Eight Mu of Spiritual Fields

In the blink of an eye, more than two years passed.

Baixi Mountain had also changed. Though not particularly tall, it was now shrouded in mist and clouds, radiating a profound and mysterious aura. Through the faint mist, one could see the mountain peak had been leveled into several open clearings, upon which various pavilions and terraces were built. They could not be called majestic, but they possessed a grand dignity of their own.

Since the four neighboring peaks originally belonged to a single mountain, Zhou Ping renamed them the Four Peaks: Ming, Jing, Qing, and Chi.

Among them, Ming Peak was the highest and most imposing. The courtyards built upon it were the most numerous and splendid, serving as the new estate for the Zhou Clan. As for the old courtyards down in the village, though still maintained by servants, they had merely become a place for Zhou Changhe and the others to handle affairs when they descended the mountain.

As for the other three peaks, only a few crude residential courtyards had been constructed.

Scattered across various corners of the Four Peaks were fragmented fields, dotted here and there. Some were as large as half a mu, while others measured only a few square feet.

These were all the spiritual fields that could be surveyed across the Four Peaks, amounting to a mere eight mu.

They were so scarce and fragmented because the Spiritual Qi within the great array shifted according to the rugged terrain, causing the density of Spiritual Qi to vary drastically across every inch of land. Some areas were rich enough to meet the standard for cultivating spiritual fields, while others could only be considered places with decent feng shui.

Chi Peak.

A child of seven or eight years old infused Spiritual Qi into the water, then ladled it out scoop by scoop to irrigate the earth.

A plot of land measuring a mere two fen took a full half hour to water. Finally exhausted, he plopped his bottom onto the ground and shouted joyfully into the distance.

"Minghu, I'm done watering!"

In another spiritual field not far away, Zhou Minghu wiped the sweat from his brow and smiled. "Uncle is amazing."

After Zhou Minghu finished watering his own spiritual field, he took Chen Fusheng by the hand and walked toward the next plot of land.

Although Zhang Ting had left behind a technique for gathering rain and drawing water, only Zhou Ping in the entire Zhou Clan possessed the cultivation to cast it.

Unfortunately, these spiritual fields were far too scattered across the Four Peaks, and irrigation required water vapor infused with Spiritual Qi, making the drain on Magic Power immense. Zhou Ping could only afford to irrigate the larger, concentrated fields. As for these small, fragmented plots, he left them to Chen Fusheng and the other Qi-Initiation cultivators to water slowly by hand.

Down the mountain, Zhou Changhe was leading the estate guards to distribute porridge to the villagers of Baixi Village. The grain came from the Wang, Sun, and Zhou clans, along with some stores delivered by the Li Clan Trading Firm.

"Eldest Young Master, this can't go on forever," Zhou Shi said with a bitter expression.

Zhou Changhe held a bowl of thin, watery porridge, speaking calmly. "I know this isn't a true solution, but look at the chaos outside. It is only because our Baixi Village is hidden deep in the mountains that we haven't already been overrun by waves of refugees."

"If we don't hand out this porridge, by this time next year, half of Baixi Village might starve to death."

Zhou Shi lamented, "But no one knows how long this drought will last. We can't afford to play the great benefactor forever."

Under years of continuous drought, let alone crops in the fields, even drinking water had vanished. The entirety of Nanyang Prefecture had become a scorched wasteland spanning thousands of li, where all living things withered. Countless lives had already been baked or starved to death.

Because Baixi Village was surrounded by mountains, the only road connecting to the outside world was concealed by the great array. Furthermore, since the prominent families had hoarded sufficient surplus grain and Zhou Changhe governed with a firm hand, they had not suffered the apocalyptic famine seen elsewhere.

Zhou Changhe waved his hand dismissively. "Do not merely look at what is in front of you."

He appeared to be performing good deeds to accumulate virtue, but in reality, he was simply using grain to pacify and control the peasants.

By boiling a few massive iron woks of thin porridge each day, he purchased peace within their territory. Furthermore, he was not feeding them for free; they had to go up the mountain to build roads and dig canals across the land.

Today, aside from the original village center remaining mostly unchanged, the rest of Baixi Village had been completely transformed. Across the fields, deep canals had been excavated in a grid of nine horizontal and nine vertical lines. Each trench was seven chi wide and eight chi deep, stretching for several li to connect directly with the Baixi River.

This not only reorganized the arable land but also laid down a foundation for future water storage and irrigation.

In the middle of the Baixi River's parched riverbed, over a hundred men were working furiously, digging the channel deeper and wider. Zhou Changhe intended to carve out a small lake here to ensure the future livelihood of the village.

There were also several flights of bluestone steps climbing from the foot of Baixi Mountain up toward the Four Peaks, ultimately disappearing into the mist. These, along with the leveling of the peaks and the construction of numerous courtyards and pavilions, were all built by the sweat of the peasants under Zhou Changhe's command.

