Chapter 19: Our Goal Is

Ding Ling’s old method was to sell spiritual plants and spirit beasts on the black market.

Back when she was an outer disciple at the Sanqing Sect, the sect had handed out money too.

Servants received wages, while disciples got allowances. Outer disciples received around twenty copper coins a month, and inner disciples got one tael of silver. As for the legacy disciples studying directly under elders, they had countless fine resources at their disposal.

Advancing one’s cultivation realm required a mountain of spirit medicines, talismans, and magic scrolls.

With a mere twenty copper coins a month, one couldn’t even buy a single bottle of mid-tier spirit medicine. Ding Ling had nothing to her name; to buy the magic scrolls, mnemonics, and spirit medicines needed to raise her cultivation, she had to find other ways.

The sect kept a precise count of its spirit beasts, but that didn’t mean one couldn’t scrape some profit from them. For instance, with the beasts’ fur, as long as one didn’t pluck all the hair from a single rabbit, no one would ever notice.

Then there was the moon-gazing sand. The other disciples found it too filthy and foul-smelling to touch, dumping the entire chore onto Ding Ling.

In reality, that sand was a genuine treasure. The alchemy chamber took most of it, but Ding Ling could keep a small portion. Selling it to pharmacies down the mountain brought in pure profit.

Seen this way, No. 1 High School was still a fairly decent sect. At least the spirit stones distributed to its disciples were the same.

Just as Ding Ling had that thought, Yao Beibei returned from fetching water and huffed angrily, “No wonder Zhang Tianyu could collect so many spirit stones! A Class and B Class get more spirit stones than we do! They claimed it was a reward distributed to the top fifty in the placement test!”

…

Only second-year students raised spirit beasts; first-years merely learned how to grow spiritual plants.

Since she could obtain spiritual soil and had a plot in Greenhouse No. 1, there was no reason to pass up such a ready-made way to make money. The only question was: how could she sell the goods here?

Ding Ling thought of Zhang Tianyu.

Early in the morning, Zhang Tianyu was munching on a fried dough stick and drinking soy milk when he looked up to find Ding Ling standing before him. She held a large stainless steel bowl piled high with steamed buns, each one larger than his fist.

“Are you sure you and Master Wang aren’t related?”

Zhang Tianyu was only distantly related to the new intern teacher at the campus card service center by a dozen degrees of separation. The intern teacher’s family wanted to buy a house in Nancheng.

Nowadays, anyone on the outside with even the slightest connection to cultivators wanted to buy property in Nancheng. Although the Zhang family had made their fortune in North City, they had acquired property in Nancheng long ago.

Zhang Tianyu’s father had helped the intern teacher’s family resolve their purchase qualification issues, so Zhang Tianyu was not about to let that favor go to waste.

Just one day into the school term, Zhang Tianyu had already mapped out almost every familial connection among the first-year students.

“We’re not,” Ding Ling said, picking up a large black truffle and beef bun.

Master Wang had said he obtained the ingredients from the Western-cuisine chefs at Window A. He had snagged a bit of everything on the lunch menus for Windows A, B, C, and D today, stuffing some into buns and saving the rest to cook for lunch and dinner.

In any case, whatever students from other classes got to eat, the students in Class F would get to eat too.

“The school is just messing around all day! As long as I run this window, your food won’t be one bit worse than those other students’!” In fact, it would only be better.

When there was enough to go around, all the students in Class F got a share; when portions were limited, only Ding Ling got one; after all, she was a patient.

Ding Ling felt that if her arm didn’t heal soon, Master Wang might very well end up becoming a culinary cultivator of his generation.

“Do you know where Jiangcheng’s black market is?” Ding Ling asked.

With the fried dough stick in his mouth, Zhang Tianyu said, “Yeah, I do. You… you want to go to the black market?”

Whoa! Impressive!

Zhang Tianyu had already figured that since Ding Ling dared to venture into an A-rank secret realm, she wasn’t some obedient, rule-following student at heart. Hearing her ask about the black market didn’t surprise him in the least.

“What do you want to buy? Or are you looking to sell something?”

“Nothing for now.”

