NOVEL NEXT Chapter 16: Lunch × Spirit Oxen
Chapter 16: Lunch × Spirit Oxen
After scattering all the spirit rice seeds and using the Green Spirit Technique five times to enhance their vitality, Li Xi quickly headed to her family’s spirit field.
One of her family’s spirit fields was about three li away, not very far. With Li Xi’s pace, she could reach it in less than two quarters of an hour.
It was on a small plain downstream of the Qingxi River, where the soil was fertile. The quality of the spirit field was almost second-grade, considered the best in the area.
Li Xi walked under the midday sun, hurrying along the way. By the time she reached her family’s spirit field, she was sweating quite a bit.
This spirit field was very large. According to Li Shan, it was a full hundred mu.
At this time, the Li family members were still working hard in the spirit field, sweating profusely. They didn’t notice Li Xi’s arrival as she was too far away on the field ridge.
However, Li Xi didn’t rush to call them. Instead, she went directly to a nearby wooden house.
This wooden house was made entirely of wood, showing its natural color. It looked very plain, even seeming somewhat rudimentary compared to Li Xi’s family courtyard.
Having weathered time, the cabin showed overlapping traces of old and new repairs.
Li Xi opened the wooden door. Inside, it was divided into two rooms by wooden boards. The inner room had a wooden bed and an oil lamp, with bare walls otherwise.
The outer room had a wooden table with a few stools, a kettle and some cups, and several sets of bowls and chopsticks on the table. Not far from the table was a simple stove.
There were also a few piles of firewood stacked there.
Li Xi added some firewood and dry grass to the stove and lit it with a fire starter.
She hadn’t learned the Fireball Technique yet, so she could only use this method.
When the flames in the stove were burning strongly, she realized she hadn’t added water to the pot. She quickly cast a Spirit Rain Technique, compressing the rain’s range to within the pot’s diameter. When she saw that the bottom of the pot was mostly filled with water, she withdrew her spiritual power, finally managing to heat up the meat pies she and her sisters-in-law had prepared in advance.
She and her two sisters-in-law had made several hundred meat pies in advance, barely enough for the family’s consumption during spring plowing. This time, she was only heating a small portion that had been brought here, with the majority still at home.
The ice blocks their family had stored in winter hadn’t melted yet, which was convenient for preserving the meat pies. However, they couldn’t do this in summer when all their ice would have melted long ago.
When the aroma of the meat pies rose with the steam from the pot, indicating they were heated through, Li Xi went outside and called loudly, “Father, Mother! Brothers, Sisters-in-law! Lunch is ready, take a break and come eat!”
The Li family members who were busy in the spirit field heard Li Xi’s voice and straightened up, all simultaneously reaching back to massage their backs.
Although they were fortunate to live under the Tianyan Sect’s rule, where all citizens had the opportunity for immortal cultivation, as long as they hadn’t reached Foundation Building, they were still mortals. After a morning of intense labor, everyone felt sore in their backs.
Everyone stretched a bit, and Li He and Li Jiang led the spirit oxen, which had also worked all morning, to graze and drink water near the riverbank a short distance away.
Li Xi hurried to the field ridge to greet her parents as they came out, reaching out to support them.
“Go away, your parents aren’t old enough to need support. We can walk on our own!” Li Shan said before Li Xi could get close.
“I just thought you must be tired after working all morning,” Li Xi said with a smile, walking beside them towards the wooden house after being rejected.
Finally, when they bit into the meat pies, the delicious meat filling and pastry sliding down their throats, everyone truly felt some relaxation after a morning of hard work.
“Sister-in-law and Seventh Sister really made these meat pies delicious!” Li Jiang exclaimed with his mouth full, taking big bites.
They had been hungry since early morning. Everyone ate the meat pies in big mouthfuls, even Wu Jingwan, who usually paid attention to etiquette, couldn’t help but eat a bit hastily.
Moreover, although these meat pies weren’t freshly made, their deliciousness couldn’t be masked.
Li Xi, being small, ate less than the others. After she finished and put down her chopsticks, she went to check on the spirit oxen.
It wouldn’t be good if someone took advantage of the spirit oxen grazing by the river to lead them away, or if the oxen wandered off on their own.
At this time, the two spirit oxen were still at their original spot by the riverbank, contentedly grazing.
Seeing that none of her concerns had materialized, Li Xi breathed a sigh of relief.
Then, she casually picked a blade of grass by the river, stripped off the excess leaves, and put only the stem in her mouth, savoring its sweet freshness as she sat down on a nearby rock to rest.
“This grass tastes quite sweet, no wonder cows love to eat it,” Li Xi thought, tilting her head back to look at the sky, her hands propped behind her, enjoying a rare moment of leisure as the spring breeze gently caressed her.
The riverside in spring was truly beautiful. The waters of the Qingxi River sparkled in the sunlight, clear to the bottom. In the deeper parts, a few spirit fish could be seen swimming and foraging.
Large patches of tender green grass grew along the banks, dotted with small yellow flowers. The two spirit oxen specifically chose grass clumps with small flowers to roll into their mouths and chew.
The spirit oxen were as tall as two people, their bodies covered in robust muscles. Their full, powerful thighs showed they were excellent for plowing fields, and indeed they were more skilled at plowing than other ordinary spirit oxen.
They had very delicate features, with big cow eyes, thick eyelashes, and short horns on their heads.
These two spirit oxen were of a breed called Level One Spirit Ox Plowing No. 3.
Hearing this simple and straightforward name, one could easily associate it with Level One Spirit Rice No. 5. Indeed, this type of spirit ox was also a breed specially cultivated by the Tianyan Sect to help people farm better.
In recent decades, for some unknown reason, the Tianyan Sect often introduced new things, including seeds and spirit beasts. These things greatly benefited low-level cultivators, and since almost everyone under the Tianyan Sect’s rule was an ordinary person who could cultivate, they were the largest beneficiary group. As a result, the Tianyan Sect’s reputation among ordinary people kept improving.
Li Xi sat there until the afternoon. When she saw it was time, she led the two oxen back to the spirit field, one in each hand. The oxen were very docile and obedient, following along with just a gentle tug from Li Xi.
The Li family members, also rested, got up to start working again. Li Jiang chuckled when he saw Li Xi’s small figure sandwiched between the two tall spirit oxen in the distance.
Was his little sister really that small?
The afternoon’s work was the same as the morning’s, nothing new. The Li family had deliberately divided the hundred mu spirit field into four parts. This morning they had sown spirit seeds in one-quarter, and this afternoon they would sow another quarter, leaving the remaining half for tomorrow.
With the help of the spirit oxen, they could take occasional breaks, which was already much better than when they couldn’t afford to rent spirit oxen.
However, they still couldn’t relax completely, because their family didn’t just have this hundred mu spirit field. They also had two more spirit fields of seventy mu and fifty mu that needed to be cultivated before the spring break ended.