novelraw Chapter 11: Wilderness Survival Relies on Your Own Hands
Chapter 11: Wilderness Survival Relies on Your Own Hands
He'd saved a half-dead white crane.
Li Qiuchen also didn't know why this white crane could still stubbornly survive until now. Looking at its appearance, it had been stuck there for at least half a month.
If it could talk, Li Qiuchen would really like to ask for advice on how it struck this pose.
The white crane's beak was broken. Now forget about talking, even its cry had become "ga ga."
Losing its beak also meant losing its ability to hunt for food. Unable to eat, it would still starve to death.
With an attitude of saving someone to the end, sending Buddha all the way to the west, Li Qiuchen fed it two fresh fish.
With two fish in its belly, the white crane immediately recovered some spirit. It could even use an angry gaze to threaten Li Qiuchen.
Li Qiuchen could understand its anger, but didn't want to indulge it.
Are we that familiar? If you're so capable, don't beg me to save you.
Tossing the white crane aside and ignoring it, he busied himself with building a shelter.Although the mountain stream was sheltered from wind and cold, he also had to consider the problem of rising river water in summer.
Li Qiuchen chose a place with relatively high terrain, cleared the ground, and first began making tools.
He didn't even have a knife in his hands. He could only use sharp stones to replace an axe for chopping trees.
Fortunately, his strength had increased considerably, and there was no lack of food here either.
Spending a full day's time, he built an extremely crude shed. Li Qiuchen crawled inside and began his daily fixed cultivation.
The biggest difference between ordinary people and cultivators lay in whether one could practice qi to enter the body, commonly known as the Qi Refining realm.
Without the proper method, even if you stubbornly cultivated for a hundred years, you could only temper your body.
Only after entering the Qi Refining realm could one be considered a cultivator, stepping onto the path of immortal cultivation.
Everyone in Songlin Village cultivated, but the fruits of their cultivation were secretly absorbed by the old peach tree. They did useless work their entire lives.
"Jingyunzi" detailed cultivation methods from the Qi Refining realm to the Golden Core realm. The incantation itself had no difficulty. The most important thing was still supplementary medicines.
Take pills, take them hard, great force works miracles!
It seemed like the grade wasn't very high, but Li Qiuchen now liked this kind of not-very-high-grade thing.
If the grade was too high, it was easy to pull something.
Li Qiuchen took out several medicinal herbs picked along the way from his bundle. After washing and grinding them, he rubbed them into a ball and directly swallowed them orally.
This was a pill formula recorded in "Jingyunzi," named "Qi Gathering Pill." According to normal procedures, some medicinal materials needed to be steamed and dried three times, properly balanced as sovereign, minister, assistant, and envoy, then refined in a pill furnace to stimulate all the medicinal properties.
Under the Medicine Master's blessing, these steps could all be omitted.
Directly one step to the stomach.
On the night Li Qiuchen obtained the Medicine Master's blessing, he gained the ability of photosynthesis... no wait, the ability to automatically absorb heaven and earth spiritual qi. According to the standards recorded in the book, he'd already entered the Qi Refining realm now.
But compared to true Qi Refining realm cultivators, he still hadn't mastered the ability to refine and transform this heaven and earth spiritual qi. It was equivalent to eating and excreting at the same time. A small part was passively digested, most was wasted.
Solving this problem was very simple. Just honestly cultivate the family's inherited method and build his own foundation properly.
The sound of pattering rain reached his ears. Li Qiuchen came back to awareness from his concentration. He saw a curtain of rain between heaven and earth.
The rain in these mountains fell as soon as it wanted to, with no warning at all.
If he hadn't anticipated this beforehand, right now he'd probably be soaked like a drowned chicken.
Therefore, cultivation required caution. Being careful meant no major mistakes.
Warmth transmitted from beside him. Li Qiuchen turned his head to look. That white crane had actually also sneakily squeezed in.
The temporarily built shed wasn't big to begin with. One person and one crane squeezed together, there wasn't even room to turn around.
Li Qiuchen was very speechless. You're a bird. Usually in the wild, did wild people build you sheds to avoid rain?
This fellow not only occupied his shelter, it also stared fixedly at the bundle behind him. It must have smelled the peach wood core.
I'm reluctant to use it myself. Would I feed it to you?
Li Qiuchen stared at the white crane's eyes and said in a low voice, "I thought you were a bird with dignity."
"Ga ga!"
The white crane indeed had a lot of dignity. Originally it had been drooling over that peach wood core, but after Li Qiuchen said this, it immediately showed an embarrassed and ashamed expression. After crying "ga ga" twice at Li Qiuchen, it turned its head away and ignored him.
After a night of heavy rain, the mountain was filled with the scent of grass and earth.
The river surface that was originally only three zhang wide had risen to six or seven zhang. In the muddy, rapid current, three or five fish would leap out of the water from time to time.
The white crane stood by the river, seemingly lost in thought. It tried extending its claws to catch fish. After failing several times, it found the knack. Plump fish were grabbed by it and tossed onto the riverbank then it tried using its claws to send fish into its mouth.
Li Qiuchen watched this comical scene from the side in silence.
Imagine a person without even a lower jaw and teeth, using their toes to pinch a ham sausage and stuff it into their own throat...
This was a proud bird with thin skin and a small heart.
Last night Li Qiuchen had only said one thing about it, and it really took it to heart.
Watching it fail at repeated attempts, angrily crying "ga ga," Li Qiuchen shook his head.
