Cultivating Immortality by Raising a Cat (GL) Chapter 2

That evening, the young man filled an entire handcart with soil from the slope beside the ancestral hall before he stopped. Then he walked for more than three double-hours beneath the stars and moon, hauling the soil back home.
Night slowly deepened. The man seemed not to know fatigue. Once he reached home, he only scooped up a few mouthfuls of cold water and gulped them down before hurrying to spread the soil from the cart over the dirt already in his yard. As for the tiny plants mixed in with that soil, crushed flat and filthy like Lin Mianmian, he picked out the ones with broken branches and missing leaves and roughly stuck them into the yard.
In the autumn of the twenty-sixth year of Jinwu, Lin Mianmian officially went from a wild blade of grass on a mountain to… a household blade of grass.
Perhaps because the trip was short, the replanting was quick, and the original soil came with them, Lin Mianmian did not feel much discomfort after changing places. The other grasses and plants that had come from the slope with her survived too, except for a few whose roots had been cut by the shovel. Seven or eight out of ten lived.
The young man came to water the yard for several days in a row. He was clearly pleased by the survival rate, and his dark, rough face was full of happy smiles.
Compared with the young man’s satisfaction, Lin Mianmian felt rather unhappy.
Even if her recovery ability was strong enough to make her a tyrant among grasses, and even if the leaves and stems crushed flat under the soil in the cart had already recovered in a short time, her mood was still heavy.
On one hand, this simple move had once again made Lin Mianmian feel how tiny she was as a blade of grass. Those plants whose roots had been cut, those plants randomly stuck into the ground that could not survive… after having been human, how could she accept a fate she had no control over, one that rested completely in someone else’s hands? Of course Lin Mianmian was unwilling. But there was also nothing she could do.
On the other hand, ever since she was transplanted into this little yard, which was probably less than forty square meters, nearly seven days had passed and she still had not fallen asleep. Since becoming a blade of grass, she had never stayed awake for more than five days in a row. Lin Mianmian had a bad feeling. Perhaps from now on, she would no longer be able to use deep sleep to escape her grassy life.
Her unwillingness was real and powerless. Her premonition was also cruelly accurate.
Seven days. Seven months. Seven years.
From the autumn of Jinwu Year Twenty-Six to the autumn of Jinwu Year Thirty-Three, Lin Mianmian lived through seven years as conscious grass.
Without sunlight, she grew weak. Without water, she hurt. She could not speak, could not move, could not decide how to live, and could not even choose life or death.
There was a saying: if you could not resist, you could only accept it well.
Seven years was enough for Lin Mianmian to go from discomfort, to acceptance, to learning how to find herself little bits of entertainment so she would not go mad from boredom day after day.
Perhaps all plants were like this. In any case, after Lin Mianmian attached herself to grass, her sight could only reach the low patch of earth in front of her, but her hearing was extremely sharp. She did not dare claim too much, but every sound made by this family, whether in the noisy daytime or the silent night, whether loud shouting or low whispers, could be heard as long as she wanted to listen. As for outside the yard, she could hear most of what went on in the two or three neighboring households too.
A grassy life was lonely, so Lin Mianmian treated those sounds like a wireless radio for passing time. Once she started listening, she listened for seven years.
If nothing else, on the first day she arrived, she understood why she had been moved here from the late-night private talk between that young man and his wife.
The young man was called Tian Dali. His wife was Madam Cui, and they had one daughter, Tian Xiaoyu. Tian Xiaoyu was already seven, but Madam Cui still showed no sign of a second child. The couple had taken medicine and prayed to gods. In the end, perhaps because they were desperate enough to try anything, Madam Cui met a fortune-teller traveling through Yingxian City on her way to the medical hall. The fortune-teller said only that the Tian family should, within Jinwu Year Twenty-Six, dig up a cart of soil from the slope west of the Tian ancestral hall and transplant both the soil and plants into their yard. In the future, wealth and honor would surely come to their door.
Madam Cui believed him completely. Tian Dali did not believe it, but under his wife’s urging, he still dragged a handcart out. That was how the cart of soil and Tian Dali’s careless replanting came about.
As for Lin Mianmian, whether there was fate involved in this matter was another question. At least she understood one thing: Yingxian City and Jinwu Year Twenty-Six were things she had never heard of when she was human. Fine, she had crossed into ancient times. Fine, she had crossed into a blade of grass. But she had even crossed into another time and space.
As a girl who had read web novels while studying, Lin Mianmian had to admit that this many-layered crossing over was impressive.
No one could say where the fortune-teller’s promised wealth was, but in Lin Mianmian’s second year as household grass, just when Tian Dali and Madam Cui could no longer withstand the pressure from the two Tian elders and were preparing to take a concubine, Madam Cui became pregnant. Ten months later, she gave birth to a son.
