrate some new breakthrough in marching rations.

Zhao Qing smiled slightly, too lazy to correct him: "Just watch it directly." The image on the screen landed steadily, like a silent snowflake, leaving everyone's curiosity stuck in mid-air.

There were no crisscrossing paths or water fields reflecting the moon as I had imagined, nor were there any old farmers with hoes or oxen slowly plowing the fields.

What came into view were dozens of huge domes covered with a transparent, glass-like texture... "greenhouses"?
They stretch out in a continuous line, quietly arranged on the vast plain, their surface seemingly covered with a very faint, almost invisible layer of "lead-colored mist". The camera passes through a specially designed ventilation duct, and after passing by a hundred or so crystal-clear talismans at the entrance, it arrives inside the arched dome.

Rows of neat rice plants were planted in white boxes that appeared to be without soil, arranged in a grid pattern.

The rice ears are already full, displaying a strange mix of green and yellow. The yellow is the natural color of the heavy grains, while the green seems to be a faint, condensed light shining through the rice husks.

It was late at night, but the greenhouse was not completely dark.

Beyond the dome lies an impenetrable "Great Night Sky," so deep and dark it seems to swallow all light.

However, above this deep, dark sky, a bright moon hangs high, its light as clear as water, gently pouring down and being refracted by the dome into countless silver threads, making the "green" on the rice ears even more translucent, as if inlaid with countless tiny pieces of jade.

"Quack... quack..."

A few slightly abrupt bird calls broke the silence.

Looking in the direction of the sound, one could see several... well, strangely shaped "crows" perched on the supports at the edge of the greenhouse.

They emanate a faint golden halo that is visible to the naked eye and carries a warm feeling, like miniature suns, silently dispelling the chill inside and outside the shed.

“This kind of fire crow is quite rare,” Tuoba Wuchou examined it for a while. “Is it used for both lighting and heating? Are the plastic film and talisman array on the shed to prevent the loss of vital energy? So that it can grow in winter?”

"Off-season planting? Overwintering cultivation? I've read about this in ancient books before. It usually involves burning firewood and drawing hot springs, which is very expensive, just to satisfy the culinary desires of the rich and powerful and to offer them new delicacies. The annual cost of maintaining the greenhouse in just one garden is more than tens of millions!"

“By extension, if we were to cultivate it on a large scale, even if it were borne by a powerful force or even a dynasty, it would still be a heavy expense,” Zhan Mohe added, his brow furrowing slightly. “Even though this ‘fire crow’ is more sophisticated than using fire to ignite springs and saves some manpower, but…”

“But perhaps it’s just to simulate the most suitable environment for ‘spiritual rice’,” Tang Xin interrupted with dissatisfaction. “Many spiritual flowers and herbs are like this, with extremely demanding cultivation requirements. If you want them to thrive under artificial cultivation and avoid withering, you always have to pay a higher price, just like this ‘greenhouse’ method.”

"Greenhouse Demonstration Area".

Zhao Qing smiled and corrected, "Its scientific name is 'Xuanji Constant Temperature Spiritual Energy Shed'. In addition to its basic heat preservation function, it also uses the most advanced aeroponic cultivation and drip irrigation system."

As she explained, the camera zoomed in, focusing on the roots of a rice plant.

Its roots were not deeply embedded in the soil, but rather suspended in a white box filled with tiny pores. Through the opaque outer shell of the box, a very faint, almost invisible milky-white mist slowly rose, gently enveloping each rootlet.

It is precisely "The spiritual root hangs from the jade window, the mist nourishes the true essence, without relying on the power of the earth, the celestial sphere arises naturally from the cave heaven"!
"That sounds interesting." Tuoba Wuchou took a closer look and had to admit that he was indeed behind the times and had no idea what kind of agricultural technology this was.

However, in his view, when it comes to measuring the specific value of such crops, one indicator is always the most crucial: "...these 'rice ears' are indeed shiny, but they look quite sparse, and the spacing between plants is also large. What is the yield per acre? How much can be harvested in one season?"

Before Zhao Qing could answer, Zhan Mohe's attention was drawn to an even stranger thing in the corner of the screen.

At the edge of the field, on an inconspicuous, low, shiny stone platform, two small drones were hovering, their four rotors turning silently, a complex array of runes and sensors hanging below their bellies, and a strange object on their backs—a celadon flowerpot!
The pot wasn't empty; instead, it was teeming with a clump of vibrant green grass with sword-like leaves!

