Chapter 5

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

“That’s awesome! You’re such a nice person, big brother.”

Seeing that her big brother wasn’t joking, Lu Qingyu excitedly pecked Lu Qingfeng’s cheek, then proceeded to hop around all over the place. Evidently, she was ecstatic.

Perhaps it was because her thoughts at present weren’t that complicated.

When she thought that she could cultivate like her eldest and second brothers, while the other girls in Blackwood Village couldn’t, and that she could go to Ganoderma Mountain to rescue her second brother after cultivating…

This itself was enough to make Lu Qingyu feel excited for days, so excited that she couldn’t even sleep.

“Qingfeng! I want to learn how to read tonight.”

Lu Qingyu looked at Lu Qingfeng, waiting for an affirmative answer.

“No problem, just make sure that you don’t complain about it being too hard,” Lu Qingfeng nodded and responded.

“As if I would. I’m not Qingshan.”

Lu Qingyu smiled with joy.

Lu Qingfeng looked at her wonderingly and said, “Qingyu, come and give me some help.”

“Huh? Oh!”

When Lu Qingyu saw that her big brother couldn’t get up after cultivating for so long, she quickly came to help him.

Lu Qingfeng struggled to get up, leaning on Lu Qingyu as he moved his numb legs from left to right.

Grrrrr!

Then, much to his disappointment, his stomach began to rumble. An intense sensation of hunger struck.

“Qingfeng, it’s not time for dinner yet.”

Lu Qingyu looked up at the sky. Seeing that sky wasn’t dark yet, she pointed at Lu Qingfeng’s stomach as she reminded him of the time.

“I know.”

Lu Qingfeng was speechless.

Cultivation in the Postnatal Stage belonged to the process of refining one’s Chi. Before one arrived at the Foundation Building Stage, one couldn’t absorb the Spirit Energy that was wandering between heaven and earth and funnel it into their bodies. Their only way of replenishing what had been consumed during cultivation was through eating.

After all, Chi control wasn’t something that would appear out of thin air, but something that was brought into existence by refining one’s inner Chi.

Lu Qingfeng was already feeling weak. His daily food intake was only enough for him to barely sustain his bodily functions. Now that he had started to cultivate, even though he had not yet comprehended the sense of Chi and the way of Chi control, it still depleted much of his energy.

This was a good illustration of the concept of “The deprived study literature, while the wealthy practice martial arts” to real people in real life.

“One coarse grain biscuit every day is not enough to support my cultivation in the Scorching Sun Classic.”

Lu Qingfeng was so hungry that he was seeing stars.

As a last resort, he quickly took out half of a coarse grain biscuit and gobbled it up in two or three bites. This was his ration for tonight, but, at this moment, it was absolutely necessary that he eat it in advance.

“Do you want to eat now?”

After Lu Qingfeng had finished eating, he asked Lu Qingyu if she wanted the remaining half of the coarse grain biscuit in his hand.

“Nope. If I eat now, I’ll get hungry at night.” Lu Qingyu shook her head.

“Fine then, I’ll keep it for you for the time being.” Lu Qingfeng stuffed the half of a coarse grain biscuit into his pocket.

Lu Qingyu swallowed hard as she suddenly remembered, “Oh no, we didn’t pick wild vegetables this afternoon!”

They didn’t have meat at home all year round, and wild vegetables were often their only dishes.

Originally, they would work on their five acres of dry land every morning and look for wild vegetables in the afternoon, but today, the afternoon had almost gone by. When Lu Qingyu thought that they would have no wild vegetables for tonight, she felt a little dispirited.

“We’ll not have wild vegetables today. We’ll be having something else.”

When Lu Qingfeng saw Qingyu’s eyes light up, he couldn’t help but smile.

“No matter how careful we are in our planning, the food we have at home will not last until the autumn harvest. Now that Qingshan is with the Truth Sect, his food intake is bound to get bigger.”

It was already difficult for the food Lu Qingfeng had in storage to supply a ravenous beast like Lu Qingshan. Now that he had to join in eating a lot as well, he was afraid that their food supply wouldn’t even last a month.

At that time, not to mention cultivation, even surviving would become an issue.

This was why he had suddenly thought of medicinal herbs.

There were 46 basic medicinal herbs recorded in the Fundamentals of Pill Refining. There were herbs that could help one put off hunger, and there were those that could invigorate one’s vitality and replenish one’s Chi. The rural people in Blackwood Village might only be aware of some three to five kinds of herbs that could treat colds and flus based on their life experiences.

