At first, it was only a few familiar coworkers from the lumberyard.
For a copper coin or two, or a small handful of roasted beans, they would trade for a gulp of the bitter soup.
The effects varied from person to person, but most felt that the grinding fatigue had indeed been eased somewhat.
To these bottom-rung laborers, that slight bit of relief was well worth the meager price.
Before long, word spread through their small circle.
The skinny kid from the Lu family had stumbled onto a folk recipe—a bitter brew that could ward off exhaustion.
Scattered orders came trickling in.
Sometimes after work, a man would squat outside the courtyard gate clutching a few coppers.
Other times in the early morning, a hunter would set down a strip of jerky or dried mushrooms to trade for a bamboo cylinder of “Energy Soup”—a name Lu Yuan had offhandedly coined.
Lu Yuan kept tight control over the operation.
The herbs were gathered only in secluded areas where few people trod, and never in large quantities at once.
He handled the brewing personally, keeping the exact proportions strictly to himself.
The income was meager, but steady.
A few Copper Soul Coins every day, along with odds and ends of food, pooled together like a trickle of water.
Lin Xiu kept the coppers in an old clay jar hidden beneath the bed.
Every few days she would count them, the worn copper coins glinting softly beneath the oil lamp’s flame.
Smiles returned to her face more often, and she could afford to drop an extra bit of oil into the pan when cooking.
The change in Lu Qinghe was even more pronounced.
Sustained by the Energy Soup, his fatigue during cultivation lessened, allowing him to endure for longer.
The soul power vortex spun with increasing smoothness, and he stood with a slightly straighter back.
Lu Yuan observed everything with a cool mind.
He knew this was only the beginning; this tiny income was nowhere near enough to support real cultivation.
But its true significance lay in validating a path: knowledge—even the most basic knowledge—could be traded for resources as long as it solved a practical need.
Half a month later, a small pile of copper coins had gathered inside the old clay jar.
On this day, Lu Yuan counted out twenty coins.
“Mother, I’m heading to the East Town Market.” Lin Xiu grew nervous.
“To buy what?” “Some seeds.” Lu Yuan tucked the coppers deep into his shirt.
“I’ll be back shortly.” The East Town Market was crude and rudimentary.
Lu Yuan squatted before a general goods stall, his gaze sweeping over the shriveled seeds on display.
Finally, he pointed to a paper parcel.
“How much for these?
The Soul-Gathering Grass seeds.” The stall owner was a squinty-eyed old man.
“Kid, you can read?
That’s the lowest quality stock there is—germination rate is abysmal.
Ten Copper Soul Coins.” Soul-Gathering Grass was one of the most basic soul-power-related plants.
Anything that drifted to a remote border town like this could only be inferior rubbish.
Yet Lu Yuan was not interested in its current value.
In his memory, he possessed theoretical blueprints to induce benign mutations in low-grade Soul-Gathering Grass, enhancing its soul power affinity.
The conditions were crude, but it was worth a try.
“Eight,” Lu Yuan bargained.
The old man sneered.
“Take it or leave it.” Without another word, Lu Yuan pulled out ten coppers and took the packet of shriveled seeds.
It was a tiny handful, feeling weightless in his palm.
He turned and left.
The seeds pressed against his skin inside his clothes, feeling slightly coarse.
The neglected plot of land in the backyard could finally be cleared out.
The first step was soil enrichment, which required leaf mold and animal manure…
there should be plenty in the woods outside town.
For watering, rain water would be best…
He calculated as he walked, mapping out a rough plan for an experimental field in his mind.
Just as he reached the mouth of the alley, Lu Qinghe hurried over from the opposite direction, an uneasy expression on his face.
“Xiaoyuan!” He caught his son by the arm and lowered his voice.
“Just now after work, Shopkeeper Liu from the general store pulled me aside to ask about the Energy Soup.
He seems interested—asked if we could supply more, said he’d pay good money for it.” Lu Yuan stopped in his tracks.
What was bound to come had arrived.
Even a tiny profit would inevitably attract attention.
He looked up, his tone calm.
“Father, what did you tell him?” “I did as you taught me.
Said the boy just threw some things together, the yield is tiny, the herbs are hard to find, and we can’t supply much.” Lu Qinghe swallowed hard.
“But he didn’t seem convinced.
Said he’d come look for me tomorrow to talk details.” Lu Yuan nodded, his eyes shifting toward their modest courtyard gate.
The first pot of gold from knowledge had been bagged.
But right behind it came the wind.
Lu Qinghe opened his mouth to say more, but Lu Yuan was already pulling him toward the house.
“Father, if he asks again tomorrow, tell him this,” Lu Yuan said in a low voice.
“It’s just a recipe a kid tinkered with.
The herbs are hard to gather, so at most we can provide three bowls a day.
If he wants it, that’s the price.” He held up two fingers.
“Don’t take Copper Soul Coins—ask for grain, salt, or cloth instead.” Lu Qinghe blinked in surprise.
“He’d agree to that?” “He will,” Lu Yuan said.
“Three bowls of soup are enough for him to buy the favor of a few people.
It’s a bargain for him.” He paused briefly.
“But you must hold firm: three bowls, no more.
The herbs were gathered by a child on a whim; who knows when they might run out entirely.” Lu Qinghe pondered the logic behind the words and nodded.
