A Farmer's Journey To Immortality

Chapter 558: Sucessfully Cultivating the Fortune Telling Arts

Using his control over the Everwood divine artifact, Aksai overlapped the spatial fabric once more, pulling the vine fully into his chamber.

The twisting length swayed, as though sensing its master’s weakness. Then, as if preprogrammed, it stretched forward with precise aim and latched itself onto the spot just above his tailbone.

Aksai clenched his jaw as he felt the first sting of contact. A faint shiver ran through him as the vine burrowed in place, anchoring itself. Then the flow began. Warm, vibrant life essence surged into him, spreading through his body like spring water pouring into cracked soil. His pale complexion flushed with a faint glow of health.

The heaviness in his chest lightened, his heartbeat steadied, and his eyes regained some of their clarity.

He let out a long breath, the corners of his lips twitching faintly upward. “Good… it’s working. I was beginning to think it was irreversible damage.”

It was impossible to restore more than six hundred years of lost lifespan in just a day or two, even with the Demon Tree’s help. That kind of damage could only be mended slowly, over time. But this alone was already enough.

For most Spirit cultivators, this method would have been forbidden, even fatal. To use something like the Demon Tree would mean losing themselves to corruption, their souls swallowed by parasitic growth.

One could say that life essence was a druid’s primary domain of expertise. Aksai had a natural advantage in recovering his lost life essence even if he had lost it due to a forbidden art, which was impossible to do for almost all the Spirit cultivators.

He leaned back slightly, feeling the steady pulse of vitality feeding into him. His thoughts turned sharp again. “The Fortune Telling Arts… others would throw it away because of the risks. But for me?” His lips curved into a faint smile. “For me, this is gold.”

The Dadangar Subcontinent—no, the whole world of cultivators—was anything but safe. Treachery, ambush, and hidden dangers waited at every corner. But if he could use the Fortune Telling Arts to peer ahead, even if just a little, to avoid calamity and seize fortune… then the trade-off was worth it.

Yes, the art drained his lifespan. But he was a druid, and he had his Demon Tree. However slow, however dangerous, he could recover what was lost. That was enough.

He raised his hand and touched his forehead where the Astral Third Eye had bloomed before. The faintest trace of warmth lingered there. His gaze turned toward the floating manual once more, the lines of text glowing faintly in the quiet chamber.

“I’ll keep going,” he murmured. “I’ve already decided to make use of this thing. Now I just have to play my cards right.”

Aksai rose to his feet slowly, stretching his arms as the last traces of weakness faded from his limbs. The vine of the Demon Tree behind him pulsed faintly, still feeding him threads of life essence, but his Qi channels felt hollow—drained and unstable.

The Spirit farmer clapped his hands together, forming a quick series of seals. The air before him shimmered as a faint green mist rolled out of the floor. Within moments, several massive pumpkins sprouted from the ground, each nearly the size of a man. Their surfaces pulsed faintly, veined with crimson lines.

They were Aksai’s genetically improved variations of Aksai’s farm—Flesh Pumpkins v.3, living spirit plants grown to store and circulate Qi essence in a much larger quantity than ever before.

The largest one split open at the top like a blooming flower, releasing a dense, sweet-smelling mist. Aksai sat cross-legged in the middle of the cluster, pressing his palms against two of the pumpkins. Immediately, a surge of pure Qi essence began to flow into him, filling his meridians with warm energy.

If the previous Flesh Pumpkins were ideal for martial artists of the first and second realm, the new variants of Flesh Pumpkins were meant to be consumed by the Martial Artists in the third realm. The amount and pureness of Qi essence they provided wasn’t something an ordinary body cultivator in the second realm could handle on their own.

Aksai closed his eyes, focusing on the rhythm of his breathing. The Spirit cultivation technique he practiced was ideal for his druidic constitution as well—steady and deep like an ocean current. His Spirit Sense spread through his body, guiding the flow of Qi through every pathway, repairing cracks and smoothing blockages left by the last experiment.

His breathing slowed, his heart rate settled, and the faint shimmer of Spirit light and blood aura began to appear around him. After a long while, he opened his eyes again. The fatigue that had clung to him like a shadow was gone. His Spirit and Qi essence were back to their peak.

“Good,” he muttered under his breath. “This should be enough.”

He turned his head toward the figure sitting in silence nearby—the clone he had prepared earlier. The clone’s body was still and empty, its eyes closed, waiting for him.

The clone was supported by the Demon Tree vines at this point, bringing him to his optimal condition.

Aksai got up, walked over, and sat cross-legged in front of it. He exhaled slowly, placed his hands on his knees, and shifted his consciousness. In the next moment, his vision spun.

When it cleared, he was inside the body of the clone once again. He could feel the wood-natured vitality of the vessel, its balance and calm. He adjusted the connection with care, letting his Soul Sense settle fully into it.

“Let’s begin,” he whispered.

