Cultivating Immortality by Raising a Cat (GL) Chapter 38

In the outer valley of the Five Elements Sect, Lin Mianmian had a fixed place to live, no worries about clothing or food, and even a cute little calico. These few days were simply the most peaceful and happy days Lin Mianmian had lived in years.
At first, Lin Mianmian had cared a great deal about her poor spiritual-root aptitude. Even in this easy life, there had been some worry mixed in. But after more than ten days passed and not a single newly entered Five Elements Sect disciple, human or demon, had successfully drawn spiritual energy into the body, plus the fact that petting the cat every day made her mood fly high, Lin Mianmian gradually relaxed. Her cultivation, however, became steadier day by day.
There were truly too many things in life worth being happy about. By comparison, failing to draw spiritual energy into the body just like everyone else… did not count as something unhappy.
The happiest thing for Lin Mianmian these past few days was that little Rice Ball had finally gone potty. Although there had been all kinds of small problems along the way, too much poop, a little loose poop, poop landing beside the sand basin, the last few times had been on time, the amount had been right, and the texture had been suitable. The quality of poop reflected the little calico’s health from the side. In this place with no animal doctors, the health of a kitten was very important.
Yuan Zhaoyang lay speechless on the bed and watched Lin Mianmian crouch in the corner with a small wooden chip, doing the daily routine she repeated several times… scooping poop. To be honest, even if Yuan Zhaoyang had no experience being a cat in the mortal world, by now she felt Lin Mianmian was truly too detailed when raising a cat. Could she not learn from their neighbor, fellow student Xiong Lanlan, and raise one freely?
Xiong Lanlan had casually used leftover stone from making stone pots to build a little nest in the courtyard, spread two pieces of cloth inside, and tossed whatever the bear ate each day into the cat bowl. As long as the kitten did not poop in the courtyard, Xiong Lanlan did not care where the kitten pooped or whether it pooped at all. Raised so casually, that gray kitten seemed to be living perfectly well. Who changed the menu every day to make salt-free meat-and-vegetable meals for a cat? Who paid this much attention to cat poop?
Thankfully, Yuan Zhaoyang had chosen the right strategy from the start. Otherwise, Lin Mianmian’s foolishness would truly be unbearable to watch.
In the corner, after Lin Mianmian finished cleaning the cat sand basin and washed her hands, she returned and gently ruffled the cat’s fur. With a happy face, she praised, “Rice Ball went potty properly today too. So good! Tonight, I will steam a little fish for you!”
The little calico silently turned over, showing her back. Being praised for this kind of thing was truly too hard to face. Even though the poop was not hers, she still felt so embarrassed.
Back when Yuan Zhaoyang had returned to Lin Mianmian as the little calico, she had put a great deal of thought into protecting a cat’s privacy and avoiding Lin Mianmian’s warm wet cloth.
As for the plain-water cat food, Yuan Zhaoyang put it into her storage bag whenever she had a chance and did not eat it. Even if Lin Mianmian watched too closely and Yuan Zhaoyang had to take a few bites, it quickly dispersed in her body. In any case, going potty was something Yuan Zhaoyang absolutely did not want to do and would not do.
Lin Mianmian had placed the little calico’s special sand basin in one corner of the room. Whenever Lin Mianmian went to collect ingredients or make food, in short, whenever she left the room, Yuan Zhaoyang would find a chance to bring in the yellow cat and switch one thing for another.
Yuan Zhaoyang had cut out a piece of the wall under the bed. Whenever she confirmed that Lin Mianmian had left the room and would stay away for a short time, she moved that piece of wall aside, released the new “Cat-Catching Talisman” she had made, stuck it to the cat’s back, and smuggled Fried Dough inside.
Of course, things had not gone smoothly at first. Yuan Zhaoyang had used the chance when Lin Mianmian went out to get ingredients to catch Fried Dough and give her a good training session. But facts proved that mortal cats were indeed not as smart as cat demons. After the yellow cat was caught and brought in, she only yowled. No matter how long Yuan Zhaoyang taught her, she refused to poop properly. In the end, Yuan Zhaoyang lost patience watching the puffed-up cat and walked closer to let her out. The yellow-furred cat was so frightened she peed instead.