Chen Li had slowed down her pace of earning money. Thinking about it now, that minor injury was far too light.

Zhang Tianyu looked at her. Ding Ling had actually been quite a good-looking girl before, slender, graceful, and fair-skinned. Even by the aesthetic standards Zhang Tianyu had picked up growing up around his father, he had to admit she was a beauty.

Looking the way she used to, going to the black market alone would have been far too risky.

Going to the black market looking the way she did now was even riskier.

“If you want to sell things, you don’t necessarily have to go to the black market. You won’t have anything that’s hard to get rid of anyway.” Zhang Tianyu unzipped his backpack, tore out a sheet of paper, and spent a while drawing on it. “These shops are pretty reputable.”

Reputable shops never offered very high prices.

Ding Ling took the paper. “Thanks.”

During their conversation, one had avoided Yao Beibei, while the other had steered clear of Zhou Ziyue and Yi Ang.

Yao Beibei came over holding her buns and cradling a cup of soy milk. “In weather this hot, why does A Class get to drink iced soy milk and iced milk? They even have a coffee machine!”

Meanwhile, Class F only had piping hot soy milk. One sip left you sweating buckets.

Yao Beibei fanned her soy milk while wolfing down a big bun, still finding time in the middle of it all to gossip with Ding Ling: “I just saw Chen Li. His entire hand is wrapped in bandages!”

The school hospital had stopped Chen Li’s bleeding, but the wound showed no sign of shrinking.

Nurse Xiao Xu asked him, “What did you touch? Are you having an allergic reaction?”

Chen Li thought of the wooden thorn. Teacher Miao was currently looking for whoever had damaged the spiritual plants in Greenhouse No. 1.

He had only been in A Class for a single day. If he got kicked out for blocking the surveillance cameras and destroying spiritual plants, he wouldn’t know how to face his father. Not daring to speak the truth, he lied, “I didn’t touch anything.”

Surely the school hospital couldn’t fail to treat a minor injury like this.

Ding Ling soon saw Chen Li’s miserable state for herself. After finishing breakfast, she went to Nurse Xiao Xu to pick up this week’s nutritional potion. When Nurse Xiao Xu saw her arrive, she gestured with her chin toward the adjoining room. “Come on, let’s go to the room next door.”

Chen Li was in this room having his dressing changed. The stench was so bad that the moment Yao Beibei stepped inside, she gagged with a retch, regretting having eaten Master Wang’s special truffle and beef bun.

Inside the room, Professor Song was still asking Chen Li, “Did you really not touch anything?” The wound had not improved; it had only worsened. Although it was no longer bleeding, pus was festering underneath.

Chen Li stubbornly held his tongue. “I really didn’t touch anything.”

Professor Song frowned. “Then do this: stick to porridge for the next few days and don’t eat anything else. If there’s any change in the wound, come straight to the school hospital, whether you’re in class or not.”

It had been less than twelve hours, but he claimed the pain was unbearable and wanted fresh medicine applied. The moment the gauze was unwrapped, the flesh was already giving off a foul stench.

Professor Song changed Chen Li’s dressing.

In the adjacent room, Nurse Xiao Xu took out a week’s supply of nutritional potion and handed it to Ding Ling. “Here. Are you still going to the greenhouse today? Teacher Miao said he will definitely catch that culprit!”

Yao Beibei had been pinching her nose and breathing through her mouth, but hearing this, she let go of her nose.

Teacher Miao told Nurse Xu?

Once out of the school hospital, Yao Beibei tugged at the corner of Ding Ling’s shirt. “There’s definitely something going on between Nurse Xu and Teacher Miao. Those two have a thing for sure.”

Ding Ling kept walking straight ahead. By the time Yao Beibei realized it, they were already standing in front of Greenhouse No. 1.

No way. Class starts in ten minutes, and she still wants to till the soil first?

A sign with “Ling” written on it had been replanted in the plot. In just one night, several seedlings had sprouted new leaves, and they would be ready to harvest in two more days.

Yao Beibei asked curiously, “How are your seedlings growing so fast?” She had also planted one, like playing house, but hers showed no movement at all.

