Annual Plan for the Year 1948

The six members of the family sat in a circle in the upstairs living room, reviewing the spoils of their latest adventure. The old man held Qin Yue close, recounting tales of the Underworld. Luo Yu neatly arranged the ghost grass and assorted experimental materials he’d collected, lining them up on the table and selecting the most unusual ones to broaden his family’s horizons.

The vampire exclaimed excitedly, “Oh, are all these for me? Darling, you’re simply wonderful!”

Luo Yu replied, “Don’t forget what you promised me! Anything good that comes out of this, I get a share.”

The vampire agreed readily, “No problem! Leave everything to Mommy!”

After a moment’s thought, Luo Yu added, “There’s something else for you to use… Um… Grandpa, Dad, you’re not afraid of ghosts, are you? We brought back a very obedient one…”

Father Chu, sensitive to the mention of “ghosts,” was just about to react when the old man, already curious, interjected, “A ghost? What does it look like? Bring it out and let Grandpa have a look!”

With a wave of her hand, Qin Yue produced a shiny black bead and displayed it on her palm.

Everyone’s heads immediately leaned in close.

The old man mused, “So this is what a ghost looks like?”

Father Chu remarked, “Quite pretty. Could this be made into a bracelet?”

The vampire offered, “Do you like it? I could make a whole string for you.”

Luo Li shrieked from the side, “It’s so ugly! Don’t believe my brother; this isn’t its true form!”

Luo Yu was surprised, “You can see it?”

Luo Li scoffed, “The Goddess’s Eye can see through all darkness!”

Qin Yue responded drily, “It’s more likely you’re seeing through the illusion cast over it—not as impressive as you make it sound.”

Luo Yu suddenly understood, “I’ve heard that cats can see ghosts! No wonder you can see through illusions—must be some kind of innate supernatural ability.”

Now everyone else was curious: just how ugly was it?

Qin Yue tossed the bead onto the ground. It bounced twice, then, like a Transformer, unfolded itself into a pitch-black figure. Its back was hunched, arms long and legs short, each ending in sharp black claws; its head was disproportionately large, topped with a tuft of gray hair; its eyes were as round as brass bells, their gaze vacant, giving it a rather foolish look, and a mouthful of sharp teeth jutted out from its lips—truly an unsightly creature.

This little ghost already possessed the strength of a third-level Qi Refiner, its spirit body solid enough for the whole family to see clearly.

Luo Yu patted its head and introduced it, “Its name is Rabbit. Nice to meet you all—please take care of it!”

Rabbit blinked its large eyes, tilting its head to size up these curious onlookers. In its mind, these people were not edible; eating them would only bring disaster upon itself. Disinterested, it lowered its head and began picking at its toenails.

Father Chu frowned and declared, “We can’t keep it at home. Take it to the old residence!”

The vampire accepted the order with a flourish, “Leave it to me!”

With the necessary reports made, Luo Yu calculated the days left. There were four days until the new term began; their journey to the Underworld had taken a month and a half.

Over the next few days, Luo Yu split the Ghostly Flame with the vampire. After refining it, a small gray-green fireball formed in his dantian, circling around it.

The vampire was deeply envious of Qin Yue’s Solar Truefire, but unfortunately, its constitution was incompatible—he could look but not touch.

Unwilling to give up, the vampire said, “My lovely children, you say this flame was artificially cultivated—maybe you can raise one suitable for Mommy too. I’ll invest in the seeds, and whatever true flames we grow, we’ll split equally. What do you think?”

Luo Yu and Qin Yue exchanged a glance: the Yin energy on Nine Yin Mountain was intense enough to nurture a Yin-type true flame. The difficulty lay in finding something to cultivate such a fire.

They explained this to the vampire, leaving him to seek a solution. Then, the vampire made another request: he wanted to convert the back garden into a field for growing ghost grass and asked Luo Yu to construct a “Sunproof Yin-locking Array.”

Luo Yu agreed readily.

Once the idea of cultivating ghost grass was raised, both Luo Yu and Qin Yue felt it was time to grow some spiritual herbs of their own.

That night, the two of them cozied up in their room, door shut, and, like a young couple counting their savings, took stock of their assets.

Including loot from the vampire’s less-than-legal activities, they had over six thousand spirit stones on hand; most of the rest had been spent on constructing arrays. As for pills, there was no shortage for the Qi Refining stage, but only three bottles for the Foundation Building stage. These would last Qin Yue two or three months, but with Luo Yu’s impending advancement, they’d likely run out soon.

In terms of spiritual herbs, those suitable for Foundation Building were scarce—there were some rarer, higher-level ones, but they were reluctant to use or trade them, deciding to keep them for themselves.

After some thought, Qin Yue said, “We must buy more seeds for spiritual flowers and herbs and plant them as soon as possible.”

Luo Yu pulled a face, “These herbs mature at uncertain rates—some might be ready in a year, but with little effect; the better ones take centuries, and we might not live to see them. Besides, if we both use them daily, who knows how many we’ll need.”