After that, there was no need to mention how Yuan-calico used both kindness and force, even working herself to exhaustion. She used a whole packet of Moonlight Powder before teaching Fried Dough the matter of being smuggled in to poop.
Moonlight Powder was powder ground from the roots of Moonlight Trees. It was usually fed to spirit beasts that needed training but were especially stupid, to increase their intelligence a tiny bit so they could basically understand simple commands from cultivators. A thing from the cultivation world naturally could not be eaten by a mortal cat. But Fried Dough was too stupid, so Yuan-calico had no choice but to use an entire packet of Moonlight Powder to make many different mixtures. At last, she created something Fried Dough could eat that made her a little sharper about commands without harming that foolish cat.
So much Moonlight Powder had been wasted, but the effect was obvious. In the end, Fried Dough at least learned this simple matter: if she was caught and brought in, and if she pooped in the cat sand basin, she would be sent away safely. She would not be beaten by the little calico and could even eat a piece of meat.
But the yellow-furred cat still did not understand. Why did she always have to be forced to a certain place to poop? Why was she also ordered not to poop too much at once, not to have loose poop, not to poop beside the basin, and not to leave it unburied? But since every time she finished, she could eat an especially tasty piece of meat, the yellow-furred cat endured being called whenever needed, pooping in the right place, in the right amount, and with a required texture.
In order to stop Lin Mianmian from nagging, Yuan Zhaoyang had put her whole heart into making poop. Just the Cat-Catching Talisman had been improved several times, all to find the yellow-furred cat as quickly as possible, silence her, hide her, float her into the room, and then send her back the same way after she finished. Setting up a simple smell-blocking array with small stones in the room corner was, of course, necessary.
After going through this kind of trouble, the new strange ideas Lin Mianmian came up with were nothing in the eyes of the worldly Yuan-calico.
For example, that morning, Lin Mianmian had clearly gone out to collect food, but when she returned, she brought back a small pair of scissors and excitedly wanted to trim the cat’s claws. If Yuan Zhaoyang had not experienced the matter of being forced to poop, she probably would have scratched Lin Mianmian’s face.
Now? Was there anything that could make Yuan-calico, whose heart was still as water, angry? At least claw-trimming created no waves in her heart at all.
So when A-Bai, who had sulked on her own for several days and then calmed down on her own, came to the courtyard, she saw the little calico lying belly-up in Lin Mianmian’s arms while Lin Mianmian held her left paw and… trimmed her nails!
“You… you…” A-Bai raised a trembling little paw. She imagined what this would look like if Yuan Zhaoyang were in human form, and she was so stiff she could not speak.
Lin Mianmian carefully trimmed one little claw tip for the calico before raising her head. Seeing the little white rabbit look as if she were about to cry, Lin Mianmian hesitated and tentatively asked the question she had wanted to ask a few days ago. “Do you want yours trimmed too?”
“Of course not!” A-Bai stepped back several steps as if her fur had exploded. As a rabbit demon who very much wanted to become human, she was definitely not that kind of rabbit!
“…” Lin Mianmian, who had misunderstood, awkwardly lowered her head and continued trimming the little calico’s claws.
A-Bai could not hold back from sending a voice transmission. “Yuan Zhaoyang, are you addicted to being a cat? Do you still remember that you came here to cultivate?”
Lin Mianmian trimmed claws fairly quickly. Just then, the left paw was finished. Yuan Zhaoyang rolled over on Lin Mianmian’s knees and took the initiative to offer her right paw. She turned her head to look at A-Bai with an innocent face. “I remember. I am cultivating right now.”
Was she?
A-Bai watched as Lin Mianmian happily caught the little cat paw that had been offered on its own and kissed the back of the paw with a smack. Yuan Zhaoyang seemed… not to resist at all?