Of course it was different.

Ding Ling had cast a Spirit Gathering Incantation on this plot, concentrating far more spiritual energy in the soil.

She filled another pot to the brim with water and formed a hand seal behind Yao Beibei’s back. With a flash of blue light, the entire pot of water instantly bubbled with foam before quickly settling down again.

Only half a pot of water remained. This was the simplest Sweet Dew Technique, which even a cultivator of the lowest cultivation could use.

Her spiritual power was still lacking for now. She had to rely on this spell to grow high-grade spiritual plants, then buy tools for extraction and alchemy.

Earn money, nourish her spiritual root, and raise her cultivation.

Over the next two days, whenever Ding Ling had free time, she spent it inside Greenhouse No. 1.

After the spiritual field was ruined, Teacher Miao locked Greenhouse No. 1. He gave a key only to Ding Ling; anyone else who wanted to enter the greenhouse, even the class representatives^[1], had to submit a request.

The spiritual botany class representatives across the entire grade were all cursing the idiot who had destroyed the spiritual field.

“Is that bastard insane?” Teacher Miao was the most easygoing teacher. In his class, every student could always score an extra point or two. Who on earth was looking for trouble and just had to mess with Teacher Miao?

Under the new points system, teachers like Teacher Miao saw their popularity explode.

Chen Li dared even less to tell the truth.

Until Zhou Ziyue suddenly appeared at Greenhouse No. 1 and walked right up to Ding Ling.

Ding Ling was harvesting vermilion fruit. This fruit had the shortest ripening period, and each vermilion fruit seedling could bear fruit three to four times. Regular consumption improved eyesight and cleared internal heat. She harvested fifty of them from her plot in one go, wondering how many spirit stones these fifty would sell for.

Ding Ling placed the vermilion fruit into small glass vials that had been enchanted beforehand with a preservation spell. By the weekend, she should have over two hundred vermilion fruits.

Zhou Ziyue always looked at people sideways, but right now his eyes burned with intensity as he asked Ding Ling bluntly, “Did you curse Chen Li?”

Ding Ling did not even turn her head. Her little bunny follower, Yao Beibei, jumped up with a lollipop in her mouth. “Zhou Ziyue! Don’t you talk nonsense!”

Chen Li had left the school. He hadn’t lasted three days; on the second night, he had called his father to pick him up and take him to a hospital in the city.

Word had it that his wound had already spread from his finger to his entire palm. The stench nauseated the students of A Class in every single period. Though A Class had single dorm rooms, anyone walking past the adjacent rooms could smell it.

Zhou Ziyue shot Yao Beibei the same look he always gave idiots. “I’m not trying to snitch.”

Yao Beibei didn’t believe him. Zhou Ziyue looked so gloomy, he seemed exactly like the type to tattle behind someone’s back.

“I won’t snitch. I just want to know how you did it.”

Ding Ling picked the last vermilion fruit. She was indeed a little curious as to how Zhou Ziyue knew.

“I know it was you.”

The other grades only knew that the field in Greenhouse No. 1 had been ruined; only a few people knew it was Ding Ling’s plot. And that afternoon, Chen Li got injured and went to the school hospital.

Just hearing the description of the condition was enough to make Zhou Ziyue certain it was a curse. He looked at Ding Ling in an entirely new light: how did she manage it, and could she teach him?

“What are the trigger conditions? And what are the conditions to lift the curse?”

Yao Beibei rubbed her arms. Zhou Ziyue was creepy enough when looking at people sideways, but looking straight at someone was even creepier.

“It wasn’t me.”

Not entirely her, anyway.

Even an investigation couldn’t trace it to her. The curse talisman was drawn by Zhou Ziyue, and she had merely burned it into wood ash. It could not be tracked.

Zhou Ziyue left. He had not gotten what he wanted, muttering under his breath as he walked away.

Yao Beibei crunched down on her lollipop. “Psycho.” Then she invited Ding Ling, “Want to come to my house for dinner this weekend? And then we can go shopping?”

“Not going,” Ding Ling refused flatly. She had to earn money, nourish her spiritual root, and raise her cultivation.