Early the next morning, before dawn had fully broken, the sun was just beginning to rise in the east while the fading crescent moon had yet to completely disappear in the west. Shi Yu opened her eyes at this exact moment, her expression clear and free of any newly awakened grogginess.
Dawn and dusk, when the sun and moon shared the sky and Yin and Yang harmonized, offered immense assistance to her cultivation of the dual Yin-Yang Qi. Unwilling to waste even a single day, she immediately sat cross-legged, silently recited her mental mantra, and operated the 《Fate-Tapping Record》. She stirred the dual Yin-Yang Qi inside her body, guiding it to flow slowly through her meridians.
Her breathing grew steady and deep. With every breath in, Shi Yu felt spiritual Qi gathering from all directions into her dantian, churning alongside the dual Yin-Yang Qi in her spirit lake to spark a profoundly mysterious power.
With her eyes half-closed and her mind extraordinarily lucid, her body felt lighter as the two Qi circulated, as if she could drift with the wind and move in step with the sun and moon. Her divine sense became exceptionally keen—the breeze brushing past the cloud boat, every blade of grass, tree, insect, and bird in the valley below, and even the subtle shifts in heaven and earth seemed magnified right before her eyes.
Only after the morning sun had risen completely and the silver moon had fully receded did Shi Yu cease her practice. Changing into fresh clothes, she stepped out of her room.
On the deck of the cloud boat, Qingzhou and the others were already awake, busy setting up a stove to brew tea and cook rice.
Hearing her footsteps, Qingzhou and Mo Tong looked up. “Morning, Ah Yu.”
“Morning.” The moment she walked over, Ji Yu eagerly bustled over with a stool, thrusting a cup of hot tea into her hands once she sat down.
The tea brewed from spirit leaves possessed a refreshing aroma, smooth and sweet on the tongue. Shi Yu took a couple of sips and looked out at the scenery below the boat.
The cloud boat had traveled at a modest speed throughout the night, remaining amid rolling mountain peaks, though the terrain ahead gently flattened out, with scattered cottages coming into view. “It seems we’ll reach a nearby town before long.”
Nearby, Qingzhou and Mo Tong asked Shi Yu for some fresh spiritual vegetables, set up a pot, and began cooking.
Ordinary storage bags and storage rings merely provided spatial storage without preventing ingredients from spoiling. Consequently, while Qingzhou and the others had stocked up on long-lasting spiritual rice and jerky, all the fresh spiritual vegetables were kept with Shi Yu.
With a long journey ahead, she had set aside a small plot in the medicinal field inside the Fate-Tapping Bell to grow vegetables after leaving her cave dwelling. The rich spiritual Qi within the bell allowed them to thrive without much care; after every harvest, a new crop would grow within half a day, making them completely self-sufficient.
Truth be told, though she possessed a treasure like the Fate-Tapping Bell, she did not hide its use too strictly from the three of them. Fortunately, they were sensible enough to respect her privacy and never pried into it, saving her the trouble of inventing excuses.
Ji Yu was helping out on the side, and Shi Yu offered to lend a hand as well, but her culinary skills were virtually nonexistent. The moment she stepped over, Qingzhou gently nudged her aside with a chuckle. “Just relax, Ah Yu.”
The other two nodded in agreement, neither wanting her help. Shi Yu had no choice but to sit to the side holding her tea, watching them work in an orderly fashion. She thought to herself that it was no wonder somewhat affluent cultivators preferred hiring mortals or low-aptitude cultivators to handle daily chores; this effortless comfort really gave a taste of living like a nobleman in the Mortal Realm.
Before long, the three prepared a delicious meal of three dishes and a soup, complete in color, fragrance, and taste.
Savoring the long-awaited hot meal, the spiritual rice and vegetables turned into pure spiritual Qi upon swallowing, nourishing every limb and meridian. A serene calm settled over the four of them, and for a time, no one spoke.
Once they finished eating and cleared away the dishes, Shi Yu leaned back to rest. Sending her divine sense into the Fate-Tapping Bell, she was greeted by a scene of blooming spiritual flowers and fluttering spiritual butterflies.
“These spiritual butterflies are nearly full-grown. In another month or so, they should begin producing scale powder.” Her gaze swept over their fluttering wings, which already bore faint specs of luminescent scale powder. Among them, a few rare species—including the Phantom Spectral-Jade Butterflies—grew slightly slower due to their superior quality and would need a little more time.
