An ‘useless' agriculture student who is actually a top-tier spiritual plant cultivator. - Reviews

Let me just say this: the author knows how to paint a picture. The scene where the bus passes through the outer gate and Jiang Luokui sees those people—burn-like red patches on skin, sparse hair, swollen limbs, no protective suits—wasn't just worldbuilding, it was a physical punch to the gut. "Most had grown up in the inner districts. Few had seen this." That's it. That's all the author wrote and I was already imagining the whole scene like a film shot. The contrast between the clean, filtered air inside the bus and the metallic smell seeping through the ventilation, the radiation grades displayed like some dystopian menu, the scaveners risking everything to smuggle in high-radiation items because they can't afford neutralizers. This world feels SO alive. And the teachers' experimental fields! The mutated cucumber vine with sharper thorns, the soybean that lost all its leaves except one purple flower, the two seedlings that grew unusually tall with drooping serrated edges. These aren't just background details—they're the world telling you something is WRONG and nobody outside of Jiang Luokui seems to notice. The radiation purification on Plot 147 being temporary, the spiritual energy she has to constantly pour in, the fact that she's checking her account balance and only having 2,000 credits left. Every detail builds this incredibly coherent, suffocating, beautiful post-apocalyptic world. I could literally smell that metallic air.

The dialogue in this section is genuinely good. Like, you can tell who's speaking without seeing the name tag. Manager Fang's lines are all sharp and dismissive—'I'm not eating anything that came out of a trash can' has such perfect condescending energy. Liang Quan sounds desperate but principled, his sentences are shorter, more punchy. 'I'll take responsibility if something happens!' versus Fang's smooth, circular arguments. And then there's Jiang Luokui's internal voice, which is totally different from her external one. Outwardly she's the calm freshman who helps carry an injured classmate and reports what she saw. Internally she's like 'actually I wanted to test my spiritual energy in high radiation' and 'this lesson was really worth it' because she found her future farmland. That gap between what she says and what she thinks is where the humor lives. Even Bubu gets a voice—just 'Abu' but it's somehow expressive enough that you believe the carrot is making opinions. The narration itself has this dry, slightly wry tone that matches Jiang Luokui's POV perfectly. Not over-dramatic, not stuffy. Just observant and occasionally deadpan.

I am not okay with how funny Liang Quan is. This man walks into the cafeteria kitchen, rubs his hands together, and immediately starts asking Aunt Chen about her cooking. His food obsession is so extreme that he can smell scallion oil from a half-hour-old dish that was washed in the sink. And his reaction? Not "wow that's nice" but "WHO GROW THESE SCALLIONS? I WANT TO BUY SOME. PRICE IS NEGOTIABLE!" The dialogue here is so natural and character-revealing. Aunt Chen calling him out: "Your food obsession is acting up again, isn't it?" And then the narration about how he once spun the lazy Susan right in front of a higher-up's hand because he was too focused on tasting the food. This is a fully realized human being in three paragraphs. And then there's Pu Qing. The man says maybe five lines in the entire chapter and each one is perfectly calibrated. "You okay?" after the chicken incident. "Looks like you're fine. Stay inside until we finish catching them." Cold, efficient, but there's this undercurrent of actual concern. The contrast between his sparse dialogue and his overwhelming presence is masterful writing. Lin Zihan's gossiping on the bus about Li Jue ming's ability potential felt so real too—like, this is exactly how college students talk. The conspiratorial whispering, the speculation about ability types, the comparison between First Academy and Third Academy. It grounded the whole scene in something mundane before everything went to hell with the chickens.

I keep thinking about that soybean plant. Just one purple flower blooming on a bare stalk, all its leaves gone, standing in the teachers' experimental field while everything around it looks healthy. It's such a small detail but it won't leave my head. There's this recurring motif of things that shouldn't be surviving but are. The mutated cucumber with sharper thorns. Bubu liking radiation of all things. The scaveners at the outer gate who have nothing but keep trying to get inside. Jiang Luokui herself—someone with a spirit plant bond and cultivation ability in a world where those are practically survival cheats, yet she's still counting every credit and worrying about radiation levels on her plot. The purification of Plot 147 being temporary is huge symbolically too. She has to keep pouring spiritual energy into it, keep working, keep fighting just to maintain what she's built. Nothing in this world is permanent. The only constant is effort. And yet she does it anyway. "This damned radiation… when would things return to normal?" That question Jiang Luokui is asking herself isn't just about the environment. It's about everything. The social divide, the mutation rates, the fact that an S-rank ability user is needed just to escort students on a field trip. The story keeps asking this question without ever giving a straight answer, and that's what makes it so powerful.

