The Undying Immortal System

Chapter 240: Life 73, Age 38, Martial Grandmaster Peak

After leaving Mount Jiang, I headed directly for the Verdant Forest Sect, and as soon as I arrived, I went straight to SuYin’s house.

When I had left, SuYin’s position in the sect had seemed stable. She didn’t have any enemies, and there wasn’t any reason for anyone to cause trouble for her. She was simply a rather talented herbalist worthy of nurturing. I had been gone for two years, but none of that should have changed. She shouldn’t have run into any serious problems, but the moment I saw her house, I couldn’t help but feel that something was wrong.

It could have been something in the glances of the people as they passed by. It could have been the overly thick coating of dirt on the windows that showed they hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. It could have been the undisturbed layer of pollen on the ground around the front door that showed no one had used it for several days. I wasn’t sure what it was, but something about SuYin’s home gave me the feeling that it had been abandoned.

As I neared, I looked through a window and saw that the inside of the house was a disordered wreck. This made my heart leap up into my throat, but just as I was about to force my way in and investigate, I heard sounds coming from behind the house.

Without hesitation, I dashed around the house with all the speed I could muster.

The sight that greeted me was beyond my expectations, but it allowed me to relax, if only just a little.

Bao was running around a garden in a ragged, dirt-stained green robe.

As I watched the young man frantically rush from place to place, I couldn’t help but notice the plants that surrounded him. Every one of them was vibrant and full of life. The greens of their leaves and stems showed no hint of disease or infestation, and the reds, blues, and yellows of their fruits and flowers possessed an indescribable luster that made me feel like I was looking at precious gemstones.

A short tree in the back corner of the garden caught my eye. Its branches held a small crop of nine-pointed starfruit. While a normal starfruit would be about the size of my fist, the ones on this tree were larger than my head.

As he moved through the garden, Bao used a series of techniques to pull thin streams of qi from the air and guide them down into the soil in complex patterns reminiscent of formation inscriptions. At the same time, he pulled wu from the ground and forced it to dissipate in the air next to the leaves of specific plants.

Following the streams of qi Bao was using back to their source, I saw that the massive formation stone I had provided SuYin was sending energy into the garden at full blast. When I had first arrived, it had been set up to send out significantly more water and earth qi than anything else, but Bao was constantly darting back to its controls to shift its output. Sometimes these changes were subtle, sometimes they were dramatic.

His actions, the way he was controlling various energies, raised several questions about the nature of herbalism, and I wanted to ask him about it, but this wasn’t the right time. SuYin was still missing, her home looked like it had been ransacked, and Bao was running around the garden like a madman. There were far more important issues to deal with.

I ran forward and grabbed Bao’s shoulder.

Startled out of his state of deep concentration, he spun on me like a frightened animal.

“What.... What are you doing?”

A maintained a firm grip on his shoulder. “Bao. Look at me.”

He swerved his head several times, and even though I kept him locked in place, his eyes continued to dart around the garden.

I placed my other hand on his other shoulder and forced him to look at me. When his eyes finally focused on me, his mouth dropped open in shock.

“M... Master?”

I nodded and gritted my teeth. “Where’s SuYin?”

He blinked and cocked his head to the side. “She... she left.”

His statement was matter-of-fact. If anything, it felt like he was questioning why I didn’t already know this. This heightened my anxiety, but I didn’t feel any panic or sadness from the boy, so I tried again. R

“Where did she go?”

Finally, a surge of fear gripped him. “Oh...

With a shaky hand, he reached into his robe and pulled out a dirty, somewhat crumpled letter.

“SuYin... I was... I was supposed to send this to you. It’s just...” Bao looked pleadingly at the garden surrounding him. “Master, these plants. That formation. You have to fix it though. It doesn’t work right. There’s so much to do...”

As he looked around, still trapped by my firm grip on his shoulders, he began sending out tendrils of qi to continue with his work with the plants.

As he did this, I added the finishing touches to my new formation and attached it to a thin metal chain. Then, I stood and walked over to him.

Without saying a word, I draped the formation around his neck and activated it.

The moment I did, Bao froze.

“What... what... they’re gone... I

He turned to me with a look of fear. “Master, I can’t hear them anymore... What happened?”

I nodded slowly and then tapped on the formation, reducing its effects slightly.

This caused Bao to suddenly look around, still somewhat fearful, but calmer.

“They’re back... but... it’s like they’re just whispering to me now...”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Alright, do what you need to do. We’ll talk in a bit.”

Bao stumbled away and got back to work. As I looked at him, I couldn’t help but feel a torrent of anger surge through me.

The formation I had given him was designed to protect someone against soul attacks. I didn’t know how it all worked, but from what I could tell, his ‘blessing’ had made his soul incredibly sensitive to soul attacks from plants. As the plants around him grew stronger, the intensity of these attacks only increased.

After letting him work in the garden for a few hours to calm his nerves, I tapped on his formation necklace again and increased the power of its barrier. This caused Bao to become agitated, but I just wrapped an arm around his shoulder and guided him to the house.

“Go inside. Get some sleep. These plants can survive for a few hours without you.”

He glanced around nervously, but he didn’t fight me. Without the constant voices in his head pleading for attention, Bao was much more willing to listen to my advice.

After settling Bao down for a proper rest, I went back outside and investigated the garden he had spent so much effort on. When I looked at the plants, when I really saw them, I was stunned. Before, I had been captivated by their color and beauty, but now, looking at them in both normal and energy vision, I couldn’t help but be shocked by the amount of energy they contained.

Most of the herbs looked somewhat familiar, but they looked so different from what I was used to that I had a hard time identifying everything. My eyes were inexorably drawn to the herb I was most familiar with. The blue peony.

The blue peony I was used to was a bright blue flower that grew from a rather normal-looking green shrub. Unless a person knew something about herbs, there wasn’t much that differentiated a blue peony from any regular, mortal flower. It contained a purified form of medicinal energy that could be used to help people cultivate, but the flower itself didn’t look like anything special.

The blue peonies in Bao’s garden, however, were different. The shrubs looked like they were carved from jade, and the leaves looked like large emeralds. The flowers themselves were translucent crystals with only faint hints of blue in their petals.

Just looking at these flowers, I could tell that they were something special. In energy vision, I didn’t see even the faintest hint of toxin. They were pure medicinal energy, and the structure of their energy was flawless.

I reached out a hand and plucked one of these flowers. The moment its connection to the shrub was severed, the flower fractured and broke apart into small crystalline shards. These shards then turned to dust and dissipated into nothingness.

I couldn’t help but frown. The medicinal energy in Rank 1 herbs was usually rather robust. The energy in these peonies was far too fragile. It felt more like what I would expect from a Rank 4 or 5 herb.

Reaching out, I plucked another peony, but this time, I used my wood affinity to hold the flower’s energy in place.

I didn’t bother with melting its physical shell or trying to remove non-existent toxins. I just attempted to form a pill directly from the raw flower.

Using just a small fluctuation of my affinity, I compressed it into a small, clear blue pill. Then, I examined it with my pill analysis ability.

Perfect Rank 1 Basic Qi Gathering Pill, 200% Medicinal Efficacy. Value: —

The System hadn’t even been able to give it a value.

What had Bao done?