Cultivating Immortality by Raising a Cat (GL) Chapter 51

That was the meeting between a little rabbit demon and the world’s stupidest little cat demon on Great Snow Mountain in the Northern Territory…
No!
A-Bai, who had just begun sinking into memories, shook her head. It should be called the meeting between a clever little rabbit demon and the world’s stupidest little cat demon.
Although over the past hundred years, A-Bai, who was free and lazy most of the time, had constantly been managed by Yuan Zhaoyang and pulled along the correct cultivation path, keeping her from drifting farther and farther away because of appetite and laziness, when the two demons had first met, it truly was A-Bai’s cleverness that let the rabbit and cat walk onto the correct path.
A-Bai had always believed this, and Yuan Zhaoyang had never denied it.
However, the events of that time involved too many things, so A-Bai usually felt too embarrassed to bring them out to jab at Yuan Zhaoyang. Only tonight, on this somewhat lonely, somewhat confused evening, did A-Bai suddenly remember the earliest past.
The world was divided into four parts: Eastern Sea, Western Wastes, Southern Union, and Northern Territory.
Great Snow Mountain of the Northern Territory was not the name of one mountain in the Northern Territory. It referred to a vast region of ice and snow that occupied nearly one-third of the Northern Territory, perhaps even more. There, mountains stretched endlessly, covered in ice and snow all year round. The landform was very complicated. Many places were extremely cold, difficult for ordinary people, and even demons, to live in.
Back then, A-Bai had been a little rabbit demon cub only a little over two years old. Although demons automatically received their clan’s inherited knowledge at birth and directly gained the intelligence and language ability of a human child of four or five, A-Bai at that time still did not quite understand what it meant to be a Phantom Silver-Haired Rabbit of Great Snow Mountain in the Northern Territory. At that time, she only knew she was a very cute white rabbit cub who lived in a somewhat cold valley, though one could live there by lighting a fire and wearing more clothes. Every day, she waited for her father to bring food home.
That valley was not large. Most of the residents were rabbit demons. Some had already taken human form, while a few, like A-Bai, were rabbits. Among the rabbits, most were from the Phantom Silver-Haired Rabbit clan of Great Snow Mountain in the Northern Territory.
Since childhood, A-Bai had been an independent and strong rabbit. So on days when her father did not bring food back, A-Bai could always solve her breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the rabbit home on the left, the rabbit home on the right, the rabbit home on the left-left, the rabbit home on the right-right, the rabbit home on the left-left-left, and so on.
From birth to a little over two years old, A-Bai had almost eaten her way through the whole village. She knew every rabbit family’s cooking level in great detail. Which family’s greens were always stir-fried too long until flat and bad. Which family always made radish and never changed dishes. Which family’s braised meat was stewed until the softest. Which family cooked as if they had beaten to death a whole group of salt sellers. A-Bai knew all of it.
But knowing was one thing. A-Bai could not only stare at the few families in the village that cooked well and often made meat dishes. After all, if she caught the same few families and ate at their homes year after year, she would easily be disliked.
That was right. Year after year, A-Bai was the only rabbit at home.
Speaking of it, it was thanks to demons knowing things from birth. If A-Bai had been human and had been left home alone at only one or two years old, whether she could have survived properly would have been uncertain.
At that time, A-Bai probably had the intelligence of a human child around six or seven. Although one rabbit could survive by getting a meal here and a meal there, she still… did not want to keep living that way forever.
A-Bai’s father was a merchant. Every time he came back, he would send a matching amount of food to the families where A-Bai had eaten during that period. Back then, when A-Bai was still a rabbit child, she very much hoped her father, who went out for one or two months each time and came back for only a few days, could stay in the valley. But she knew he could not.
Likewise, A-Bai had no way to say the words asking him to stay.
A-Bai’s mother had died in childbirth. When A-Bai had just left her mother’s body, before her mother could even look at her little rabbit cub, her mother closed her eyes.
When the newborn A-Bai finished receiving the inherited knowledge of the silver-haired rabbit demons of Great Snow Mountain in a daze and opened her eyes, she discovered that only her father was left.
Demon pregnancy carried bloodline inheritance. The purer the demon race, the harder pregnancy was. A-Bai’s mother and father were both pure-blood Phantom Silver-Haired Rabbits of Great Snow Mountain. The bloodline aura on A-Bai was very strong, which could be seen from the fact that she had been born as a white rabbit.
People could be divided into those with spiritual roots and those without. The former had the basic aptitude for cultivating immortality, while the latter had no fate with cultivation.
Likewise, demons could also be divided into demons with spiritual roots and demons without spiritual roots. The former could cultivate immortal arts like humans with spiritual roots and had a chance to reach Soul Transformation and ascend. The latter could only receive the inheritance in their bloodline and become ordinary demons with racial talents.
