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

Lu Qingchen squatted by the field, carefully examining the faint light on the leaves of the few spiritual herbs, and couldn't help but smile.

Deep spirit enhancement is indeed effective, and its effects far exceed those of conventional spirit enhancement.

But the consumption is also high.

This small experimental area alone consumed the cultivation required for the previous shallow spiritual rice cultivation of ten acres.

If this were expanded to the entire spiritual field, it would be unaffordable.

The conclusion is clear: Deep Spirit Points are suitable for cultivating a small number of high-quality products, but not for large-scale promotion.

He kept this conclusion in mind and planned to select the best seeds after this batch of spirit rice was harvested, and then cultivate a batch of high-quality spirit rice with deep spiritual infusion in the next season.

Focus on quality, not quantity.

If you can grow just a few plants of excellent quality, its potential value is higher than growing dozens of acres of ordinary rice.

However, plans can't keep up with changes.

......

That morning, Lu Qingchen inspected the spirit fields as usual.

As he approached the edge of the field, he suddenly stopped.

Several grayish-white spots appeared on the leaves of a Jade Rice plant.

He crouched down and looked closer.

The spots are small, only the size of a grain of rice, with slightly yellowish edges, and are located at the tips of the leaves.

The symptoms were exactly the same as those in Zhou Pingling's spiritual field.

Lu Qingchen's heart sank.

He stood up, walked around the field ridges, and found several more patches of rice with the same symptoms.

They were all concentrated in the area near the edge of the field, where there was a clump of weeds, and beyond the weeds was a shared irrigation ditch.

The canal passes by Sun Zhiyuan's sacred field.

The disease still spread.

Lu Qingchen squatted on the edge of the field, looking at the few spirit rice plants with spots, his brows furrowed.

The owner's instruction was to destroy any diseased plants immediately to prevent their spread.

But this season's rice is almost ready for harvest, and destroying it now would be a significant loss.

More importantly, he was unwilling to accept it.

This batch of sacred rice was dug out by him, one hoe at a time, starting from the initial land reclamation.

Sowing, watering, fertilizing, and applying nutrients—every single plant is the result of painstaking effort.

He didn't want it to be destroyed like that.

After thinking about it, he decided to keep quiet for now and try to see if he could cure it himself.

He selected the diseased plant with the mildest symptoms, drew out a trace of his cultivation from the Dao Stele's light pearl, and carefully injected it into the spirit rice's body.

The moment his cultivation entered, he closed his eyes and, through the connection between the Dao Stele and that trace of cultivation, the scene inside the spiritual rice gradually appeared in his mind.

Cultivators in the Qi Refining stage do not have the ability to project their divine sense, but the cultivation level of the Dao Stele is connected to his mind and spirit. Wherever the cultivation reaches, it is as if his perception extends there.

He "saw" it.

Within the spiritual energy channels of the spirit rice, clumps of dark gray substances clung to the channel walls like stains.

Those things were slowly wriggling, constantly eroding the spiritual energy in the meridians.

With each step of erosion, the gloomy mass expands, and the vitality of the sacred rice diminishes.

This is the Soul-Eating Insect.

Lu Qingchen guided the cultivation of that Dao stele, slowly advancing it along the meridians.

Wherever the cultivation passed, the dark stains seemed to have met their nemesis, being washed away, dissolved, and turned into nothingness.

In less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, all the spirit-eating insects that could be sensed within the spirit rice plant were completely eliminated.

He opened his eyes and let out a long breath.

It works! The Spirit Pointing Technique can kill the Spirit-Eating Insects.

Moreover, the cultivation power consumed was much less than he had expected—the cultivation power consumed to kill that swarm of spirit-eating insects was less than one-tenth of that consumed in a shallow spirit-cultivation.

The Spirit-Eating Insects were like natural nemesis in the face of the Dao Stele's spiritual energy; they almost didn't need to be deliberately activated, and the spiritual energy dissolved on its own wherever it passed.

He didn't delay any longer and continued to deal with the past along the field ridges.

Soon, all the diseased plants in the field were removed.

Standing on the edge of the field, looking at the few spirit rice plants that had recovered and become clean, Lu Qingchen felt much more at ease.

At this rate of consumption, even if the entire field were infected, it wouldn't require much cultivation.

But it's not over yet.

He observed the rice plant for another two days and found that the spots had not recurred, and the leaves were even shinier than before the disease.

What surprised him even more was that a faint trace of gold remained on the surface of the spirit rice—a trace left by the spiritual energy of the Dao Stele.

This trace seems to have given the rice a certain "resistance" to the insect-eating insect.

Lu Qingchen kept quiet.

The field is healed; there's no need to let everyone know.

But just because he doesn't make a fuss doesn't mean others won't find out.

......

The gray spot disease broke out in Qingmu Manor on the fifth day after Lu Qingchen healed his spiritual field.

The first to suffer was Sun Zhiyuan's sacred field.

His fields are upstream, and the irrigation canal flows from one end of the village to the other. His fields are at the very front, so diseases spread along the water flow, and his fields are the first to be affected.

It took only three or four days from the discovery of the first diseased plant to the appearance of symptoms in half of the field.

Next up is Zhou Ming.

His field was right next to Sun Zhiyuan's, spreading over through the weeds on the field ridges at an equally astonishing speed.

Liu Wenhua and Wang Youde were not spared either.

Although the location was somewhat remote, the disease still spread because of the shared farm tools and the interaction between tenant farmers.

For a time, the entire Qingmu Manor was shrouded in gloom and despair.

Zhao Demao used every method he could think of.

Insect-repelling talismans, insect-repelling techniques, and liquids made from special herbs... all sorts of methods were used. But the disease continued to spread.

He reported to the sect and received the reply that the Spirit Plant Hall was working hard to develop a prescription, but there were many types of Spirit-Eating Insects, so the right medicine was needed, and it would take several more days.

Sun Zhiyuan was so anxious that blisters appeared around the corners of his mouth.

His spiritual field is the largest, and more than 50% of it has been infected.

The first thing I do every morning is go to the field to count the diseased plants, and my face gets worse and worse as I count.

Zhou Ming could no longer laugh.

He squatted by the field, looking at the rice plants covered with gray and white spots, his brows furrowed so deeply they could trap flies.

Several times when Lu Qingchen passed by, he saw him sitting alone on the edge of the field, lost in thought, without even saying hello.

The tenant farmers were talking amongst themselves, with some saying that this year's harvest might be completely lost.

Old Li squatted on the edge of the field, smoking his pipe, and said to the tenant farmer beside him, "I think it's hopeless. Even the landowner and the big shots above can't do anything. What can we do?"

......

Zhao Demao was indeed running out of options.

That evening, he sat alone in the main room, with a message from the sect spread out in front of him.

The message clearly stated that the gray spot disease had spread to seven farms, and the Spirit Plant Palace was working hard to develop a cure, but progress was slow.

Each village needs to take its own measures to minimize losses.

"Minimize losses as much as possible."

Zhao Demao looked at those words over and over again, and a slight twitch appeared at the corner of his mouth.

How to reduce it? We've tried everything we could: we sprinkled lime, pulled out diseased plants, put up insect-repelling talismans, used magic tricks, and even watered them with herbal juice.

The disease continued to spread, becoming more severe day by day.

He worked at Qingmu Manor for over a decade, rising from an ordinary spiritual plant grower to the manor lord, and he witnessed all sorts of natural and man-made disasters.

We have experienced drought, floods, pest infestations, and the degradation of sacred fields.

But this is the first time I've ever been helplessly watching the disease spread day by day like this.