The grass swayed without wind, faintly emitting a barely perceptible sword aura, seemingly echoing the runes around the stone platform.

"what is this?"

He pointed at the flowerpot drone, looking astonished. "Flying with a flowerpot on its back... a bionic dragonfly? Why do I feel like the one capturing the images on the screen is another 'dragonfly' like this? And it's the grass controlling it?"

"It's just a sword intent that's 'chaotic and disorderly'."

Zhao Qing nodded and explained, "I made some improvements to the Sword Tomb's inheritance, giving it the ability to create artistic conceptions and transmit frequencies on a small scale, and to run the 'Sword Scripture Program.' Moreover, the more 'grass dragonflies' there are, the higher the intelligence they gain after sharing information in parallel."

"They are mainly responsible for maintaining and regulating the energy fluctuations of the spirit rice, guiding the plants to resonate with the external laws of primordial energy, controlling the spirit-gathering array in the greenhouse area, and also patrolling and performing some miscellaneous tasks, which can complete the routine work of low-level cultivators..."

As if to confirm her words, in the video, one of the flowerpot drones gracefully flew toward a golden raven that was preening its feathers, and a small hatch popped open under its belly, accurately dropping a small piece of... well, it looks like dried meat.
The crow skillfully stretched its neck, snatched the jerky, and cawed contentedly. Its golden hue seemed to brighten even more, making it appear more energetic: "Extra meal! Time to work overtime!"

"Caw! You've worked hard overtime! Plenty of jerky!" another crow cawed.

"..." Zhan Mohe's lips twitched, feeling that his worldview had been refreshed to a new low.

Holy crap... He can fly a plane? And he delivers takeout to birds? What on earth is this?!
As for the fact that ravens can speak human language, that is not surprising.

"Alright, let's get back to the main topic." Zhao Qing zoomed out the panorama, pointing to the endless sea of ​​gleaming ears of grain. "Marshal Tuoba just asked about yield? Hmm, the yield per mu during the current experimental phase..."

She held up three fingers.

"Three hundred catties?" Zhan Mohe asked tentatively, thinking that although the glowing rice looked sparse, it was still a precious spiritual rice, so it was normal for the yield to be low, and it was worth investing so many resources.

Zhao Qing shook his head.

"Three thousand catties?!" Tang Xin exclaimed in astonishment. This was simply a miracle!

Zhao Qing shook his head again, a playful smile on his lips: "The yield is about thirty catties per mu."

"What?!" The three exclaimed in unison, and Tuoba Wuchou almost thought he had misheard: "Young Master Duo?"

This yield is far inferior to even the most barren dryland grains, let alone the millet grown in the fertile plains of the Central Plains, where the yield can easily reach hundreds of kilograms per mu! It's not even enough to feed chickens!
Investing such enormous human, material, talisman arrays, and even biological modifications, just for a yield of thirty catties of rice per mu? This is a hundred times more outrageous than the most extravagant royal greenhouses used to grow out-of-season fruits and vegetables!
It's like trying to plant crops with a golden hoe, and all you get are weeds!
Even Tang Xin, who had been expressing confidence, couldn't help but ask, "Senior, isn't this output... a bit too much... um, too much of a pursuit of perfection?"

He almost blurted out "horrible".

Seeing the expressions on everyone's faces that said, "Have you been scammed?" or "This project should be canceled," Zhao Qing finally couldn't help but burst into laughter: "I said 'spirit stone rice,' so of course it produces 'spirit stones'! Who told you it's rice?"

"Huh?" The three of them were dumbfounded again.

Spirit Stone Rice—doesn't that mean using spirit stones to assist in rice cultivation? How can crops actually grow stones?

Zhao Qing seemed quite pleased with the astonishment on their faces. With a gentle tap, he split the floating light screen in two.

The left half of the image still shows the green and yellow rice ears hanging heavily inside the greenhouse; the right half, however, switches to a microscopic dynamic simulation: a rice grain magnified countless times.

Under a special spectrum, its glumes exhibit a dense, honeycomb-like microstructure.

They are inlaid with countless extremely tiny, transparent crystals of various shapes! Some are like miniature fans, some like tiny dumbbells, and some like perfect spheres, shimmering with diamond-like starlight under the microscopic vision of the energy field! "Look here," Zhao Qing said, tracing his finger across the right side of the screen, "these are the 'phytoliths' that are naturally formed in rice husks."

