A Mortal’s Immortal Gourd
Chapter 45: Seventeen Years Old

The rice seeds and Iron Bramble that Ergouzi brought back from Ding Family Village were watered daily and grew quickly.

In just a month, the Cat’s Fang Rice was ready to harvest.

He peeled a grain to taste and found it even more fragrant than what was grown in the Ding Family Village.

Plus, the grains held a bit more spiritual energy.

Especially after being stored in the gourd for three days—besides tasting better, the spiritual energy had become even denser.

Far better than the ordinary rice he used to plant.

He planted all the Cat’s Fang Rice again, enough to fill about one mu of land.

From now on, he could harvest once a month, about four dou each time—plenty for his own needs.

As for the Iron Bramble he planted at the same time, its growth was much slower—after more than a month, it was only a foot tall.

He still didn’t know how long it would take for it to flower and produce seeds.

To Ergouzi, whether or not he ate the Cat’s Fang Rice didn’t matter, but the Iron Bramble was very important.

He was eager to plant it all over Shekou Mountain.

But being anxious was useless—the Iron Bramble was already doing its best. On its small branches, the backward-hooking wooden thorns were beginning to show their edge.

One morning, before Ergouzi even got out of bed, he heard a goose honking wildly outside.

When he stepped out, he saw a goose had gotten its neck caught in the Iron Bramble, unable to move forward or back.

The mutated goose had strength equal to a martial artist, but struggling by brute force only tore off a chunk of flesh.

Ergouzi worked at it for a long time, and in the end, had to tear away some flesh to get the goose free.

Looks like he could plant some Iron Bramble around the ginseng field in the future.

He fed the goose some fodder mixed with ginseng and added water to the trough.

The goose had done well—it had laid around a dozen eggs for him. Naturally, he had to feed them well to recover.

All the eggs had blood-red markings on the shells—no one knew what might hatch out of them.

After feeding the geese, he cultivated for two hours, then carried a large basket of red dates and rode a goose down Shekou Mountain.

At the foot of the mountain, a group of stonemasons were chiseling stone. When they saw Ergouzi descend from the sky on a giant white goose, they clicked their tongues in amazement.

“The scholar lord’s geese are all heavenly swans.”

“Scholar Zhang might already be a true immortal master.”

“Same village, two Scholar Zhangs—one kind, one stingy.”

“Shh, keep it down. If word gets to him, you’ll get hit with higher rent next year...”

As Ergouzi walked onto the construction site, the stonemasons quickly got up and bowed to him.

“Greetings, Scholar Lord!”

“You’ve all worked hard. Take a break and have some refreshments.”

Ergouzi set the large bamboo basket on a boulder.

The workers thanked him repeatedly.

Not long ago, he’d asked A’hu to hire craftsmen to build a large house at the base of the mountain—for temporary residence and grain storage.

To build a sturdy house, the foundation had to be solid. With plenty of stone in the area, they used well-shaped stone blocks for the base.

First, they had to chisel the stones into regular long shapes, then embed them underground—the foundation would hold for hundreds of years.

Even the stingiest landlords wouldn’t be harsh with these craftsmen.

They’d make sure they ate full meals every day and got snacks and tea once or twice during the day.

Ergouzi used what was available—there were plenty of sweet red dates on the mountain, and the workers loved them.

Some even sneaked a few dates into their shirts to bring home for their kids.

Ergouzi pretended not to notice and generously handed out an extra big bag to each person.

The craftsmen were overjoyed, hiding the dates and taking out one or two each day to appease their children.

The kids would wait at the doorstep every day for their fathers to return from work—with dates.

Even when the kids ate the dates, they would boast to the other kids about how kind the scholar lord was.

After chatting with the craftsmen for a bit, Ergouzi headed to Shexi Village.

Year-end was approaching, and he still owed Huang Laocai 110 taels of silver.

Nowadays, Huang Laocai greeted him with deep bows, calling him “Scholar Lord” repeatedly.

But the moment Ergouzi handed him the big bundle of silver, Huang Laocai accepted it deftly, inspecting each piece carefully and weighing them with a děngzi.

