Another full year passed, and it was no ordinary year by any measure.
Ling Hua was no longer that slender boy whose feet had first touched this field's soil two years ago. He had grown taller, and his arm muscles had gained a firmness that wasn't the result of hard labor alone, but of a year of continuous Qi Refining at the second level, where his spiritual pathways had become wider and his ability to absorb the energy of heaven and earth far deeper than before. His eyes, though still carrying some of that childhood innocence, had gained a calmer look—the look of someone who had seen death up close and learned how to stand before it without collapsing.
Every morning, he woke a full hour before sunrise, sitting cross-legged on the meditation cushion Tianmo had gifted him at the start of his path, breathing in the first traces of heaven-and-earth energy scattered in the cold dawn air, and pushing it slowly through his now-expanded pathways, trying to further solidify his foundation before thinking of any new breakthrough. He knew that rushing cultivation was a shortcut to collapse—a lesson he'd learned the hard way when he nearly lost control of his energy during his last breakthrough.
Since breaking through to the second level, he'd noticed his meditation sessions had become deeper and richer; it was no longer merely breathing in the surrounding energy as it had been at the first level, but he'd become able to sense fine currents of qi flowing through the very soil beneath him, as though the whole earth had become part of his extended senses. This new ability had helped him greatly in understanding his field's needs more deeply, so that he now felt dry patches before signs of wilting appeared on them, and sensed the buildup of negative energy in a particular corner of the field before it turned into a real problem.
After meditating, he'd eat his simple breakfast, usually cooked spirit rice grains with a bit of wild herbs he gathered himself from the edges of the nearby forest, and sometimes, when he felt a bit lazy, he'd eat human food to break the routine—most often small red shrimp grilled over the fire with a pinch of salt. He'd developed, over time, a small personal ritual for preparing these meals, a simple ritual but one that gave him a sense of stability and belonging to this life he'd built with his own hands, before heading out on his daily rounds of the field, the hive, and the stream, checking every small detail in this miniature world he'd built himself.
His daily tasks were no longer limited to farming alone. On his own initiative, he'd begun dedicating a full hour every afternoon to reviewing the Pine Wood Arrows technique, trying to reach the "Great Success" stage after having settled for some time at the "Minor Success" stage. He knew his combat strength was still limited despite everything he'd been through, and that the forest incident, though a false alarm as the Treasury Elder had explained, had clearly revealed to him that the outside world shows no mercy to the weak, even if they were entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.
He trained in this technique at the edge of the field, firing arrow after arrow at a simple wooden target he'd set up himself months earlier, noticing with each training session how he'd become able to control the density of energy pumped into each arrow with greater precision, instead of releasing all his energy at once as he'd done at first. This skill of "calibrating" qi, as he called it to himself, was the same lesson he'd first learned while using the spirit hoe, which he'd later reapplied to the Spirit Rain technique, and now here he was applying it once again to his sole martial art.
Evenings were his favorite time for this kind of training, when the insects' movement in the field quieted down and the sounds of daytime faded, and he could clearly hear the sound of the arrow cutting through the air before striking the wooden target. He noticed his body had begun remembering the movements more automatically over time, as though his hands and legs had gained a memory of their own, separate from his conscious thought—exactly as Tianmo had once described to him when explaining the concept of a "trained body" in the martial arts, which differs entirely from merely memorizing a technique's movements by rote.
The field itself had transformed into a breathtaking sight.
The spirit rice stalks now stretched in swaying emerald rows, far taller than they'd been the previous year, and heavier with grain thanks to the rich soil that had benefited from his devoted care and the constant activity of the ordinary bees in pollination. The scent of ripening rice filled the air each morning, a heavy sweet scent mixed with the aroma of spiritual energy rising from the fields, a scent Ling Hua could never have imagined he'd form such a deep emotional bond with.
