Chapter 17: The Decoy Garden
Time: 1 Months Later (Outside World).
Space Time: Approximately 3 Months Passed.
Location: Inside the Farming Space.
The air inside the Farming Space was suffocating. It was thick, heavy, and smelled of sulfur and charred earth. Heat waves distorted the view of the southern horizon, shimmering like a mirage over a vast desert.
Luo Feng stood at the edge of the Red Clay Area, his arms crossed over his chest, his brow slick with sweat. He was watching a scene that would make any sane Alchemist scream in agony.
The 5 acres of Blast Chilies had fully ripened months ago.
Over 750 glowing, fist-sized red fruits hung heavy on the jagged, thorny bushes. The plants themselves looked like they were forged from dark iron, with veins of magma running through the leaves. In the outside market, these fruits were rare volatility ingredients used to add explosive power to pills.
This field represented a massive, staggering fortune. If Luo Feng could liquidate this crop, he would be richer than most Clan Elders in the city.
But he wasn't harvesting them for sale.
CRUNCH.
Little Gold, the Mutated Fire Crow, sat perched on a sturdy, thorn-covered branch. He looked like a king on a throne of fire. He used his jet-black beak to pluck a glowing red fruit, tossed it into the air like a grape, and swallowed it whole.
Gulp.
Usually, a Blast Chili would explode upon heavy impact. A normal stomach would be blown to pieces. But inside the stomach of a Fire Spirit Beast, the explosion was contained.
Muffled Boom.
A dull, heavy thud echoed from inside the bird's belly, causing his feathers to ruffle violently. Little Gold's eyes glowed like high-beam lanterns. Smoke puffed out of his nostrils in two gray streams. He hiccuped, releasing a small tongue of blue flame that singed the leaves nearby.
"Kreee! (More!)"
"Eat up," Luo Feng said, kicking a fallen chili toward the bird. "These things are dangerous trash to me right now."
He looked at the vast field.
"I can't walk into the market with a thousand explosives. If I try to sell this many, the City Guard will arrest me for plotting a terrorist attack or finding a secret ruin. And I can't use them all in a fight unless I want to blow up the entire district." Also this don't work more storng cultivater.
So, the weapon became food.
For the past six months of inside time, Little Gold had been on a diet of pure explosives.
The result was terrifying.
The bird had doubled in size. His wingspan was now two meters wide—too big to hide in a sleeve anymore. His feathers weren't just red; they were a dark, metallic crimson that looked like forged blood-steel. The heat radiating from his body was intense enough that Luo Xia couldn't pet him without circulating her Qi for protection.
He was inching closer and closer to Rank 1.
"You are eating a fortune," Luo Feng sighed, watching the bird devour another fruit worth 20 Spirit Stones. "Every bite you take is money. You better evolve into something magnificent, or I'm going to make you pull a cart."
Little Gold ignored the threat, happily biting into another bomb. Crunch. Boom.
Luo Xia walked up beside him. She looked healthy, her skin glowing with the vitality of a Layer 2 cultivator. She held a basket of Spirit Grapes she had just harvested from the trellis near the spring.
"Are you going to the market today?" she asked.
"Yes," Luo Feng nodded, turning away from the gluttonous bird. "We've been in 'seclusion' for two months. Our cash reserves are dipping. It's time to show our faces, sell some wine, and buy the next generation of seeds."
He looked at his hands. They were calloused from the saber and smooth from the Qi.
"And we need to set up the stage. People are starting to wonder where a rogue cultivator gets his money."
The Business of Scarcity.
Location: Green Willow District, Fatty Wang's Treasure Pavilion.
The bell above the door chimed softly as Luo Feng pushed aside the bead curtain.
The shop was quiet, filled with the scent of dried herbs and old parchment. Fatty Wang was behind the counter, looking stressed as he argued with a supplier about herb prices. When he saw the figure in the clean blue robe enter, his eyes lit up.
"Brother Luo!" Fatty Wang practically vaulted over the counter. His belly jiggled, but his movement was surprisingly agile for a man of his size. "You! You've finally come out of your cave! Do you know how many people have threatened to burn my shop down because I ran out of Cloud Mist Wine?"
Luo Feng smiled faintly, sitting down on a guest chair. He didn't look desperate or eager. He looked calm, rested, and composed.
"I have been in seclusion, Manager Wang," Luo Feng said, his voice steady. "Brewing takes time. Perfection cannot be rushed. If I hurry, the Fire Toxin remains, and the wine becomes trash. You know this."
He placed a medium-sized Storage Bag on the counter.
Fatty Wang grabbed it eagerly. He opened it, counted with his Spiritual Sense, and his face fell.
"Thirty-five?" Wang looked up, disappointed. "Brother, only 35 bottles? I have a backlog of orders for three hundred! The Young Master of the Azure Clan alone wants fifty for his banquet next week!"
"Quality over quantity," Luo Feng lied smoothly.
In reality, he had 500 bottles sitting in his Space. The production line inside the farm was efficient enough to drown the city in wine.
But Luo Feng understood economics.
If he flooded the market, the price would drop.
More importantly, if he flooded the market, people would ask questions.
How does one man brew 500 bottles in two months? Where is his vineyard? Where are his workers?
Scarcity created value. Scarcity created safety.
"35 bottles is all I have," Luo Feng said firmly. "At the usual price."
Fatty Wang sighed, defeated by the logic but happy to have any stock at all. "Fine. 3 Stones per bottle. That's 105 Spirit Stones."
