Cultivating Immortality by Raising a Cat (GL) Chapter 83

After only smoothing the seed’s veins once, the spiritual energy was gone… Of course, part of it was because Lin Mianmian had only recently drawn qi into her body. But a thirty-two percent spiritual root really was a little too forced.
Combining what the Great Lecture Hall teacher had said with her own actual situation, Lin Mianmian felt that if she wanted to urge one Moon-Watching Epiphyllum to maturity, with her current state, it might take three or four months.
Moon-Watching Epiphyllum could be planted normally. With a little care, it would mature in one year. Compared with that, constantly urging growth for three or four months just to get one plant had no cost-effectiveness at all.
Her spiritual energy being unhelpful was within expectation. Although she felt a little discouraged, what Lin Mianmian cared about most was still the ability she would use next.
This core that had followed her to another world, this ability that could only be filled by eating, could it still be used or not…
At this time, only a dozen days had passed since Lin Mianmian successfully drew qi into her body. The ability recovered in her core was probably only about six-thousandths of its full state. Even that had been slowly eaten back by working hard to eat wood-attribute ingredients at Clear Heart Hall.
If this were the apocalypse, this bit of ability would be gone with one wave of the hand, and it would be refilled after a few breaths. It would truly not be enough to look at.
But now, under the condition that it could not recover naturally, every tiny bit had truly come with difficulty.
Lin Mianmian temporarily set aside the seed that had been smoothed by spiritual energy but had still shown no response. She walked instead to the other seed she had just planted.
With a little hesitation, she reached out, but in the end, her hand landed steadily above it.
Inside the empty core, the small amount of ability flowed. It drew out a thread of energy tens of millions of times thinner than a strand of hair and slowly sent it out from Lin Mianmian’s fingertip.
Twining, seeping in, opening the channels, nourishing…
The tiny seed was guided by the ability, accelerating its division and rebuilding. It went smoothly beyond imagination.
And Lin Mianmian, who had felt a little unfamiliar at first, soon found the familiar feeling again.
When one had done something continuously with all one’s heart and strength for seven years, even after a stretch of time had passed, even if the first movement felt a little raw, once the feeling returned, it was very easy to regain the rhythm.
There was no need to think too much. It was like the body’s instinct. The ability guided the seed, and at the same time, was led by the seed, naturally rushing toward the most perfect moment.
Sprouting, drawing stems, spreading leaves, blooming…
The dark green stem and leaves were an arm long. The flower that bloomed was as large as a bowl made by circling two hands together. The petals went from darker to lighter pale purple from bottom to top. In the middle, the flower’s stamen was shaped like a white moon and faintly carried the sweet scent of medicinal material.
Moon-Watching Epiphyllum was rather beautiful. Looking at the finished plant in front of her, Lin Mianmian was dazed for an instant.
Whether it was beautiful or not was naturally not the main point.
The main point was that in less than ten minutes, it had… grown?
Lin Mianmian’s heart beat very quickly. She barely suppressed her excitement and quickly inspected the ability inside her core.
The ability that had originally occupied only about six-thousandths of the core had now only consumed an even thinner layer. In these ten minutes, it had probably used only about one-thousandth.
A second-grade spiritual plant that would take three or four months to urge to maturity with spiritual energy had been urged to maturity in ten minutes with one-thousandth of her ability…
What kind of gap was this! Lin Mianmian had not even had time to rejoice that her ability could still be used before she fell into an even greater shock.
A ten-thousandfold increase in efficiency meant she could obtain much more profit.
Using Moon-Watching Epiphyllum to calculate, one Moon-Watching Epiphyllum seed sold inside the Five Elements Sect for about twenty-eight low-grade spirit stones. A mature Moon-Watching Epiphyllum plant sold back to the sect could earn fifty low-grade spirit stones.
In other words, using one-thousandth of her ability and spending ten minutes could earn almost twenty-two low-grade spirit stones.
No… perhaps even more.
During the apocalypse, when Lin Mianmian had a fifth-level ability and could urge the growth of many kinds of mutant plants, she no longer needed to work one seed at a time. A dozen seeds, several dozen seeds, even an entire handful scattered into a patch and urged together, were all ordinary things.