From then on, the house was full of laughter, voices, and the crying of a baby. It was so noisy that Lin Mianmian would rather endure loneliness and empty her mind so she could lower her hearing. She had to admit, a blade of grass that could freely raise and lower its hearing made Lin Mianmian sincerely feel that her grassy body truly had research value. As someone who had spent years studying mutated plants, she could not help imagining that if she still had a human life and her ability, she would surely discover many interesting things from this grassy existence.
Unfortunately, as soon as she crossed over, Lin Mianmian had tried to move her ability and received no response at all. She had become grass. Grass without an ability. That was reality.
Tian Dali’s newborn son was named Tian Jinbao. Once the gold treasure was born, the jade turned to stone.
Before that, although Tian Xiaoyu was not favored by her grandparents, she had at least received much of her parents’ love. But after Tian Jinbao was born, Tian Xiaoyu slowly became a person on the edge of the family. Aside from being told to help look after her little brother or do chores, no one in the family seemed to see her. It was not abuse, but for a child, how was being ignored not another kind of harm?
Lin Mianmian did not need to hear much to understand this typical preference for sons over daughters. As a blade of grass, saying she pitied a person sounded absurd and useless. Even so, Lin Mianmian liked the little girl of the Tian family and truly felt the situation was unfair to her.
When Lin Mianmian was transplanted here, Tian Xiaoyu was already seven. Children in this time and place matured early. Tian Xiaoyu had also heard the fortune-teller’s words from Madam Cui. Tian Dali had watered the soil for two days after hauling it home, then stopped caring once he saw that many plants had survived. Madam Cui and the Tian elders had come to the yard for a few months to mutter prayers and make wishes. But after the novelty passed and no clear good fortune appeared, they gradually stopped caring too.
Only Tian Xiaoyu remained. Over the years, she watered during drought and drained water during rain. She was very attentive. While tending the plants, she would often murmur wishes: that her mother might become pregnant again, that her grandparents would stop scolding her mother, that the family could be harmonious. She spoke softly when no one was around, and only Lin Mianmian could hear. Whether those words were sincere was obvious.
Tian Xiaoyu’s patient care and her simple wishes both made Lin Mianmian like the child. Mm… it would have been better if she did not go next door every so often to ask Auntie Wang for chicken manure as fertilizer! Lin Mianmian truly only wanted to be a quiet blade of grass that smelled like grass, all right?
A blade of grass was powerless because it was powerless over itself.
A blade of grass with a human soul was powerless over herself, and also powerless over the other things in this world.
For example, she clearly hated the smell of fertilizer, yet she was always fertilized. Every day, she could smell the sauce-braised meat noodles from the Qiao family’s noodle shop on the street three households away, and the scent made her whole grassy body want to sway, but she could neither see nor eat them. She knew the Tian family favored sons over daughters, knew Tian Xiaoyu worked like an ox and a horse at home, and knew the girl’s sincere heart would one day be wasted, yet she could do nothing.
For example, in Lin Mianmian’s seventh year as household grass, when Tian Xiaoyu was fourteen, Lin Mianmian heard Tian Dali planning to arrange a marriage for her the next year, when she turned fifteen. He wanted to marry her to the lame son of the Fengji Pawnshop’s shopkeeper and take two hundred taels of betrothal money, so he could buy a house in Yingxian City for Tian Jinbao and make it easier for him to seek a wife in the future. Lin Mianmian could not warn Tian Xiaoyu by even one word.
Tian Dali was a small manager at the Yingxian City docks who kept count for the laborers. The work was not easy, but compared with the laborers who sold their strength directly, it was much better. Tian Dali had few hobbies. He simply liked inviting several other small dock managers he was friendly with to his house for drinks every so often. The Tian home was not large. When guests came, they usually set up a table in the yard and ate and drank there.
At times like that, Lin Mianmian was always terribly hungry. Even after becoming a blade of grass, she still could not resist the smell of food. Lin Mianmian sincerely felt that after starving for years in the apocalypse and then starving for decades as grass, if someone gave her the chance, she could eat all of Yingxian City. Mm… she was joking. But eating the whole table of dishes would be no problem.
Tian Dali and those little managers loved to brag over meals.
Over the years, with the smell of food tormenting her, Lin Mianmian heard quite a lot about this time and space.
The thing that shocked her most was this: this world had immortals.
This world was made up of four regions: the Eastern Sea, the Western Wastes, the Southern Union, and the Northern Territory. Yingxian City, where the Tian family lived, was a medium-sized city in the Southern Union. Its name, Yingxian, had been changed only a little over a hundred years ago. It came from the immortal sects’ once-every-ten-years disciple recruitment and was meant to welcome the immortals who came to take disciples.