He counted out the glowing blue stones. Luo Feng swept them into his ring.
"A pleasure as always," Luo Feng said. But he didn't stand up. "Manager Wang, since I am your exclusive supplier... I was hoping to see your Grade 1 Seeds."
Fatty Wang's eyebrows shot up. "Grade 1? You're upgrading? Are you hitting the upper layers of Qi Refining?"
"I'm experimenting," Luo Feng gave a vague answer. "I need sturdy crops. Things that can survive... intense cultivation methods."
Fatty Wang nodded knowingly. He pulled a wooden box from under the counter.
"Grade 1 seeds are expensive, Brother Luo. And hard to keep alive in normal soil. But for you..."
He opened the box.
"Crimson Fire Grape. Used to make 'Flame Spirit Wine.' Good for Layer 4-6 cultivators."
"Iron-Skin Yam. A body tempering food. Tastes like chalk, but makes your skin tough as leather."
"How much?"
"Usually 20 stones a packet," Wang rubbed his chin. "But since you brought me wine today... 15 stones per packet."
"I'll take two of each," Luo Feng said instantly.
He paid 60 Spirit Stones. He walked out with a profit of only 45 stones. To an outsider, he was barely breaking even on his alchemy costs. But to Luo Feng, he had just bought the foundation for his next stage of power.
The Decoy Garden.
Luo Feng returned to his walled courtyard in the Green Willow District.
The sun was beginning to set, casting long shadows across the stone walls. The street outside was quiet, but Luo Feng knew better. In a district full of cultivators, eyes were everywhere. Spirit Sense probed walls; neighbors watched comings and goings.
He stood in the center of his courtyard. In the corner, there was a small, decorative garden filled with useless mortal flowers—peonies and jasmine.
"Xia," Luo Feng called out. "Bring the hoe and the shovel."
Luo Xia stepped out of the house. She was glowing with health, her Layer 2 cultivation stable. She handed him the tools, looking confused.
"Are we planting the new Grade 1 seeds?" she asked.
"Some of them," Luo Feng said loudly, making sure his voice carried slightly over the wall. "We need to expand the garden if we want to test this new batch."
Luo Xia paused, whispering, "But this is mortal soil. They will grow ten times slower. And the Qi here is thin."
"Exactly," Luo Feng whispered back, crouching down to rip out a beautiful jasmine bush. "Think about it, Xia. We are selling wine. We are selling produce. But if anyone looks over our wall, what do they see? An empty yard."
He gestured to the street.
"If we produce goods out of thin air, people will suspect we have a treasure or a secret dimension. But if they look over the wall and see a garden full of Spirit Grapes and Herbs, struggling to grow..."
"They will think the wine comes from here," Luo Xia realized, her eyes widening. "It's a mask."
"It's a decoy," Luo Feng corrected. "We will grow a small, pathetic crop here. It will take six months to bear fruit. It will look difficult. And that will make our cover story perfect."
The Performance.
Luo Feng didn't just plant them; he put on a show for the invisible audience.
He stood in the center of the churned earth. He raised his right hand. He didn't just dig a hole; he flared his Qi.
"Spirit Finger: Plow Form!"
His index and middle fingers glowed with a bright, metallic golden light—the Yang Qi. He thrust his hand into the mortal soil.
Thump.
The ground shook visibly. He dragged his fingers through the dirt, carving a perfect furrow. He did this row after row, sweating profusely, letting his heavy breathing be heard.
"Hard work," he grunted loudly. "But necessary for the roots."
He took out ten seeds of the Crimson Fire Grape and ten seeds of the Iron-Skin Yam. He placed them lovingly into the dirt. These were expensive seeds to waste in bad soil, but the illusion was worth the cost.
Then, he stood up and wiped his brow. He formed a complex hand seal.
"Little Cloud Rain Spell!"
He pushed his Qi into the air. A small, gray cloud, no bigger than a dining table, formed over the garden patch.
Pitter-patter.
A gentle, glowing rain fell onto the seeds. Luo Feng held the spell for a full ten minutes, his face twisting in feigned concentration, as if this simple spell was taxing his reserves.
"Grow," he commanded, pouring more Qi into the ground.
Unlike the Farming Space, where plants exploded with life instantly, these seeds barely stirred. A tiny green shoot poked out of the mud after an hour of effort.
"It works," Luo Feng said loudly, sounding exhausted but satisfied. "With this rate, we might have a harvest in six months."
He dropped his hands, letting the cloud dissipate. He slumped his shoulders, acting like a man who had spent his entire day's cultivation on a few plants.
He looked at the high walls of his courtyard. He couldn't see anyone, but his Spirit Farm Sense picked up a faint fluctuation of Spirit Sense retreating from the southern wall. Someone had been watching. And now, they had seen a hardworking cultivator exhausting himself for a few grapes.
"The Space gives us power," Luo Feng whispered to Luo Xia as he picked up the shovel. "But this... this gives us invisibility."
He patted the dirt of the fake garden.
"Let the world think I toil for every grape. Let them think I am just a talented farmer."
He turned back to the house, where the real treasure lay hidden behind the reinforced bedroom door—where time moved three times faster, and where 1,500 explosive chilies were waiting.
"Let's go inside, Xia. The show is over. It's time to plant the real crop in the Black Soil."
[End of Chapter 17]
— Author's Note —
Support the book with Power Stones! 💎
Add to library.📚