He had saved a half-dead white crane.
Li Qiuchen didn't know how this white crane was still stubbornly alive. Judging by its condition, it must have been stuck there for at least half a month.
If it could speak, Li Qiuchen would really like to ask how it had managed to strike such a pose.
The crane's beak was broken. Now, let alone speaking, even its cries had turned into "ga ga."
Losing its beak meant losing its ability to hunt. Without food, it would still starve to death.
With the mindset of saving someone to the bitter end and seeing Buddha off all the way to the West, Li Qiuchen fed it two fresh fish.
Once the two fish reached its belly, the crane immediately recovered some energy. It could even protest at Li Qiuchen with angry eyes.
Li Qiuchen could understand its anger, but he didn't want to indulge it.
"Are we close? If you're so capable, don't beg me to save you."
Leaving the crane to the side, he began building a shelter on his own.
Although the mountain stream was sheltered from wind and cold, he still had to consider the river rising in summer.
Li Qiuchen chose a relatively high spot, cleared the ground, and began making tools.
He didn't even have a knife. He could only use sharp stones in place of an axe to chop trees.
Fortunately, his strength had increased considerably, and food was not lacking here.
Spending an entire day, he built an extremely crude shed. Li Qiuchen crawled inside and began his daily cultivation.
The greatest difference between ordinary people and cultivators lay in whether one could breathe qi into the body—commonly known as the Qi Refinement realm.
Without the proper method, even a hundred years of devoted cultivation would only temper the body.
Only by entering the Qi Refinement realm could one be considered a cultivator and step onto the path of immortality.
Everyone in Songlin Village cultivated, but their cultivation results were secretly absorbed by the old peach tree. A lifetime of work was all for nothing.
The Jingyunzi detailed cultivation methods from the Qi Refinement realm to the Golden Core realm. The techniques themselves weren't difficult. The most important thing was supplementary medicine.
Popping pills, popping them hard—great force creates miracles!
It might seem low-class, but Li Qiuchen currently liked this kind of low-class stuff.
Too high-class, and it was easy to overextend.
Li Qiuchen took out several herbs he had picked along the way from his bundle. After washing and crushing them, he rolled them into a ball and swallowed them directly.
This was a pill formula recorded in the Jingyunzi, called the "Qi Gathering Pill." According to normal procedures, some ingredients needed to be steamed and sun-dried three times each, properly balanced as principal and supplementary ingredients, then refined in a pill furnace to bring out their full medicinal properties.
Under the Pharmacist's blessing, these steps could all be omitted.
Directly—one step to the stomach.
The night Li Qiuchen obtained the Pharmacist's blessing, he gained the ability of photosynthesis... no, the ability to automatically absorb heaven and earth spiritual energy. According to the standards recorded in the book, he had now entered the Qi Refinement realm.
But compared to true Qi Refinement cultivators, he had yet to master the ability to refine and transform this heaven and earth spiritual energy. It was equivalent to eating while defecating—a small portion was passively digested, while most was wasted.
The solution was simple: honestly cultivate his family's inherited technique and lay a solid foundation.
The pitter-patter of rain sounded in his ears. Li Qiuchen roused himself from meditation to see a curtain of rain spanning heaven and earth.
Rain in these mountains fell whenever it pleased, completely without warning.
If he hadn't anticipated it beforehand, he would have been soaked like a drowned chicken by now.
Therefore, cultivation required caution. It was better to be safe than sorry.
Warmth came from beside him. Li Qiuchen turned to see that the white crane had sneakily squeezed inside too.
The temporary shed was already small. With one person and one crane squeezed together, there wasn't even room to turn around.
Li Qiuchen was speechless. "You're a bird! Out in the wild, do wild men build sheds to shelter you from the rain?"
Not only had this creature seized his shelter, but it also stared fixedly at the bundle behind him. It must have smelled the peach wood core.
"I can't even bring myself to use it. Why would I feed it to you?"
Li Qiuchen stared into the crane's eyes and said softly, "I thought you were a bird with some pride."
"Ga-ga—!"
The white crane indeed had its pride. It had been drooling over the peach wood core, but after Li Qiuchen's remark, it immediately showed an embarrassed and annoyed expression. It squawked twice at Li Qiuchen, then turned its head away and ignored him.
After a night of heavy rain, the mountain air was filled with the scent of green grass and mud.
The river surface, originally no more than three zhang wide, had risen to six or seven zhang. Three to five fish would leap out of the turbid, rushing water from time to time.
The white crane stood by the river, deep in thought. It tried extending its claws to catch fish. After a few failures, it found the trick. One after another, fat fish were caught and thrown onto the bank.
Then it tried using its claws to deliver the fish to its mouth.
Li Qiuchen silently watched this comical scene from the side.
Just imagine—a person without a jaw or teeth, using their toes to clamp a ham sausage and stuff it down their own throat...
This was a proud bird with very thin skin and a very petty heart.
Li Qiuchen had only said one thing to it last night, and it had really taken it to heart.
Watching it fail repeatedly and squawk in anger, Li Qiuchen shook his head.
One couldn't quibble with a bird.
"Come, I'll feed you."