He gathered his senses once more—Spirit Sense, Qi Sense, and Aether Sense. Each responded to his call.

He began to weave them together carefully, guiding all three to converge at the point between his eyebrows.

A faint glow appeared there, weak at first, then slowly gaining strength. The mark of light trembled, struggling to stabilize.

Then, with a soundless pulse, the vertical slit appeared—the Astral Third Eye.

It opened just slightly, and Aksai felt the strain immediately. A deep ache spread across his forehead, and his soul trembled in response. His main body, sitting nearby, flinched as if sharing the pain. Sweat began to bead across both forms.

He could tell that his physical and spiritual recovery wasn’t complete yet. His lost lifespan still weighed him down like an invisible chain. The Third Eye was sluggish, its vision blurred, unstable.

Aksai did not force it open right away. Instead, he steadied his breathing and sat quietly, letting the senses merge naturally and the strain fade.

“No wonder…” he murmured softly, his voice calm despite the effort it took to speak. “The Astral Third Eye chapter had that footnote… saying this eye is mostly a concept, not a real thing for the cultivators of this world.”

He smiled faintly, eyes still closed as the mark on his forehead flickered between dim and bright.

“After all, no Spirit cultivator here has access to both Qi Sense and Aether Sense. The people of Dadangar can only rely on Spirit Sense. Even Naisha’s sect, at its peak, must have never seen anyone open their Astral Third Eye. And I managed to do it even before I started cultivating the Fortune Telling Arts for real.

Wait… was the backlash of the Threads of Fate so severe in my last try because I was yet to officially cultivate the Fortune Tellins Arts? I… I might not be able to completely avoid losing my lifespan every time I use the technique but using the arts I can at least manage to lessen the burden.”

A low chuckle escaped him. “Makes me wonder… if the remnants of her sect found out that what was once a theory in their core manual was actually realized by me… would they hail me as their sect master?”

His faint smile lingered as he continued to breathe evenly, stabilizing the process.

Time passed slowly. The flickering glow between his eyebrows steadied little by little. The strain eased as his senses began to synchronize. The Third Eye, once dim and wavering, now opened fully—vertical, gleaming, and alive.

Aksai’s face relaxed. The Astral Third Eye had returned.

Aksai’s breathing slowed until it was almost impossible to tell if he was still alive. The world around him faded away, and the familiar pull of the mysterious state took hold once again. Darkness swallowed everything.

The luminous threads of fate drifted around his phantom form again.

This time, Aksai didn’t stare at them directly. He had learned from his last experience that doing so made the entire vision unstable.

Instead, he focused on his phantom self—the copy of him that sat cross-legged in the void. His Soul Sense expanded outward, a transparent wave spreading through the empty space. He wrapped the phantom in his Soul Sense.

“Let’s try this differently,” he thought.

Through the Soul Sense, Aksai moved the phantom’s arms. The phantom slowly raised both hands and reached for the nearest thread of fate. Its glowing fingers brushed past a thread, but the line slipped through them like smoke. The phantom tried again and again, but the ethereal nature of the threads made them impossible to hold.

Aksai’s eyes narrowed slightly. “So normal touch won’t work.”

He shifted his focus to the phantom’s head. The space between its eyebrows began to shimmer faintly. Then, with a pulse of Aether and Qi combined, a vertical eye opened—its iris glowed like liquid silver. The Astral Third Eye.

As the Astral Third Eye opened, the surrounding void seemed to shudder. The moment its gaze fell upon a particular luminous thread, the thread trembled and solidified, losing its ghostly form. It was no longer smoke—it became something tangible, something that could be touched by Aksai’s phantom.

“Now,” Aksai whispered.

The phantom’s hands moved again and this time, they closed around the glowing thread. The sensation was strange, as if gripping a line made of living light. Encouraged, Aksai focused again. The Astral Third Eye turned toward another thread. That one too lost its ethereal shimmer and turned solid.

One by one, Aksai made his phantom grab several threads of fate. Each time, he could feel a sharp drain on his Aether reserves. His mind grew heavier, his Spirit trembling with exhaustion.

But the sight before him filled him with a quiet joy.

He had done it.

The phantom sat in the void, holding multiple glowing threads in both hands, while several others hovered close, almost as if waiting to be caught. The threads didn’t bind him this time. Instead, they moved at his will. For the first time, Aksai wasn’t bound by fate—he was the one holding it.

“This… this is enough,” he thought to himself, a faint smile forming in his consciousness. “Even if the method is different, I believe I’ve met the condition of the Fortune Telling Arts.”

The goal was never to dominate fate—it was to stay in contact with it, to sense its flow and influence. And he had achieved that.

Outside the mysterious void, in the real world, Aksai sat cross-legged with his clone before him. Both their faces were calm and peaceful. A gentle smile lingered on their lips, eyes still closed in meditation. The faint spiritual glow around them pulsed rhythmically.

Aksai had succeeded. He had finally begun to cultivate the Fortune Telling Arts.