CBGC – Chapter 16

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Chapter 16: Harmed by Insect Pests

Su Tingyun was able to see it using her spiritual consciousness.

Since she was able to see it, maybe she could try touching it and pinching those gold colored bugs to death like ants? In the past she just concentrated her attention and wished really hard to see the situation on the other side of the array as if her life depended on it. In the end she really was able to see it, so she has always felt that whenever she experienced this out of body experience, things would happen as long as she wished for it.

She was just like the God in her own world. God said let there be light, and then there was light! It was just that sadly, this kind of state couldn’t be controlled, so she couldn’t tell when it would occur.

Su Tingyun focused all of her attention onto that bug. The gold colored bug continuously enlarged in her consciousness and gradually, she seemed to have ended up in a strange space. Inside this space, other than that gold colored bug, there wasn’t anything else around! Su Tingyun seemed to be able to see even its antennae and mouthparts; she could see it chewing the Purple Costus Roots. She imagined herself reaching out her fingers and squeezing that bug to death. After a unknown amount of time, Su Tingyun saw the bug that was originally chomping down suddenly stop. It nervously looked around and it revealed a look of fright. Then in the next instant, it really died!

Su Tingyun followed up her victory by pressing on with her attack and continued to crush all the other gold colored little dots to death. Once she finished, before she could even relax a breath in relief, she suddenly felt a head-splitting headache. In the next second, a lacerating pain transmitted from within her body and Su Tingyun’s sight turned dark. In the next instant, she sat straight up on the stone bed, turned to her side, stretched her head over the side of the stone bed and puked.

This one puke was quite world-shaking. She vomited to the point everything in her stomach was cleanly vomited up, but still felt nauseous as if she needed to forcefully vomit out all five visceras and six bowels. Those who know nothing have nothing to fear.(This is just a saying about ignorance) At this time, Su Tingyun was completely unaware that she had just achieved something the majority of cultivators could never achieve in their entire lifetimes. A cultivator that had just entered the first stage of Qi Condensation had learned, on their own, how to manipulate a spiritual consciousness attack.

Su Tingyun didn’t know how long she’d vomited for. In any case, she didn’t have a single shred of energy left by the end. Her head felt like it was bored through with a drill and her brain felt like it was twisted then smashed. She was in so much pain that she couldn’t sleep at all and just lay there with her eyes open till dawn arrived. However, she still didn’t have the energy to go out even after the day broke. She forced herself to up, but as she was walking she would continuously sway left and right. After cleaning up the vomitted mess with great difficulty, Su Tingyun felt like there was no way she could move anymore.

She laid down again. After a long time, she finally fell asleep, and with this one sleep she slept an entire day and night.

The next time she woke up, Su Tingyun felt that her headache had eased quite a bit. She rubbed her eyes, then looked towards the Purple Costus Root on the table. In the end her body suddenly froze, her brain was practically about to explode! Didn’t she painstakingly kill all those gold colored little bugs? Why is the Purple Costus Root still dying?

This Purple Costus Root’s leaves had all turned black and there was no life in it at all anymore.

Su Tingyun was worried to death. She was worried that she might have missed something that day and didn’t pick out all the inflected Purple Costus Roots. If that was the case, her field was definitely done for. Su Tingyun hurriedly rushed to her field, no longer caring about her headache or the fact that her legs were completely weak anymore. When she saw the completely matured, verdant and lush field of Purple Costus Roots, the stone over her heart fell to the ground and she took a deep breath.

Right now all the Purple Costus Roots were matured. She didn’t waste anymore time and quickly plucked all the Purple Costus Roots in the field and stored them in the boxes that Manager Song had specially distributed. Box after box, she stacked the medicinal grass up next to the side of the field, creating a small hill. Manager Song didn’t give her a spatial universe bag so Su Tingyun could only polish herself by running back and forth several rounds in order to bring these one hundred boxes back to the pavilion building.

It wasn’t due to the fact that they were too heavy though, but rather because the boxes were too smooth. If she carried too much they would definitely fall onto the ground and break.

Just as Su Tingyun lifted up about thirty boxes and was just about to leave, Manager Song brought people over again. They didn’t enter the medicinal field but through some unknown technique, Su Tingyun was able to hear their words even while standing by the field.