“Alright.” *** Night fell, the oil lamp flickering like a tiny bean of light.
Lu Yuan sat at the small table.
Spread before him were sheets of coarse paper and the small packet of shriveled seeds.
Leaving the seeds untouched for now, he picked up a piece of charcoal pencil.
*Soul-Gathering Grass: Low grade, abysmal germination rate, virtually zero soul power affinity.* He wrote down several key phrases: *Soil Pretreatment, Soul Power Micro-Environment, Growth Intervention.* Fragments of theory surfaced from his memories.
They were not ready-made recipes, but lines of thought.
Assuming low-grade Soul-Gathering Grass possessed latent soul power affinity, external energy field resonance combined with specific induction stood a chance of triggering a benign genetic expression.
The probability was low.
The conditions were harsh.
Yet it was worth a shot.
He blew out the lamp, lay down, and held out his right hand.
With a slight thought…
A faint tingling sensation spread across his palm.
A limp, drooping phantom image of Blue Silver Grass surfaced—two leaves, pale green tinged with yellow.
It looked like a dead object.
Lu Yuan stared at it.
There was no disappointment in his eyes, only rigorous scrutiny.
He closed his eyes, circulating his modified Tide Meditation Method.
His soul power was as faint as a strand of silk, yet it remained obedient, flowing along smooth and unimpeded pathways.
Accumulation was painfully slow.
But he possessed infinite patience.
A few moments later, he detached a sliver of soul power—thinner than a strand of hair—and probed toward the Blue Silver Grass.
The instant it made contact, a feedback response returned.
A sense of heavy stagnation.
Like a drop of water landing on dusty glass.
Lu Yuan did not stop.
Controlling his soul power at an extremely slow pace, he made it crawl along the leaf veins, sensing everything.
His soul power acted as a crude probe.
The fiber structure was loose, the energy nodes were dim and blocked, and the pathways were narrow, filled with an inert resistance.
*The mutation isn’t pure degradation.* He captured this crucial piece of information.
The nodes were still there, and so were the pathways—they were simply like rusted pipes, extraordinarily thin and plugged up.
The problem lay in *activation*.
He withdrew his soul power and opened his eyes.
*** The next morning, Lu Yuan rose very early.
After breakfast, the house fell quiet.
He closed his door and retrieved the small clay jar from under the bed.
Inside lay the dried, caked residue from the Starlight Vine extract from before.
Scraping off a thin layer, he placed it on a piece of broken roof tile.
He summoned his Blue Silver Grass.
Dipping a fingertip into a tiny speck of the residue’s liquid, he rubbed it onto the midrib of one leaf.
He waited.
There was no reaction whatsoever.
Lu Yuan was not surprised.
Holding his breath, he sent a thread of soul power close to it.
This time, the feedback registered a faint, microscopic ripple—like a pebble dropped into a swamp, stirring a barely visible wave.
A tiny fraction of the liquid’s faint soul power had been “absorbed.” Nothing more.
*The frequency is wrong,* he thought.
*Or the intensity isn’t enough.* It required far more precise stimulation.
Over the next fortnight or so, Lu Yuan lived an extraordinarily disciplined routine.
He rose before dawn to practice stance training with his father.
His hands and feet no longer grew cold so easily.
After breakfast, his father went to work.
Lu Yuan stayed in his room or in the corner of the backyard, conducting his “Martial Soul Stimulation Experiments.” He attempted to use his soul power to simulate different fluctuation frequencies, ranging from extremely low-frequency pulses to rhythmic vibrations.
Each time, he paired it with a microscopic amount of treated Starlight Vine liquid—having used sedimentation methods to remove as many impurities as possible.
The process was intensely dull.
Most of the time, the Blue Silver Grass showed zero response.
On rare occasions, a faint tremor would ripple through it, vanishing in an instant.
Lu Yuan was never in a rush.
He retrieved a slate slab and used charcoal to make simple records: date, frequency range, liquid dosage, feedback level.
The data was sparse, almost entirely consisting of failures.
Yet from these failures, boundaries began to take shape.
If the frequency was too high, soul power consumed rapidly and the Blue Silver Grass exhibited slight rejection.
If the frequency was too low, it was like throwing a stone into the deep sea.
Only a specific middle range seemed capable of occasionally eliciting a tiny spark of resonance.
It was vague, but better than nothing.
Through this day-in, day-out precise control, his soul power actually experienced a minor increase.
He was still far from a Rank 1 Spirit Scholar, but that slender silk thread had indeed grown slightly thicker.
It was his sole comfort.
On Lu Qinghe’s end, the trade with Shopkeeper Liu proceeded quietly.
Three bowls of soup every day in exchange for coarse grains and daily necessities.
Shopkeeper Liu had probed several times about increasing the supply, but after being pushed back with “the herbs are hard to find,” he dropped the matter.
It was just that during every exchange, a unreadable glint shone in his shrewd eyes.
Lu Yuan instructed his father not to show off the traded goods, but to consume them quietly.
Lu Qinghe obeyed.
Now, several full grains of rice could be seen in their daily porridge, and occasionally a few drops of oil floated in their vegetables.
The worry on Lin Xiu’s face softened just a bit.
Everything was developing in a good direction—slowly, but surely.