Chen Feng lay on the bed and began to open the floodgates of his memories, searching through the vast ocean of ancestral knowledge for a way to improve the quality of his spiritual roots.
His first area of focus was Pill Refining, as he believed using medicinal pills was the most feasible method to enhance spiritual root quality.
Chen Feng turned the memories of Pill Refining over in his mind, searching through them multiple times. He even dug up some extremely ancient pill formulas from the depths of his memory.
Indeed, he did find pills capable of improving spiritual root quality among those ancient formulas.
However, the cost of these pills was exorbitant, and many of the precious medicinal herbs required were simply unobtainable for Chen Feng in his current situation.
For instance, the legendary Heaven-Mending Pill could significantly improve a cultivator's spiritual root quality.
Yet this Heaven-Mending Pill was a Rank 3 top-tier pill from ancient times. Not only were the required medicinal herbs scarce and hard to find, but refining it also required a cultivator at the Golden Core Stage.
Such harsh conditions caused Chen Feng to automatically dismiss the idea altogether.
The other few types of pills were much the same as the Heaven-Mending Pill; either the herbs in the formulas were nowhere to be found, or they were prohibitively expensive.
Given that Chen Feng was not even an immortal cultivator yet, the path of pills was definitely a dead end.
If he could successfully embark on the path of immortality and become a high-tier cultivator, he might be able to try using medicinal pills.
Yet without improved spiritual root quality, he could not rapidly advance his cultivation, creating a contradictory dilemma.
In the end, Chen Feng had no choice but to turn his attention to other immortal cultivation arts.
Spirit Gastronomy, Spirit Brewing, Spirit Planting, and various other arts were all thoroughly searched by Chen Feng.
Because the memories were so vast, it consumed a massive amount of time. By the time he came to his senses, more than a day had already passed.
Had his stomach not been growling, Chen Feng would have completely lost track of time.
With a carp leap, Chen Feng bounced straight up from the bed.
Judging by the look of joy on his face, he must have found a solution.
Chen Feng retrieved an iron pot from the corner of the room, poured the Spirit Rice from the cloth bag into the pot, and prepared to satisfy his hunger first.
Before returning from the market, he had already spent one spirit stone to purchase sixty catties of Spirit Rice.
As for everyday items like pots, bowls, basins, and ladles, those could be bought with ordinary silver.
Chen Feng had bought the most ordinary Spirit Rice, but even so, every single grain was much thicker than ordinary rice.
The moment he untied the bag's opening, a faint, refreshing fragrance drifted out.
If ordinary Xiantian martial artists regularly consumed Spirit Rice, it could increase their vital blood strength and enhance their reaction speed.
Even low-tier cultivators who ate it could advance their Mana cultivation, though the boost was very subtle.
Had there been monster beast meat, the improvement to a martial artist's physique would have been even more pronounced.
Unfortunately, the Purple Jade Demonic Spider Chen Feng and the others had hunted was entirely venomous and had no edible meat on it; otherwise, Chen Feng certainly would have asked Feng Kejian for a piece.
As for making him spend his own money to buy some, the six spirit stones he had left were of great importance and could not be squandered casually.
Chen Feng did not want to venture into the Yunmiao Mountains to take risks anytime soon. Naturally, he had no source of spirit stones, and every single one he spent was gone for good.
And if a Xiantian martial artist frequented the Yunmiao Mountains, it meant that martial artist was not far from death.
The dangers within the Yunmiao Mountains were such that even cultivators protected by Spirit Talismans and Dharma Artifacts could lose their lives at any moment, let alone ordinary Xiantian martial artists.
Although Chen Feng possessed formidable martial arts, he was unwilling to take such risks.
It was better to hurry and become a cultivator, arming himself as thoroughly as possible, and wait until he had a certain level of strength before heading to the Yunmiao Mountains.
Chen Feng set up the iron pot and wedged a piece of obsidian ore underneath it.
This was a unique mineral exclusive to the cultivation world. A gentle friction was all it took to start a fire, and it produced no smoke, making it an essential item for low-tier cultivators to cook meals.
While making a fire to cook his rice, he continued to ponder ways to improve his spiritual root quality.
Just now, he had indeed found a simple and effective method, inspired by the art of Spirit Planting.
In ancient times, there was a special ethnic group in the cultivation world known as the Treants.
This Treant race was not trees that had cultivated into monsters, but rather a group of human cultivators who treated spirit trees like pet beasts.
Taking inspiration from the spirit beasts of cultivators, they treated certain precious spirit trees as pets just like beasts.
They even used a special cultivation technique to establish a close relationship with the spirit trees, forming a symbiotic existence.
Once symbiosis was established, the cultivator's Mana cultivation would gradually be absorbed by the spirit tree and transformed into nutrients for its own growth.
Meanwhile, the human cultivator could also gain some heaven-defying abilities from the spirit plant, such as an increased capacity to sense heaven and earth Spirit Qi, accelerated absorption of Spirit Qi, and rapid advancement in cultivation—effectively improving their spiritual root quality in a roundabout way.
In this manner, the symbiotic partners complemented each other, becoming closely intertwined companions.
They cultivated together and advanced together.
However, this Treant race had a major restriction.
Once they established a symbiotic contract with a spirit tree, they could never leave that spirit tree for the rest of their lives.
If the spirit tree died unexpectedly, the symbiotic human cultivator would die along with it.
Later on, however, a clever cultivator found a workaround from the Treants' symbiotic contract.
He altered the Treants' egalitarian symbiotic contract, turning it into a master-servant contract.
This new contract placed the human cultivator in a position of absolute mastery, gaining benefits unidirectionally from the spirit tree, while the spirit tree received no Mana transformation from the human cultivator in return.
The human cultivator could leave the spirit tree at will, and even if the spirit tree died, it would have no impact on the human cultivator whatsoever.
Because this contract was far too domineering and offered no benefits to the spirit tree, it naturally provoked the spirit tree's instinctive resistance.
Although most spirit trees lacked consciousness, they possessed an instinct that allowed them to sense the malice of human cultivators.
Under such circumstances, human cultivators were unable to establish a master-servant symbiotic contract with spirit trees.
If forced, the spirit tree would slowly wither and die.
This required the human cultivator to possess advanced Spirit Planting skills, enabling them to communicate and interact with the spirit tree.
Although the cultivator who created this spell back then had poor spiritual root quality, he was immensely talented in Spirit Planting and was a high-ranking Spirit Planter.
He communicated with the spirit tree, promising to help it till the soil and irrigate, rid it of natural enemies and insect pests, and aid its growth and evolution, thereby prompting the spirit tree to willingly establish a contract with him.
In this way, the spirit tree indirectly gained benefits, and was naturally willing to establish a symbiotic contract with him.
Chen Feng's Spirit Planting skill was similarly at the grandmaster level, so communicating with a spirit tree would be completely unproblematic.
However, establishing a master-servant contract with a spirit tree was no simple matter either.
First, one needed a stable cultivation location, and the rank of the spirit tree used for the symbiotic contract could not be too low, otherwise the effect of sensing heaven and earth Spirit Qi would be severely diminished.
The higher the rank of the spirit tree, the better the effect of communicating with the heaven and earth Spirit Qi.
Chen Feng pulled out the Immortal Ascension Token from inside his robe, thinking to himself that it would be wonderful if the Misty Immortal Sect started recruiting disciples sooner.
As long as he could join the Misty Immortal Sect, he would have a relatively stable cultivation ground and could try this method.
For now, however, his only option was to slowly cultivate and take his first steps into the path!