"Plasma body?" Tang Xin repeated the unfamiliar term with a puzzled look.

"Simply put, they are tiny silica particles formed in plants after they absorb silicon from the soil."

Zhao Qing explained, his tone as relaxed as if he were chatting casually: "Silicon is... the main component in making glass and crystal, the kind of thing that's most abundant in ordinary sand and gravel."

"Just as some shellfish grow nacre and some algae form diatom shells, so-called phytoliths are also a kind of 'skeleton' or 'armor' of plants. They are hard structures formed in the body to support the body and resist pests and diseases."

"Oh, I got it!"

Zhan Mohe suddenly realized, "Like the 'sea buckthorn' in our northern border region, its leaves are so hard they can cut your hand, and they contain a lot of sand!"

"That's pretty much what it means."

Zhao Qing nodded: "A mature Spirit Stone Rice leaf can produce about 50,000 such tiny fan-shaped or dumbbell-shaped phytoliths. Leaf sheaths, glumes, and other tissues are also rich in this substance."

“With ordinary rice, we painstakingly remove the husk to obtain the edible endosperm. However, for Spirit Stone Rice, these discarded 'husks' and 'dregs,' chaff and bran…”

Zhao Qing paused, looking at the light that gradually brightened in Tuoba Wuchou and Zhan Mohe's eyes, a mixture of shock and realization, and chuckled, "...that is the real 'fruit,' the embryo of the 'spirit stone'!"

The simulated scene changed again.

In the left-hand image, the piled-up rice grains are gathered and purified by an invisible force, and finally melted and condensed in the flames, forming hundreds of square, translucent, pale blue stones, resembling standard-cut stones.

"Thirty catties of bran per mu?" Zhan Mohe subconsciously calculated, "Then... how many spirit stones can be refined from that?"

Zhao Qing smiled slightly: "These thirty jin refer to the weight of the standard spirit stones after purification, but they can only be classified as low-grade."

"Low-grade spirit stones?" Tuoba Wuchou pressed, "What are low-grade spirit stones? How much vital energy do they contain? How are they classified?"

In the world of Sword Dynasty, spirit stones are not the essential currency in some cultivation novels, nor are they the exclusive currency unit for cultivators. Rather, they refer to the products of many types of spirit ores, including fossils formed over millions of years after the death of many exotic plants and beasts.

Generally referred to as crystals, they vary greatly in internal structure.

Not only are there distinctions in terms of properties and main functions, such as symbolic crystals, Dharma crystals, thought crystals, and meso crystals; their values ​​are also vastly different.

Cheap ones, a pound of low-grade talisman sand containing a thin layer of impurities costs only a hundred or so coins, and can be bought in larger markets; expensive ones, a single rare crystal containing pure primordial power is worth tens of thousands of gold!

"Everyone should have seen this kind of spiritual material called Xuanbing, right?"

Zhao Qing added casually, "Simply put, the amount of primordial energy contained within a low-grade spirit stone is on average about nine times that of an equal weight of ordinary azure ice. Mid-grade spirit stones vary greatly in quality depending on the changes of the five elements and yin and yang, and their primordial energy content is ten times that of low-grade spirit stones; high-grade spirit stones are also ten times that of mid-grade spirit stones; and top-grade spirit stones are ten times that of high-grade spirit stones."

"Above that are the truly rare and precious jades."

"That's... pretty good."

Tuoba Wuchou silently calculated for a few breaths: one jin of low-grade spirit stone is enough to support the physical exertion of an ordinary person for several months; a standard spirit stone weighs about two liang and can support a beginner in the Qi Refining Realm for seven or eight days of cultivation. The wood and earth elements it contains are also balanced and easy to absorb.

"How long does it take to plant one season?" he asked a new and important question. If it takes years, the efficiency is not very high.

"At the fastest, twenty-five days," Zhao Qing replied.

"Twenty-five days?!" Zhan Mohe exclaimed, even Tuoba Wuchou's pupils contracted slightly. Ordinary grains, even the lowest grade, take more than a hundred days from sowing to harvest!

