Cultivating Immortality by Raising a Cat (GL) Chapter 43

A-Bai’s words before she left still rang in Yuan Zhaoyang’s ears. The little calico crouched far away in the corner of the bed and watched Lin Mianmian drink the soup, her face complicated and confused.
When had it started? When had she stopped resisting Lin Mianmian’s kisses?
Was this the power of habit? How frightening…
Then, after A-Bai had said all that nonsense about stepping in poop or not stepping in poop, what was that sudden joy in her heart when Lin Mianmian kissed her paw?
A person who took such careful care of cats really was too easy for a cat to fall for…
While little calico Yuan was thinking this way and that, tangling her own mind into knots, Lin Mianmian took one sip of soup, suddenly turned around, and called out with a hesitant face, “Rice Ball…”
Mm. This was a very common expression. Usually, when Lin Mianmian ate something she wanted to give the cat, but also felt cats probably should not eat it, she called her with exactly that expression…
Sure enough, Yuan Zhaoyang had guessed right. The next moment, Lin Mianmian sighed at the cat with a conflicted face. “This soup is really good… Too bad you can’t drink it.”
See? Exactly like that. The little calico glanced at Lin Mianmian. For the moment, her deep thoughts about A-Bai’s earlier words scattered. She flicked her tail and curled up where she was.
Red Essence Five-Scale Fish really was a terrible ingredient. Qingxin Hall was used to cooking big-pot meals and did not have many high-grade seasonings, so Yuan Zhaoyang could only use the most common Creeping River Vine and Underground Yellow to remove the fishiness, then add a little Luminous Shell Salt for savoriness. Even though Yuan Zhaoyang used quite a lot of spiritual energy and spent plenty of effort cooking this jar of fish soup, the final taste was only the tiniest bit better than delicious fish soup from the mortal world. Compared with other delicacies in the cultivation world, it was simply… All right, there was no way to compare. Since she had also deliberately forced away the essence of the Red Essence Five-Scale Fish, this soup could be called a dark dish that lowered Yuan Zhaoyang’s usual cooking standards.
If she had not noticed that Lin Mianmian wanted to eat it, she never would have used this kind of ingredient to make this kind of soup. Earlier, when A-Bai had loudly stressed that Yuan Zhaoyang had specially cooked it, Yuan Zhaoyang had been so embarrassed and annoyed that for one instant, she almost wanted to knock the jar over.
Fortunately, she held back.
At the table, the little girl who had taken several mouthfuls of fish soup had eyes full of surprise and delight. Seeing that made Yuan Zhaoyang feel that nearly two hours of hard work had been worth it. Although she herself thought it was a dark dish, seeing Lin Mianmian enjoy it so much still gave Yuan Zhaoyang a small, comfortable pride through her whole body.
Soup stewed from a fish that could barely count as an ingredient can make you this happy. If I cook for you later with good spirit beasts and spiritual plants, won’t you be overjoyed? The little calico rubbed her paws against the quilt and gave a soft little hmph, carrying a bit of joy she did not even notice.
Recently, whenever Lin Mianmian ate anything, she thought first of the little calico. After regretfully explaining to the cat, she sank into the wonderful experience the fish soup brought her.
The hot liquid in the jar was almost transparent. If the rich aroma of fish soup had not drifted from the jar with the steam, it really would have made people think it was a jar of boiled plain water. The fish soups Lin Mianmian had seen before always treated a milky white, thick stew as the best result. Compared with the clear jar in front of her now, they were two complete extremes.
Whether fish soup was good or not could be known after one sip. It looked like clear water, but once it entered the mouth, it was full of deep, fresh flavor. Lin Mianmian had never drunk such strongly fragrant fish soup before. Holding one mouthful was like holding the essence of a whole fish. The satisfaction was hard to describe. She swallowed it slowly, reluctant to let it go, and the tip of her tongue could not help curling after the soup. She almost wanted to swallow even the tongue that had been soaked in that fragrant soup.
The soup slid down her throat and into her stomach, warming her heart and lungs all the way down. In an instant, it seemed to drive away the late-autumn chill. Her whole body and mind relaxed.
