Xiulan's life has never been normal, but this time, it felt like the heavens had handed him a tragedy wrapped in carrot peel.
A completely normal, orange, root vegetable that Xiulan had grown using his usual farming rituals: a bit of humming to the soil, three drops of melted mountain snow, and exactly one wink at the sun spirit while turning counter-clockwise in a circle. Very standard stuff.
Only… this carrot had a rune on it.
A real, glowing, slightly humming spiritual rune.
"I didn't put that there," Xiulan said thoughtfully, holding it up by the green top. "Maybe it wanted attention."
The rune pulsed. Then glittered. Then purred.
Yes, purred. That too very prettily.
Uncle Hei peered over his shoulder, sniffed the carrot, and immediately turned away with a scowl. "That thing reeks of trouble."
Baby Po, meanwhile, was delighted. "How wonderful! Our vegetables are finally developing personality!"
Xiulan was not sure whether to be proud or mildly terrified as the carrot opened its mouth. Xiulan never knew his carrots had a mouth.
The truth was, Xiulan had doodled on the carrot a few days ago. With diluted beast-blood ink. He had been experimenting(playing) with spiritual symbols—most of them copied from scrolls left behind(snatched from) by wandering cultivators or simply made up based on squirrel tail patterns. He did not remember exactly what that one meant.
He flipped open his Leaf Diary of Very Serious Theories (He got a new one from Elder Redcheeks):
"Rune on carrot = perhaps attract bunnies? Or wind spirits? Maybe accidental marriage proposal to nearby mountain?"
It was not the worst outcome he had had. (That was still the time he painted a rain-warding charm(they were drops confined in scrawls) onto a pumpkin and caused a five-day drought over the north wing of the forest. Oops.)
He decided not to worry about it.
The next day, four cultivators from a mid-tier sect arrived.
"Excuse us," one said reverently, holding out a talisman. "Is this the sacred farm of the… uh… Great Spiritual Gardener?"
Xiulan blinked. "No. This is my farm."
"Ah!" they all gasped together. "You must be the Immortal Leaf Cultivator!"
"I am not immortal."
Another collective gasp.
"…Is this about the carrot?" he asked.
"Yes! We heard a single bite led to a breakthrough in cultivation! Someone reached peak foundation stage overnight!"
Xiulan tilted his head. "You are not supposed to eat it. It hums."
"It… hums?"
"Like this—mmmnnnnnnn~"
They stared at him. Then, as if in a trance, each one dropped to their knees before the carrot patch and began bowing respectfully to the soil.
Xiulan looked at them strangely feeling there was something weird about them. He even moved a few steps away.
Uncle Hei emerged from the hut just in time to mutter, "And so begins the carrot cult."
What followed was chaos, devotion, and unexpectedly good commerce.
Sects began sending disciples to volunteer on the farm. "Just to be near the sacred soil," they said. "For inspiration."
One golden-robed elder tried to meditate near the potato bed for a week straight. A wandering alchemist tried to graft carrot leaves into his hair. A beggar-turned-spiritual-swordsman declared the radish patch a "blessed sword-forging ground." There was one that achieved some breakthrough.
Sage Brother Long-tail said that he has never seen so many cultivators frequenting the forest, something related to the dense spiritual energy.
But the real chaos started when someone unearthed another rune-marked vegetable.
A turnip.
It shrieked.
And then exploded into fireworks.
Xiulan was horrified. "They're not supposed to detonate!"
Baby Po patted his head. "I think it was just feeling emotional."
Uncle Hei grabbed a hoe and declared all "suspicious crops" must now be tested by the squirrel unit.
The squirrels agreed. For a price. (They demanded glow berries and front-row seats at the next mushroom festival. They were very attracted to the sacrificial mushroom from the last party, the one that flirts and seduces.)
To Xiulan, it was just farming. To the rest of the cultivation world, it was divine mystery.
The truth? Xiulan's body naturally attracted all types of qi, converting them into pure spiritual energy. His emotions, whims, even his lazy doodles… subtly shifted the natural order around him. The soil remembered. The vegetables responded.
To the forest? Normal.
To humans? Legendary.
Which is where Young Master Jin came in.
A demon cultivator-turned-handsome businessman, brother Jin was a fox in origin but pure gold when it came to business. Literally. The man was obsessed with coins—gold taels, silver pieces, copper jingle-jangles. He hoarded wealth with all the shameless grace of a dragon, yet ran his trade houses with frightening efficiency and wore silks woven with charm-imbued thread.
He was also Xiulan's honorary elder brother.
"I love you dearly, my little sprout," he declared, upon seeing the rune-carrot. "But these metal Lints you hate? I will take them. All of them."
Xiulan wrinkled his nose. "They're heavy and tasteless."
"They're not food!" Jin cried, clutching his chest like he'd been insulted. Then, arms thrown dramatically to the sky, he shouted,
"Let the gold taels fall like heavenly rain! Drown me in wealth, I beg you!"
Uncle Hei muttered, "Let a gold tael explode on his head."
In truth, Jin was respected in the human world, even if occasionally labeled eccentric. He managed businesses, trained young merchants, and had the ear of a few cultivator clans. His warehouses moved spiritual treasures disguised as cabbages. His guards wore silk socks with embedded qi wards. His fox ears twitched only when profits were involved.
But his softest heart always belonged to Xiulan.
"You keep growing vegetables that make idiots ascend," Jin grinned, hoisting a basket of turnips onto his back. "I'll keep building temples around your name. Deal?"
Xiulan nodded seriously. "But you can't call me a boy."
Thunder rolled faintly in the distance.
"Wouldn't dare," Jin said smoothly, adjusting his jade collar pin.
By the end of the month:
Six sect flags fluttered near the carrot bed.Gold-tael donations poured into the fox brother's ledgers.A monk had opened a shrine next to the cucumber plot.Jin had started trademarking phrases like "Farm of Enlightenment" and "Root to Heaven."
That night, in his Leaf Diary, Xiulan wrote:
"Rune carrot = maybe emotional. Maybe secretly powerful. Also, I think brother Jin has started selling radishes with motivational phrases carved into them. He calls them cheap business, I call them sham business. He wanted me to write some quote too, I denied, those slogans were shady."
"Slogan of the week: 'Break Through or Root Out!' (??? Very confusing.)"
He ended the entry with a doodle of a gold-tael being hugged by a fox tail, labeled:
Outside, vegetables hummed faint lullabies in the soil, disciples meditated peacefully beneath flowering vines, and somewhere under the moonlight, a certain fox brother was cackling while counting taels—his grin sharper than any sword.
And then, with perfect comedic timing, the heavens—or perhaps fate itself—answered.
Thud.
A sack of precisely one hundred gold taels crashed down on Brother Jin's head with all the subtlety of divine judgment.
He did not even flinch. Just smiled wider. From the day, he has known Xiulan, such incidents weren't exactly uncommon.
Because truly, if Xiulan's love could be measured in currency… then it was worth its weight in gold.
Just another peaceful, spiritually confusing, money-laced day on the farm.