Chapter 175: Chapter 109: Life-Cutting Finger, Come Often When You Have Time

Returning to his residence, Zhou Changwang went straight to the backyard without hesitation.

In the backyard, only two kinds of spirit plants were planted.

Spirit Gathering Grass and Red Leaf Spirit Tea Tree.

It was customary to use the Fertilization Technique to assist the growth of these spirit plants, and then irrigate them with the Spirit Rain Skill.

After a busy hour, an hour had passed.

Then, Zhou Changwang sat down in the pavilion, and casually took out a Jade Scroll.

This Jade Scroll recorded the method of casting the Annual Ring Skill.

"The Annual Ring Skill is an advanced version of the Fertilization Technique. When cultivated to a high level, it can make spirit plants directly gain a year in annual rings.

As long as there is sufficient spiritual energy and nutrients, a batch of high-age precious spiritual materials can be rapidly cultivated."

Zhou Changwang’s spiritual power entered the Jade Scroll, and he quickly received information on cultivating the Annual Ring Skill.

After a long while, he opened his eyes.

There was a trace of inexplicable emotion in his gaze.

The fundamental difference between the Annual Ring Skill and the Fertilization Technique is that the Fertilization Technique directly targets the spirit plant itself, inducing rapid growth and maturity... In essence, it does not increase the plant’s years.

Even if a spirit plant normally requires three years to flower and fruit, if matured through the Fertilization Technique, its actual growth time depends only on the time the caster spent cultivating it to flower and fruit.

As short as a day, as long as several days...

Time is fixed, and what it should be is what it is.

That is to say, this spell doesn’t have much effect on spiritual materials and medicines that require years.

For example, in his Spirit Plant Master assessment, although the Spiritual Peach Tree was matured and bore fruit through the Fertilization Technique, after the fruit was picked, the tree itself could no longer bear fruit.

Because its ’life’ had already reached an end.

’Bearing fruit’ was the endpoint.

Even if it continued to be fertilized, it could not escape withering and becoming a dead tree.

Its potential was exhausted.

It couldn’t open new branches on an old tree to bear ’fruit’ again.

But the Annual Ring Skill is different.

Each application leaves a corresponding deposit of years.

The amount grown is based on ’time’.

With each annual ring, the age of the tree grows; during spring when vitality flourishes, the tree naturally sends out new branches, then blooms and bears fruit again.

This is also why the profession of Spirit Plant Master is truly valued.

After all, there are too many spirit plants that cannot become medicine due to insufficient base years and cannot be used as alchemy materials to make spirit pills.

Spirit materials like Spirit Gathering Grass, which can be refined into pills with almost no required years, are also extremely rare.

Most require enough years to settle, absorb enough spiritual energy, and then stimulate their unique ’medicinal properties’ to be used as alchemy materials.

"Cultivating this Annual Ring Skill is also difficult.

However, fortunately, I have long cultivated the Fertilization Technique to the Realm of Perfection, and there are many similarities between the two.

For me, the difficulty isn’t as great as imagined."

Nowadays, Zhou Changwang’s understanding of magic is incomparable.

The saying goes, mastering one method, leads to mastering many.

Having mastered so many spells, he naturally has some insights into cultivating magic.

Thus.

After just two hours of practice, he had cultivated the Annual Ring Skill to the Entry Stage.

"Entry into the Annual Ring Skill.

Just right to see the specific effects of this spell."

Very soon, Zhou Changwang stood next to the Red Leaf Spirit Tea Tree and naturally cast an Annual Ring Skill.

Annual Ring Skill +1 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Then, in an instant, specks of spiritual light sprinkled onto the Red Leaf Spirit Tea Tree.

With the flow of spiritual energy, a large amount of spiritual energy and nutrients from the Spirit Soil was absorbed by it, and visibly, the half-person-height spirit tea tree grew a little taller, with thicker branches and stems.

"One Annual Ring Skill is almost equivalent to three days of natural growth for this spirit tea tree.

It’s already not much inferior to the Fertilization Technique."

Seeing the effect of this Annual Ring Skill, Zhou Changwang was slightly surprised.

When he used one Fertilization Technique on this Low-Tier Second-Grade Spirit Tea Tree, it was only equivalent to five days of growth.

But this one Annual Ring Skill, still in the Entry Stage, was already comparable to three days of natural growth, which speaks volumes about the potential of this spell.

Of course, while the spell’s effect is strong, the consumption is naturally not small.

One Annual Ring Skill consumes the same amount of spiritual power as three Fertilization Techniques.

Moreover, the time to cast the spell is much longer, taking nine breaths.

Nine breaths are not long.

After all, he had just begun to cultivate this spell, and long casting time is quite normal.

He believes that as proficiency deepens, and the spell advances to Mastery, Small Success, or even Great Success Stage, the casting time will naturally decrease significantly.

Then, he didn’t stop and continued to cast spells.

One, two, three...

After a full five Annual Ring Skills, Zhou Changwang suddenly noticed cracks on the ground, and the Spirit Soil seemed to have signs of degradation, so he hurriedly stopped.

He knew this was because the spirit tea tree, after being catalyzed by the Annual Ring Skill, grew rapidly and absorbed too much of the spiritual energy and nutrients in the Spirit Soil.

So, he quickly used the Spirit Rain Skill to irrigate the Spirit Soil and spirit plants, restoring the nutrients and spiritual energy within it.

After three Spirit Rain Skills, the Spirit Soil barely recovered.

At this point, continuing to use the Annual Ring Skill for catalysis was clearly impossible, as it could easily cause fundamental damage to the Spirit Soil around the spirit tea tree.