Mysterious mirror hanging high

"Is there any explanation for this great achievement?" Jing Yu asked.

"Great Merit is a hard currency in our Xiaoyao Alliance that is more valuable than spirit stones. Only by completing the tasks assigned by the alliance can you have the opportunity to obtain it."

Mu Shan explained, "One great merit can be exchanged for ten low-grade spirit stones within the alliance. I earned five great merits this time, which translates to fifty spirit stones!"

"Uncle, think about it. My annual salary as a deacon in the Spirit Plant Garden is only 15 spirit stones. This one month of back and forth work is equivalent to three years of my annual salary!"

"It shows how many people are vying for this job of searching for spiritual roots."

"This great achievement is so valuable?" Jing Yu asked in surprise.

“It’s valuable, but no one actually exchanges it for money.”

Mu Shan picked up the wine bottle, sipped the spirit wine, and said slowly, "Great Merit can be exchanged for a lot of things in the secret vault of the Xiaoyao League. Many things that are priceless are not even available outside! If someone really wants to exchange great merit for spirit stones, they must have been kicked in the head by a donkey."

"Take the Foundation Establishment Pill, for example, which every Qigong cultivator desires. Within the alliance, you can exchange it for forty great merits. If you were to buy the Foundation Establishment Pill at an auction in the Fairy City, you wouldn't be able to get it without at least five or six hundred spirit stones! And they might not even be in stock!"

"As for the Foundation Establishment Pills sold privately, they're even less reliable. If you go to a place like Xiaoyao Xiancheng to find a Foundation Establishment Pill Master to refine a Foundation Establishment Pill, you'll often have to crowdfund the ingredients with others. If the ingredients you offer are slightly less valuable, your priority in getting the pill will be lower. If the Master makes a mistake refining the pill, you'll be lucky to get a defective, useless pill. It's more likely that you won't even get a useless pill!"

"Things like these that are related to the path of Taoism are most reliably exchanged within the alliance."

"It seems that the Xiaoyao Alliance is also encouraging cultivators to take on missions and earn great merits?" Jing Yu thought thoughtfully.

"Of course." Mu Shan said, "The Xiaoyao League is currently on the rise. They're storing grain and farming, helping with various arts, exploring the wilderness, surveying veins, and building mansions. Where does it need cultivators? Naturally, we have to put a lot of effort into encouraging them. After all, a big reward always attracts brave men!"

"It's just that ordinary jobs are often very stingy in rewarding people. The only jobs that are rewarded are those for bounties on robbing cultivators or developing border areas. These are too dangerous. When a job that's not too dangerous and has a good reward comes along, everyone rushes to take it."

"There's one thing I don't quite understand. Did this search for spiritual roots only start in the last few decades?"

Jing Yu couldn't help but ask, "Logically speaking, if it had started hundreds of years ago, I wouldn't have gone decades without hearing anything about immortality in Zhao State!"

"Indeed, it has only become more frequent in recent decades!" Mu Shan twirled his beard and said, "It's normal that there weren't any before. After all, cultivators in the early stages of Qi training had meager spiritual energy reserves, and their cultivation of techniques was slow, so their use was minimal. Their output far outstripped their consumption, and therefore, when sects recruited disciples and noble families chose sons-in-law, they preferred quality over quantity. Counting back a hundred years, there were less than a thousand cultivators in our Wushan Market."

"Later, a cultivator with extraordinary talent in the art of magic successively improved the three most crucial arts in the art of spiritual planting: [Spirit Rain Art], [Soil Condensation Art], and [Green Sprout Art], greatly lowering the threshold for practice. Originally requiring the sixth level of Qi training to fully perform these arts, this gifted cultivator forcibly improved them so that even the first level of Qi training could perform them."

"Originally, a qualified spiritual plant husband needed to be at the sixth level of Qi training. Now, as long as a large number of low-level cultivators in the early stages of Qi training are willing to farm, the spiritual rice they harvest each year is enough to support themselves and even generate a substantial surplus. Many sects, aristocratic families, and alliances have seen the benefits, and naturally changed the cultivation world's original habit of cherishing their own possessions."

"Nowadays, every time we discover a spiritual root, even if his cultivation has only been at the first level of Qi training for his entire life, it represents a continuous output of spiritual rice every year! The income it brings is far more than just a few spiritual stones."

"Since there's profit to be made, naturally all sorts of methods have emerged! The [Spirit Detection Plate] I used before in the Zhao Kingdom's capital, which can roughly detect the spiritual roots of the entire city, is a new thing in the past few decades. With this, the efficiency of spiritual root detection has increased by more than ten thousand times."

"Speaking of this, there is an interesting thing."

Mu Shan smiled and said, "Originally, testing the spiritual roots of mortals in the mortal world was something that the demons liked to do. However, those demon cultivators didn't have any good intentions. Instead, they imprisoned those with poor spiritual roots who were tested and forced them to absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and become self-reliant. Once they had cultivated some skills, they would use secret methods to refine them into human pills."

"But after word of this spiritual plant improvement method spread, those demonic cultivators suddenly realized that letting these low-level cultivators grow spiritual rice for their entire lives was much more cost-effective than refining them into human pills! So they actually changed their previous brutality and provided these cultivators with good food and drink while they worked the land!"

"Now, this evil heretic, aside from some eccentric behavior and perhaps the practice of raising furnaces and cauldrons, is actually no different from our righteous sect! How ironic!"

"It seems that this cultivator who improved the method of cultivating spiritual plants has done immeasurable merits. Even the spiritual roots of the mortal world discovered in recent decades have to do with favors!" Jing Yu marveled.

"Of course! This cultivator improved the method of cultivating spiritual plants while still in the Foundation Establishment stage. He's truly a prodigy! Now, it's said that he's already reached the Golden Core Realm!"

"Where is this monk from? Is there a name you can pass down?"

"This Immortal isn't in our Yunchuan Region. He seems to be in the far west, far away from here. I'm afraid even a Jindan Immortal would have difficulty crossing this distance... It must be a wandering Yuanying Immortal who brought this improved spiritual plant method to our Yunchuan Region!"

"As for the name... it seems, it seems..."

Mu Shan frowned and thought hard, then said uncertainly, "This Immortal's surname seems to be Yun, his common name is Yun Sanniang, and his Taoist name is Xuan Ce!"

"Not bad!"

"It's Master Xuan Ce!"

At this moment, a loud thunder suddenly fell from the sky, and a moment later, a "boom" sound was heard.

Jing Yu held the wine bottle and silently took a sip of the spirit wine, calming the rolling pain in his throat. He said calmly, "This is going to change."

Feeling the dampness in the air, Mu Shan frowned. "It means it's going to rain. That's all for today. Madam, please take care of the tidying up. There aren't enough guest rooms at home, so I'll take my uncle back to the shed allocated to him in the outer district."

"Be careful on the road, my husband."

"Don't worry, nothing can happen in the market." Mu Shan said with a smile.

"Sixth brother, since you're here, we're blood relatives after all, so we need to visit each other from time to time."

Zhao Mingyu said in a deep voice, "If you have any difficulties, come find me here. Third Sister will help you."

"Don't worry, third sister. I will come to see you often in the future." Jing Yu smiled, stood up and said goodbye to Mu Shan.

The two of them quickly disappeared into the thick night before it rained.