People couldn't stoop to a bird's level.
"Come, I'll feed you."
Picking up a fish and feeding it down its throat, the white crane stretched its neck long and swallowed it down with a gulp. Reluctantly it cried "ga" once at Li Qiuchen, seemingly expressing thanks.
It poked at the fish on the ground with its claws, staring at Li Qiuchen.
The meaning was very clear: Feed me!
The white crane's appetite was very large, perhaps because it had gone without food for a long time previously and was urgently hungry.
It actually swallowed six or seven chi-long small crucian carp before it satisfactorily flapped its wings.
Li Qiuchen stood to the side silently observing. He saw that the life energy inside the white crane's body increased at a visible speed, gradually gathering into life essence that flickered with faint light.
Sure enough, this was a crane spirit.
If it were any other bird hanging up there for half a month, it would have long since starved to death. However, there were also gaps between spirits.
The crayfish spirit at the back mountain of Songlin Village had already cultivated a nine-chi-long body. It could speak human words, use magic arts, was impervious to blades and spears, and possessed tremendous strength. If it hadn't feigned defeat and pretended to surrender, those villagers holding hoes and manure forks really wouldn't have had any way to deal with it.
This unfortunate white crane before him looked no different in size from normal cranes. Although it had already developed spiritual intelligence, it still couldn't speak and didn't have much cultivation.
Maybe it tastes good...
Li Qiuchen subconsciously licked his lips but right now it was too shriveled. Better wait until it fattened up a bit before talking about it. By winter, he could pluck its feathers and make it reserve grain.
After settling the temporary shelter, Li Qiuchen's next plan was to rebuild a medicinal garden.
The Li family's cultivation method could be summed up in four words: take pills, change fate.
The method itself wasn't profound enough, so use pills to make up for the deficiencies.
There was no lack of medicinal materials in the mountain forests, but not every medicinal material was useful or easy to find.
For example, there was a locally common specialty medicinal herb called "Screaming Loudly" that was deeply loved and well-reviewed by middle-aged and elderly men, but it had no help whatsoever for Li Qiuchen's cultivation.
Some medicinal herbs liked sunlight, some liked shade, some liked eating meat, some had to grow symbiotically with other plants... different types, different medicinal properties. It wasn't simply a matter of opening a plot of land, planting them, and being done.
Li Qiuchen took the most primitive crude tools in his hands and cleared two plots of land outside the mountain stream. He planted the Calm Heart Grass and Peaceful Spirit Flowers he'd found along the way.
These two types of medicinal herbs had mild medicinal properties and were usually used to refine auxiliary materials for pills. Like Sichuan peppercorns and star anise, when you're stewing meat and don't know what seasonings to add, randomly adding some definitely wasn't wrong.
Of course, most importantly, they were easy to raise. As long as the environment was suitable, they could grow wildly like weeds.
In fact, they were just weeds.
Calm Heart Grass and Peaceful Spirit Flowers that had just grown in their first year could be eaten as wild vegetables. They had no medicinal properties and no toxicity either.
Only those plants that survived the northern frontier's wind and frost, living three to five years, would gradually accumulate some medicinal properties.
If they could grow to over ten years, then they'd be genuine spirit herbs.
Li Qiuchen had no time to wait for them to slowly grow. The main purpose of building the medicinal garden was to accelerate the growth of these medicinal herbs.
This was technical work.
First was the quality of the soil, second was the source of fertilizer.
The black soil of the northern frontier was extremely fertile, sufficient to nourish plants to grow vigorously.
And in the mountains, he could also pick up large chunks of feces left behind by wild beasts. This feces couldn't be used directly. It needed to be mixed with other things and further fermented before it could be made into fertilizer.
Besides this, there was also the Medicine Master's blessing.
Simply put, the ability to control life.
One could both absorb and digest life energy, condensing it into life essence, like the tree core inside the old peach tree's body.
One could also decompose life essence back into life energy, healing one's own wounds or transmitting it to others, including but not limited to animals and plants.
Question: Student Xiao Ming's daily cultivation speed is 1. After taking medicinal herbs, his cultivation speed reaches 2. Planting and harvesting a batch of medicinal herbs requires at least three years. Every time Student Xiao Ming takes out 0.1 of his cultivation results to assist herb growth and takes out 0.2 of his cultivation time to nurture medicinal herbs, he can reduce the herbs' growth duration by 0.2.
Solve: How much cost must be paid to obtain the highest cultivation efficiency?
This problem was quite complex.
Li Qiuchen's mathematics had long been returned to his previous life's teacher. He completely couldn't calculate it.
Anyway... practice slowly.
Cultivating immortality was for longevity and freedom. Caution was necessary, but being overly rigid wasn't very necessary.
When Li Qiuchen read those online cultivation novels in his previous life, he'd always been confused. Some protagonists were either in closed-door cultivation or on the road to finding heavenly treasures to prepare for the next closed-door cultivation.
After cultivating to the end, what did they cultivate into?
Closed-door cultivation for a million years and still a pure yang virgin boy. With a casual finger gesture, the great Dao was erased, the universe exploded, the book concluded.
Where was life's happiness?
Li Qiuchen was very clear that he didn't have such high talent, nor did he hope to reach any invincible level. Being able to happily live a lifetime while ensuring his own personal safety was very satisfying for him.
Now that spring had just begun not long ago, before winter arrived, he had at least five months to build the medicinal garden, continue perfecting the shelter, and incidentally store grain and fodder to prepare for winter.