"What do I want from farming?" Xiang Yu asked himself.
Unlike the researcher profession where he was going in blind, he felt he had an idea for a starting point with this one.
He closed his eyes and let his mind wander.
In his thoughts, he found himself floating in endless greenery - a place filled with all sorts of herbs and beautiful flowers that stretched infinitely in every direction. At the center of it all, he saw it: a massive tree, thousands of miles wide, extending upward with no end in sight. The tree spread its endless life force, using it to nourish and maintain the greenery below without limit.
The World Tree.
He wanted to use it as a concept. He needed to create something similar - not literally create a World Tree, but something that could replicate its effect of endlessly supplying energy to plants and boosting their growth.
Of course, it wasn’t just about plants.
He also thought of other aspects, like boosting his beasts. But he didn’t want to focus on beasts alone either. He wanted to boost others too - ones he hadn’t tamed yet. If he could open up this path, he would be able to take his junior sister to the God Realm much more quickly.
As he continued slowly perfecting the path he wanted for his farming profession, ideas kept flowing. But issues kept arising too.
He would revise his method whenever problems came up, continuously refining the path.
He thought about the lifespan issue. If he used this ability on others, they would quickly run out of lifespan and die. Could this problem be solved?
After several revisions to the lifespan part, he came up with a solution - though he wasn’t exactly impressed by it. The way it worked was by using his own life force to power the stimulation, instead of letting the target pay the cost themselves.
After some thinking, he realized this might not actually be such a bad thing. Before, he had seen that he possessed over a hundred million years worth of lifespan - that was with ten stars. Now, with a hundred even bigger stars, combined with the upgrades he had experienced in his two strongest physiques and other aspects, he had well over a trillion years worth of lifespan.
With this, his life force reserve was virtually infinite. Even if he spent a million years worth of life force per day, it would still take over two thousand years for him to even come close to running out.
With this in mind, he decided to change up a few things. He had found a path for the Spirit Farmer profession.
Even for plants, he felt that life force might actually be the better option. Naturally, for living things, life force was always better than just pure energy. Of course, there were situations where this wasn’t true, but mostly it was like this.
The way his growth booster worked was by stimulating the growth aspect of a plant, causing it to grow much more quickly. But this was really bad because it consumed the plant’s life force. If he wanted something like a certain fruit, he would need to plant a new tree each time, since the plant would run out of life force after bearing the first fruit.
But if he used his own life force instead, he could endlessly support the tree without completely exhausting its potential.
This was true for creatures as well.
...
He remembered how the World Tree supplied its life force, maintaining all the greenery around it. That’s how he wanted to be.
He thought to himself that although his life force was being consumed, it was nothing compared to his total. Besides, he could just use the plants he grew to progress even further, gaining even more life force in the process.
It was basically a perpetual motion machine.
Well, not really. But like...
Xiang Yu did a few finishing touches to complete the path, and before long, it was done.
[You created a new path for the [Spirit Farmer] profession, [Keeper], choose a reward]
[1: Upgrade an existing system function]
[2: Unlock a new system function]
The farming clone got up, wearing a pleased expression as he disappeared and reappeared in his farm.
He looked at all the herbs present, but he didn’t bother with them.
Instead, he walked to the area he had dedicated for the heavenly and immortal grade herbs.
There were some heavenly grade herbs here. Xiang Yu added a few more, then planted immortal grade herbs as well. After he was done, he decided to test out his new growth booster. This one didn’t have a version number - he felt it was probably going to be the final version.
As soon as he activated the ability, green energy radiated from him, transferring to the plants. In just a few seconds, the plants had matured completely. He picked them, inspecting them carefully.
It really was insane, he thought. With this new life force method, he didn’t need to wait. He could just grow them instantly by providing the needed life force.
Xiang Yu took out the seeds for the plants. He didn’t even need to plant them. He activated his ability while holding the seeds floating before him, and instantly, they grew to maturity.
"It seems the new path to farming is killing farming," he thought, chuckling to himself.
Well, it wasn’t like he really enjoyed farming. For him, it was just a means to an end - though he admitted he had kind of fallen in love with the craft. Just a tiny bit though.
He still had the original growth booster method, but he admitted it wasn’t that good for high-level plants. Though it should be able to work with heavenly grade herbs and below.
From now on, his heavenly grade herbs and below could be harvested multiple times a day. As for immortal grade...he could only sigh.
Xiang Yu felt he was reaching a limit for the traditional ability.
Currently, even with the new ten thousand percent base boost for the immortal grade herbs, they would still take over ten months to grow. He hadn’t had this problem before because of the constant qi upgrade from the spirit vein, but now the qi was stagnant and the slow scaling of the ability showed.
If he couldn’t get the spirit vein to celestial grade, he didn’t think he had a chance at daily immortal grade herb harvesting - even if his Keeper profession upgraded.