The growth cycle of this spirit stone rice has been shortened by more than four times!
With an absurd number of crops that can be grown in a year—fourteen and a half—the annual yield per acre... wouldn't that be as high as three thousand five hundred low-grade spirit stones?! This isn't farming; it's practically growing spirit stone veins directly from the ground!
Although the quality is inferior, the sheer quantity and speed... are enough to overturn everything!
Zhao Qing smiled and said, "The Asian rice variety that has undergone special breeding and gene editing, and which has no requirements for the edible part of the grain, does indeed only take twenty-five days to complete the entire cycle from sowing, seedling raising, heading, grain filling to maturity."

"Compared to those vital energy compounds that require extremely complex steps to produce—such as the fruits containing vast amounts of pure vital energy that some advanced spiritual plants take years or even decades to bear—spirit stones, as 'simple minerals,' are produced much faster!"

"The more reaction steps and the more complex the path involved in the transformation of this kind of 'crystallized' energy, the lower the overall transformation efficiency tends to be. Not only is it time-consuming, but the resulting products are also rarer and more precious..."

In fact, this is one of the reasons why she chose to focus on developing spirit stone rice rather than rapeseed-type spirit plants.

While spirit fat can release a large amount of stored primordial energy simply by being ignited, firstly, if used as an energy source, it can only be burned directly, producing light and heat, and its uses are far less extensive than those of spirit stones, which can be used for things like ice-type refrigeration and driving rune arrays. Moreover, it is plug-and-play, easy to carry, and safe.
Secondly, judging from the known prospects, its yield is not as good as that of standard low-grade spirit stones, its growth cycle is much longer, and it is less impressive. The latter is easier to promote.

But whichever of the two is developed and achieves economies of scale, it will be enough to replace compressed true qi and become the main energy source for many new types of talismans, bringing about another round of industrial revolution—even though the last round of change has not been a full month.

"...When every household can grow dozens of acres of spirit stone rice," Zhao Qing's eyes gleamed with a certain light, "spirit stones will no longer be rare, but a basic commodity like firewood, rice, oil, and salt. The people's livelihood and daily necessities will be worry-free."

"Wait a minute!" Tuoba Wuchou suddenly thought of something and frowned as he asked, "Just as there is the concept of crop rotation and fallow in mortal agriculture, the issue of soil fertility must be taken into account. Will planting spirit stone rice so intensively and frequently, and frantically absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, affect the concentration of spiritual energy in a place?"

"If this continues, will it lead to a depletion of spiritual energy and the abandonment of farmland, making it unsuitable for cultivation? It's like draining a pond to catch all the fish?"

"Good question!" Zhao Qing nodded approvingly, as if he had been waiting for this question.

She tapped her finger lightly, and the screen switched again, this time displaying a complex dynamic diagram of the flow of vital energy.

Countless pale blue light spots, like trickling streams, converged from all directions toward the roots, stems, and leaves of the Spirit Stone Rice, permeating and merging into it, being absorbed and transformed, and finally condensing in the phytolith.

"Do you know how much spiritual energy of heaven and earth is required to form a low-grade spirit stone?" Zhao Qing asked calmly.

She answered herself, "No more than five thousand bushels."

“Five thousand bushels?” Zhan Mohe repeated.

Hu, dou, sheng, he, and yue are all standard units of volume. One yue can hold 1200 medium-sized millet grains, while one hu is equivalent to 2000 yue. After the unification of the You Dynasty, this type of unit of measurement was already a consensus.

Five thousand bushels of millet is certainly a lot, but five thousand bushels of air is a worthless and useless thing that no one cares about. If it is scattered in the vast world, it is even more insignificant!
“If the concentration of vital energy near the ground is relatively high, then a thousand bushels will suffice.” Zhao Qing smiled slightly and continued, “The five thousand bushels I mentioned is actually an estimate based on the average concentration of vital energy in the middle and lower atmosphere.”

"Considering the complex convection activities of the primordial energy of heaven and earth, the global circulation of primordial energy, the spiritual pressure fronts, the day-night migration of high-altitude spiritual energy masses, the breathing of accumulated evil spirits in the earth's apertures, the tides caused by the movement of the sun, moon, and stars, and the fluctuations in the activity of primordial energy itself, this is but a drop in the ocean."

"The commonly perceived 'thin' or 'rich' qualities cannot fully capture the attributes and characteristics of vital energy, and should not be viewed simply using static cognition!"

After the creation of the world and the initial formation of the inner universe, Zhao Qing undoubtedly gained a profound understanding of the essence of primordial energy. It can be said that he completely grasped the mechanism of its changes, and his cultivation level was rapidly increasing.

...(End of chapter)