“Old Madam Wei, your medicinal field wasn’t infected?” Manager Song’s tone was urgent as he asked. The three people next to him were wearing the same color and style of gown as him, they were probably the other managers of this Heaven Jade Pavilion, Su Tingyun thought.

“No.” Su Tingyun opened a box and took out some just plucked Purple Costus Roots for them to see, “They’re fine, it’s truly the old heavens’ providence!”

Manager Song saw clearly the freshly plucked Purple Costus Roots whose spiritual energy was reaching the summit of the first rank. He felt that this Old Madam Wei’s luck wasn’t just an average amount of good. They had gone with Manager Xu to other spirit fields and nine-tenths of them had already been infected. Furthermore, everyone worked together to think of ideas but they still couldn’t find the root of the problem.

“You’re planning to carry them back right now? You don’t have a spatial universe bag?” The lowest rank spatial universe bag only costs a few pieces of low rank spirit stones. Of course, it can’t carry a lot, but it was an essential item for cultivators. Manager Song never thought that she wouldn’t even have a spatial universe bag so naturally he didn’t prepare one for her. “Right now, all the spirit herbalists are assembling at Spring Water Pavilion, you should go as well! I’ll help you pack away this medicinal grass and hand them up for you when the time comes.”

He didn’t wait for Su Tingyun to agree. She only felt that there seemed to be a hand that pushed her directly out of the field. But after getting out, she discovered that Manager Song and the rest were quite far away from her. Furthermore, a faint, strange whirlwind had appeared, separating them.

“Your field wasn’t infected so your body is naturally fine as well. For the time being, don’t come too close to us.”

Su Tingyun followed Manager Song and the rest to Spring Water Pavilion. She didn’t know how to fly and was sent up by them using a cool breeze. That feeling of being suspended in midair was quite mysterious; when she had the chance she definitely had to learn and try it for herself.

At this time, there were several hundred cultivators gathered in Spring Water Pavilion. They were separated into left and right sides. The left side had a bunch of cultivators, but the right side barely had ten people.

The left side was making a racket and arguing quite fiercely while the few on the right side were whispering like they were conspiring some great national plot. It was very clear that the left side was the infected side and the right side was the still normal side. Su Tingyun looked closely and saw that Qi Suzhen wasn’t in the crowd. Wonder how that female cultivator was doing right now?

Following Manager Song’s instructions, Su Tingyun walked towards the right side. When she went over, a cultivator shone a mirror-like artifact at her for a long time before she was met with everyone’s inquiries.

“Grannie, is your field alright as well?” The person speaking was a youth with ordinary features. His face carried a bit of a smile as he extended his hand and pointed towards the stool next to him, “Grannie, come over and sit.”

“En, thanks ah.” Su Tingyun walked over and had just sat down when she heard a rather handsome little pretty boy that was sitting on the other side raise his voice to ask: “Old woman, what did you plant?”

One gave a call of grannie, one gave a call of old woman. The first impression that the two gave Su Tingyun was different as heaven and earth. Even though the handsome but effeminate pretty boy was much better looking and could probably be a celebrity in her previous world, but ever since she saw her family’s putative husbandT/N, just based on outer appearance Su Tingyun felt like everyone else became mud, the mud on the ground.

And as for Su Lijiang, he’s that cloud in the sky.

“Purple Costus Root.”

Su Tingyun replied honestly. The result was that she heard the other side laugh, “Didn’t I just say so? This time, the lower rank the plants are, the harder it is for it to get infected. They’re all low level spirit herbalists, the plants they planted were also low rank medicinal grass, what kind of good idea can we hope to come out of them?” His voice had just fallen when the expressions of the people on the right side all turned quite unsightly. One of the ordinary youth’s among them’s face turned completely red and he said a bit resentfully, “We’ve been helping you guys think of ideas this entire time. Zhang Hao, how could you say things like this!?”

“Isn’t everything I said the truth?” Zhang Hao gave a cold humph and extended his hand to point over one by one, “Second rank, second rank, third rank… Out of your group, the best medicinal plant is only one that just reached third rank, and it’s even the worst of the third rank. Right now another trash first rank Purple Costus Root came, isn’t this completely obvious? The infection this time only targets high ranked medicinal grasses. Your fields not getting infected has nothing to do with your planting ability, but instead the fact that your abilities are too weak to plant high rank medicinal grasses!”