Mutant plants also had high and low levels. They were only not divided as finely as spiritual plants in the cultivation world.
After urging one Moon-Watching Epiphyllum, Lin Mianmian could feel that in the cultivation world, the difficulty of urging a second-grade spiritual plant was about the same as several lower-level spiritual plants from the apocalypse. If her feeling was not wrong, Moon-Watching Epiphyllum was also the type she could urge in patches. Of course, that required her ability to be sufficient.
Looking at the mature Moon-Watching Epiphyllum before her, Lin Mianmian wanted to verify her guess.
Ability growth-urging and spiritual energy growth-urging were the same. They only sped up the plant’s growth. The other things the plant needed to grow still had to be absorbed from its surroundings. Compressing and speeding the growth would also speed the consumption of surrounding spiritual energy and nutrients in the soil.
Lin Mianmian touched the soil around the mature Moon-Watching Epiphyllum. Sure enough, that small patch of earth had become hard and dry. Lin Mianmian thought for a moment, then took out four more Moon-Watching Epiphyllum seeds and planted them two steps away from the mature plant, spaced apart. Lin Mianmian herself stood near the four seeds and touched one hand to the ground.
The ability released from her fingertip slowly split into four in the soil and moved forward on its own.
Another ten minutes… Lin Mianmian straightened her waist. There were already five mature Moon-Watching Epiphyllum plants on the ground.
Sure enough!
It actually…
If growing one plant before had brought Lin Mianmian a nervous surprise, then at this moment, using wild joy to describe her mood was not excessive.
On the ground were five mature Moon-Watching Epiphyllum plants, and also one hundred and ten low-grade spirit stones of net profit.
But no one could calculate more clearly than Lin Mianmian that what these twenty minutes brought her was not only one hundred and ten low-grade spirit stones.
Successfully testing four more plants let Lin Mianmian better grasp the similarities between urging plants in the apocalypse and in the cultivation world. She was confident that as long as there was enough ability in her core, she could urge a whole patch of Moon-Watching Epiphyllum to maturity in ten minutes.
Only looking at planting Moon-Watching Epiphyllum, she did not need to spend more time. Every one-thousandth of ability would bring a return of twenty-two low-grade spirit stones.
The time cost of urging growth could basically be counted as zero.
As for the cost of the ability…
Although in this cultivation world, Lin Mianmian could not gain more ability through natural recovery, there was still the path of food nourishment.
Most importantly, there was Clear Heart Hall.
One had to know that at Clear Heart Hall, one low-grade spirit stone could buy a meal ticket and eat until full.
Previously, one bowl of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup had let her recover one ten-thousandth of her ability. In other words, for every ten bowls of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup she drank, she could earn twenty-two low-grade spirit stones.
The little abacus in Lin Mianmian’s heart clacked extremely quickly. The more she calculated, the more she felt piles of low-grade spirit stones waving at her.
Although the Five Elements Sect only bought fifty Moon-Watching Epiphyllum plants from each disciple each year at the price of fifty low-grade spirit stones per plant, Lin Mianmian felt that even if she sold them elsewhere and did not get the disciple-friendly price, she could sell each plant for forty low-grade spirit stones. Earning ten low-grade spirit stones was still earning.
After all, if her ability was sufficient, she could completely urge a large batch to maturity in ten minutes. It was simply flying-fast.
Lin Mianmian had heard A-Bai say before that a Core Formation elder of the Five Elements Sect had an official yearly salary of only three hundred middle-grade spirit stones, converted to about thirty thousand low-grade spirit stones.
Calculating it… she would only need at most three full-core states of ability to earn that?
And this was only calculated using the second-grade spiritual plant Moon-Watching Epiphyllum.
Then what if it were an even higher-grade spiritual plant…
Lin Mianmian rubbed her fingers. She always felt that she could urge even higher-grade spiritual plants too. After all, the difficulty of urging Moon-Watching Epiphyllum just now was still far below the higher-level mutant plants she had urged in the later apocalypse.
Higher-grade spiritual plants should sell for more spirit stones…
Lin Mianmian quickly calculated in her heart. As one math formula after another ran through her mind, her heart gradually settled.