Lin Mianmian had never imagined soup like this existed. The satisfaction of holding it in her mouth and the comfort of drinking it down were both extreme pleasures, yet they pulled against each other. She wanted to taste it a little longer, but also wanted to swallow it quickly and warm herself. It was almost magical. After several mouthfuls, she still could not stop. Even after drinking many sips, there was no greasy taste in her mouth at all. Instead, there was a faint sweet aftertaste that surprised her even more.
So this was the taste of Red Essence Five-Scale Fish soup… Lin Mianmian looked at the “clear water” with only less than half the jar left and sighed inwardly.
Several years after the apocalypse began, ability users and mutated people who kept advancing in level began to hunt mutated animals and plants. But hunting mutated animals and plants was never easy, and there were never many spoils. At Lin Mianmian’s base back then, people could use crystal cores or base points to exchange for finished foods made from mutated animals and plants. The price was fairly high, and the supply times and food attributes were uncertain. Whether one could buy food suited to one’s own ability also depended on luck.
Take Red Essence Five-Scale Fish as an example. Back then, the base followed the Food Classic and made the fish into paste, then boiled it into fish balls. According to the Food Classic, the fish paste nourished metal. In other words, after eating it, it helped metal-type ability users the most. Only metal-type ability users could gain a little recovery and growth for their abilities from it. Other ability users, mutated people, and ordinary people could only gain an improvement in physical quality. That improvement was not as great as what metal-type ability users received.
Researchers had tested a basic figure. Using Red Essence Five-Scale Fish balls as an example, the physical improvement a metal-type ability user gained from eating one fish ball was about the same as what other ability users gained from eating ten. If it was a mutated person with a physical-strength or eyesight mutation, they would need to eat about twenty to gain the same benefit. As for ordinary people, they needed even more.
So with mutated animals and plants that had special effects always being rare and expensive, most people would not waste crystal cores and points on mutated-animal or mutated-plant foods that did not match their own attribute.
Lin Mianmian had focused on research back then, so she had eaten wood-nourishing foods a few times. The strength they gave her body felt comfortable, and the texture was very special, but the taste was only average. She always felt that the sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy flavors floated on the surface of the ingredients. Eating them felt rather strange.
Red Essence Five-Scale Fish was a metal-nourishing food, so Lin Mianmian had never been extravagant enough to try it. Still, she guessed its taste should be about the same as the ones she had eaten.
The bowl of fish soup before her was not made according to the Food Classic, but to Lin Mianmian, in terms of flavor, it completely surpassed the wood-nourishing foods she had eaten in the apocalypse. She just did not know whether, in the matter of improving physical quality, it followed the same rules as it had in the apocalypse. Lin Mianmian thought about this randomly, but the speed at which she drank the soup did not slow at all.
The jar was not large. After a few more mouthfuls, Lin Mianmian had finished the fish soup. Just as she was about to put down the jar, she suddenly noticed a pale white piece at the bottom. It looked… like fish meat? The pale piece had been sunk at the bottom the whole time. While drinking, she had thought it was a pattern on the jar.
Lin Mianmian lifted the jar high with one hand, tilted back her neck, and patted the bottom of the jar with the other hand.
The little calico, who had been curled on the bed with her gaze never leaving Lin Mianmian, stood up. Her kitten eyes were round, her two little front paws were pressed tightly together, and the quilt under her paws was clawed into wrinkles. Anyone with eyes could tell this was a very nervous cat.
Lin Mianmian finally managed to pat the fish meat into her mouth, but because her face was still inside the jar, she missed the best moment to watch the nervous little calico.
Unlike the fish soup, where even one drop could leave an endless aftertaste and the fragrance gathered in her mouth as if the last trace of sweetness could carry her through two more bowls of rice, this fish meat…
Lin Mianmian narrowed her eyes and chewed seriously. It was fragrant, with the fresh aroma of fish soup.
After the time it took to drink a cup of tea, Lin Mianmian rubbed her cheeks, which were already sore and numb. After hesitating, she spat out the fish meat, which was still just as fragrant as when she had first put it in her mouth, and whose shape had not changed at all.
Although wasting it truly felt embarrassing… something that did not change shape after ten minutes of chewing probably would not be digested even if she swallowed it.
Long before this, when Lin Mianmian had been chewing the fish meat and teasing the cat, Yuan Zhaoyang had already known that Lin Mianmian, who had not yet drawn spiritual energy into her body, really did not have teeth as good as hers. Still, the fact that Lin Mianmian had persisted for so long before spitting it out also surprised Yuan Zhaoyang.