Qin Yue sighed, “Only you would think cultivators have pills to eat every day.”

Luo Yu reconsidered—perhaps she was right. He was an alchemist, after all, with a high success rate, and lower-level herbs were easier to find, making pills readily available.

Qin Yue continued coolly, “Keep these pills for yourself. I’ll meditate. Your spiritual roots are too poor—meditation isn’t as effective for you.”

Luo Yu muttered, “You should take them. My roots are bad; taking them would mostly be a waste. It pains me.”

Silence fell between them.

After a while, Qin Yue spoke again, “If we’re to buy seeds, our spirit stones are far from enough. We need to earn more. I’d like to craft some magical tools to sell to the artifact shops—you can help inscribe the arrays.”

Luo Yu’s eyes lit up. He burrowed into Qin Yue’s arms and said, “With more spirit stones, we could buy herbs outright! I could also sell some small arrays! Why don’t we open our own artifact shop? We could rent a storefront in a bustling cultivator town!”

Qin Yue was silent for a long time before replying, “…There’d be no one to mind the shop.”

Luo Yu considered this—indeed, a tricky issue. He had classes to attend and didn’t want to upset his father; he couldn’t bear to leave Qin Yue alone to run a shop either… Besides, artifact crafting required both of them. It wouldn’t do for him to be constantly running back and forth.

He suggested, “How about…we open a shop in the old residence?”

Qin Yue deliberated, “We could…give it a try?”

With business settled, the two lay in bed, preparing to sleep, when Qin Yue suddenly remembered the Heart Demon Tribulation that came with advancement. They discussed it and agreed that practicing lucid dreaming was a great advantage: lucid dreaming inherently trains one to pit their conscious mind against the subconscious. The “heart demon” is a form of subconscious, an illusion born from extreme pain. Without practice in controlling the conscious mind, one could easily be swept along by the subconscious, lose reason and control over spiritual power, leading to spiritual deviation and disaster.

Seeing how beneficial lucid dreaming was, Luo Yu said, “There must be a lot about our bodies that cultivators don’t yet know. We should study ourselves thoroughly.”

Qin Yue nodded in agreement, pulled him closer, and they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

The days passed in busy preparation. Soon, it was time for school to start again.

Luo Yu continued striving for advancement while researching new arrays. Besides the two “Sunproof Yin-lock Arrays” promised to the vampire, he needed to create two all-purpose arrays for the Ancient Formation and Nine Yin Mountain. The ancient array had to integrate illusion, defense, offense, and spirit-locking; the one on Nine Yin Mountain needed all that plus an extra yin-sealing function. Luo Yu didn’t trust arrays designed by others—hadn’t he, a newcomer, managed to break them? It was best to set his own. But his cultivation was too low for anything so grand, so he focused on “group arrays”: interlocking, overlapping, mutually reinforcing—an array of arrays. Such formations were far harder to break and much more powerful, but they were also prone to loopholes and errors, requiring repeated testing and patching.

Luo Yu figured the safest approach was to “create his own programming language.” That way, no other array master could decipher his work and break it. But that was a daunting task—he knew programming, not hardware. To create an entirely new set of runes, one had to understand the “world’s rules”—the hardware—so the runes could resonate with them. This was beyond his current reach.

The first arrays completed were the two “Sunproof Yin-lock Arrays.” Luo Yu spent an afternoon setting them up in the three-courtyard compound and the back garden. Now, even during the day, the vampire could roam freely in those areas. He devoted much time to laying out a grid of “yin fields” in the garden, each a two-meter-square plot framed with stone, filled with fertile black earth, and enriched with all the Nether Stone Luo Yu had brought back from Nine Yin Mountain. Finally, the garden was densely planted with ghost grass. Luo Yu’s technique was more careful than any herbalist’s treatment of thousand-year ginseng, so nearly all the grass survived the transplant.

Though the yin garden was only just established and its yin energy was weaker than in the main house, Rabbit and the zombie babies much preferred it, often sitting there motionless for hours. The vampire was puzzled—did they prefer plants to yin energy? Curious, he spent a day in the garden too, but aside from the air being fresher (by vampire standards), he found nothing unusual and soon lost interest.

While Luo Yu’s new arrays were still under development, he himself reached the peak of Qi Refining and successfully entered the Foundation Building stage, fulfilling his goal of flying within a year. From the start of his cultivation journey to Foundation Building had taken just over a year—if word of this spread in the cultivation world, he would be in trouble.

The freshly minted Foundation cultivator, Little Luo Yu, harbored a shameless secret: during his Heart Demon Tribulation, he’d done unspeakable things to a certain someone. But as far as Little Luo Yu was concerned, it was just an illusion, so what did it matter? Such a golden opportunity—how could he not look, not touch! Besides, the person in question would never know… It was rather delightful, the effect was so realistic! He wondered if that person felt the same… Well, there’d be a next time in the Heart Demon Tribulation—heh heh!

End of Year 48 Plan for “Cultivation Chronicles of Soulmates”—update complete!