SFS Chapter 16 Building a New House
Chapter 16 Building a New House
Should we continue digging or stop?
Su Qingyan hesitated for a moment, then said to Little Grey, "Little Grey, you stay here and guard the spring."
"I can't tell what this is. I need to get my wife to come and take a look."
"She stayed at the Zhou family in Jin Su Mountain for ten years and knows more about the cultivation world than I do. Perhaps she can find out the origin of this thing."
Ten minutes later, Su Qingyan returned with his wife Zhang Hui, walking quickly.
Upon seeing the spring gushing forth spiritual energy, Zhang Hui's face lit up with joy. She immediately let go of Su Qingyan's hand and rushed forward.
Then he circled the spring, observed it carefully, scooped up a bowl of water with both hands, tasted it, savored it for a while, turned around and said with a smile, "The water is full of spiritual energy."
"The water flows continuously but does not overflow the surface of the puddle. The spring water is warm to the touch and smooth like grease. It must be a sacred spring."
"When I lived in the Zhou family, there was a spring like this in the courtyard."
"However, the Zhou family's spiritual spring is larger, enough for late-stage Qi Refining cultivators to use for daily cultivation. The one we discovered, based on the amount of spiritual energy it spews out, should be able to supply three or four mid-stage Qi Refining cultivators for daily cultivation without much problem."
"The prerequisite is to gather spiritual energy."
Even though he had some premonition, Su Qingyan was still very excited when he heard his wife explain the specific effects of the spiritual spring. His face lit up with a smile: "With this spring, if we manage it properly, it will be enough to lay the foundation for our Su family to become a family of cultivators."
"My lady, how can we gather the spiritual energy produced by the spring and keep it in one fixed area for a long time?"
"Let me think..." Zhang Hui stroked her chin, recalling as she spoke, "The Zhou family hired an outside array master to set up a spirit-gathering array on the spiritual veins and springs to retain and gather the spiritual energy produced by the spiritual veins and springs, causing the concentration of spiritual energy within the array to continuously increase."
"Our family doesn't have that kind of wealth, so forget about using a spirit-gathering array."
"We have to use other cheaper methods."
"When I was in the Zhou family, I once overheard the cultivators in their family talking and they mentioned that it was quite expensive to have a formation master set up a spirit-gathering formation. If you used high-quality stone to surround the spirit spring in a room, you could also achieve the effect of locking in the spiritual energy."
"Although the effect is much worse than the Spirit Gathering Array, it is cheaper. It does not require spending spirit stones and can be done by some ordinary people, making it extremely cost-effective."
"Now that we have this sacred spring, my husband, you'll have to speed up your plans to build a new house."
Su Qingyan nodded, looking at his smiling wife, and said, "It needs to be expedited!"
"Whether it's for the sake of the family's development or to see our Xian'er without too much trouble, we need to arrange this matter in the next couple of days."
"Let's do a simple design first, select suitable stones, cover up the spring, and then go to the village to invite people to come and build it."
After a pause, Su Qingyan asked curiously, "Wife, how did this spiritual spring in our woods form?"
"We didn't have this treasure before."
"You've come to the right person," Zhang Hui replied with a hint of pride. "While I may not be a lady from a prominent family, I am certainly well-versed in both literature and martial arts, and have read extensively."
"I just happened to see this question in the miscellaneous books in the Zhou family study."
"Based on some of the knowledge inside, I speculate that when the black mist and miasma appeared last time, something in the Biyue Mountains caused the earth's veins to move, connecting this underground river under the forest with a spiritual vein in the Biyue Mountains. The spiritual energy of the spiritual vein was transmitted here through the underground river, thus forming the spiritual spring we see here."
"If our family becomes powerful in the future, perhaps we can also take over the spiritual vein at the source of the Spirit Spring."
"Only then can our Su family truly be called a family of cultivators."
After satisfying their curiosity, the couple talked for a long time about their ideas for the design and planning of their new house, and quickly reached a consensus. After selecting the materials, they could start construction.
The two people and one beast then began their daily work of cultivating the Crimson Blood Yang Ginseng.
In the afternoon, Su Qingyan found a stonemason in the village to brush up on his knowledge of stone materials, and also made a comparison of common stone materials in the surrounding villages.
Ultimately, a high-quality stone called "Qinggang Stone" was chosen.
This type of stone is relatively common near the Biyue Mountains. It is bluish-black in color, cool and heavy to the touch, produces a clear and resonant sound when struck, and has a smooth, mirror-like surface. It is easy to fit two stones together seamlessly.
The downside is that this type of stone has a very high density, making it extremely difficult to mine and very expensive.
Moreover, houses built entirely of bluestone, while structurally very sturdy, are extremely cold and damp inside, making them unsuitable for ordinary people to live in.
In the surrounding villages, wealthy families all used these stones to build their walls, but not to construct their houses.
Su Qingyan returned home and discussed his choice with his wife Zhang Hui. The couple decided to use the Qinggang stone to build the walls of the new house and the cultivation room, while the rest of the rooms would still be constructed with blue bricks and wood.
The Su family has been landlords for many years and has accumulated a considerable amount of savings. Building a new house made of green oak stone is no problem for them. In addition, cultivators have much stronger physiques than ordinary people and can withstand the harsh environment of cold and dampness for a long time. Cultivating in a house built of green oak stone is not a big problem.
As for ordinary people in the family, they can live in ordinary rooms.
The day after making the decision, Su Qingyan took out a large amount of money and offered high prices to recruit a large number of stonemasons from the surrounding villages and towns to start a large-scale quarrying operation on the hills near the Biyue Mountains.
Su Qingyan watched the scene for a long time.
He discovered that "quarrying oak is extremely difficult" was not just an exaggeration; it took five or six strong men four or five hours to extract about one cubic meter of square stone.
The subsequent cutting and polishing will take a lot of time.
"Luckily I hired so many workers, otherwise it would have taken half a year just to repair this training room." Su Qingyan smiled helplessly.
He didn't stay at the quarry the whole time.
Instead, after seeing that everything in the quarry was going smoothly and in an orderly manner, he returned to the spring and made a wooden shield to cover it up, so as to avoid being recognized and causing trouble.
Then they found carpenters, bricklayers, and laborers to collect the broken pieces of oak stone from the quarry and transport them to the camphor tree area to build a wall and a fishpond.
In addition to the training room, construction on other ordinary houses also began simultaneously to speed up the construction of the new residence.
According to the plan, the entire new residence is centered around the cultivation room where the spiritual spring is located, with fish ponds and spiritual fields extending outwards.
The fishpond is adjacent to the cultivation room, making it convenient to use the high-quality, spiritually rich water from the spring to raise spirit fish.
A large backyard was cultivated next to it as a vegetable garden, which can be planned to become a spiritual field later. Being next to the fish pond makes it convenient to use the water from the fish pond for irrigation, and fish manure can be dug out regularly to fertilize the field.
There's not much to say about the other direction; those that expand outwards are the typical layouts of ordinary wealthy families' homes.
It's just that more houses were built.
After all, to develop the family and expand its branches, the population will certainly not be small in the future.
It's always good to prepare in advance.
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