"Ugh... ow, ow, ow..."
That was the first thing Li Changsheng felt upon waking. A searing pain radiated from his chest, as if he’d been run over by a car, back and forth. Even taking a breath brought the metallic tang of blood to his mouth.
"OINK OINK..."
In his daze, the sound of oinking filled Li Changsheng’s ears, followed by a putrid stench that assaulted his nostrils.
He opened his eyes.
A ferocious beast’s head was less than half a meter away, its sharp tusks glinting menacingly.
"Fuck."
Li Changsheng scrambled back in a panic, using both his hands and feet, until his back hit a wall. He suddenly came to his senses and couldn’t help but curse in frustration.
Just a moment ago, he had been pouring feed for the pigs. For some reason, the two Tusked Pigs had started fighting over it. Caught completely off guard, he was knocked unconscious by one of them.
"Why didn’t you just kill me!"
"Fuck!"
Feeling the throbbing pain in his chest, Li Changsheng cursed again. He raised his left hand and viciously slammed a beige-covered book onto the ground.
"Cultivation? To hell with cultivation!"
A gentle breeze rustled the pages, causing the book to fall closed. The title, written in neat, small script, was clearly visible: *One Hundred and Eight Ways to Raise Tusked Pigs*.
Tusked Pigs were Tier One Low-grade Spirit Beasts. Their meat was firm and their blood qi was potent, making them quite popular among low-level Cultivators.
The blood essence from their hearts was one of the main ingredients for Blood Pills.
Their four sharp, exposed tusks were supplementary materials used in various forms of Artifact Refining.
You could say their entire bodies were treasures; a single one could sell for a hundred Spirit Stones.
However, because they grew to be sturdier than an ox and had an irritable, aggressive nature, very few Cultivators dared to raise them.
And he, of course, was one of those defiant few.
Staring at the glaring title on the book, Li Changsheng buried his face in his hands, wishing he could dig a hole and bury himself.
’It was just too humiliating. In the novels he’d read in his past life, transmigrators rode the wind on their swords, exuding an ethereal, immortal grace.’
’But when he actually transmigrated, reality hit him like a ton of bricks.’
A year ago, he had successfully joined the Cyan Yang Sect. He’d been ecstatic, thinking he was about to reach the pinnacle of his life.
’He’d cultivate Immortal Techniques, ride an Immortal Sword, advance triumphantly, travel with celestial maidens, and journey toward immortality together.’
But reality was, a sect wasn’t a charity, and it didn’t support freeloaders.
Outer Sect disciples like him had to perform manual labor in addition to their cultivation.
The common tasks included farming, animal husbandry, identifying herbs, mining, and so on.
After weighing his options, Li Changsheng chose animal husbandry. As for the species, he picked the Tusked Pig, which, upon reaching adulthood, was comparable in strength to a cultivator at the Qi Cultivation First Layer.
From then on, he worked from dawn till dusk—cooking pig feed, cutting grass for them, and shoveling their manure. His time for cultivation dwindled to almost nothing.
A year passed, and his cultivation was still stuck at the Qi Cultivation First Layer.
Today, for some unknown reason, Big Flower, who was usually quite gentle with him, had suddenly flown into a rage and rammed her head into his chest.
"Sigh. Life goes on."
As the pain in his chest slowly numbed, Li Changsheng sighed twice and took a small, cyan jade bottle from his robes.
He uncorked the bottle, and a refreshing fragrance immediately wafted out.
He tilted the jade bottle, and a thumb-sized, blood-red pill rolled into his palm.
The pill was a Blood Pill, refined from the essence of blood qi. It had the ability to replenish blood and heal injuries. A single pill cost fifty "spirit fragments"—scraps leftover from Spirit Stones. One complete Spirit Stone could be exchanged for a hundred spirit fragments.
A pained expression flashed across Li Changsheng’s face as he picked up the pill and swallowed it.
Once in his stomach, the pill dissolved into warm streams of energy that spread throughout his body. The majority of it flowed to his chest, instantly relieving most of the pain.