For all of this labor, the Zhou Clan had paid no more than a thousand shi of grain, half of which had been extorted from the Wang and Sun clans.

Although it was hard to watch the villagers starve to death, Baixi Village held over five hundred mouths to feed. Even subsisting on watery porridge, they burned through more than a shi of grain every day-over a hundred jin-just to barely scrape by.

Zhou Changhe swallowed another mouthful of porridge, calculating silently in his heart.

The clan's storehouses held five hundred shi of grain. Once they went through another hundred shi, he would stop distributing porridge. After all, the places in Baixi Village that needed repairing were repaired, and those that needed building were built. The Zhou Clan had already shown these peasants the utmost benevolence.

From then on, whether they lived or died would depend entirely on their own miserable fate.

After all, in such a year of brutal famine, landlords and wealthy households in other villages had long since barred their gates, terrified of drawing the greedy eyes of refugees. None possessed the spare grain to offer relief in exchange for labor. In some regions, starving crowds had battered down the doors of the wealthy, ending in bloodbaths and slaughtered estates.

It was only because the Zhou Clan had seized the combined wealth of the three major families that they still possessed the surplus grain for this endeavor. Regardless, Baixi Village was sealed within the mountains. Word could not leak out, and no refugees would ever find them.

Just then, a shout echoed from the distance.

"The Immortal is bringing rain! Hurry and catch the water!"

Instantly, the crowd erupted into a chaotic clamor. The villagers, who moments ago were listless from hunger, suddenly burst with frenzied vitality, grabbing bowls, clay pots, and jugs as they charged toward the village square.

"Stop pushing! Stop pushing!" Some men shoved back, only to be swallowed and swept further away by the surging crowd. Women and children were crushed in the middle, unable to move, screaming out in desperate pleas.

A burly man violently shoved people aside, forcing his way to the front.

"Get out of my way! I need water!"

Their lips were cracked and bleeding, their throats raspy and dry-the horrifying signs of severe dehydration.

Amidst this great drought, not only did the crops wither, but the wells also ran dry. It was a hell that could starve and dehydrate a person to death in the open sun.

Even though the thin porridge given by the Zhou Clan contained water, it was a drop in a bottomless bucket. The villagers' lives hung by a thread, solely preserved because Zhou Ping cast a technique to draw water and summon rain every three to five days.

The crowd continued their frantic shoving until Zhou Ping unleashed a wave of spiritual Pressure, crushing down upon the crowd and forcing them into stillness.

"If there is any more noise, there will be no rain today."

The throng fell instantly silent. Everyone trembled, shrinking their necks and lowering their heads, not daring to gaze up at the figure standing upon the platform.

Seeing the crowd quiet down, Zhou Ping began to chant his incantation, the Magic Power within his body surging. In an instant, currents of air swept in from all directions, gathering in mid-air to form a dark cloud several dozen zhang wide.

Soon after, sparse raindrops began to fall. The peasants plunged into a frenzy of ecstasy, scrambling forward and frantically holding up bowls, jars, bottles, and buckets to catch the precious drops. Many tilted their heads back, jaws unhinged to the sky, letting the sporadic rain splatter onto their cracked, deadened lips, revealing expressions of pure salvation.

The Wang and Sun clans also brought their people, desperately scrambling to catch water, terrified of missing out on a single drop.

As for the Zhou Clan itself, over the past year Zhou Ping had been continuously drawing up water vapor, creating several deep pools on Ming Peak. It was more than enough for the clan's daily use.

The cost of drawing normal water for rain and infusing Spiritual Qi into rainfall were worlds apart. Casting a normal rain technique consumed only about twenty strands of Spiritual Qi, but summoning a single storm of spiritual rain would completely drain Zhou Ping's reserves. Given such a massive toll, it was naturally far more pragmatic to have Chen Fusheng and the others handle the irrigation by hand.

Yet, as he stared at the cloud gathered in the sky, Zhou Ping let out a faint sigh.

The cloud he could condense was shrinking every single time. If this continued, he might soon be unable to summon rain at all.

After all, the technique to bring rain merely gathered the ambient moisture from the surrounding lands to drop as sweet dew. But if the earth was baked so dry that no moisture remained, no amount of Magic Power could weave rain out of nothing.

He gazed out at the horizon, his brow tightly furrowed. This drought had dragged on for far too long-so long that it was utterly unnatural.

He recalled the legends he had heard of mighty elders and exalted cultivators back when he was in the Azure Cloud Sect. It was said that with a single thought, they could shift the seasons and warp the very fabric of reality, possessing a boundless, god-like omnipotence. But Zhou Ping had only been a lowly servant back then; such exalted figures were too far removed from his reality, nothing more than distant myths. He had no way to know if those rumors were true.

But now, Nanyang Prefecture had suffered five or six consecutive years of drought, and it was only growing more terrifying and intense. It caused wild, unsettling thoughts to drift into his mind.

Could it be that some mighty cultivator in Nanyang Prefecture was attempting a breakthrough?

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