Rebirth of the Weakest

5: Farming Trip Gone Wrong

A single encounter can change a lifetime. Ken was beginning to suspect this one had already rewritten his.

"The best way to refine a martial spirit is through fire or thunder," Mirinda explained, still catching her breath from earlier. "Most spirits naturally suppress beast Qi, which makes breaking through difficult without an outside push."

"Will that not just burn me alive," Ken asked, eyeing her warily.

She smiled, holding his gaze a beat longer than felt entirely comfortable.

"What exactly are you afraid of," she said. "I carry the Recreation Flame, ranked ninth among Beast Flames, born from a Heavenly Dragon. It rebuilds the body during breakthrough instead of destroying it. In this world, true strength always comes down to flame."

She handed him a list of ingredients, and Ken stared at it like it was written in a language he had never studied, which, in fairness, it might as well have been.

"Din stem," he read aloud, squinting. "What is that supposed to be? None of these sound like anything I have heard of."

Mirinda's eyebrows rose. "You genuinely do not know alchemy? That is one of the core professions across all of Tianluo. How does anyone reach your age without at least basic knowledge of it?"

A fragment of memory surfaced, faint and half formed. "Ah," Ken said slowly. "Right. That does ring a bell now."

*Barely,* he thought. *This body apparently forgot more than I ever learned.*

"I will be resting inside your soul space for a while," Mirinda said, stretching as though the announcement were nothing at all. "It has been quite some time since I was left this powerless."

"And that would involve exactly what," Ken asked, already bracing himself.

"The soul space is the mental domain within a cultivator, home to their beast Qi and martial spirit," she explained. "A high level practitioner could theoretically enter it and interfere with the state of a weaker cultivator directly. It is both your greatest source of power and your greatest vulnerability. I promise not to cause harm. I only intend to hide there, mask my presence, and lend you strength where I can." A pause, and her tone turned wry. "Though really, the question is not whether you agree. You simply do not have another option."

"Will you not damage my martial spirit while you are in there," Ken pressed, only half joking.

Before he could get an answer, she dissolved into pure energy and slipped straight into him.

The world around Ken shifted instantly. He found himself standing inside his own soul space, and the sight nearly knocked the breath out of him. A vast spiritual sea stretched in every direction, thunderclouds rolling silently overhead, and at the center, his two martial spirits lay curled together, sleeping.

"Is this really what my inner world looks like," he asked, turning in a slow circle.

"I can reshape what you perceive here if I choose," Mirinda said, already settling into a meditative pose nearby. "The stronger mind always controls the domain. I can see your memories, your thoughts, your actions. I cannot, however, see past what is sealed deep within your soul, the place guarded by the seven amulets." She studied him for a moment, something curious flickering across her expression. "You truly are an unusual one, son of the Grand Le Clan."

*You have no idea,* Ken thought, and decided that particular truth could wait for another day.

---

The Pill Pavilion greeted him with polished floors and the sharp, herbal smell of a hundred different remedies steeping somewhere out of sight. A woman at the front desk looked up as he entered, her gaze quick and appraising.

"Young sir," she said, "are you here as an alchemist seeking herbs, rather than finished pills?"

"Not exactly," Ken said. "I am just here for the herbs themselves. My master handles the alchemy side."

He passed over the recipe list. Le Yan scanned it, and her smile sharpened with interest.

"This recipe is for the Body Washing Spirit Pill," she said. "A lost treasure of a formula. Unfortunately, the pavilion does not stock any of these ingredients at the moment." She tapped the paper thoughtfully. "You may have luck at the edge of the village, where the wild forest begins."

"Thank you, Le Yan. I appreciate it."

She circled him slowly, her tone shifting into something a touch more calculated.

"You know, young master," she said, "with a recipe like this in hand, you could become quite the alchemist yourself someday. Shame you carry a thunder attribute spirit instead of one better suited for it."

Ken let that pass without comment. "Out of curiosity, how much would it cost to have this pill refined here instead?"