Those long days when she could not draw qi into her body… her very ordinary spiritual root aptitude… and now, today, holding her ability again. Could this count as finally finding a foundation that would let her survive in the cultivation world?
No matter when or where one was, the thing called “money” was usually better the more one had.
Spirit stones meant richer cultivation resources. If her ability, planting, and food could always form a good cycle, then extravagantly using extra spirit stones to support cultivation was not too far away.
Then, with a thirty-two percent spiritual root, perhaps she could still catch up a little. Catching up to the cultivation speed of someone with forty or fifty percent spiritual root aptitude might not be impossible.
A little light showed through the future and finally pulled some of Lin Mianmian’s attention away from the matter of parting.
Ever since she successfully urged Moon-Watching Epiphyllum to maturity, Lin Mianmian seemed to have found her passion for planting again.
Lin Mianmian had not expected that when she began urging plants again, she would not feel blocked by her final experience in the apocalypse. Instead, it went somewhat overly smoothly, whether in mindset or result.
When had the grievance, resentment, loneliness, and fear in her heart scattered like that?
The little calico cat, A-Bai, Zihui, Xiong Lanlan, Feng Liang, Gui Changshou, Meng Tianhe… and Senior Sister Yuan…
Back in Immortal Welcome City, being able to choose to set foot on this cultivation road was truly… so good…
Yuan Zhaoyang entered seclusion. After wandering around for a few days, A-Bai said the sect was boring and dull. She threw Lin Mianmian a bag of spirit stones and two large bags of food, then went to the mortal world to play.
Clearly, only two people were missing, yet Lin Mianmian’s life suddenly became quiet.
Quiet, but not lonely.
Great Lecture Hall’s classes were very rich. During the dozen or so days before Yuan Zhaoyang left, she had already intensively sorted and taught the early Qi Refining courses. Lin Mianmian had only just drawn qi into her body, so for now, she did not need to go supplement more later cultivation knowledge. Instead, she put more time into the Great Lecture Hall courses on wood-type cultivation and spiritual plants and spirit beasts.
During the apocalypse, Lin Mianmian’s wood ability was skillful and had much experience in mutant plant cultivation. But because she basically never left the base, she had almost zero practical experience using her ability in attack.
Great Lecture Hall’s classes effectively made up for this missing piece for Lin Mianmian. Although a thirty-two percent spiritual root made her spiritual energy reserves and spiritual energy purity very ordinary, after three months, her use of spiritual energy to control tools and activate talismans had become quite decent. Lin Mianmian once again sighed at the importance of knowledge inheritance. The efficiency of feeling things out alone in the apocalypse and having someone guide her now could not be compared at all.
Only, Great Lecture Hall’s courses for early Qi Refining disciples on spirit beasts and spiritual plants were far too basic. It was hard for Lin Mianmian to extract more of the information she wanted to understand from them. In the end, it was Wang Minger who mentioned the Five Elements Sect’s World-Viewing Hall, a place similar to a library. Only then did Lin Mianmian’s investigation make progress.
The Five Elements Sect had been established for a long time. The books and jade slips in World-Viewing Hall were also like stars in the sky. Fortunately, after being sorted by many generations of sect disciples, many similar contents had already been gathered and organized, and there were also summary jade slips similar to classified encyclopedias.
Lin Mianmian roughly skimmed one relatively complete jade slip that summarized spiritual plants of the four lands. Just looking at the names of those spiritual plants without carefully reading the detailed descriptions took her a full three months.
Fortunately, the time spent was useful.
More than half of the plants that had appeared in the Food Classic could be found in the jade slip. As for the smaller half of names, although they had not been found in that summary jade slip, Lin Mianmian somehow felt that it was not that those plants did not exist in the cultivation world. It was very likely that the Five Elements Sect’s summary jade slip simply had not recorded them.
This guess had no basis. It was only intuition.
Although she had not yet had time to compare the mutant animals in the Food Classic with the spirit beast names recorded in World-Viewing Hall, Lin Mianmian thought that many of them should match as well.
This discovery was expected, yet also unexpected.
Ever since seeing Red-Essence Five-Scale Fish, Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig, Bitter Jiji Grass… and being able to use food to recover her ability, Lin Mianmian had held a guess in her heart. These three months of searching only made that guess more certain.