Using the Phantom Silver-Haired Rabbits, who were most numerous in the valley at that time, as an example, those who had reached adulthood and still remained in the valley basically had no spiritual roots and could not cultivate immortality. They gathered and lived together. As for young rabbit demons like A-Bai, if they wanted to cultivate, they would go to various immortal sects around the age of ten to test whether they had spiritual roots.
A-Bai’s father had loved A-Bai’s mother deeply. The pain of losing his wife came from the heart and could not be stopped by action. A-Bai, who had just begun to understand things, never dared mention her mother in front of her father. In fact, even between father and daughter, they rarely spoke.
A-Bai’s father was in human form. As a little rabbit cub, A-Bai always felt there was a gap like a ravine between herself and her father.
So A-Bai learned many things from the other rabbit demons in the village.
The Phantom Silver-Haired Rabbit demons of Great Snow Mountain in the Northern Territory were a demon race with a decent number within Great Snow Mountain. They were scattered sparsely in various places across the snowy mountains. This valley was one of the small settlements of the Phantom Silver-Haired Rabbit clan.
About three years earlier, A-Bai’s father and mother had come to this valley to settle.
Actually, most demons were like most humans and did not have spiritual roots. A little demon born from two pure-blood demons was usually in demon form. Children born from a pure-blood demon or half-demon together with a half-demon or human would have both demon and human features.
Demons and half-demons received bloodline inheritance at birth and gained spiritual awareness. Whether to look more convenient, live more conveniently, or simply because they hoped to, they usually wanted to take human form.
There were also two ways to take human form. One was to have spiritual roots and cultivate. At the latest, by Core Formation, one could take human form. The other was for those without spiritual roots to drink a transformation potion.
Unlike becoming human through cultivation, the transformation potion did no harm to demons without spiritual roots, but the process was not easy. It also harmed demons with spiritual roots, to the point that saying it hindered cultivation would not be wrong.
When A-Bai’s parents first came to the valley, the rabbits only thought another pair of rabbit demons who had drunk transformation potion had arrived.
Only when A-Bai’s mother died in childbirth and A-Bai’s father lost control, creating ice spikes all over the ground as layers of ice spread upward and instantly sealed the whole house, trapping the family of three inside, did the rabbits learn that at least A-Bai’s father had cultivated into human form and had not drunk potion.
Fortunately, another rabbit cultivator happened to be visiting relatives and friends in the valley at that time and acted in time to undo the frost surrounding the whole house. Only then were A-Bai and her father rescued, avoiding an even greater tragedy.
A-Bai always felt that her birth had caused her mother’s death. Sometimes, she even felt her father thought so too.
Life as a lone rabbit cub truly was hard. Every day, she thickened her face and went out to beg meals. Sometimes, after eating at one house and still not being full, she had to rush to another family before they cleared the bowls and get some more. A-Bai had once hoped her father would return sooner.
But as if by some strange instinct, whenever her father, who had been gone for many days, finally came back, A-Bai would look at that serious-faced father in human form and feel a deep awe. She could only obediently crouch in the corner and be a quiet, well-behaved rabbit waiting to be fed.
There was almost no communication, only smoked meat, flatbreads, dried vegetables… The taste was average, not even as good as the dishes A-Bai had found among the better rabbit households. But at least it belonged to her own home, so A-Bai ate with great peace of mind.
A-Bai lived like this for more than two years.
Until, when A-Bai was a little over two years old, she felt she was already a big rabbit. She gathered her courage and planned to talk with her father about changing their way of life.
All right. In truth, it was because A-Bai discovered she could eat more and more. How could she live when she had to beg meals from four families before she was only mostly full? Every time she reached the fourth family, they had already cleared the bowls. Sometimes, no matter how thick-skinned A-Bai was, she still could not say, please bring out the leftovers and let me eat some more.
Also… A-Bai, who was becoming more sensible, felt that the families who received her father’s smoked meat, flatbreads, and dried vegetables seemed… not very satisfied.
The reason she could still get meals was probably only their sympathy.
As A-Bai began growing up, not only her appetite grew, but also her self-respect. Changing this way of life soon became urgent.
A-Bai still remembered that night when she was a little over two years old. She gathered all her courage and prepared a whole basket of things to say, wanting to talk properly with her father about their future life. Would she go out with him to trade? Would her father come back to live? Or would they convert the smoked meat, flatbreads, and dried vegetables into money for those families? A-Bai thought of several ways to change things and many reasons for each one.
But she had not expected that after she had only said the opening, her father nodded.
In a rush, almost without any preparation, A-Bai followed her father onto the merchant road the very next day.
It was also during that trip that A-Bai, because she loved to play, got separated from her father while passing through an extremely cold region. She nearly became a rabbit demon frozen to death in the snow. While she wandered in confusion, searching for a way out, she found a calico kitten in a snow hollow, already frozen stiff.