“Master Zhang, have you eaten yet? It’s almost lunchtime. Why not stay for a bite?”

Ergouzi noticed Huang Laocai looked like he had something to say, so he nodded.

Huang’s wife, along with a few concubines, bustled in the kitchen for quite some time.

Finally, the food was served: a whole roast chicken, stewed pork, fried eggs, and a whole fish—four dishes in total.

“That’s a lot of food. Even New Year’s wasn’t this fancy.”

Looking at the big spread, Ergouzi recalled the first meal he ever had here that spring.

It had been dried radish stir-fried with pork fat, and he’d eaten three big bowls of rice.

“We’re a small household with not much to offer. Just scraped together a few decent dishes—hope you won’t mind.”

Even as he looked at the table, Huang Laocai still felt it wasn’t good enough.

Times had changed—Ergouzi was no longer the ragged boy of the past.

During the meal, Huang brought out a jar of aged wine he had stored for years.

The moment he opened it, the whole house filled with a rich aroma.

But Ergouzi couldn’t handle alcohol. He’d drunk with his master before and thought wine was just a form of self-torture—honey water was way better.

He only sipped a little from the big bowl of wine and didn’t drink any more.

When the meal was nearly done, Huang finally opened up—after clearly struggling to bring it up.

“Master Zhang, I’d like to ask you a favor.”

“What is it?”

Ergouzi had already guessed that Huang must want something—it didn’t surprise him at all.

“I want my kid to learn martial arts. Could you help recommend him to Zhengwu Hall?”

Ah, so that was it. Ergouzi thought about it—he was now an instructor at Zhengwu Hall and probably had the authority to do that.

“I can’t give you a definite answer right now. Next time I’m at Zhengwu Hall, I’ll ask Hall Master Sima for you.”

Huang Laocai was a good guy—he had helped Ergouzi more than once in the past. Helping him in return was no problem.

Still, Ergouzi felt that as someone who was getting paid for doing nothing, casually pulling strings would be pushing it.

He needed Sima Hong’s approval before recommending any students.

“Thank you so much!”

“You’re the Huang family’s great benefactor!”

“Man Cang, come kneel and thank the master!”

Huang’s wife pulled Huang Mancang over, and they hurriedly knelt to Ergouzi.

Since the kid had already knelt, Ergouzi figured he had to take it more seriously and promised to ask next time he went to the county. Probably after the new year.

He had borrowed a bunch of books from Zhengwu Hall this time—enough to keep him busy studying for a long while...

………………

Four months later, spring had returned again. Ergouzi was now seventeen years old.

Swish!

Swish!

Swish!

At the top of Shekou Mountain, Ergouzi swung his 150-jin heavy sword with light, agile movements.

He had fully mastered the Wind Spirit Sword Technique in just one month.

The book claimed it required over ten years of grueling practice to master—clearly exaggerated.

It said the sword style was meant to be light and flexible, best used with a 3–5 jin sword.

Ergouzi didn’t have such a delicate weapon, so he used his Hundred-Jin Heavy Sword. With his brute strength, it wasn’t hard at all.

After mastering the Wind Spirit Sword Technique, he used another twenty-plus days to learn a fist technique.

And with each new technique, his training time got shorter.

From over twenty days, to just over ten, and now—two or three days were enough to master a martial arts manual.

The speed shocked even him.

These weren’t common techniques either—many students at Zhengwu Hall had trained for years, even a decade, and still hadn’t fully mastered them.

He figured it was because he already had a third-layer True Qi foundation—learning these basic martial arts was no challenge.

With cultivation backing him, his martial techniques became exponentially more powerful.

Once he had mastered all the borrowed techniques, he lost interest in them.

All those fancy moves were nothing compared to a simple, powerful strike.

This, he realized, must be what the books meant by “the great path is the simplest.”

So in the end, he returned to his roots—practicing the most basic sword moves every day: thrusting, slashing, slicing...

Now, aside from watering and farming, he spent his time training and reading.