If this was transmigration, and if two worlds had some animals and plants that looked similar, or even exactly alike, that was possible. But those mutant plants and animals that had suddenly appeared in the apocalypse not only looked very similar to the spiritual plants and spirit beasts of this cultivation world, even their names were exactly the same. That truly made one unable to stop making more connections.
Only, those further connections were not something Lin Mianmian, who had only recently drawn qi into her body, could think too deeply about.
For Lin Mianmian, compared with those doubts in her heart, the more practical matter was this: if most of the animals and plants in the Food Classic existed in this cultivation world, then the dishes made according to its recipes should also have the effects written in the Food Classic, right?
Red-Essence Five-Scale Fish replenished metal. Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig replenished earth. And the thing that replenished wood…
Recipes were easy to memorize. Ingredients were hard to find.
Clear Heart Hall’s food was always plain steamed or boiled with no pairing at all, only sprinkled with Glow-Shell Salt. Lin Mianmian did not know whether only the Five Elements Sect cooked and ate so roughly, or whether other places were all like this too… Directly cooking a single ingredient, even if it was a wood-attribute ingredient, only restored about one or two ten-thousandths of her ability after one bowl. By comparison, Bitter Jiji Grass Soup was already the easiest Clear Heart Hall food to swallow, with the best balance of eating difficulty and ability conversion efficiency.
When she had first successfully urged Moon-Watching Epiphyllum to maturity, Lin Mianmian had thought beautifully. One bowl of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup restored one ten-thousandth of her ability. Ten bowls were enough to urge one Moon-Watching Epiphyllum to maturity. That meant drinking ten bowls of soup netted more than ten low-grade spirit stones. If she drank around a hundred bowls a day, would that not be a happy hundred or so low-grade spirit stones?
The dream was beautiful. Reality was skinny.
Back then, she still carried the dream of making money. But the first time she let herself drink freely at Clear Heart Hall, Lin Mianmian had only drunk about thirty bowls in one go before nearly vomiting.
No matter how hard Lin Mianmian tried to endure a little more, she only lasted until the thirties before she could not continue.
And that had been the amount from her first open attempt.
In the days after, she could never drink more than thirty bowls of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup in one day.
It was as if… somehow, both her body and heart were full.
Truly, going from frugal to extravagant was easy, but going from extravagant to frugal was hard…
During the apocalypse, objective conditions were bad. There was nothing to eat or drink, and continuing to drink Bitter Jiji Grass Soup even after growing tired of it was common. Now that she had arrived in the cultivation world, there was no need to mention Clear Heart Hall’s flavor again.
On ordinary days, Xiong Lanlan and Feng Liang would occasionally suggest holding a small gathering in any one person’s small courtyard. They would exchange for ingredients from senior brothers and sisters who had returned from missions in the mortal world and cook some food to satisfy their cravings. The deliciousness naturally far surpassed Clear Heart Hall’s boiled-water world. Add in the two bags of mortal-world delicacies A-Bai had left together with spirit stones before she left… and they formed a sharp contrast with Bitter Jiji Grass Soup.
The more one had suffered bitterness, the more one longed for sweetness.
She was already a pitiful grass who had suffered through the apocalypse and stood in the ground for seven years. Even if she could resist the temptation of delicious food and firmly go to Clear Heart Hall to drink bitter soup, the great appetite of a grass demon had unknowingly shrunk under bowl after bowl of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup.
Lin Mianmian had also tried eating other foods that replenished wood ability before drinking Bitter Jiji Grass Soup. But the result of doing this was that the amount of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup she could drink afterward dropped sharply.
In the three months after Yuan Zhaoyang entered seclusion, besides going to Great Lecture Hall for classes, going to World-Viewing Hall to borrow spiritual plant jade slips, and cultivating, Lin Mianmian forced herself to drink a few more bowls of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup at Clear Heart Hall.
Unfortunately, after three months of grass soup, her ability had only recovered to a little under thirty percent.
Looking only at the total result, it seemed much more pleasing than one bowl of grass soup restoring one ten-thousandth. But calculating carefully, spread over each day, she really could only drink about thirty bowls.