Pests were no longer a real problem this season. Every time a harmful insect dared approach the field's borders, one of the spirit bees would swoop down on it with lethal speed before it got the chance to lay its eggs, then carry its corpse to the tree as part of the nutritional cycle the queen had established from her very first day settling there. Over the months, Ling Hua had noticed that this small natural system that had arisen in his field had become like a complete, balanced garden; the rice fed the ordinary bees with nectar, the bees pollinated the rice and increased its yield, the spirit bees protected everyone from pests, while the tree fed on the corpses of those very pests to produce the special spirit fluid that these insects alone needed for their development, growth, and the making of spirit honey—a fluid that didn't directly benefit the rice or surrounding soil, but remained confined to that fine nutritional cycle between the tree and its insect inhabitants.
Spirit bees can produce spirit honey without the spirit fluid the insect tree secretes—but the nectar produced by Green Jade Rice specifically is not suitable for making spirit honey; it needs more spiritually potent plants than this, such as rice at the first, lower tier—unlike this rice, which suits only ordinary people who haven't yet entered the cultivation of immortality but are merely preparing to enter it, and that faint energy present in it suits them, to eat it, to give them the final push to enter Qi Refining.
He also checked, roughly once every two weeks, on the condition of the field's soil itself, using his new second-level sense to detect any area needing more spirit irrigation or rest from intensive farming. He'd learned from the old agricultural books in the Inheritance Hall that soil, like a living being, needs cycles of rest and renewal, and that greed in exploiting it without giving it a chance to recover was enough to destroy even the most fertile land within just a few years. For this, he'd dedicated a small corner of his field this year to experimenting with growing a different, simpler type of spirit herb, just to give the rest of the soil relative rest, and to test his skill at crop diversification, which Tianmo had encouraged him toward during one of her brief visits.
Ling Hua headed toward the tree first that morning, as usual, only to find a different scene awaiting him.
He stopped at the trunk, looking in astonishment at the growing numbers of spirit bees hovering around it. The hive no longer held just four spirit bees as it had a year ago, but had expanded noticeably to now include ten full spirit bees, their semi-crystalline bodies larger and more radiant than before, their movements coordinated with military precision resembling a small squad of trained guards.
He noticed they no longer merely defended, but had become actively involved in organized group attacks on any threat appearing at the field's edges, spreading into precise formations, some attacking from above while others flanked from the sides, as though they'd learned from every battle they'd fought since that day in the forest. He sometimes enjoyed, when sitting by the tree in the evening after a long day's work, watching them train among themselves on new attack formations, as though the queen's innate instinct had planted a genuine military system in them despite her complete absence from directly leading them during this period.
But what caught his attention most was the queen's absence from her usual place.
He approached the hive's main opening, wondering with a worry that had begun creeping into his chest.
"Where's the queen?"
The bees didn't answer of course, but one of them flew toward him and gently guided him to a deep cavity within the tree's trunk, where he could see, behind a thin layer of a nearly-transparent silver cocoon, the queen's body, completely still, as though sunk in a deep sleep nothing could wake.
His heart froze for a moment, and the worst possibilities crossed his mind.
But he soon remembered something he'd read in the spirit-insect encyclopedia he'd studied in the Inheritance Hall two years ago, back when he wasn't yet receiving formal lessons there and was trying to absorb every possible piece of information about this new world. He remembered a whole chapter on the phenomenon of "Spiritual Molting" that some spirit-insect queens undergo upon reaching a certain maturity stage, where they enter a deep dormancy resembling death outwardly, while their internal structure is completely rebuilt from within, in preparation for an evolutionary leap that grants them far greater strength and perhaps even an entirely new form.
He breathed a sigh of relief, and smiled with ease.
"So you're not sick... you're evolving."
He reached out carefully and touched the trunk's surface beside the cocoon, as though wanting to reassure her, despite knowing she was likely unconscious in this state.
"Take all the time you need. I'll be here when you wake."
He turned and left with calm steps, leaving her ten guards to continue their daily duties with complete discipline, as though their queen's temporary absence hadn't shaken their system at all. He thought as he walked away that he'd ask Tianmo about this phenomenon in more detail when the chance arose, for despite everything he'd read, he still felt his knowledge of this rare creature was far from complete.
From there, he headed toward the small stream flowing beside his field, where the four crabs had been living their quiet lives for a full year now.
He knelt at the water's edge, and looked down with a broad smile.