He’d borrowed more than ten books from Zhengwu Hall’s library—six of them martial arts manuals.

The rest were about agriculture, military tactics, and medicine.

Military tactics were a must for the martial juren exam, and as a farmer, he had to study agricultural books too.

Since he grew a mountain of medicinal herbs, and cultivation would involve them, he needed to understand medical knowledge in advance.

Martial arts and medicine had always gone hand in hand.

This time, he borrowed two medical books: the Herbal Compendium and Shenghui Prescriptions.

The Herbal Compendium listed 800 kinds of herbs—flying, growing, or swimming—anything medicinal was included.

Each herb was detailed with identification methods, properties, and growth or production environments.

Near the end of the book was a small section labeled “Spiritual Herbs.”

It only listed around twenty types—most of which he’d never even heard of.

Only a few were familiar: for example, hundred-year-old ginseng could count as a spiritual herb.

Ginseng under a hundred years old still had spiritual energy but was considered mundane.

Only when it reached a hundred years and its spiritual energy transformed could it be counted as a spiritual herb.

Ginseng of three or five hundred years—or even a thousand—only existed in legends.

Besides ginseng, other herbs like lingzhi, polygonatum, jade bamboo, and notoginseng were also on the list.

If they grew for a hundred years, they too could undergo a transformation.

As for the rest, over twenty spiritual herbs, he hadn’t even heard the names before, much less seen them.

Shenghui Prescriptions listed over a thousand formulas using these herbs.

By combining different properties, various effects could be achieved—some enhanced, some neutralized toxicity, and some reversed properties entirely.

Even poisonous herbs could become great tonics, and harmless ones could become deadly.

These transformations created endless possibilities.

The formulas covered decoctions, infusions, pastes, powders, pills, and more.

But most were for treating common ailments—headaches, children’s coughs, infertility, and such.

Only a few were aimed at martial artists.

These included treating injuries, strengthening muscles and bones, boosting Qi and blood, and nourishing the foundation.

He even found the recipe for the Peiyuan Gutben Pill.

It was only sold at Hong’an Hall in the county—and at ten taels of silver per pill, it was always in short supply.

Peiyuan Gutben Pill Recipe:

5 taels of ginseng (50+ years)

4 taels of ophiopogon

2 taels of schisandra

2 taels of desert-living cistanche

8 taels of prepared rehmannia...

Grind all herbs into fine powder, sift them, and mix with refined honey to form thumb-sized pills.

Except for the ginseng, the other ingredients weren’t too hard to buy.

Next time he went to the county, he planned to buy them all and make his own pills.

The only issue was his ginseng wasn’t old enough.

The first batch of ginseng planted on Shekou Mountain had barely reached thirty years.

He hadn’t dug much up himself, but recently had fed a lot of ten-year-old ginseng to the thirteen geese.

To help them reproduce, he had to give them daily ginseng for nourishment.

Now, the geese were laying eggs one after another.

Each egg was much larger than normal, with red markings on the shell.

After feeding all that ginseng, there were thirty-one eggs in the goose shed, and several mother geese had started incubating them.

The male geese guarded the shed closely, never leaving their post.

Originally, Ergouzi had planned to visit the county to return books to Zhengwu Hall and ask about Huang Laocai’s matter.

But seeing how tense the geese were, he decided to stay and guard the mountain.

This time, it took two full months before the goslings finally hatched—much longer than normal.

The new goslings were larger than usual but otherwise looked normal—covered in yellow fluff, with flat yellow bills.

Just one problem: they were picky eaters.

They wouldn’t even look at ordinary, non-spiritual leaves—would rather starve than take a bite.

Ergouzi had no choice but to give in—placing the leaves in the gourd to enhance the spiritual energy before feeding the goslings.

Not only were they picky, they ate well but didn’t grow fast.

Fortunately, while they were small, they were nimble—ordinary people wouldn’t be able to catch them.

Seeing that, Ergouzi finally felt a bit at ease.

He packed a few things and, under cover of night, quietly descended the mountain and headed for the county.