“Precisely, bunch of useless trash.” Everyone felt not only disdain, but resentment and envy in their hearts towards the people on this side.. Now that someone had taken the lead, quite a few people joined in the sneering.

“Your mouth is full of bullshit, continuously babbling nonsense!” The person that spoke was a middle-aged woman. She put one hand on her hip as she fiercely cursed back at Zhang Hao. Zhang Hao was immediately ticked off but just as he was about to cross over the boundary, several managers moved to stop him. In the end he said with a dark expression: “Xu Niangzi, just you wait!”

“This ma’am will wait to see how you get punished by Master Feng once you’re unable to submit  the medicinal grass!” Xu Niangzi also had a fiery temper. It was just that after she finished speaking, all the people on the right said ‘crap’ in their hearts.

Su Tingyun knew that what this Zhang Hao said was completely unfounded. Even her Purple Costus Roots had been infected. It had nothing to do with being low a rank medicinal plant. Those gold colored bugs were probably hard to discover, causing plants to be infected when they were transported on a person’s body. She asked how these few uninfected cultivators usually worked and found that they were all extremely attentive: they’d always wear different clothes everyday when they headed out to tend to their medicinal fields. This way, it effectively prevented their clothing from being infected by those gold colored little bugs.

Because Su Tingyun’s medicinal farm wasn’t infected, she was quickly accepted by the people on the right side. No one looked down on her lack of ability and she easily blended in.

“Qi Suzhen’s field of medicinal grass was the first to be infected. Afterwards, she rubbed the medicinal grass juice on her body and through coming into contact with Niu Hanshan, infected his medicinal fields. Then, Niu Hanshan asked Manager Xu to come look at the cause of the disease. Manager Xu also frequently checks on the medicinal fields inside the valley, that’s probably why he ended up infecting a lot of medicinal fields.” Su Tingyun made these connections as she casually asked around.

That ordinary youth was called Xu Zhen. At this time, he made a silencing motion and said, “Don’t mention these things.”

“Then that means it was spread through people ah.” Su Tingyun lowered her voice to ask. The voice of this body of hers was quite rough. When she lowered her voice to speak, Su Tingyun felt like her rough voice was not much different from a middle-aged guy, practically causing her to jump in shock.

“But Manager Xu and the rest also went to our farms, and our farms are fine.” Xu Niangzi added.

“Maybe they went to your fields later so their bodies already didn’t have any bugs?” Su Tingyun immediately made another speculation.

“Bugs? What bugs? Are you saying that those were caused by insect pests?”

So it turns out that they still hadn’t found the cause of the infection even now. Su Tingyun silently sweated in her mind. And these people were actually spirit herbalists, they were farming professionals. Unexpectedly, they still hadn’t figured out exactly what was causing mischief. A certain amount of pride subconsciously arose within Su Tingyun.

However, she did know to be low-key as a person. So she forced couple laughs and said: “Could it be that it’s not insect pests? I saw that all those medicinal grass died strangely so I thought there were bugs.”

“Actually, we all think it’s bugs, but no one has found any.”

And only high level poisonous insects could cause this much damage to the medicinal fields in such a short time.

__________
Credits: Translated by Chiyomira, Proofread by Sigil

[Chiyomira’s Corner]
T/N – In regards to the term 便宜相公 which I translated before as husband of convenience since I couldn’t confirm the meaning of the term through searching: I finally found the meaning of it when I came across a similar term, which was 便宜老爹(literally ‘convenient dad’) in a different Chinese novel. So basically, this term has a background meaning of ‘you got it without having to work for it’.

In the past, a ‘convenient dad’ referred to the scenario in which a mother got pregnant but her husband didn’t want her anymore. So she gave the child to a different man that had feelings for her, and that man becomes the ‘convenient dad’. It also refers to when the other person recognizes you as a big brother or big sister on their own accord, not caring if you agree or not.

In cultivation terms, after you transmigrate your father doesn’t have true blood (spiritual) relationship with you. But you still have a father and son/daughter relationship with him. So in this kind of situation you can call him a ‘convenient dad’.

But since ‘convenient husband’ sounds not quite right and doesn’t encompass the main meaning which is pretty much ‘so-called’, I’m using a synonym of supposed which is putative. The dictionary defines it as “generally considered or reputed to be”, i.e. the putative father of a boy of two.