Li Changsheng breathed a sigh of relief. Just as he was about to circulate his Cultivation Technique to absorb the pill’s effects and prevent any waste, a tearing pain suddenly shot through his mind. His vision went black, and he passed out.
「A short while later.」
Li Changsheng slowly came to. As he opened his eyes, a faint, starlike glimmer flashed in their depths.
[Target: Xiaohua]
[Species: Tusked Pig (Male)]
[Grade: Tier One Low-grade (50%)]
[Talents: Tough Hide, Sharp Teeth.]
[Status: Healthy.]
’A Golden Finger?’
Li Changsheng’s mind swam for a moment as a stream of unfamiliar information flooded into it.
*Nurture*. It was the ability to detect, collect, record, and analyze data to produce results.
It was the passive ability of a character from some farming game.
After processing the information, Li Changsheng was ecstatic. ’I knew it!’ he thought. ’A Golden Finger might be late, but it’s never a no-show!’
Li Changsheng’s gaze shifted to the second Tusked Pig in the pen.
[Target: Big Flower]
[Species: Tusked Pig (Female)]
[Grade: Tier One Low-grade (59%)]
[Talents: Tough Hide, Sharp Teeth.]
[Status: Ready to Breed.]
"Huh?!"
Li Changsheng stared in disbelief. He rubbed his eyes and looked again at the status bar: "Ready to Breed." After confirming he wasn’t mistaken, he couldn’t help but break into a wide grin.
"So that’s why Big Flower was so aggressive all of a sudden! She’s about to have piglets."
Li Changsheng’s mood instantly soared. He walked over to the pen and watched Big Flower circling restlessly, occasionally ramming her tusks against the enclosure in agitation. His eyes burned with excitement.
It was no wonder he was so excited. The sect’s buyback price for a Tusked Pig piglet was ten Spirit Stones, and they could be sold for as much as twelve Spirit Stones in the Marketplace.
Spirit Stones were wonderful things. Directly absorbing the gentle Spiritual Qi within them was much faster than painstakingly absorbing the free-roaming Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi. They could also be used to buy Spirit Gathering Pills, Yellow Bud Pills, and other auxiliary Spirit Pills to accelerate one’s cultivation.
After a moment of excitement, Li Changsheng calmed himself down.
’His dreams were grand, but there was a catch.’ Of the two adult Tusked Pigs before him, only one belonged to him. The other belonged to the Cyan Yang Sect.
As an Outer Sect disciple who had chosen the path of animal husbandry, the sect had provided him with two Tusked Pig piglets to raise, free of charge.
Regardless of how well he raised the Tusked Pigs, he was required to hand over one adult Tusked Pig or one hundred Spirit Stones to the sect every year until he entered the Inner Sect.
Failure to deliver on time was met with zero leniency—direct expulsion from the sect.
A well-cared-for Tusked Pig could produce a litter every four months. With each litter containing five to fifteen piglets, that meant three litters a year, or at least fifteen piglets in total.
One Tusked Pig piglet was worth ten Spirit Stones, so fifteen would be one hundred and fifty Spirit Stones.
An adult Tusked Pig was worth one hundred Spirit Stones.
In other words, if he didn’t expand his operation and only sold the piglets, he could still earn fifty Spirit Stones after paying the sect’s due of one hundred Spirit Stones.
It might not seem like much, and in truth, it really wasn’t...
But there was nothing to be done. In the Cultivation World, where individual power reigned supreme, the strong devoured all. That was the simple truth.
Though Li Changsheng felt helpless, he had to agree.
’No, I have to move Xiaohua to a different pen. Big Flower will definitely be even more aggressive after she gives birth. If they start fighting and the piglets get hurt, it’ll be a disaster.’
No sooner said than done. Li Changsheng had actually anticipated this problem when he built the pens. Over the past year, he had intermittently felled ironwood from the mountains to construct three interconnected enclosures.
To make it easier for the Tusked Pigs to move between them, he had built a connecting gate in each one. Now, it would finally come in handy.
Li Changsheng walked to the adjacent enclosure and inspected it carefully one more time. Finding no issues, he opened the gate connecting the two enclosures.
"Ruh, ruh, ruh..."