By this calculation, if she wanted to restore all of her ability, it would take about a year. And this was calculated only with intake and no expenditure.
After this period, Lin Mianmian also had some guesses. The fact that she could only eat thirty bowls of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup per day might be affected by appetite. But under the condition that she worked very hard and still made no progress, it was more likely because her body’s endurance was limited. Even a low-grade spiritual plant like Bitter Jiji Grass was not something she could eat in large amounts.
Yuan Zhaoyang had been in seclusion for more than three months, and A-Bai had not come back at all. Lin Mianmian had no choice but to find a time to look for Zihui. She hid the specific example that she could only drink thirty bowls of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup, and only asked in general how to solve the problem of spiritual plants and spirit beasts making one full too easily.
Zihui’s answer was almost the same as Lin Mianmian’s guess.
When spiritual plants and spirit beasts were made into spiritual food, some components could benefit the eater, and some components needed the eater to digest and dissolve them. The higher one’s cultivation, the higher-grade spiritual food one could eat, the larger the amount one could eat, and the faster one could dissolve it. At the same cultivation level, demons had a stronger ability to eat spiritual food than people of the same level.
This was also why Clear Heart Hall, though it was all the boiled-water world, provided different food lists for disciples of different cultivation levels. Low-cultivation disciples could eat high-grade spiritual food, but after eating it, they gained little benefit and had a harder time dissolving it. It was actually worse than eating things suitable for their own cultivation.
As for Lin Mianmian’s question of how to eat more, besides raising cultivation, Zihui could not give any more suggestions.
After all, although spiritual food could bring some benefit to the eater, the immediate effect was very limited. The effect of low-grade spiritual food was even more tiny. Using spiritual food to increase cultivation was only a support among supports. To put it simply, the effect of eating spiritual food for a year might not even match one bottle of pills issued monthly by the sect.
Because of this, even though pills that had not been tempered again contained pill poison, and pills after tempering might not fully remove the pill poison either, spiritual food, which had no poison after eating and only needed time to digest, still could not compare with the popularity of pills. There were very few cultivators who specialized in researching spiritual food. Even the Five Elements Sect, a sect with very strong tolerance, currently did not have one.
Most of the Five Elements Sect’s Clear Heart Hall existed for disciples who had not yet reached inedia to solve meals and add a little support along the way. Many sects did not even open a dining hall. They simply issued fasting pills to disciples and sent them off.
Senior Sister Zihui’s explanation was careful and detailed. After Lin Mianmian thanked her, she was very discouraged.
So the reason she could not drink more Bitter Jiji Grass Soup was indeed that her body could not bear more, and it was sending a signal to stop…
Those spiritual foods were a support among supports to other disciples, but to Lin Mianmian, they were the most important thing.
What happened to properly drinking soup, properly farming, and properly earning money…
Also, what happened to demons being able to eat a lot…
At the next small gathering, Lin Mianmian set the location at Clear Heart Hall, and it was the kind where one meal ticket let them eat until full. This time, whatever Feng Liang ordered, she ordered too. When Feng Liang could no longer eat, Lin Mianmian felt herself and judged that she was only about thirty percent full.
Fine. Calculated this way, the fact that she could drink thirty bowls of Bitter Jiji Grass Soup already used her identity as a grass demon… She could not digest more.
She did not know whether those cultivators who researched spiritual food, the ones Senior Sister Zihui had mentioned, had better methods. But this was also not something Lin Mianmian, a disciple who had just entered Qi Refining, could think far about.
If Senior Sister Yuan and A-Bai were here, perhaps she could ask more…
Counting it, Yuan Zhaoyang had already been in seclusion for over three months. Every time Lin Mianmian went to Clear Heart Hall, she would always go around to the cliff on the right and stand there for a while, looking toward Wanyi Peak. When the weather was good, she looked at the mountainside. When the weather was bad, she looked at the peak.
When she was anxious, looking made her gradually calm. When she was discouraged, looking warmed her heart. When she was happy… she always felt the wind on this cliff could also carry her joy over.
Although she still did not know why Senior Sister Yuan looked at her differently, those good things were all real.
