Chapter 44: Cloud Valley (Please collect and read)
After meditating for two hours.

Chen An recovered most of his spiritual power.

He shook the empty porcelain bottle of medicine, his eyes dimmed.

Ever since the immortal seed was planted, most of his spiritual energy has been consumed on it. Although his cultivation has not been hindered, the amount of Qi-nourishing Pills he consumes is increasing day by day.

Now, I have to ask the Second Elder to buy a few bottles to deal with the emergency.

On weekdays, apart from some pills and seeds, Chen An doesn’t spend too many spirit stones on other things, and he has accumulated quite a few over the years.

The extra spiritual materials harvested can basically meet daily needs as long as Chen Lun is asked to help sell a small portion of them in the market occasionally.

Walking on Yunwu Mountain, Chen An discovered that there were many new faces in the tribe recently.

He could recognize some of them, all of whom were young members of the family who had joined in recent years.

Some are descendants of monks from the mountains.

Some were children with spiritual roots who were selected from the mortal towns at the foot of the mountain. When they reached the age to practice cultivation, their families brought them to Yunwu Mountain to practice.

But no matter which one it was, Chen An had some impression of it.

The remaining cultivators seemed to be unfamiliar faces that had only appeared recently. Their cultivation level was at the first or second level of Qi training, and most of them were between sixteen and twenty years old.

Judging from my impression, it doesn't seem to be either of the first two.

Chen An came to the second elder with doubts.

After exchanging the tortoise shell leaf for the Qi-nourishing Pill, Chen An asked, "There have been a lot of new faces in the clan recently. Are they outsiders?"

The second elder, Chen Rui, nodded and said, "He is indeed not a member of the Chen family. He is the son-in-law we recruited last month."

"Son-in-law?" Chen An was surprised.

"The family is in a period of transition, and the number of young and strong cultivators is increasing slowly. Some of them died or were injured during the last trip to the ruins and cave. Recruiting a son-in-law is a last resort." The second elder looked helpless.

Chen An suddenly realized that for a family that makes a living by farming, population is the greatest resource.

As long as there are enough young and strong monks in the clan, they can open up a large number of spiritual fields on the mountain and increase the clan's income from growing spiritual plants.

Once the income is increased, everything else will be easy.

“Where did these people come from?”

Chen An was worried that recruiting all kinds of people would bring chaos to the family.

He didn't want to disrupt his current comfortable life of farming and practicing.

"They are all from Qingyun Sect, the unsuccessful immortal seedlings."

The second elder, Chen Rui, saw Chen An's worry and said, "When recruiting, the family has already eliminated the princes and nobles from the mortal realm, as well as people from other immortal cultivation families. All of them have clean origins."

He took a deep look at Chen An and said, "You are not young anymore."

Chen An's heart tightened: "It's not too big."

He quickly changed the subject: "By the way, I heard that you recently started refining Qi Gathering Pills, how is it going?"

The Qi Gathering Pill is a pill that assists cultivators in the late stage of Qi training. It is only a matter of time before Chen An advances to the late stage of Qi training, so he asked casually.

"Oh, forget it."

The second elder had a worried look on his face: "The success rate of refining Qi-gathering Pills is not high. The small amount of Qi-gathering Pills that were refined were all taken away by the Patriarch and Chen Zishun."

Chen An's heart moved. Chen Qing and Chen Zishun were the two youngest cultivators in the clan who were in the late stage of Qi training.

If there is anyone who hopes to achieve perfection in Qi training in the end, it must be them.

Combined with the news of their previous retreat, even if the Chen family does not have the Foundation Establishment Pill, they at least have the Heavenly Spirit Fruit!
Seeing that he was about to enter the late stage of Qi training, Chen An had to start thinking about his foundation building.

The Foundation Establishment Pill is hard to come by, and he doesn't have any good solution now, so he can only take it one step at a time.

Unless there is really no other way, Chen An is absolutely unwilling to go out to look for opportunities.

After all, the danger is too great. If you are unlucky and encounter a calamity cultivator, you will die instantly.

