After binding with a genius, I became an immortal by exploiting loopholes.

The wasteland was worse than he had imagined.

The area was overgrown with weeds, some reaching waist-high, so densely packed that there was no room to even step.

Stones were everywhere, some as big as millstones, others small pebbles scattered all over the ground; you could kick one every few steps.

The soil is ridiculously hard, with a surface as hard as stone, making it uncomfortable to step on.

He took a deep breath, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work.

First, remove the weeds.

The grass roots were very deep, some even longer than his arm. He had to dig them out one by one, otherwise new shoots would sprout again in a few days.

He squatted on the ground, gripping the grass stems with one hand and digging at the roots with a hoe in the other.

The hoe was an ordinary iron hoe issued by the Spirit Plant Hall. It was so vibrating that it made my hand go numb when I dug it down, and it took two or three digs to dig out a single blade of grass.

One tree, two trees, three trees... Half an hour passed, and he had only cleared a small area. His palms were already blistered.

Next, clean up the stones.

The large ones are too big to move, so we have to use a hoe to pry them open and a lever to lift them, moving them little by little to the edge of the field.

Small pebbles must be picked out one by one, bending down, picking them up, throwing them to the side of the ground, bending down again, picking them up again, and throwing them away again.

He repeated this movement countless times until his back was almost too sore to straighten.

Finally, the soil is turned over.

When you use an iron hoe to dig into the hard ground, you can only lift a small patch of soil. You have to dig three or four times to loosen the soil.

One swing of the hoe made my arm go numb; another swing, another shock.

After working for less than an hour, he was covered in sweat and his arms were sore, but he hadn't even turned over half an inch of land.

Lu Qingchen straightened up, wiped his sweat, and looked at the almost unchanged wasteland in front of him, feeling deeply worried.

At this rate, it would probably take three days and three nights to finish digging up one acre of land.

He leaned against the hoe handle, catching his breath, and wondered how long it would take at this pace.

Suddenly I remembered the hoe I saw next to Old Sun's house yesterday—the blade gleamed with a faint spiritual light, clearly not an ordinary object.

With the help of such a magical artifact, the pioneering work would be twice as effective.

After hesitating for a moment, he still shamelessly walked up the mountain.

In the No. 3 medicinal herb garden of Dingmao, Old Sun was squatting on the edge of the field smoking a dry tobacco.

Hearing footsteps, she looked up and saw Lu Qingchen. She raised an eyebrow: "Why are you up here again?"

Lu Qingchen said somewhat embarrassedly, "Old Sun, the ground at the foot of the mountain is too hard; a regular hoe can't dig it up. I saw that hoe next to your house..."

He paused for a moment, then asked, "Could I borrow it for a bit?"

Old Sun glanced at him and said slowly, "Do you know how to use it?"

"No," Lu Qingchen honestly shook his head.

Old Sun stood up, walked to the side of the house, picked up the hoe, and handed it to him: "You can use it by infusing it with spiritual energy. It's less strenuous than an ordinary hoe, but it still consumes spiritual energy. Take it and use it, but—"

He paused for a moment, then added, "You'll have to pay for it if you break it."

Be careful!

Lu Qingchen quickly took the hoe, and found it to be quite heavy, much heavier than an ordinary hoe.

But when you hold it in your hand, you can feel a warm spiritual energy coming from the hoe handle, as if it were alive.

He tried to infuse a trace of spiritual power into the hoe, and the spiritual light on the blade of the hoe brightened slightly, making the entire hoe seem a little lighter.

"Go."

Old Sun waved his hand, "Remember to spend an extra half day helping me loosen the soil in the herb garden."

"Of course!"

Lu Qingchen carried the spirit hoe back to the foot of the mountain, took a deep breath, and started working again.

The spirit hoe was indeed different.

As you dig, the hoe blade easily cuts into the hard soil, turning up a large clump of earth, requiring more than ten times the effort of an ordinary hoe.

