Chapter 7: Secret Realm Development

Inside the room, Xu Guifen calmed herself for quite a while before finally speaking:

“The food you brought back yesterday… that wasn’t picked from the back mountain either, was it?”

Ji Tangtang nodded.

Ji Changming and Xu Guifen exchanged a look. Their lips moved a few times, but in the end they didn’t ask where those things had come from. After all, last night Ji Tangtang had already said she’d had a fateful encounter, something related to the heavens, and that it couldn’t be spoken of. If the two of them pressed her and their daughter accidentally revealed a secret, bringing disaster upon herself, what would they do then? Meeting each other’s gaze, they both decided not to ask further.

Xu Guifen held Ji Tangtang’s hand and whispered a warning:

“Tangtang, outside right now they’re smashing the Four Olds, you know that, right? You mustn’t let anyone else know about the things you’ve told us, understand?”

Ji Tangtang nodded. She had read about this in books, understood it was called “feudal superstition.” If she were caught, she’d be sent to a labor farm for reform.

“Your little sister is young. You must also keep it from her. If a child lets something slip outside, it could be very bad.”

Still uneasy, Xu Guifen went on nagging:

“And Gu Shiyu— even if you two become husband and wife, some secrets cannot be told. A person’s heart is hidden in their chest—who knows what thoughts he might have?”

Ji Tangtang understood these principles even better than they did. In fact, by revealing her extraordinary nature today, she had already been testing them. If the couple had shown even the slightest hint of bad intentions toward her, she wouldn’t have treated them the way she did now. But seeing that they truly regarded her wholeheartedly as their daughter and thought only for her sake, she was willing to follow the karmic bond and treat them as her own parents.

Xu Guifen rambled on for a long while, carefully pointing out every danger she could think of before she finally stopped.

“Mom, you’ve been working hard all morning. Have something to eat.”

Ji Tangtang handed a large fruit to Xu Guifen, then gave several more to Ji Changming.

“Dad, you eat too. Eat more, and your leg will heal faster.”

Last night, while helping Ji Changming, she had already examined his injury. His broken leg bone had long since set, but the reason it hadn’t recovered was mainly due to malnutrition, which slowed healing. These fruits contained spiritual energy that could help his wounds recover.

Hearing this, Ji Changming suddenly understood:

“No wonder my wound hasn’t hurt today.”

“Eat it.” Xu Guifen pushed the fruit in her hand toward Ji Changming. “Eat it and get well quickly.”

Ji Changming also wished he could recover faster. He truly couldn’t bear to let his wife and daughters shoulder all the family’s burdens. But still, he refused the fruit his wife handed over.

“The child gave it to you— you should eat.”

“Dad, Mom, don’t argue. There are plenty more here. Eat as much as you like. We won’t run out.”

Ji Tangtang placed the basket of fruit in front of them, picked up the two pheasants, and turned into the kitchen, swiftly slaughtering them. Since there was only an hour’s break for lunch, there wasn’t enough time to stew the pheasants. They would have to wait until evening.

At noon, Ji Tangtang still had no choice but to eat a bowl of coarse grain porridge. Across both of her lives, she had never eaten anything so awful. She didn’t even want to bother planting corn. It tasted so terrible that even if she grew it, she wouldn’t want to eat it.

She had been reborn to enjoy life, not to suffer.

She had eaten rice before, during her previous life when she had gone down to the mortal world— it tasted very good, far better than this corn. So in the afternoon, while transplanting rice seedlings, she quietly slipped a few bundles into the secret realm.

When work ended in the evening, she went to the brigade leader to request leave. Liu Daocheng was very satisfied with Ji Tangtang’s performance today. The accountant recorded 8 work points for her. Upon hearing that she wanted leave to go to the city to buy medicine for her father, he readily approved, even encouraging her with a few kind words, telling her to keep working hard in the future.

With her leave approved, Ji Tangtang happily went home.

Once home, she took a hoe and some tools, shut the door, and entered the secret realm.

The secret realm was vast, with areas even she hadn’t explored in her past life. But she knew where land could be cleared for planting rice. From what she had learned today, rice had to be grown in paddy fields. And she knew of just such a place within the secret realm— one that could simulate human rice fields. Not only were there no large spirit beasts, but the water there also contained spiritual energy. Perhaps she might be able to grow spiritual rice.

Spiritual rice not only tasted good, but also aided cultivation. However, aside from the rare instances where it formed naturally in extremely dense spiritual energy, most spiritual rice had to be cultivated and modified by immortal sects using special methods or secret techniques. She didn’t dare hold too much hope.

Soon, Ji Tangtang arrived at the land she had chosen earlier. There was a spiritual spring there, whose water overflowed daily, forming a pond. All she needed to do was clear a few terraces below the pond to form paddies.

Because the pond water was from the spiritual spring, the overflowing water made the surrounding vegetation flourish. Around it grew not only precious medicinal herbs and flowers, but also plenty of edible wild vegetables and fruits.

Ji Tangtang couldn’t bear to destroy the fruit trees, so while clearing land she avoided them whenever possible. If she couldn’t avoid them, she carefully dug them up to replant later. The valuable herbs and flowers she also dug up, setting them aside for safekeeping.

Clearing land was slow work to begin with, all the more so since she was careful not to harm the fruit trees or the medicinal herbs and flowers. Fortunately, time in the secret realm flowed differently from outside— inside, time moved more slowly.

She didn’t have a watch and had never precisely calculated the time difference between the secret realm and the outside world. But based on her feeling, a little over an hour in the secret realm was equal to only about ten minutes outside.

Ji Tangtang busied herself in the secret realm for three to four hours. After opening up a plot of farmland, she came out carrying the wild vegetables she had dug up while clearing land, along with the fruits she had just picked.

Although Ji Changming’s leg was injured, it wasn’t a problem for him to lean on a crutch and do some light household chores. After eating the wild fruit his daughter had brought back, he felt much more energetic than before. The wound on his leg no longer hurt, and he was brimming with strength.

That afternoon, after Xu Guifen and the daughters had gone to work, he leaned on his crutch and tidied up the house back and forth. Afterwards, he stewed the pheasants Ji Tangtang had brought out at noon. Following her instructions, he also washed a few of the golden-yellow fruits and put them in the pot to stew together with the chicken.

He didn’t know what the golden fruits were called, but after simmering in the pot with the chicken for more than half an hour, the fruit blended into the broth, releasing a strange yet delightful fragrance.

Smelling the aroma, Ji Changming secretly felt fortunate. Back then, after his parents had scorned him and Guifen for giving birth to only a daughter and then having no more children, while his second brother’s family quickly had two sons, they had insisted on dividing the households. Using the excuse that his second brother had more children and their family had only a daughter who wouldn’t need to marry a wife in the future, they refused to give him and his wife a share of the old house.

He and his wife had to rely on her family’s help to secure land and build their own home. Now, their house stood farther from the old family home, with no close neighbors around. Otherwise, if this fragrance had drifted out, those people at the old house would surely have come to make trouble again.