“You are just letting her do this? When she finds out that the cat is you, how will you face her later…”
A-Bai had just sent that voice transmission when the little calico, who had been lying lazily on the person’s knees, flipped over and looked at her seriously.
“Hey, hey, do not move. Be good. I almost cut the flesh!” Lin Mianmian quickly pulled back the scissors. Good thing her eyes and hands were quick.
“Of course I will not let her know.” Yuan-calico added with a serious face, “After this period of time, there will be no more calico cat.”
Heh. Was that so?
A-Bai looked at Yuan Zhaoyang, who followed Lin Mianmian’s guiding hands and lay down again. She truly felt those words had no credibility at all.
“A-Bai, do you want buns? I made a few shredded-radish buns this morning, with dried shrimp inside.” Lin Mianmian did not know what A-Bai had come for. But the rabbit kept glaring at little Rice Ball, and Rice Ball had been startled just now, so Lin Mianmian could only urge the rabbit to go eat something.
“No. If your cooking skill had one-tenth of your recipe-talking skill, I might consider tasting it.” Thinking of that wet dough spread across the whole chopping board earlier, A-Bai could not help showing a mocking face.
“…” Lin Mianmian truly had no way to refute that.
Seeing the young girl lower her head gloomily, A-Bai knew, even without Yuan-calico glaring, that she had taken her anger out on an innocent person. She hurriedly threw down one sentence, “Go to the small square this afternoon. Do not forget,” and left. Speaking of it, why did it seem that every time she came to Lin Mianmian’s place, she ended up fleeing in defeat? A-Bai was tired in her heart.
“Did Senior Sister Zihui not already mention the afternoon gathering when she handed out food this morning?” Lin Mianmian stared at A-Bai’s back, which quickly became a small white dot, and murmured to herself. After speaking, she lowered her head and saw the little calico obediently closing her eyes and letting her trim its nails. She could not help smiling as she asked for leave. “Stay home and be good. Do not be afraid if you cannot see me this afternoon. I will come back tonight.”
But you will still see me at the small square this afternoon…
Yuan Zhaoyang flicked her ears, drew back the finished right front paw, and casually stretched out one back paw.
The sect task to catch this batch of Red Essence Five-Scale Fish had been accepted by Yuan Zhaoyang, A-Bai, and Zihui. Yuan Zhaoyang naturally had to be there. A-Bai’s earlier willful decision to let the new disciples watch the fish capture actually made it convenient for Yuan Zhaoyang to temporarily step away from her little calico identity.
When Zihui handed out ingredients that morning, she had only announced the gathering time at the small square that afternoon. Only in the afternoon, after everyone arrived at the square and was led to the river channel beside it, did they learn from Yuan Zhaoyang that they had come to watch fish being caught.
This river channel had originally been open to the new disciples. Only after Xiong Lanlan took too many stones from the river, exposing a large number of Copper-Thread Snails at the riverbed and drawing over the Red Essence Five-Scale Fish that had originally lived in the main river channel closer to the inner valley, was a restriction set to keep new disciples from coming near.
The Red Essence Five-Scale Fish was a kind of group-living fish raised in the Five Elements Sect’s outer-valley river channels. It got the name Five-Scale because two large scales covered each side of its body, and one small scale sat in the center of its skull. When young, the Red Essence Five-Scale Fish’s scales were pale pink. As it grew, the pink gradually deepened until, in adulthood, it became crimson.
Each adult Red Essence Five-Scale Fish was nearly two meters long. Its scales were extremely hard and were commonly used as a supporting material in artifact refining. They were not especially precious, but they were often needed. So Red Essence Five-Scale Fish were one of the spirit beasts that any sect with the right conditions would choose to raise in large numbers.
Beside the river channel, Yuan Zhaoyang was responsible for casting the net and catching fish. When a net of fish was pulled up, Zihui was responsible for immediately picking off the dark red little scale on the top of each Red Essence Five-Scale Fish’s head. That was the fish’s vital point. The little scale was even harder than the four large scales on its body, but when facing a cultivator, that was no defense at all.
