Yan Tianhen was still snoring loudly. Lin Xuanzhi sat at the bedside stool to appreciate this sight for awhile before he got up to make breakfast.
Yan Tianhen continued sleeping for a quarter of an hour before he woke up. He smelled a delicious fragrance wafting over, then ran over to find Lin Xuanzhi. But he realised that Lin Xuanzhi was no longer in their small yard, and he didn’t know where he went.
Yan Tianhen saw a piece of paper on the table that had a small stone on it that served as a paperweight —
“Ah Hen, I’m going out today to buy some supplies, have fun while you’re at home.”
Yan Tianhen grinned widely for awhile, then after he cleared the table of food, he stuck out his perfectly round watermelon belly and walked towards the Lin family’s spiritual plants plantation.
The two tiger cubs were nowhere to be seen, but Yan Tianhen wasn’t worried. Ever since Lin Zhan left, Ah Bai and Hu Po understood that Yan Tianhen couldn’t afford the spiritual food they usually ate, so they would go to the back mountains by themselves everyday to do some scavenging. They still managed to feed themselves until their fur was all slick and bright, and now they were even as fat as a ball.
The Lin family’s spiritual plants plantation was located in the eastmost side of the Lin residence. It was a two hour walk from the residential area, main area and commercial streets, so it’s usually quite deserted. Unless there were people there to collect or buy spiritual plants, usually you would only see servants hard at work in the plantation area.
Yan Tianhen didn’t need to come to this kind of place to do physical labour at first, but if he didn’t come, he and Lin Xuanzhi wouldn’t have any source of income. Even though Lin Zhan had left a lot of treasures for Yan Tianhen, but on the one hand, Yan Tianhen couldn’t bear to exchange them for money, and on the other hand, he had already handed his storage bag over to Lin Xuanzhi.
Lin Xuanzhi had always been very generous with his spending. In order to cure his destroyed Dantian, his expenditure had turned into a bottomless pit; no matter how much a.s.sets he had it wouldn’t be enough for him to exhaust.
Yan Tianhen’s daily task was to get rid of the weeds in the plot of spiritual plants allotted to him.
This kind of work isn’t simple. One had to first wrap your Qi around those weeds, then you have to ensure that the roots of the weeds aren’t entangled with the spiritual plants before you can pull them out.
If the weeds are entangled with the spiritual plants and was robbing the spiritual plants of its nutrients, then the weeder has to waste quite a bit of Qi to separate the roots of the weeds and spiritual plants before pulling them out. The roots of the spiritual plants had to be perfectly intact before you could say that you’ve completed the task.
Yan Tianhen had to squander away all of his Qi everyday before he was done.
But, even though this was the most tiring kind of job, its upside is that it gives quite a bit of money. You could earn five silver in one day; one hundred silver is equivalent to one gold, so within twenty days he could earn one gold!
One must know, to a normal family, one gold is more than enough for them to live on for a year!
Yan Tianhen gave it his all in getting rid of the weeds in his plot.
His luck was pretty good today, the weeds he encountered weren’t entangled with the spiritual plants, so he was relatively fast at pulling them out.
Yan Tianhen’s task for the day was almost finished by noon.
Yan Tianhen was scratching his head over pulling out the last few weeds in his plot, but there were some people who found his presence unpleasant.
Two teenagers adorned in relatively chic attire walked over sloppily.
“Yo, ugly idiot, you’re working pretty fast today.”
Yan Tianhen ignored him.
The other teenager lifted his leg and kicked his lower back, then said, “We’re talking to you ugly idiot, or are you mute too?”
Yan Tianhen patted off the dirt on his body and stood up. He looked up and glared at these two teenagers who were a whole head taller and half a body bigger than him, then said, “You guys lost in our fight yesterday, what more do you want?’
“Who f.u.c.king lost? I even smashed your head in, you–” the teenager’s triangular eyes instantly widened, he pointed at Yan Tianhen’s forehead and turned pale with fright, “Where’s your wound?”
Yan Tianhen said expressionlessly, “O, your level’s way too low. That kind of small wound, even if I don’t pay attention to it it’ll heal by itself in a couple of hours.”
Triangular eyes stared agape and said, “That, that’s impossible!”
“What’s impossible.” Yan Tianhen tsked, then placed his hands on his hips as he said, “Don’t just see how I’m plucking weeds here with you two and how we’re all Refining Qi stage first layer cultivators, I’m different from you guys.”
The teenager who wore a gold bracelet said, “What’s different?”
Yan Tianhen patted his chest and said, “My Dad said, sooner or later I’ll become a cultivator who’s even more amazing than him, it’s just a matter of time!”
“Puhahahahhaha–” Triangular Eyes and Gold Bracelet laughed together aloud so hard they held their stomachs.
“And my Dad said that I can become an earth-level cultivator!”
“Your dad was just lying to you and you actually believed it, you can’t actually be a fool right?” Triangular Eyes narrowed his already not very big eyes, then stared at Yan Tianhen and said, “Shut it with your f.u.c.king nonsense, hurry and pluck out the weeds in my plot, or else, I’ll beat you up so hard today that you won’t even be able to get up!”
Yan Tianhen looked at him coldly and said, “I’m not going, finish your own work yourself.”
Gold Bracelet pushed Yan Tianhen. He took out a whip from his sleeves and sneered, “You rascal, don’t think that you’re still the Lin family’s young master, if you don’t do as we say today, then I’ll let you have a taste of this Golden Snake Whip!”