And that’s it for my commentary~ I hope I didn’t ramble on too much.

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16 Responses to CBGC – Chapter 16

  1. Elliana says:

    Thank you 😗😗😗

  2. chibimi says:

    Thank you for chapter. Never thought that cultivating gardening can be interesting 🙂

  3. Sim says:

    I still have yet to see benefits of being “low key”. You get bullied regardless and everyone will try to kill you the moment you say anything that makes them lose face.

    A person in power on the other hand, has a lot more freedom and when they correct others they are thanked for it.

    tldr: low key MCs are masochists.

    • gman says:

      >You get bullied regardless and everyone will try to kill you the moment you say anything that makes them lose face.

      That’s just bad writing which is apparent with a lot of CN novels. And low key aren’t masochist but prudent. Would you boast that you found out that you have a stone talisman from Wu Dong Qian Kun? Or the bead from Renegade Immortal? Or continue to rise in cultivation rank without the ancient old guys finding out your secret and dissect you for it?

      Another thing is giving out info at the right moment. You wouldn’t want a random passerby to steal your credit when you said your opinion without holding back especially in the cultivation world where it’s survival of the fittest.

      My only pet peeve regarding it is when a character says he’s staying low-key but he’s actually not like in History’s Strongest Senior Brother which is attributed to bad writing or hypocritical nature of the character. I doubt it’s the latter though since characterization fail in CN novels.

      • Chiyomira says:

        True true, the moral themes in Chinese novels are really questionable. But then again, a lot of Chinese novels are just written for the sake of exploring some fantasy world rather than some aspects of the real world. There are good lessons from time to time, but everything should always be taken with a lot of salt.

        • gman says:

          >Chinese novels are just written for the sake of exploring some fantasy world

          I threw away my suspension of disbelief when reading one, but the endless hordes of fodders for the growth of an MC the writing weak. To clarify, I’m not attacking the genre but attacking the bloating a novel for the sake of livelihood of the author. Just look at how many chapters “bringing the farm to live in another world” has.

          >There are good lessons from time to time,

          I agree. Sometimes it could get philosophical like in ISSTH’s teachings of the Dao (or the way), or being filial.

          >but everything should always be taken with a lot of salt.

          I’ve been reading CN novels since two years ago — starting from Coiling Dragon — and I already gained the expertise to filter out fillers ;).

          Anyways, thanks for the translation.

          • Chiyomira says:

            Haha, there’s this Chinese novel in which the protagonist’s job is to transmigrate into the body of cannon fodder and defeat the main leads while criticizing how horrible their morals are and while having laughable morals herself. Having read that novel, I came to the conclusion I left you above.

            I agree with you that some novels are bloated, but in my opinion, it would be better to attack the genre rather than the author. You read pretty much for free, but the author puts in efforts to write for a livelihood. Yes, stuff gets predictable and boring after a while so then, move on. Authors write what they want/have to write for fun/money. Readers should just read what they find fun, give helpful critiques, leave supportive comments.

            P.S. not targeting you or anything, it’s just rare for me to see readers leave debatable comments. 🙂

          • gman says:

            Another clarification: I’m not attacking the author but the mode of payment how an author gets their due — by word count in a chapter or reaching a minimum word count per chapter. This is what I hear anyways so correct me if I’m wrong.

            The genre itself is fine. Even though most of the characters are Dragonball-esque characters, I still found them enjoyable.

            No offense taken. I know you’re not targetting me.

          • Chiyomira says:

            I never found much info about that, so I’m not completely sure. I heard some translators say that some authors choose to promise a certain wordcount per chapter to readers to garner more support, and etvo said that most authors do get paid by wordcount. So it’s true that there’s a lot of filler chapters. I personally also feel the drag, especially when I’m translating filler chapters. I don’t mind as long as they help flesh out the fictional world, but yeah, sometimes long and repetitive scenarios are such a pain. Anyhow, happy reading! 🙂

  4. katann13 says:

    Thank you for the chapter!
    She is so silly!

  5. elixir mou says:

    Thanks for the chapter. This just keeps getting better and better. Please don’t stop. I always wait eagerly for an update of this novel.

    • Chiyomira says:

      I’m happy to hear that! Sorry for always making you guys wait though… but thank you for your support!

  6. laura says:

    Thank you!

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