From standing up for Tian Xiaoyu at Lin Mianmian’s request when they first met, to fighting Wang Fang for her in the forest, to rescuing her from the Iron-Inlaid Embroidered Stone Array, to the careful teaching at Great Lecture Hall afterward… If all these could still be attributed to a Five Elements Sect senior kindly supporting a junior, then what about those talismans, personal notes, spirit stones, and hair storage bag… Those shredded chicken cold noodles, roasted chicken legs, Five-Scale Fish soup, little wontons, and sugared fruits…
Those kindnesses she had not yet had time to repay…
Worry, concern, and longing filled every day she looked toward Wanyi Peak…
This day, after Lin Mianmian finished pouring down grass soup, she again habitually walked onto the cliff on the right.
Ever since receiving Zihui’s answer, Lin Mianmian had truly been discouraged for several days.
She had not stopped the thirty bowls of grass soup each day, and she worked hard at cultivation every day too. Only, the drive in her heart was not as strong as before. She had more or less taken a blow.
In the distance, Wanyi Peak only revealed its summit. It was quiet and still, without any movement.
Lin Mianmian could not help sighing inwardly. No wonder A-Bai had left the sect early. This waiting was somewhat grinding.
Whether from the special fact that Yuan Zhaoyang had stopped at Great Perfection of Foundation Establishment for seventy or eighty years, or from the careful arrangements she had made before seclusion, or from A-Bai’s behavior of leaving and not returning, as if avoiding something, one could see the difficulty of forming this core.
Only, Lin Mianmian could not do anything.
Senior Sister Yuan really was a very good person…
In the apocalypse, desperately planting had been lonely. Being a grass for a hundred years, unable to speak, had been even lonelier.
She really hoped this cultivation world could stay lively forever.
A person with low aptitude and low cultivation was already doing well if she did not add trouble for others, let alone protect anyone. She had originally thought her core and ability would be a turning point, but now, it seemed they were not very useful.
Lin Mianmian stood beside the cliff. One moment, she thought about Yuan Zhaoyang’s golden core. The next, she thought about her own ability. Amid the thousands of tangled threads in her heart, a light suddenly flashed.
Her spiritual energy had struggled to smooth even one Moon-Watching Epiphyllum seed, but her ability could easily urge batches of Moon-Watching Epiphyllum to grow. Then by this calculation, was her ability not far stronger than the spiritual energy she had as someone who had just entered Qi Refining? She wondered how her fifth-level wood ability would be rated in the cultivation world’s power system…
Lin Mianmian had not been good at attacking during the apocalypse. She could only calculate from the angle of growth-urging. The most difficult plant she had urged during the apocalypse was called Wrapping-Silk Vine. It was a tough vine that could grow companion metal threads. Only, that vine was not recorded in the Food Classic, and the Five Elements Sect’s library also had no record of it. Going down from there, the next most difficult was Many-Seed Fruit. It was recorded in both the Food Classic and the library. In the Food Classic, it counted as a mid-grade ingredient. In the Five Elements Sect’s library… it was a fourth-grade spiritual plant.
Then her ability… Could this ability actually be converted to Foundation Establishment strength…
Earlier, Lin Mianmian had only thought of using her ability to urge spiritual plants, exchange them for spirit stones, and then raise her cultivation. For the moment, she had not thought of this layer. Now that drinking soup had been frustrated and she could not continue her grand money-making plan, it had instead removed the leaf blocking her eyes.
Never mind other things. With Lin Mianmian’s current state, cultivating to the second layer of Qi Refining in one year would already be considered decent. Breaking through to the third layer of Qi Refining was probably not very possible. The higher the cultivation, the longer it took to break through. To reach Foundation Establishment… who knew how many years it would take? But now, as long as she spent a year drinking soup, she could have a whole core’s worth of Foundation Establishment strength. At least when going on missions, she would have much more power to protect herself.
Thinking this way, it could count as some comfort.
Lin Mianmian’s heart eased slightly, and her discouragement scattered a little. After being a grass for a hundred years, the ability to comfort herself could not be lacking.
With her heart lighter, Lin Mianmian could not help beginning to consider how to fill her ability faster. After circling around and around, her attention could not help returning to the Food Classic.