He picked up a fish and fed it down its throat. The crane stretched out its neck and gulped it down into its belly. Reluctantly, it squawked at Li Qiuchen, seemingly expressing gratitude.
It used its claw to nudge the fish on the ground and stared at Li Qiuchen.
The meaning was obvious—Feed me!
The white crane had a large appetite. Perhaps because it hadn't eaten for a long time before, it was ravenous.
It actually swallowed six or seven one-foot-long crucian carp before fanning its wings in satisfaction.
Li Qiuchen stood by, silently observing. He saw the life energy within the white crane growing at a visible speed, gradually gathering into life essence that flickered with faint light.
Sure enough, this was a crane spirit.
Any other bird hung up there for half a month would have starved to death long ago.
But there were differences between spirits and spirits.
The crawfish spirit in the back mountains of Songlin Village had cultivated a nine-zhang-long body. It could speak human words, use spells, was invulnerable to blades and spears, and possessed boundless strength. If it hadn't feigned defeat and pretended to surrender, the villagers wielding hoes and manure forks truly wouldn't have been able to do anything to it.
This unlucky white crane before him looked no different in size from a normal crane. Although it had developed spiritual intelligence, it couldn't speak yet and didn't have much cultivation.
Perhaps it would taste quite good...
Li Qiuchen subconsciously licked his lips.
But it was too scrawny now. Better wait until it fattened up. Come winter, he could pluck its feathers and keep it as reserve food.
After settling his temporary residence, Li Qiuchen's next plan was to rebuild a medicinal garden.
The Li family's cultivation technique could be summed up in four words—popping pills to change fate.
Where the technique itself wasn't profound enough, medicinal pills would make up for the deficiencies.
The mountain forests weren't lacking in medicinal herbs, but not every herb was easy to use or find.
For example, there was a locally common specialty herb called Ao'ao Jiao, deeply loved and praised by middle-aged and elderly men, but it was of no help to Li Qiuchen's cultivation.
Some herbs liked sun, some liked shade. Some liked to eat meat, some had to grow symbiotically with other plants... Different types had different medicinal properties. It wasn't simply a matter of clearing a plot of land and planting them.
Li Qiuchen took the most primitive and crude tools in hand and cleared two plots of land outside the mountain stream. He planted the Heart-Calming Grass and Spirit-Tranquilizing Flower he had found along the way.
These two herbs had gentle medicinal properties and were usually used as supplementary materials for refining pills. Just like Sichuan pepper and star anise—when you're stewing meat and don't know what seasonings to add, throwing some in definitely wouldn't be wrong.
Of course, the most important thing was that they were easy to keep alive. As long as the environment was suitable, they would grow like weeds.
In fact, they basically were weeds.
Heart-Calming Grass and Spirit-Tranquilizing Flower that had just sprouted in their first year could be eaten as wild vegetables. They had no medicinal properties and no toxicity.
Only those plants that survived the wind and frost of the Northern Border for three to five years would gradually accumulate medicinal properties.
If they could grow for more than ten years, they would be genuine spiritual herbs.
Li Qiuchen didn't have time to wait for them to slowly grow. The main purpose of building the medicinal garden was to accelerate these herbs.
This was technical work.
First was the quality of the soil, second was the source of fertilizer.
The black soil of the Northern Border was extremely fertile, enough to support robust plant growth.
In the mountains, one could also find large clumps of beast droppings. These couldn't be used directly. They needed to be mixed with other things and further fermented to be made into fertilizer.
Besides that, there was the Pharmacist's blessing.
Put simply, it was the ability to control life.
It could both absorb and digest life energy, condensing it into life essence, like the tree core within the old peach tree.
It could also break down life essence back into life energy, healing one's own wounds or transferring it to others, including but not limited to animals and plants.
Question: Student Xiao Ming's daily cultivation speed is 1. After taking herbs, his cultivation speed reaches 2. Planting and harvesting a batch of herbs requires at least three years. For every 0.1 of cultivation results Student Xiao Ming invests to assist herb growth, and 0.2 of cultivation time spent nurturing herbs, he can reduce herb growth duration by 0.2.
Solve: How much cost must be paid to obtain the highest cultivation efficiency?
This problem was rather complicated.
Li Qiuchen had long since returned his mathematics to his previous life's teachers. He couldn't calculate it at all.
Anyway... he would just cultivate slowly.
The goal of cultivating immortality was longevity and freedom. Caution was necessary, but being constrained was unnecessary.
In his previous life, when reading those online cultivation novels, Li Qiuchen had always been puzzled. Some protagonists were either in closed-door cultivation or on the road searching for heavenly materials and earthly treasures to prepare for their next closed-door cultivation.
What did they cultivate into in the end?
Closing up for a million years, still a Pure Yang virgin body. Raising a hand and pointing, the Great Dao was obliterated, the universe exploded, the book ended.
Where was the joy in life?
Li Qiuchen was very clear that he didn't have that kind of talent, nor did he hope to reach some invincible-under-heaven level. Being able to live a happy life while ensuring his personal safety would satisfy him.
It was just early spring. Before winter arrived, he had at least five months to build the medicinal garden, continue improving his shelter, and by the way, store food to prepare for winter.
Thanks to Wu Zeyan for the passionate tip.