The Gourd Vine

"Qiaosong!"

Mrs. Chi, who came to pick vegetables in the greenhouse, suddenly shouted, "Did the greenhouse get hit by thieves last night? Why are the vegetables in such a mess?"

The thieves she was referring to were not real thieves but small animals that steal food.

Chi Qiaosong, who had just finished practicing the Fierce Tiger Heavy Fist, was scooping water from the urn to wipe down his body. He walked over in a loose T-shirt and asked, "What's going on?"

"Look here. The lettuce leaves have been gnawed. The unripe radishes have been pulled out. And here, the cabbage leaves were chewed up in pieces..."

Mrs. Chi stood on the edge of the field, clearly angry and distressed.

The vegetables in the greenhouse were very precious. They were the heart of the Chi family. Usually, they were meticulous when picking them for fear of being too rough and hurting these precious little seedlings.

Now, a large area had been ravaged by some unknown small beasts.

"Nothing came last night, I don't think. The fence protects everything." Chi Qiaosong frowned as he looked at the vegetables that had been damaged. He didn't detect anything amiss last night.

Logically, large-sized animals could not even bypass the fence.

Moreover, all the wild animals in the vicinity had been hunted down during his daily outings. Not even many rabbits were left.

Suddenly, a thought flashed as he remembered his dream last night. In the dream, two little squirrels came to the greenhouse to steal food, and he followed behind the little squirrels and could see everything clearly.

Looking at the vegetables that had been damaged, he silently compared them with his memory. He was surprised that these vegetables and the vegetables that the little squirrels ate were overlapping.

The lettuce, radishes, cabbage...

Whatever the little squirrels stole in the dream, that was the vegetables harmed in the greenhouse.

"Is this even possible?" Chi Qiaosong was astonished beyond words. He was clearly dreaming last night, so how could the things that happened in his dream actually happen in real life?

Mrs. Chi was still muttering on the side. "Oh, I should have known that you were so sound asleep at night that you couldn't hear anything. I should have your dad or your uncle come to take over the watch at night."

He ignored his mother's complaining.

The more Chi Qiaosong thought about it, the more incredible it seemed. He carefully recalled the dream he had while he was resting last night and found that the dream was extremely realistic. He could clearly remember the many roads that the two little squirrels had traveled.

"That's it!"

He jolted abruptly.

Then, he thought of another thing in the dream. "The two little squirrels went to look at some gourd vines, and there were flowers of all colors on the gourd vines...My goodness, it can't be the gourd vines that bear the gourd babies?!"

Thinking of this, he could no longer remain still.

He knew now that this world had mountain spirits, demons, ghosts, and such. It was not entirely impossible to add gourd babies to that list.

"Mom, you stay here. I'm going out."

"Are you going hunting again?"

"No, just going out to take a look around."

Chi Qiaosong took the spirit tusk dagger and the machete and walked outside the fence. Based on his memory, he found the location where the squirrels had climbed over the wall and then walked deep into the mountains based on memory.

Although his memory was clear, there were still many details that were not coherent, which caused Chi Qiaosong to take many detours.

But the general route could still be discerned with some effort.

He repeatedly searched and compared, over and over again.

An hour later, he successfully followed the trail of the little squirrels in his dream and entered the valley north of First Ridge. There was a small creek in this valley that would eventually flow into the Great Striding Lake.

"It should be in this direction." He stood by the creek to orient himself for a moment before firmly turning to the west.

Overgrown with weeds, there were not many trees or plants in this area.

Not long after he walked out of it, he entered a small forest. He now recalled entirely that it was in this small forest that the little squirrels saw the little gourd hanging off the dead tree.

"I have to find the dead tree first!" Chi Qiaosong searched slowly and methodically.

The sun was hanging high above the sky, and the small forest was heated up to a state of anxiety. At this moment, a dead tree came into his view, along with the gourd vines that clung to its dead branches.

Chi Qiaosong was overjoyed.

Upon closer inspection, he found that these gourd vines was indeed the one from his dream. There were many small whitish flowers on the vines, but each seemed dazzled with a slightly different iridescence.

A tiny small green gourd hung near the main vine.

This gourd was covered in a fine fuzz on the surface and looked incredibly adorable.

"Amazing!" He couldn't help but touch the leaves of the gourd vines with his hand. Immediately, he felt that the gourd vines had an unusual yet very familiar aura.

Similar to the aura of the bay tree and the Saturn peach tree.

Therefore, he reached a quick conclusion. "I don't know if it will yield gourd babies or not, but this is definitely a spirit root!"

The Golden Finger in the field made the planting of the spirit root source and the external spirit root possible. The spirit root source was transformed by his own foundation, while the external spirit root was the spirit root transplanted from the wild.

Previously when hunting in the mountains, he paid close attention to old trees and exotic flowers, but he never found another spirit root.

He never expected that a dream would bring a spirit root to him.

"No, not a dream!"

Standing next to the gourd vines, Chi Qiaosong clearly realized that last night he might not have been simply dreaming but had experienced something similar to an out-of-body journey.

He had seen similar reports on Fox News.

It was said that there were martial artists who cultivated the evil arts and used voodoo to harm others, pulling out their souls and slaying them. The victims would die without exhibiting any discernible wounds.

There was also a tale of a woman who married a rat in her dream and lay with the rat every night in her dreams. She thought it was just some kind of strange dream, but later the woman really gave birth to a monster that was half human and half rat.

Aside from that, the cultivation of the internal skills of martial arts to the Divine Plane and the Great Divine Plane meant that one could not only nurture divine thunders in the palms of one's hands, but one's nascent soul was able to travel outside of the body and roam among mountains and rivers overnight.

"But how can I have an out-of-body experience like that?"

He was only in the Novice Plane, however.

Chi Qiaosong frowned and thought, "Was I attracted by the little squirrels? So, these two little squirrels were squirrel spirits? Or was I attracted by this spirit root, the gourd vines, and it was deliberately luring me over here?"

All of them seemed to have some truth, but none seemed to be quite it.

He suddenly thought of that two acres of field. "Could it be because of the Golden Finger? Maybe the field sensed the aura of the spirit root from the little squirrels so that I had an out-of-body experience to find these gourd vines?"

For now, he had no answers.

But one thing Chi Qiaosong was sure about was transplanting the gourd vines into the field as soon as possible. However, since the field had not yet been upgraded, for the time being, there were only two acres of land, and only two spiritual roots could be planted.

He already had the bay tree and the Saturn peach tree, representing the internal and external skills of his martial arts' foundations; they must not be moved.

So, if he wanted to transplant the gourd vines, he had to wait for the field to upgrade first.

...

...

...

The wait brought him to the beginning of September.

When the third bag of fertilizer appeared in the fertilizer storage, and after the spirit plants in the greenhouse were repeatedly harvested, they had finally accumulated enough experience to help the field to upgrade to Grade 3.

...

Grade 3 field: 2 acres/3 acres (3 acres could be realized, and currently 2 acres had been realized; fields need to be connected)

Fertilizer storage: Three bags

Spirit root source (2): bay tree (...); Saturn peach tree (...)

External Spirit Root (0): None

Spirit plants: ...

...

There were few changes in the upgrade, meaning the area had been expanded from two to three acres.

The platform made here from the farmhouse was originally three to four acres in size. All they had to do was move the fence a bit, and an area of about an acre could be vacated for realization.

But the most urgent task was to transplant the spirit root.

Chi Qiaosong led his father and uncle, bringing shovels, poles, bags, and ropes with them, and quickly moved in the direction of the gourd vines.