I need to talk about the Liang Quan subplot because honestly it's giving me more drama than the actual mutated rice incident. This man is OUT HERE pulling wilted lettuce out of the TRASH CAN because he's that committed to getting Jiang Luokui's produce into the cafeteria. Manager Fang is basically the villain of this mini-arc—sneering at him, calling his supplier 'unstable,' throwing around demands for inspection reports that a student literally cannot provide. And Liang Quan? He's not backing down. 'I'll personally guarantee this batch.' 'I'll take responsibility if something happens!' The stakes here are weirdly high for something that's basically vegetables. But think about it—in a world where radiation-free crops are basically mythical, this isn't just about lunch. It's about survival. Manager Fang is protecting Boss Zhao's supply chain, and he's not above sabotaging a competitor. The comparison test tomorrow? That's a cliffhanger waiting to happen. Will Boss Zhao's greenhouse lettuce actually be worse? Will Manager Fang find a way to block it? I'm already invested in a vegetable supply chain drama and I don't even cook.

I keep coming back to the ending of this section. Everyone's exhausted, Chu Zi'an's been taken away on a stretcher, the farm incident is being hushed up with confidentiality agreements and compensation money. And Jiang Luokui? She falls asleep on the bus. After literally witnessing a plant attack a classmate, after making a crucial scientific observation, after secretly mapping out her future farmland—she just... naps. There's something so human about that. The others can't sleep because they're too wired, but she's already processed everything and moved on. Meanwhile Pu Qing is wide awake, staring at her pocket, trying to figure out what the hell is going on with this girl. And Wang Meng shows up as a doctor and is like 'why are freshmen doing something this intense?' There's this underlying current of 'Jiang Luokui is not normal and everyone around her is slowly realizing it' that's equal parts thrilling and kind of lonely. She's building this incredible secret life—farming, spiritual energy, a magical carrot—while everyone else is just trying to survive a field trip. I want someone to notice her. I want her to let someone in. But for now, she's just sleeping through the tunnel and catching Bubu before it gets seen.

Let's talk stakes because they are about to go THROUGH THE ROOF and I am not ready. On the surface, this chapter is about a field trip that goes wrong. Mutated chickens escape, students are in danger, an S-rank upperclassman saves the day. Standard conflict, right? But underneath all of that, there are SO MANY threads pulling tight at once. Jiang Luokui only has 2,000 credits. Her plot's purification is temporary. She needs spiritual energy she can't afford to constantly replenish. Meanwhile, she's discovered that her spirit plant LIKES radiation, which means either her cultivation is about to evolve in a way she didn't expect, or she's about to face a moral dilemma about how far she's willing to go. The mutated cucumber vine that she noticed two days ago and didn't remove—because she's a student, not a teacher, and maybe she was afraid, maybe she didn't want to stand out—has GROWN. The thorns are sharper now. And nobody else has noticed. What happens when that vine affects the crops around it? What happens when the mutation spreads? And Pu Qing. The guy is literally being groomed to represent the academy at the Central Base competition in two months. He's an S-rank ability user who commands shadows like they're nothing. Why is he escorting agriculture freshmen? What's the real mission here? The chickens were just the opening act. I can feel the ground shaking.

Okay so let me just say this plot setup is genuinely clever and I want to talk about why. Jiang Luokui gets reborn back to her university days after a hundred years of cultivation. She's a Nascent Soul stage cultivator in her past life, and now she's a broke D-rank student with two loans and three part-time jobs. The immediate hook is survival—she has to make money fast because she knows a catastrophic disaster is coming in four years that will wipe out all her agronomy knowledge. But here's the thing that actually got me invested: the ability assessment scene. She lies on that machine, accidentally opens her meridians by circulating her cultivation technique, and her capacity reads 50 instead of the expected 40. That's a fifteen-point gap, which is flagged as abnormal. The teachers dismiss it as a measurement error, but readers like us know something is up. When she seals her meridians and retests, it reads 40—normal. This means her cultivation ability is actively manipulating her ability metrics in ways the system can't properly account for. She's essentially hiding her true potential behind a D-rank facade, and that's a ticking bomb waiting to go off. The plot also drops this bombshell about the disaster in four years—plants and animals undergo secondary mutations, agronomy becomes useless, humanity has to survive by gathering. She died during a gathering mission in her past life. Now she's back with all that knowledge, and she's already figured out that she can still cultivate in this world. The stakes are massive: she's not just trying to get rich, she's trying to prepare for an apocalypse she's already survived once. And then there's the land rental scene. Half a fen of remote land for 1,000 yuan a month—she takes it immediately despite the price gouging. Something happened there before that made it unwanted. Classic setup for a hidden advantage. What could possibly be wrong with that plot?