Turning her attention to the bees, she found that most had also matured. During the time Shi Yu had been too busy to tend to them, they had constructed a hive on their own, buzzing back and forth as they gathered nectar.
Her mind had been consumed by many affairs recently, preventing her from checking on them properly. Seeing how orderly the bees were now, she felt a wave of relief.
However... taking a closer look, she noticed something amiss. “Why are there so few bees?”
Sweeping her gaze across the swarm, the count was roughly a tenth of the original egg count, leaving only a small cluster.
Frowning slightly, Shi Yu glanced at Little Seven, who was nestled near the Life Spring water preening its feathers, wondering if the little bird had snuck a few for a snack. After all, bees were a delicacy for avian spirit beasts, and Little Seven had succumbed to temptation in the past. Yet, she had explicitly instructed Little Seven not to eat them beforehand. Though playful at times, the bird was generally obedient, and seeing its innocent little expression now, Shi Yu shook her head and dismissed her suspicion.
Extending her divine sense deeper into the hive, she spotted an extraordinarily plump, massive empress bee alongside a few slightly smaller queen bees, finally understanding what had happened.
A lingering blood aura clung to these select bees, and the severed limbs and wings of their companions lay scattered nearby. It was not hard to deduce what had occurred.
All these bees had hatched from the same batch of eggs. They had clearly engaged in a bloody struggle to establish dominance and yield queen bees and an empress bee, with the weaker bees consumed by the victors to nourish themselves and evolve their bloodlines.
At the moment, however, the queen bees and empress bee appeared somewhat weak. After a moment's thought, Shi Yu begrudgingly pulled out the Royal Honey and Royal Jelly Hua Qingrui had given her to feed them.
Having set themselves apart from ordinary bees, their required sustenance had elevated as well; ordinary honey would no longer satisfy them.
Sure enough, the moment she poured out the Royal Honey and Royal Jelly, the starved queen bees and empress bee immediately swarmed forward to feast.
“You lot certainly lucked out,” she muttered, feeling quite reluctant to part with it.
The Hundred Flowers Nectar was truly wonderful stuff, yet even she had only managed to drink a single small cup, using the rest to nurture the young bees. As for the Royal Honey and Royal Jelly, she had not tasted a single drop.
Hua Qingrui had given her a dozen or so vials of ordinary Hundred Flowers Nectar, three vials of Royal Honey, and only a single vial of Royal Jelly. Now that she had to supply this empress bee and the queen bees, she could not spare any for herself for the time being.
Fortunately, the ordinary adult bees could already begin gathering nectar and brewing honey, though their numbers were still so few that self-sufficiency was barely attainable. Even so, at this pace, they would achieve self-sufficiency before long, after which there would be a surplus for her to consume. The same applied to the Royal Honey and Royal Jelly; she just needed to wait, and her turn would come sooner or later.
“These bees still cannot compare to the ones nurtured by the Hundred Flowers Sect for generations, so the Hundred Flowers Nectar they brew is much thinner.”
Yet inside the Fate-Tapping Bell, supported by such dense spiritual Qi and nourished by the life energy of the Life Spring water, various spiritual plants and flowers grew far faster than normal. The spiritual flower seeds Hua Qingrui had provided were already on par with the century-old spiritual flowers cultivated by the Hundred Flowers Sect, and with further growth, their quality would become superior.
The same would undoubtedly hold true for these spiritual butterflies and spiritual bees.
A major reason the Hundred Flowers Sect maintained its standing was its unique secret techniques for cultivating spiritual flowers and rearing bees and butterflies. Yet Shi Yu had simply scattered the seeds and placed the butterfly chrysalises and bee eggs inside, rarely tending to them afterward, yet they grew every bit as well. This was testament to how miraculous the Fate-Tapping Bell was.
Therefore, the Hundred Flowers Nectar and scale powder produced by these bees and butterflies would likely reach the Hundred Flowers Sect's signature quality sooner or later.
Aside from securing a steady supply of the scale powder needed for future talisman crafting, these honeys possessed endless marvelous uses—not only providing vast benefits to cultivation but even aiding in bloodline evolution.
Thinking of this, Shi Yu could not help looking forward to it.
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