They were no longer the small crabs that could be held in one palm, as they'd been when he bought them from that grumbling merchant at the market. They'd grown noticeably, and their red shells had become harder and more lustrous, glimmering under the sunlight filtering through the clear water as though they were pieces of real agate. Their movements were slower and heavier than in their youth, a clear sign of their full maturity.
He'd grown used to feeding them every few days with the remains of dead insects the spirit bees sometimes dropped near the stream, or with some spoiled rice grains. Over time he'd noticed each crab had a slightly different temperament; the first was always the first to approach food without hesitation, and he privately named him "the Brave One," while the last was more cautious, preferring to hide under the rocks until certain no danger threatened him, so he named him "the Wise One." He found a strange pleasure in these small observations, something that reminded him that, despite all the major events that had upended his life, he was still capable of enjoying the simplest details of this world.
He extended his finger to gently touch the back of one of them, and it moved slightly and turned toward him with curiosity, as though it had grown used to his presence all this time.
"You've really grown... I think the time has come."
He remembered that merchant's words from a year ago, when he'd told him this crab's meat was delicious and rich in qi, and that its hard shell was used in refining spirit items. He knew that keeping them all forever wasn't a wise decision, for they were, in the end, a resource that could benefit his family, not merely pets he watched from afar.
He decided within himself to sell three of them, and keep the fourth—"the Wise One" specifically, perhaps because he felt a special connection to its natural caution—not for sale or even breeding, but to be the family's evening meal after all this exhaustion. It was a simple idea, but it stirred a warm feeling in his chest he hadn't felt in a long time; the idea of eating a meal he'd prepared with his own hands, from a harvest he'd grown himself, with his mother, whom he hadn't sat down with for a quiet meal in a long time due to his constant preoccupation with the field.
A few weeks after that day, during one of her routine rounds checking all the family's fields, Elder Tianmo stopped by Ling Hua's field, as she'd done roughly every two months since the forest incident, keen on following the development of the rare tree she'd never seen the like of before.
She found him busy removing some wild weeds that had crept into the new spirit-herb corner he'd planted, so she smiled as she approached him.
"I see you're still working tirelessly, little one. Even now at the second level, you haven't stopped bending over the soil like any novice farmer."
Ling Hua rose, wiping his hands with a cloth, and greeted her respectfully.
"Work is what you and my father taught me from the beginning, Elder. I won't stop it no matter how far my level advances."
Tianmo walked slowly around the field, examining the plants' condition with expert eyes, then stopped for a long while before the strange tree, contemplating the silver cocoon surrounding the sleeping queen.
"So this is what happened to her." she finally said with a tone of genuine interest. "I read about this phenomenon in one of the family's old books, but I've never witnessed it with my own eyes before. Spiritual Molting is rare even among spirit-insect breeding experts, because most bee queens don't live long enough to reach this stage at all, either due to being hunted by farmers or due to diseases that strike their hives in their early stages."
Ling Hua asked her with curiosity he couldn't suppress.
"How long does this transformation usually take to complete, Elder?"
"No one knows exactly, since every queen and every spirit insect differs according to its nature and original strength." she answered while patting the trunk gently. "It might take weeks, and it might take entire months. What matters is not trying to wake her by force or interfere with the process in any way, as that could lead to permanent deformities in her new structure, or even her death in the worst cases."
Ling Hua nodded seriously, keeping this advice in mind.
Tianmo continued her round, stopping by the stream to glance at the crabs, then at the rows of rice, unusually lush for a field of such relatively young age.
"This field has become a model to be emulated, Ling Hua. Honestly, some of the other young farmers have started asking me about the possibility of trying to raise similar spirit insects in their own fields, after hearing your story."
She smiled sarcastically and added, "As though they think spirit insects are like wild vegetables."
Ling Hua smiled with pride mixed with slight embarrassment.
"I honestly didn't plan any of this, Elder. Everything that happened was just a series of coincidences."
"Perhaps." she replied while turning to leave, a faint smile on her lips. "But even coincidences need someone who knows how to invest them wisely instead of wasting them. Keep on this path, and let's see where it takes you in the years to come."
The Elder left with calm steps toward the next field in her round, leaving Ling Hua to return to his work among the weeds, but her words kept echoing in his mind for the rest of that day.