He became more and more adept at using it, hoe after hoe, the land he turned over stretching out behind him.

While the spirit hoe is good, it does consume a lot of spiritual energy.

In less than half an hour, he had exhausted most of his spiritual energy and had to stop to meditate and recover.

Recover and then do it again, then recover and then recover again, and so on.

By the time the sun was setting, half of the two acres of wasteland had finally been cultivated.

The freshly turned soil gleamed moistly in the setting sun. The weeds had been cleared away, large stones had been piled up to form field ridges, and most of the small pebbles had been collected.

Although it's still half-finished, it already has the basic shape of a proper field.

Lu Qingchen straightened up, his whole body aching as if it had fallen apart, several blisters on his hands, and his spiritual energy completely depleted.

He leaned the hoe back against the old man's house and went over to thank him.

Old Sun looked at him, who was covered in mud and sweat, and didn't say anything, just grunted in response.

Lu Qingchen dragged his tired body toward the cafeteria.

I'll probably have to eat two extra bowls of rice for dinner tonight.

......

In the evening, Lu Qingchen dragged his tired body into the cafeteria.

He had consumed too much energy today, so he filled three large bowls with spirit rice, two plates of spirit vegetables, two bowls of spirit chicken soup, and added a serving of braised spirit venison. Amidst the surprised gazes of those around him, he returned to his seat and began to wolf down his food.

These meals are provided free of charge to the outer disciples by the sect; otherwise, the food alone would have bankrupted him.

Li Si and Wang Ming were already sitting in the corner, with two familiar immortal seedlings beside them—Zhao Ming and Qian Wanliang.

As they ate and chatted, they recounted their first day as formal disciples in the sect, each sharing their own experiences.

Li Si said with a bitter face, "The senior sister from the Array Dao Hall told me to start by learning the basic principles of array formations. She gave me a book that was as thick as a brick. I got a headache after flipping through just two pages."

Wang Ming sighed, "The Pill Hall asked me to observe my senior brother refining pills first. I stood there for a whole day, and my legs went numb. I didn't even get a clear look at what the pill furnace looked like."

Zhao Ming and Qian Wanliang also each complained a few times.

When it was Lu Qingchen's turn, he simply ate his meal in silence without saying anything.

The hardships of clearing land are something no one can explain to you.

......

After finishing dinner, Lu Qingchen returned to his room, sat cross-legged on the bed, and opened his handwritten copy of "The Spirit-Nourishing Technique of Green Wood," studying it word by word.

The cultivation method of the Azure Wood Spiritual Energy Technique is different from ordinary cultivation methods. In addition to absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, one can also use one's own wood-attribute spiritual power as a guide to stimulate the vitality of plants and trees, thereby accelerating cultivation by borrowing the power of plants and trees.

He closed his eyes and focused his mind, sensing the faint spiritual energy within his body, which slowly circulated according to the path of the cultivation technique.

The spiritual energy rises from the dantian, travels along the meridians, passes through the chest, passes through the Jianjing acupoint, enters the arm, and finally gathers in the palm.

This is the basic path of the practice. Whether or not one relies on the power of plants, one must first make this path clear.

After a full cycle, the spiritual energy circulated through the meridians, and although it was weak, it flowed more smoothly than yesterday.

He tried to condense his pure energy. After half an hour, a faint wisp of pure energy appeared in his dantian. It was far from being fully formed; it was barely condensed and would dissipate if he wasn't careful.

At this rate, it would take about two to three days to condense a barely stable stream of pure energy.

One hundred and eight questions, that would take more than two hundred days!

Moreover, as cultivation level increases, this speed will become slower and slower!

However, this is the normal speed for a low-grade Five Elemental Root cultivator; it's so slow it's frustrating, but there's no rushing it.

Fortunately, he still had the Dao Stele, which stored the cultivation he received from Chu Yunfeng every day. Otherwise, given his own aptitude, it would be hard to say whether he could break through to the Foundation Establishment stage in this lifetime.