After listening to Tian Dali and the others gossip for years, Lin Mianmian could more or less guess that the immortals they spoke of were cultivators. She had truly never expected that the other world she crossed into would be a world of cultivation. Unfortunately… Lin Mianmian was only a blade of grass.
An interesting world of cultivation had nothing to do with a blade of grass. After her first shock, Lin Mianmian no longer felt that those distant matters had any connection to her.
That lasted until she heard Tian Dali and the other managers chatting about how the lame son of Fengji’s shopkeeper had actually taken a liking to Tian Xiaoyu two years ago. If not for the Tian family wanting Tian Xiaoyu to try and see whether the immortals would take her as a disciple this year, they would have married her off long ago. After all, if the immortals accepted a disciple, they would give the disciple’s family five hundred taels of silver. That was more than twice the two hundred taels of betrothal money.
Selling a daughter and doing the math so carefully, while those managers nodded in approval – when Lin Mianmian thought again of Tian Xiaoyu, who spent every day rushing around for the family, even as a blade of grass she was almost twisted crooked with anger.
Unfortunately, it was still the same sentence. As a blade of grass, Lin Mianmian could do nothing.
Less than two months after hearing Tian Dali’s plan to sell his daughter over the banquet table, Lin Mianmian sensed changes nearby, especially along the streets.
More and more people arrived. It was noisy, lively, and the air was cheerful.
The immortals who came to recruit disciples were almost here.
Lin Mianmian silently watched the Qiao family’s boy lean over the wall and toss Tian Xiaoyu a packet of pastries. She could not help sighing. Whether Tian Xiaoyu was chosen to be an immortal’s disciple or not, these two had no fate together. What a pity. The Qiao family’s sauce-braised meat noodles smelled so good.
Decades of existence, seven years of conscious grassy life – Lin Mianmian had already accepted that she could only be a spectator in this world. Listening to gossip and basking in sunlight were the only things she could do.
But she never expected that one morning, the calls, shouts, and children’s noises that had grown around the area over the past few days would suddenly become especially numerous and especially loud.
Then, although there was clearly no one in the yard, an external force suddenly appeared out of thin air. Lin Mianmian felt as if something had squeezed her. Pressure came from every direction.
It was very much like that feeling in the universe, when she had been a ball of light and was squeezed.
Lin Mianmian was terrified. She could still remember that terrible pain clearly. But before she even had time to be afraid, the familiar pain arrived.
She did not even have time to curse, all right?
To Lin Mianmian’s surprise, the violent pain lasted only an instant. Then the force squeezing her seemed to vanish. What replaced it was fullness inside her body.
Satisfaction. Comfort. It was as if a gentle current flowed through her, soothing every inch of her.
Happiness was brief. Soon, Lin Mianmian discovered that there seemed to be too much of that current in her body. It gave her the feeling that she was a balloon about to be blown apart.
More frightening was that her branches and leaves did not seem to have changed. So what exactly was going to explode?
The extra current seemed unable to find a way out and rushed around wildly. The pain of her body nearly bursting from within was no weaker than the feeling of almost being crushed apart as a ball of light. Just as Lin Mianmian was about to faint from pain, she sensed something familiar.
This feeling of being so full her body was about to burst was something Lin Mianmian had experienced when she still had a human body. Back then, she had been a level-one ability user at a bottleneck. In order to advance faster, she had taken the risk of absorbing a level-two crystal.
Lin Mianmian was already stuffed full of those strange currents, hurting so much that her mind was nearly unclear. For some reason, remembering that past experience made her reflexively circulate the method she had used to absorb crystal energy.
When she had first crossed into grass, she had tried to move her ability and received no response. Now, when she used the method for absorbing ability energy, at first the current truly gathered toward the top of the grass. But soon it flowed downward instead, without absorbing at all.
Of course. She had become grass. How could she absorb it? Besides, she did not even know what that current was. After one failed try, Lin Mianmian felt very discouraged and thought she might as well faint from the pain.
But before she gave up, the current flowed in reverse, downward, and began to gather at one point. The pressure inside her body suddenly lightened.
Lin Mianmian was startled. The moment she relaxed, the current lost control. It no longer moved slowly under her guidance. Instead, like a pack of puppies that had found their owner, it rushed in a crowd toward that one point. The out-of-control current tore through Lin Mianmian’s tender channels as it ran. At last, Lin Mianmian… fainted from the pain.
This was really unlucky beyond belief, Lin Mianmian thought before passing out.
Only when she woke again did she realize that there was no unluckiest thing in the world. There was only something even more unlucky.
So now came the question: was it worse luck to be a blade of grass in the yard of a family that valued sons over daughters, or to be a young girl lying naked in someone else’s yard?