Soup and Book

"Come back!"

"Come back!"

"You forgot to drink your soup, don't worry it's delicious!"

A faint indescribable voice permeated through Zhao Feng's thick skull. It seemed to come from all directions. Echoing, layering, and relentless.

Who?

"Go back where? To earth pssh as if that'll ever happen."

"Isn't my life amazing and my farm…"

"Wait! My precious farm! I must hurry!"

He suddenly woke up. Same as always his clothes were soaked, sticking uncomfortably to his body. He sat up, the dark night sky dotted with stars twinkled; seemingly having a little laugh at his misfortune. Then the icy wind blew onto his already wet body causing him to shiver to the bones.

He had forgotten that the barrier surrounding his farm needed to be reinforced again today.

This dream again! I should just kill myself to sleep forever… wait no that's not it. I must save up jade to buy a dream cultivation method! This way I can sleep soundlessly next time!

Wait who even bestows a drought! As if a drought was a gift you would give to someone. Looking outside, he saw that his fields were fine with the occasional chilling winds that encompassed his small villa and fields.

It was still early in the morning, and dawn hadn't broken through the sky yet. The village was in the middle of a long dark winter and was situated in the northern lands ruled by the Golden Ichor Sect. Winters here lasted almost twice as long taking over most of the spring time needed for low-level spiritual plants to grow. The consequence of this naturally meant that the northern kingdoms and cities had higher cold-attributed tier crops and herbs. They were used for containing ferocious qi needed by cultivators who cultivated the ice martial path.

Jianghu in this world was not as unforgiving as Zhao Feng had imagined. He had reincarnated and transmigrated 3 times already, strangely with parts of his memories intact after each one. He was originally from earth during the prosperous time of the 22nd century where science and knowledge flourished.

However, his thick-skulled nature was his demise. When activating a high-energy antimatter collider, he ignored several safety protocols believing that they were unnecessary and believed that he would at most be injured and treated immediately.

Of course, what happened next doesn't need any more explanation. He died.

After he reincarnated, he transmigrated to a medieval time period that diverged from earth's normal timeline. It was one filled with magic, cultivators, and ferocious beasts. Zhao Feng was excited, believing that with his modern brain filled with advanced technology he would be able to establish a machine empire. Unfortunately, he wasn't reborn with a photographic memory of everything he learned before, and therefore could only spout some nonsensical information, which the natives had no idea what he was talking about.

After a few years, he died of an unknown plague and reincarnated for the third time. This time was relatively peaceful, he became a snail, so he lived peacefully for a couple of weeks in someone's backyard garden until a bike rolled over him.

The fourth reincarnation, the one he is currently living right now, is his only hope. He didn't believe that he would endlessly continue the cycle of black-hearted lucky deaths of reincarnation.

He changed into another loose-fitting faint yellow robe with a small rounded rectangular silver insignia of an ice phoenix tied next to his right hip. Everyone belonging directly to the Frigid-Glacier Sect had one of these, from; wooden, copper, iron, mysterious-iron, silver, secret-silver, light-gold, dark-gold, and the high elders of the sect wore the eternal ice pendant around their necks.

The eternal ice pendant passively gathers the qi around the world and converts it to ice essence. No one knows what the pendant looks like other than hearing it from rumors. They were rumored to be part of a legacy pertaining to the Frigid-Glacier's large success of maintaining their dominance in the north.

Zhao Feng has lived in this early cultivation world for quite some time now, 3 years to be exact. He felt proud as it was a new record for him surviving after reincarnating. At first he was excited to be reborn in such a mythical world with strange powers that allowed one to achieve immortality.

However, reality hit him hard, again. The world didn't have a lot of qi or essence to begin with, in fact it seemed to be declining. For some unknown reason, he could sometimes feel the world's vitality or maybe it was his dreams making him hallucinate. He has very active dreams. He never heard of any world shattering battle between old great masters at some kind of peak realm. Instead, the battles he heard and experienced were against locusts that would ravage spirit farms if not for his small success in wind art.

It allowed him to manipulate the wind essence around him to create repulsion barriers against the small locusts and other pests depicted in his beginner guide, "to be a good farmer" sold from every shopping pavillain. He had to resort to eating 2 times a day to save up enough [1]jingshi to buy a beginners book! It robbed him of 199 jingshi and 1 medium jade shard for tax purposes.

After this little spendthrift, he lost 10 pounds or as this world calls it, catties. No not kitty cats, jin. It seemed the world's culture was similar to that of ancient china in some areas.

Taking in the beauty of his beloved farm he felt satisfied in his heart. It could be said that a calm rippling lake resided within his eyes. Making haste, he immediately grabbed his small treasure box under a trapdoor on his floor that was protected by an intermediate formation. He grabbed several medium grade jade shards and 3 minuscule pieces of thousand year old wild ginseng. The wild ginseng were as thin and small as a baby bamboo leaf.

He hastily set up another wind barrier surrounding his farm, after making sure he didn't miss a single spot he hurried to the Huan city marketplace. In no time at all, he was already at the gate of the city. It was a particularly busy day as the [ ] holiday was beginning to take form.

Jingling the jade shards in his robe pocket, he looked around the busy streets for the crippled old man in a white shawl. Last time he saw the old man, the shawl was without any blemish, and this time when he saw the old man again, it was still without a single speck of dirt.

The old man promised to sell him a body tempering book at a cheap price for ginseng and jade shards. Those shards and ginseng were the last of his precious belongings. Only about 100 jingshi were the rest of his valuables.

JIngshi was used as currency in the place he lived in the northern lands. Perfect grades, peak, high, middle, and low were the grades that jingshi had. It was the essence that cultivators needed to absorb to progress their state of body and mind or cultivation level.

Zhao Feng wasn't a cultivator so he had no knowledge of such cultivation. The wind barrier was not a cultivation method, but rather a technique that anyone can learn to manipulate the world around them to a weak extent.

Cultivation methods gather and store the qi of the world rather than manipulate it, it is not entirely inaccurate to say it is 100 times harder to cultivate the body and mind. It was not simply to gather and store but also to control the body letting the conscious mind gain control over body parts usually controlled by the unconscious. Breathing, scratching itches, waking up and sleeping are all things the unconscious controls 100% of the time unless someone has trained their mind to overcome the unconscious barrier.

This is just an elementary explanation of what body and mind cultivation is, in reality it is a deeply layered subject. Something a single chapter doesn't have the time for. [oops fourth wall broken, ok back to world haha]

In front of him was a frail looking old man but he excluded a powerful aura. It seemed that the old was not a simple character. "Hey hey old man, I got you your ginseng" said Zhao Feng with great concern.

He felt that this old man was definitely a fallen hero or some great figure, he thought he might as well establish a relationship early on. Perhaps the old man might transform into a great expert and ask to make him his disciple.

"Thank you young man" the old man unsurprisingly had a croaky and soft voice. Typical example of someone who didn't exercise and eat right when they were young. Zhao Feng was going to introduce him to some exercise sets for old men but decided it wasn't his business to care.

Being too kind in this vicious world would mean one's own demise! After receiving the

tattered old book he went to a restaurant to read over a nice meal.