Golden Snake Whips are crafted using the skin of an infant stage snake beast. Even though it’s just a toy to real cultivators, but for a Refining Qi stage first layer dabbler, it’s still a treasure that can command absolute submission.
He didn’t know where Gold Bracelet got this whip from, but Yan Tianhen really wasn’t willing to get whipped by that.
Yan Tianhen pulled a long face and said, “You guys have two plots, which do you want me to work on?”
Triangular Eyes said, “Mine of course, I said so first.”
Gold Bracelet flung his whip and said, “Of course he should work on mine, if it wasn’t for my Golden Snake Whip, how could this ugly idiot be so obedient?”
Triangular Eyes looked at the sun, then waved his fan and said, “Whatever, then he can do yours first. Once he’s done with yours, he’ll have to work on mine too anyway.”
Yan Tianhen squatted down to finish up his own plot first. He threw the weeds into a basket, then went to the neighbouring plot that belonged to Gold Bracelet and began pulling weeds.
This wasn’t the first or second time he was bullied, but those who can work here must have some kind of blood relation with the Lin family. No matter how distant the blood relation may be, they were still part of the Lin family.
When Yan Tianhen was adopted by Lin Zhan, he was criticized by quite a lot of people. Which one of these families didn’t want to push their children onto Lin Zhan? Yet an ugly idiot completely unrelated to the Lin family had actually been given that honour, so naturally they wouldn’t like Yan Tianhen.
After Lin Zhan’s death, Yan Tianhen was treated as a servant straightaway.
Yan Tianhen’s temper can’t be considered good, but he understood his circ.u.mstances. He knew that his living environment was incomparably difficult, so he would grit his teeth and swallow down the blood in his mouth. Whatever he did, he had to do with the motive of protecting himself and this job as his priority.
Weeds that had absorbed spiritual Qi grows at an astonishing speed, within a night it would already be a foot high. Gold Bracelet had only plucked out 10% of the weeds in the morning, so Yan Tianhen estimated that he would probably only be done by midnight.
Triangular Eyes and Gold Bracelet were chatting away happily and drinking tea under a shed. The other workers who had seen them didn’t utter a word; old timers bullying newcomers, the strong bullying the weak – this was the norm, everyone had to go through it.
Also, towards the types like Yan Tianhen who had fallen from a position high above to the dirt below, most people harboured the att.i.tude of watching a good show. They couldn’t wait for him to fall into even more miserable straits, it was already hard enough for them to hold back from stepping on him themselves.
Yan Tianhen plucked weeds for another two hours before he suddenly heard someone shout, “When I was outside just now, I obtained news from a credible source that Steward Fang will be inspecting this place in an hour, so everyone hurry up! Be careful not to make Steward Fang unhappy, or he’ll fire you guys!”
The full-time workers who were originally taking their time to pluck weeds were all shocked, then immediately sped up their plucking rate.
“Why is Steward Fang suddenly coming over now?”
“Didn’t he handover his work to his disciple a long time ago? f.u.c.k, why couldn’t we have gotten the notice for this sooner!”
“Oh heavens, I only decided to laze around a bit for today. It’s impossible to finish plucking all these in two hours.”
“Why weren’t there any signs before this, that’s so sly!”
“Hurry and start plucking, Steward Fang is so strict, he definitely can’t stand people loafing around.”
Everyone was complaining, yet at the same time they were also quivering with fear and really wished that they could grow out another ten pairs of hands right now.
Everyone knows how strict Steward Fang is. His rule stipulated that before weishi1, everyone had to finish plucking their weeds. If they were to exceed the time limit, their task would be considered incomplete.
Towards this kind of people, Steward Fang has only one method of dealing with them – to fire them without a second though.
In Steward Fang’s words, everyone’s allocated plot was carefully chosen, so the area of the plot definitely wouldn’t be too big and there wouldn’t be too many weeds. People who were unable to complete their task everyday are either loafing around, or their internal Qi isn’t sufficient for their task’s demands, so leaving this kind of person behind is equivalent to ruining the spiritual plants. Anyway, there are more than enough people who want to work here, so it’s not like they’ll run out of people to hire.
It wasn’t that Steward Fang was being cruel on purpose, but it’s because after weishi, these weeds would start to absorb spiritual plants, spiritual Qi and the nutrients in the earth like crazy. This would end up harming the spiritual plants greatly, so removing the weeds as early as possible is to ensure the quality of the spiritual plants.
Steward Fang is an impartial man who wouldn’t be swayed by anything, and he can be considered as someone of high status. Afterall, he has the biggest say in arranging the personnel for the entire spiritual plant garden – whoever he asks to leave, has to leave; whoever he allows to stay, can stay.
Yan Tianhen quietly continued to take his time plucking weeds. His task was finished for the day anyway, whatever happens to the others was none of his business.
However, Gold Bracelet and Triangular Eyes had started to bicker.
“He has already plucked weeds for you for two hours, he should start plucking in my plot for a bit.” Triangular Eyes said.
Gold Bracelet waved his Golden Snake Whip around and said, “No away, he’ll pluck weeds for you tomorrow, he can only work for me today. Or else, both of us wouldn’t be able to finish our tasks.”
As he was talking, Gold Bracelet started walking to his own plot to start plucking weeds.
If two people work on the plot, they’ll definitely be able to finish within two hours.
1.Weishi = the period between 1-3pm↩
T/N: Lin family’s elixir plantation was changed to spiritual plants plantation