"At minimum, one hundred spirit stones," she said. "That covers the cost of summoning an alchemist skilled enough for the job. A tier one alchemist manages only level one or two pills. It rises from there. The higher the pill, the higher the alchemist required, and the price climbs to match."

"And what tier would this particular pill fall under?"

Le Yan's smile widened, clearly enjoying delivering the number. "The Body Washing Spirit Pill is ancient, its formula known only to the old Kron Dragon Clan. Tier four, requiring a tier four alchemist. Four hundred spirit stones."

Ken blinked. "That is a small fortune."

*This entire system runs exactly like a business,* he thought. *Spirit stones instead of currency, alchemists instead of contractors. Somewhere out there, a version of me in another life is probably filing paperwork for this exact same transaction.*

He thanked her and turned to leave.

"You will be back, young master," Le Yan called after him, smiling in a way that suggested she already knew something he did not.

Outside the city gates, Mirinda's voice surfaced inside his mind. "So, young mortal, what have you decided?"

"We are going farming," Ken said flatly.

---

The forest entrance greeted him with a warning scrawled in old, rust colored blood across a dead tree trunk. *Danger. Wild beasts ahead.*

Ken took a steadying breath and pushed forward anyway, using what little spiritual sense he could summon to guide him through the underbrush. Hours passed. He gathered the divine lotus stem, the web plant, the thunder seed, and finally the din stem, each one stranger looking than the last.

The willow grass, though, refused to show itself anywhere.

By the time the light started fading, Ken was exhausted, scraped up, and seriously reconsidering every decision that had led him here.

"Could we not just work with what we already have?" he asked, dropping onto a fallen log.

"Unless you would like to spend the rest of your life disabled," Mirinda said, "no. Divine lotus generates heat for the nine meridians, but it is dangerously unstable, capable of burning through your organs and spirit alike if mishandled. Web plant binds tissue together. Thunder seed forces cultivation forward at an extreme rate. Din stem strips cultivation away entirely."

Ken stared at her. "Those all sound like poisons, not medicine."

"Every medicinal herb carries risk alongside its benefit," she said simply. "Divine lotus burns. Web plant, used wrong, stitches your organs shut and suffocates you. Thunder seed can cause the body to explode outright. Din stem is, frankly, lethal to most martial spirits."

"So how exactly is any of that supposed to rebuild my meridians instead of ending me," Ken asked, only half certain he wanted the answer.

"My Recreation Flame can blend the four together safely," Mirinda said. "But without willow grass, which regrows lost limbs, meridians, and spirit pathways, the entire refinement fails regardless. There is no version of this pill without it."

---

They found the lake almost by accident, tucked into a hidden pocket of the forest where drought had dried everything else to dust. Vivid, glowing flowers floated across the water's surface, rooted somewhere beneath.

"That has to be it," Ken said, half stumbling toward the bank, throat dry and legs aching. "Willow grass."

"Do not," Mirinda snapped, sharp enough to freeze him mid-step. "Wherever willow grows this size, something is always guarding it. A specimen that large would have taken a full century to mature. That makes it valuable. It also makes it a trap."

Ken hesitated at the water's edge, weighing exhaustion against caution, and exhaustion won by a narrow margin. He nicked his palm on instinct, letting a single drop of blood fall into the lake.

The water responded immediately, boiling up around the willow roots in a churning ring.

Then something massive broke the surface with a roar that shook birds out of the trees for a quarter mile.

A scaled serpent, easily the size of a small house, rose up dripping and furious, fixing its attention directly on Ken.

"Sea serpents feed their own spirit Qi to willow grass every year," Mirinda said quickly, her voice tightening. "It strengthens the herb in exchange for the serpent's own breakthrough later. This one sits at level four already, strong enough to rival a peak Beast Master." A beat of silence, heavy with everything she was not saying. "If you want that willow, Le Ken, you have no choice left. You will have to kill it."

Ken stared up at the serpent towering over him, blood still dripping from his palm into water that was very clearly already furious about it.

"Of course," he muttered. "Of course it is a dragon-sized snake guarding the one plant I actually need."