But if it really comes to that, I'm afraid I'll have to face it.

In the blink of an eye, one year has passed.

During this period, Chen An occasionally paid attention to that group of sons-in-law.

Since they were recruited, the family has assigned each of them one or more mortal women from the Chen family.

They are all well-educated, fair-skinned and beautiful ladies, talented women who are proficient in music, chess, calligraphy and painting. The only shortcoming is that they have no spiritual roots and cannot practice.

A year later, the sons-in-law lived up to expectations and three of them successfully gave birth to children.

The head of the family, Chen Qing, was overjoyed and gave the three people magical instruments, fifty spirit stones and one hundred kilograms of spirit rice as rewards as encouragement.

These people were born in ordinary mortal families. It was a great honor for them to embark on the path of Taoism. Seeing that having a child would bring such a generous reward, they were all like hardworking old oxen, working hard in the fields.

Chen An originally didn't have much hope for this matter.

Yunwu Mountain is mostly made up of rocks and has less soil. Even though there is a first-level spiritual vein, there is not much land that can be cultivated.

At most, we can cultivate another 100 acres of first-grade low-quality spiritual fields, and that will be the limit.

By then, the development of the Chen family will basically come to an end, unless the spiritual fields are upgraded on a large scale.

But recently, things have taken a turn for the better.

Fifty miles north of the Yunwu Mountains, there is a valley called Yunwu Valley. Not long ago, a first-level spiritual vein was actually derived in the valley!
The valley is flat and open with fertile soil, making it more suitable for cultivating spiritual fields than the Yunwu Mountain.

For the Chen family today, this is enormous wealth.

Most of the spiritual plant masters in the tribe signed up and went to cultivate spiritual fields.

Among them were Chen Lun, Chen Youliang and Chen Yuyi.

Chen An is not very interested in this for the time being.

The Liu family would definitely be the first one to be dissatisfied with such overwhelming wealth, and might even send people to sabotage it halfway.

He could go and take a look when things there were completely stable. With his current means, it wouldn't make much difference whether he went early or late.

More importantly, the Eight Treasures Spirit Tree seemed to be hungry every day, and he really couldn't leave.

Before Chen Lun went to the market to do some business, Chen An had asked him to buy some herbal essences.

Look at the time, he should be back soon.

Five days later.

Chen An stood in the spiritual field, sweating profusely.

I have just fed the Eight Spirit Treasure Tree with dozens of soul-nourishing techniques. Now its dantian is empty and its body feels a little empty.

He was about to return to the cave to meditate and recover.

Chen Lun comes to visit.

Chen An's face lit up with joy, and he activated the Mist Concealment Array to cover the spiritual field. He didn't care about his empty body, and walked out of the array with light steps.

"Brother Chen Lun, how is it? Have you got the essence of plants?" Chen An silently practiced his skills, forcing himself to look less frivolous.

“I bought it, but…”

Chen Lun looked at Chen An, whose face was slightly pale, with a strange expression: "Youyuetan is extremely difficult to cultivate. I really don't understand why you grow this thing."

After saying that, he handed over a storage bag.

It was no secret that Chen An asked for the Youyuetan seeds from the second elder, and many people knew about it.

He also used this as an excuse to ask the other party to bring back the essence of plants.

Chen An waved his hand and said, "Since we've already planted them, why not give it a try?"

He took the storage bag and took a look at it. There were two jars, one big and one small. The big jar contained ten kilograms of first-grade medium-quality plant essence, while the small jar contained two kilograms of high-quality essence.

After exchanging the other party's spiritual materials for spirit stones and buying the essence of plants, there were still thirty spirit stones left.

Plus a small bag of spiritual seeds.

Chen An took out thirty spirit stones and gave them all to Chen Lun.

"Thank you, brother. This is just a small token of my respect."

"You're too polite, brother. It's just something that comes to my mind."

Although he said this, Chen Lun took the spirit stone without hesitation.

Before leaving, he reminded me: "Call me next time if you want to bring something with you!"

(End of this chapter)