But they definitely didn’t have as much knowledge as that that was recorded in Fundamentals of Pill Refining.

Lu Qingfeng had already mastered the Fundamentals of Pill Refining. Although he had not yet started to work on it, the information about the 46 medicinal herbs was firmly etched in his mind.

In Fundamentals of Pill Refining, there was information not only about the handling of these herbs, but also detailed information about various medicinal herbs. In order to handle medicinal herbs, one needed to understand all kinds of basic information about them.

Based on all this information, it wasn’t difficult for Lu Qingfeng to find these wild herbs in the area where they lived.

“Among the 46 medicinal herbs, Bai Zhu, licorice, Lycium chinense, Polygonatum sibiricum, etc., are all extremely common medicinal herbs that can invigorate one’s vitality and replenish one’s Chi. These are all necessary ingredients for making the Yellow Dragon Pill. The effect of taking them individually is definitely not as good as taking the Yellow Dragon Pill, but, at my current stage, they’ll appease my urgent needs.”

Among them, licorice has a sweet taste and can be taken directly after some handling. Consuming a small amount of licorice was not only good for the body, but it would also serve as a good treat. Lu Qingyu would definitely like it.

“Let’s go! I’ll take you to go pluck some herbs.”

Lu Qingfeng got up. With a hatchet in his left hand and a black wooden hoe in his right, he went to the back of the terraced fields.

“Herbs?”

Lu Qingyu was baffled, but she followed Lu Qingfeng with a confused look on her face.

To the west of the terraced fields, there was a large area of uncultivated hills.

Bai Zhu and licorice were very common, though in Blackwood Village, people who knew about herbs were as rare as a phoenix’s feathers or a unicorn’s horn. Hence, it shouldn’t be too hard for them to find the herbs.

As anticipated…

Before they even got into the depths of the mountain woods, just at the periphery, it took only a short while for Lu Qingfeng to find three bushes of Bai Zhu and two licorice plants.

“This is enough.”

Seeing that it was getting late, Lu Qingfeng was preparing to return home.

According to the methods in Fundamentals of Pill Refining, for licorice, he just had to remove the impurities by washing it. Then he needed to soak them in water until they were 80 percent translucent, drain them, moisten the individual pieces, and leave them to dry.

For Bai Zhu, he had to slice them into pieces, stir-fry them in Terra Flava Usta powder until there was an earthy color on their surface, and sift away the excess powder.

And that would wrap up the handling of these two medicinal herbs.

In this way…

Tomorrow, he could use the licorice and the Bai Zhu to replenish his energy that had been consumed during cultivation.

“Are these even edible?”

Lu Qingyu watched Lu Qingfeng as he picked the herbs for a long time, and she couldn’t help asking.

“Of course. This one is sweet.” Lu Qingfeng waved the licorice in his hand at her.

“Sweet?”

Lu Qingyu’s eyes lit up once again.

“I can find a few more licorices and Bai Zhus in the next few days and take some to Qingshan when I visit Ganoderma Mountain in two days.”

Lu Qingfeng returned to the Blackwood shack with Lu Qingyu, who eagerly waited to taste the licorice, as he thought secret thoughts.

As of right now, he didn’t have the ability to go against the Truth Sect or flee Blackwood Village with Lu Qingshan and Lu Qingyu. He could only use the approaches that he had to prevent things from happening to Lu Qingshan that were too deplorable to describe. He was physically exhausted at this time before he succeeded in his cultivation.

After picking the Bai Zhu and licorice, Lu Qingfeng and Lu Qingyu each tried one piece of licorice.

“It sure is sweet.”

Lu Qingyu broke off half of the coarse grain biscuit that she had saved for dinner and handed it to Lu Qingfeng.

“Qingfeng, you should eat more, or you will be so hungry that you can’t sleep at night.”

“It’s okay, have it yourself.”

Before Lu Qingfeng could finish speaking, Lu Qingyu played the same old trick by stuffing the coarse grain biscuit directly into Lu Qingfeng’s mouth.

“I’m still little. It’s okay if I eat less.”

Lu Qingyu took a sip of water, cleared the table, and sat down firmly.

“Big Brother, hurry up and teach me how to read!”

“It’s precisely because you’re little that you should be eating more.”

Lu Qingfeng shook his head, grabbed a charcoal pencil, a piece of tree bark, and started teaching Qingyu how to read.