Yuan Zhaoyang and Zihui worked together. One caught fish, the other killed them quickly and freed up the fishing net. A-Bai crouched in a soft nest and slowly introduced the Red Essence Five-Scale Fish, Copper-Thread Snails, and the Flame-Crystal Green-Bellied Spider silk in Yuan Zhaoyang’s hands.
Most of the disciples came from the mortal world. It was not that they had never seen fish killed. Some had even seen chickens and pigs slaughtered. But they truly had never seen fish this large, nor had they seen this many fish killed at once.
With expressionless Yuan Zhaoyang and Zihui working together, one fish corpse after another was piled neatly along the riverbank, stretching farther and farther. Although Zihui killed the fish by removing the scale, so it was not too bloody, simply watching a mountain of fish corpses rise from the ground was enough to make the new disciples’ stomachs churn. A few who had eaten too much at noon smelled the heavy fishy odor in the air mixed with a faint scent of blood and nearly could not endure it.
A-Bai looked at the new disciples and could not help shaking her head. This batch of disciples really seemed too weak. Other than that bear and that turtle, whose faces could not be read, everyone else was starting to go pale. Even Lin Mianmian was no exception.
But at this moment, A-Bai did not know that Lin Mianmian’s pale face was not because of this scene, nor because of the smell. After all, in the apocalypse, Lin Mianmian had seen mountains of human corpses, and the rot in the air had never disappeared. How could such a small scene and smell make Lin Mianmian lose control like this?
In truth, when Yuan Zhaoyang began catching the first net of fish and A-Bai spoke the fish’s name, Lin Mianmian had already broken into a cold sweat from shock.
Red Essence Five-Scale Fish. Lin Mianmian had heard this name long ago.
Unlike A-Bai, who focused on introducing the forging value of Red Essence Five-Scale Fish scales, when Lin Mianmian had first come into contact with the name Red Essence Five-Scale Fish, it had been because of its… food value.
Red Essence Five-Scale Fish. Low-level ingredient. Many bones. Hard meat. Fishy smell. Eating it nourishes the metal element. Processing method: remove scales, head, and tail. Place in a steamer. For each fish, add three Creeping River Vines and one slice of Underground Yellow. Steam over high heat for one hour. Remove. For each fish, add two drops of Iron-Thorn Bush Green-Bee honey. Let sit for half an hour. The bones become crisp and the meat loosens. Mash into paste. Fine, fresh, fragrant, and melts in the mouth.
Lin Mianmian could recite this ingredient description backward with her eyes closed, along with many other ingredient descriptions. In the apocalypse, this had simply been a required skill. Even Lin Mianmian, who had not needed to leave the base for the time being to hunt mutated animals and plants, could recite it skillfully.
At the beginning of the apocalypse, humans built bases of all sizes to resist zombies and save themselves. About half a year after the apocalypse began, besides zombies, all kinds of mutated animals and plants began entering human sight. Just when humans felt that their living space was being squeezed again and the pressure to survive grew heavier, a recipe book began spreading among the survivors.
It was a recipe book that used mutated animals and plants as ingredients and could improve the bodies of ability users, mutated people, and even ordinary people. This thing was almost tied to the fate of all humanity. Once several large bases confirmed that its contents were truly effective, they immediately ordered everyone in the base to memorize it. Very soon, this recipe book became something all survivors had to remember.
It was said that this recipe book had first been published on a novel website called Jinjiang. The book only dryly introduced animals and plants that sounded completely made up, along with ways to eat them. At first, no one paid attention to it. But as more and more content was posted, some writers gained a little inspiration for creating things from it, and it began to develop like a writing reference book.
Everything was destroyed in the apocalypse, of course including the server that had stored this book. But a writing reference book would not normally be worth people remembering so firmly, much less writing out from memory in the apocalypse.
Lin Mianmian remembered that the first person to write out this book from memory was the chief editor of a publishing house. That person had had a photographic memory since childhood. Because she had once been very interested in the book and wanted to contact the author to publish it, she had read the whole thing. That was how the later apocalypse book, the Food Classic, came to exist.