I hope when we next meet in human form, she does not mention this. The little calico lay on the bed and weakly buried her face in the quilt.
Lin Mianmian had drunk delicious fish soup she could not share with the little calico. After finishing it, she stewed two small fish for the little calico’s dinner.
Watching Lin Mianmian lower her head to pick out fish bones, carefully scraping the meat into the soup bowl, Yuan Zhaoyang sighed softly.
Actually, the fish soup Lin Mianmian stewed without salt tasted really… Every time Yuan Zhaoyang saw Lin Mianmian spend so much time picking out fish bones before feeding the cat, her feelings became complicated. She always felt as if a little girl’s deep affection was being betrayed by a cat demon. Just thinking about it made her feel that she was truly… not kind. Even though she had spent two hours that afternoon refining and burning Red Essence Five-Scale Fish, Yuan Zhaoyang still felt that she could not repay Lin Mianmian’s sincere heart toward the cat.
Cultivate faster. End this lie sooner. Yuan Zhaoyang steadied her mind and sped up the flow of spiritual energy in her body.
That night, Yuan Zhaoyang was not the only cat who wanted to cultivate faster.
Perhaps the day had been too exciting, with catching fish, killing fish, scraping scales, and burning fish. Or perhaps the youngest, Wang Minger, being the first to draw spiritual energy into her body had made everyone feel pressure. That night, there were very few cooking fires at mealtime, but many more houses had lamps lit deep into the night than usual.
Lin Mianmian was no exception. But it was not because she had been stirred by the law of the weak being prey to the strong, nor because she felt pressured by Wang Minger taking the first step. It was because she very much wanted to get an attribute-less or wood-type energy core to test whether her wood-type inner core was still there. This came not only from a thirst for power, but even more from a trace of confusion about the past.
That night, Lin Mianmian cultivated until very late, and Yuan Zhaoyang did the same. Life seemed to have tuned itself all at once to the direction Yuan Zhaoyang had first wanted: cultivate properly, advance together in harmony. The cat was very comforted.
Early the next morning, Lin Mianmian was woken by Xiong Lanlan. More accurately, she was startled awake by the sound of two large iron buckets hitting the ground.
At dawn, a black bear appeared in her courtyard holding two iron buckets full of buns. Even during the apocalypse, Lin Mianmian’s imagination had never gone this far.
“Morning. Have you eaten breakfast? You haven’t, right? Come, eat bean buns.” Xiong Lanlan waved, as if she had not seen Lin Mianmian’s shocked expression. She picked up a stool from the courtyard, looked at it, tossed it aside, and simply sat down on the ground.
“Why did you make buns so early… Have you eaten?” Lin Mianmian could not adapt right away to meeting a delivery bear in the morning. She slowly walked to the buckets and looked inside.
Xiong Lanlan patted the buckets. “Eat more. If it isn’t enough, there is more.”
After saying that, Xiong Lanlan stood up, patted off the dust, waved, and left.
“…” Lin Mianmian watched the bear’s back and felt that something was not quite right.
Hmph. Since you did not come back, I will not give you a single one when you do! Xiong Lanlan strode away angrily. Even all the cute little ice rabbits along the road could not make her happy.
The previous evening, Xiong Lanlan had cooked red bean paste, kneaded flour, and steamed a tray of sweet bean buns to wait for Wang Minger to come back. In the end, she waited until deep into the night and still did not see her. As time passed, Xiong Lanlan became more and more upset. She began making bean buns in huge amounts, thinking she would make a mountain of them. When Wang Minger came back, Xiong Lanlan would sit on the sweet bean bun mountain, one bean bun in her left hand, one in her right, eating them one after another and not giving Wang Minger a single one. That would teach her to come back late.
Who knew that after the whole bear worked like she had been injected with chicken blood and steamed bean buns all night, Wang Minger still had not come back by dawn.
Xiong Lanlan faintly felt that Wang Minger might not come back. But anger she could not release still sat in her heart, so she directly carried two buckets of bean buns out to give away. Since the person was not coming back anyway, she would give them away instead of waiting for her return.
As for the remaining bean buns, they naturally became a sacrifice to the angry bear’s stomach.
But even after Xiong Lanlan finished eating the sweet bean buns that truly had piled up like a small mountain, Wang Minger really did not come back.