Okay so let me just say this upfront—Jiang Luokui walking up to grab both rice AND tomato seeds as a D-rank freshman is the single best plot move in this entire batch. Like, think about it. Every other student, even the B-ranks, was hesitating. The C-ranks were literally waiting for someone else to take the rice so they could grab tomatoes. And she just... stepped up. No hesitation. Not because she's reckless, but because she knows something they don't. She's reborn. She knows the disaster is coming in four years. She knows staple crops will be a nightmare for a decade. And instead of playing it safe, she goes for the hardest challenge right now. The Professor's reaction is also brilliant storytelling. He hands her the seeds and says "If you encounter difficulties, come to me anytime." That's not just world-building—that's a setup. He's planting a hook for future interactions. And then the betting pool subplot with Chen Pan? Perfect. It ties together the forum smear campaign, the wager on whether she'll last a month, and now Chen Pan accidentally becomes her informant about the Li family. The plot threads are weaving themselves together without feeling forced. But here's what really got me—the mortality rate discussion at the start. Professor Qian casually dropping that the annual mortality rate for agriculture researchers is climbing from 8% to 10% and telling students to "value your time here"? That's not just atmosphere. That's the author telling us exactly how dangerous this world is, and Jiang Luokui noticing it as a sign she missed in her previous life. The plot is layering information like an onion, and I love it.

I need to talk about Uncle Li. Just... Uncle Li. Because this one moment completely changed how I see Jiang Luokui's backstory and I'm still processing it. The scene where he's feeding the kids at the Happiness Charity Institute, handing out coarse steamed buns, sitting beside Jiang's mother on the steps—"That child always keeps her troubles to herself." And then later, he changes into clean clothes and takes a bus from the outer wall district to the inner wall district to confront the Li family patriarch. Twenty years he's been gone. Twenty years. And he comes back now because his nephew tried to physically grab Jiang Luokui. The line that destroyed me was when Li Xianhua asks: "What is Jiang Luokui to you, that you're protecting her like this?" And Uncle Li just says: "I raised her. By seniority, she's your younger sister." She's his younger sister. Not his daughter. He raised her, but she has the surname Jiang. The implications are staggering. Who is her real father? Why does she have a different surname? What happened twenty years ago that made him leave and only come back now? And why is he so fiercely protective of her that he'd confront his own brother's family? Jiang's mother's reaction too—"Once something happens once, it'll happen again—and again." She's not surprised. She expected this. There's so much history between these three characters that the author hasn't fully revealed yet, and it's making my brain itch. I need answers. Now.

I need to talk about how this author builds a world without dumping exposition on you, because it's genuinely impressive. The wasteland setting is established through tiny, specific details rather than giant info-dumps. A 10-liter bag of soil costs 279 yuan because all natural soil carries radiation and has to be treated. Rice is 20 yuan, a steamed bun is 5 yuan, vegetables are 30 yuan per serving. The Great Cataclysm has lasted over sixty years, and humanity has only recovered for about a decade. These numbers paint a picture of scarcity and inflation that feels lived-in. Then there's the smart chip called LingXun—a ten-inch screen projected onto the retina. No smartphones anymore. This is a world that's moved past our current technology but hasn't solved basic survival problems. The contrast between advanced ability-assessment machines (developed by the Central Base) and the fact that a college student can barely afford soil is really effective worldbuilding. It shows a society that has made technological leaps in some areas while remaining desperately poor in others. The ability assessment room itself is described with just enough detail to visualize it: a massive machine taking up half the space, resembling a CT scanner, with a receiver above where the student lies. Old Zhang stubbing out his cigarette while operating high-tech equipment—that single image tells you everything about the culture of this world. Scientists in casual clothes, smoking, treating extraordinary technology like everyday tools. And Jiang Luokui's scalp itching before her natal plant sprouts? That's the kind of sensory detail that makes a fantasy element feel physically real. You can feel the tickle. You can imagine her frantically rushing back to the dorm and locking the door. The world feels tangible in a way that most web novels don't achieve.

I need to talk about Bubu because this moment absolutely wrecked me in the best possible way. Jiang Luokui spent a hundred years in the cultivation world. She reached Nascent Soul stage. She built a life, however difficult, and then she died—alone, repaying loans she'd just finished paying off. When she wakes up reborn in a university classroom, the emotional baseline is devastation. She's lost everything: her fortune, her status, her century of accumulated power. The author makes us feel this through small details—the math she does converting currencies, the faint sigh when she can't remember why she chose agronomy, the calculation that she's lost "at least one billion." Then the scalp starts itching. She rushes back to the dorm, locks the door, parts her hair, and there they are—two small green leaves. Her natal spiritual plant, Bubu, has come with her. The scene where she pulls it out and it transforms into a palm-sized radish creature with bead-like eyes and a slit mouth, saying "A-boo! A-boo!" and "Master—!"—this is the emotional climax of the first three chapters, and it works because it's earned. A natal spiritual plant is described as the best assistant for tending crops, naturally attuned to plants, growing stronger as the master cultivates. But beyond the mechanical description, this is a companion. Something she had for a hundred years and thought she'd lost forever. The fact that it reverted to juvenile form because of the low spiritual energy in this world adds a bittersweet layer—Bubu is back, but diminished, just like Jiang Luokui herself. The relationship with Lin Zihan also has quiet emotional weight. They're both D and C rank, both broke, splitting a bag of soil to survive. There's no grand friendship declaration—just Lin Zihan saying "I'll buy the soil myself" and the unspoken understanding between two people who are in this together. It's the kind of friendship that doesn't need words.