Later that night…

Lu Qingfeng lay in his bed and logged into “Primitive”.

…

[You died because you have not eaten for a long time. Please make a selection between Reincarnation and Resurrection.]

Lu Qingfeng was dumbfounded as he floated in the chaotic void of nothingness. In front of him was a flashing system reminder with scarlet writing on it.

Exactly.

He was dead.

Starved to death.

“It’s only been at most eight hours from when I logged out of the game last night until now when I logged in again, and three months and one day have gone by in ‘Primitive’?”

“The time difference is more than 100 times. This isn’t right.”

“If there was a time difference between the game and reality, how come when I stayed in the game for a couple of hours last night, not much time had passed in reality. This means that the time when I logged out of the game was about 11 hours difference.”

“Which is exactly a 100 times difference.”

Lu Qingfeng called up the death record and discovered that three months had passed in “Primitive”.

His physical body had already starved to death more than two months ago because he had not eaten for a long time in the Bluestone Tablet. Being in Level 1 of the Fetal Phase would mean that he was still mortal. Without consuming any food or any Fasting Pills, naturally, he wouldn’t be able to survive for three months.

What Lu Qingfeng was faced with right now was a choice between Resurrection and Reincarnation.

“No wonder I felt that time passed especially slowly last night.”

Lu Qingfeng finally knew where that weird feeling had come from, and why he had felt so energetic when he got up this morning.

With enough sleep, one would naturally feel replenished.

“According to various information in ‘Primitive’, for the other players that entered the game, their in-game time was synchronized with their respective real times. What is happening to me must be caused by the different world that I’m in or because I’ve traversed across worlds.”

This was also the reason why Lu Qingfeng had directly gone offline and didn’t think about the flow of time last night.

For ordinary players, the time ratio between reality and the game was 1 to 1.

For Lu Qingfeng, it was 1 to 100.

This could be due to the different world that he was in. It was also why he couldn’t choose to log in to the game with his real body.

“A 100 times time difference!”

“If I could log in with my real body…”

Thinking about all of this, Lu Qingfeng shook his head. One must not be insatiably avaricious.

With a time difference of 1 to 100, even with respect to the consciousness of one’s soul alone, there were already numerous benefits to Lu Qingfeng.

Although at present, some minor accidents had occurred.

“Resurrection is immediate. I’m only at Level 1 now, so the loss of Levels will have a minimal impact on me. However, my Foundation will be damaged and my talents in cultivation will decrease, thus affecting my future growth.”

“If I choose to reincarnate, 16 years in the game is just 2 months in reality for me.”

After some thought, Lu Qingfeng chose to reincarnate.

In two months, too much could happen, and he simply couldn’t afford the bet.

As for his Foundation in the game, after he solved his crisis in real life, he could just make up for it by spending two months to reincarnate in the game when he had time.

[You are now at Level 0. 1 low grade Spirit Stone is required for Resurrection. Do you want to resurrect?]

“…”

“I choose to reincarnate!”

[Please select: Reincarnate to current location / random location]

“Current location.”

Lu Qingfeng was more familiar with Emery Town. So naturally, he wanted to stay in Emery Town.

[You have chosen to reincarnate to your current location. Please wait for a moment.]

[Reincarnation successful. Growth progress: 1/16]

Just like the first time he’d logged in, he could only continue the game when he was 16. Ordinary players would have to wait 16 years in reality. For Lu Qingfeng, with the 100 times difference in time, it would only require two months.

Name: Lu Qingfeng

Race: Human

Faction: None

Title: None

Cultivation Stage: None

Level: 0 (0/1)

Destined Life Span: 1/68

Innate Talent Level: 1

Merit: Unknown

Karma: Unknown

Technique: Yellow Court Classic (Unblooded) [Property: Ability Upgrade (Level 1); Commanding Power (Level 1); Karma Nullification (Level 1)]; Scorching Sun Classic (Novice) [Updating]

Magic: None

Abhijna: None

Equipment: None

Pill Refining: Fundamentals of Pill Refining (Unblooded) [Updating]

With all this happening, one could say that he had gone back to the pre-liberation period in just one day’s time. Fortunately, the Yellow Court Classic was still there, and his proficiency in the Scorching Sun Classic and the Fundamentals of Pill Refining hadn’t been lost.

His Level and Stage in cultivation weren’t high by default. There wasn’t much to feel bad about.

The only price Lu Qingfeng had had to pay was two months of his time in reality.

“In these two months, I must be cautious.”

…