Chapter 66: Sunshine

This time, they only had three newcomers out of the twenty-five participants. By taking Chen Tu and Qin Lei out of the remaining headcount, it was safe to say there were twenty repeating participants.

Regardless of how they were chosen, there's no doubt that they're happy to participate in this harvest. After all, only twenty-five people would be chosen from the seven senior workers and Elder Wei Xuan.

This means those who weren't chosen could only look at the twenty-five people with a pair of jealous, red eyes.

To most, this harvest was merely an excuse for the Spiritual Garden to reward the people they endorsed with Contribution Tokens. While as a matter of fact, that wasn't the case.

The reward was plentiful, but not everyone qualified to share the bigger piece of an entire cake. Naturally, some people did well, and some didn't.

After all, harvesting a Burial Root properly requires experience, patience, and understanding. If merely using brute strength would get the work done, the seven senior workers would be more than enough to finish the job.

Hence, these twenty-five people are selected carefully, regardless of their cultivation strength, age, and favor. They'll be chosen somehow as long they have the quality the senior workers and Elder Wei Xuan searching for.

Even if their result from their last harvest was just a single Burial Root.

While Chen Tu's result of fourteen roots in the previous harvest was amazing, he's only the ninth out of the twenty-five people. As for Qin Lei, he found twelve Burial Roots and stood in the eleventh spot.

What does that result mean? 

It means eight people are doing better than Chen Tu and fourteen with results worse than Qin Lei. From what the two heard, the person who held the first spot found twenty-one roots, and the last found only one.

The fourteen people are naturally Chen Tu and Qin Lei's targets. But that doesn't mean they'll ignore the rest because they're much better. Although, they'll likely overlook Chen Tu and Qin Lei due to their pride.

Chen Tu and Qin Lei believe they would be willing to cooperate if they can promise these people a certain number of Contribution Tokens. After all, their proposal was for the benefit of everyone.

It is indeed worth a try.

They went around and delivered a sales pitch to everyone interested in listening. Since there was no rule forbidding disciples from forming a team, nobody came and made things difficult for Chen Tu and Qin Lei.

But even with Qin Lei's reputation, they only manage to convince four disciples to join them.

The four naturally don't belong to the upper eight on the list. These people are nowhere weak in their cultivation, just slightly unfortunate. The best one here only found six roots in the previous harvest, and the worst was the person with only one.

There is plenty of reason for them to perform terribly, but these things weren't Chen Tu and Qin Lei's concern. As long they're willing to help as much as possible, the reward would still be shared with everyone here.

Furthermore, Chen Tu and Qin Lei didn't purposely make things tricky for them.

For starters, Chen Tu and Qin Lei promised everyone here would pocket the first five Burial Roots they harvested. The reward would be split in half from the sixth and consecutive Burial Root until the person here decided to stop digging.

As for the responsibility of which Spiritual Plant to go for, that would be Chen Tu's part. Since they're already promised ten Contribution Tokens right from the beginning, nobody here had a reason to say no. To these four, Chen Tu and Qin Lei's help would make everything easier for them.

After waiting for a while, it was finally time to start harvesting. It was compulsory to went over the introduction seminar before the disciples were allocated to their designated plot in the Spiritual Garden.

"Senior! There are six of us here. Can we request to be arrange on the plantation adjacent to one another?" Qin Lei raised his hand and asked. His question made the senior workers have a discussion between them.

"Very well. You people would take the sixth and seventh plantations." a senior worker replied to Qin Lei. They had no qualms about this request.

But to everyone's surprise, Chen Tu and Qin Lei's group didn't separate and work separately on two plantations. Instead, the five people were waiting for Chen Tu to point at which plant to dig.

They knew what this group of six was trying to do, but would their method be profitable? What if Chen Tu's choice was wrong?

Of course, it hardly distracted the rest of the disciples. 

After everyone had a plant to work on, Chen Tu went along. Using a red string as a marking, Chen Tu ensured he tied a knot on those to be harvested next. He kept going and was about a third done when Qin Lei and the others were going for their second plant.

The first five plants selected by Chen Tu all had a matured Burial Root inside the soil. This gave them more confidence to continue. And by the time Chen Tu was done with this plantation, everyone else was about to finish on their third plant.

Chen Tu had already lost count of how many markers he had left on the last plantation. And by the time he was done, he didn't return and joined the rest but decided to start digging right here. His peculiarity made the others couldn't help but be distracted.

"Fellow disciple Chen Tu, correct?" someone approaches Chen Tu while he sweeps the soil away. Looking at this disciple's basket, it appears he only found one Burial Root. This was a terrible harvest, even for someone positive like Chen Tu.

"Is the offer you spoke of... Still valid?" he sounded apologetic and regretful while asking. He is naturally one of the newcomers who is confident in himself. But the truth sometimes hurts.

If he had been following Chen Tu and Qin Lei from the start, he would already have five Burial Roots by now.

(Sigh...)

Chen Tu smiled at the disciple.

"Come over here and quickly help. We have less than six hours to go. And make sure you only go for those with a marker I left!" Chen Tu replied and waved at him to come over. His reply was like a ray of sunshine to this disciple.