She repeatedly recalled its contents and compared them with the materials sold by All Affairs Hall and the missions issued there. After going back and forth and spending much thought, Lin Mianmian actually managed to piece together one soup she could make right now.
The Food Classic recorded: Body-Nourishing Soup, eaten to replenish wood. Take three Seven-Petal Ice Lotuses. Remove the outermost four petals of each, leaving nine petals total, and add fifteen Woman’s Wood seeds. Stew with lotus pond water. When the lotus petals become transparent, add one palmful of Water-Spraying Bee honey and two palmfuls of bee water. Continue stewing for the time it takes one incense stick to burn, and it is done.
It was now early autumn. All Affairs Hall had issued a mission to collect Ice Lotuses. The location was at Ice Lotus Pond, not far from the outer valley riverbank. The reward could be settled in lotus flowers or spirit stones. Water-Spraying Bees were already one of the spirit beasts used in the outer valley to assist farming. Their honey could be obtained through missions to clean beehives, while bee water could be obtained everywhere. Among the three ingredients, only Woman’s Wood needed to be bought at All Affairs Hall. Fortunately, Woman’s Wood counted as a low-level ingredient, and one middle-grade spirit stone could buy a small bowl.
Opening a new dish was much harder than spending one low-grade spirit stone at Clear Heart Hall and acting as a hands-off master. However, to Lin Mianmian, who had poured Bitter Jiji Grass Soup into herself for three months until she felt her breath was almost bitter, yet still could not see room for improvement, every effort was necessary and valuable.
Disciples with the lowest cultivation like Lin Mianmian could usually only accept missions with no real difficulty. At most, they were tedious. Rather than calling them missions, it was better to say the sect had found some work and given diligent disciples a chance to train and receive benefits.
The Five Elements Sect’s outer valley lotus pond was more like a large lake. Looking across, one could not see the opposite shore. One could only faintly see an island floating far away in the pond.
Ice Lotuses were shaped similarly to ordinary lotus flowers, only slightly smaller. They were translucent beige-white. From a distance, they really did have a bit of the feeling of lotus flowers carved from ice.
Early autumn was when Ice Lotuses bloomed best and were closest to withering. Flower after flower joined together in strings. For a time, only the sea of flowers could be seen, not the surface of the water.
Across the almost boundless lake, there was a white expanse.
Only after rowing the boat into the water did Lin Mianmian discover that not all the Ice Lotuses in the pond had seven petals, as required for Body-Nourishing Soup. After a round of picking, she obtained Ice Lotuses with as many as nine petals and as few as five.
While picking, Lin Mianmian had sorted the Ice Lotuses into piles beforehand. Only before turning in the mission did she pile them together. When taking the reward, she quietly took a handful from the Seven-Petal Ice Lotus pile.
For the Ice Lotuses used as reward, Lin Mianmian only took a few flowers. When the senior brother at All Affairs Hall was about to settle the rest of the reward as spirit stones, she asked him to change the spirit stones into a fresh lotus seedpod.
Ice Lotuses were easy to obtain in this season, but after a few missions, before the Ice Lotuses withered, the sect would send people to clear the whole lotus pond. After that, if one wanted to get Ice Lotuses, they would have to buy them at All Affairs Hall, like Woman’s Wood.
Originally, Lin Mianmian had planned to do this. But after going into the water and seeing that the lotus flowers had different numbers of petals, while the Ice Lotuses sold by All Affairs Hall were not sorted by category, she thought that if she wanted to buy only Seven-Petal Ice Lotuses later, even if it were possible, it would likely take extra words and cause extra attention. It would be better to prepare lotus seeds first and test whether they could be urged to grow.
During the apocalypse, Lin Mianmian had only heard of Ice Lotus in the Food Classic and had never seen the actual mutant plant. But in this cultivation world, Ice Lotus was only a second-grade spiritual plant. Its growth-urging difficulty should be about the same as the second-grade Moon-Watching Epiphyllum.
After drifting on the lotus pond for three days and turning in one round of missions, Lin Mianmian obtained lotus flowers and a lotus seedpod. When she left, she did not forget to take a large jar of lotus pond water. Then, without stopping, she went to Taming Hall.
The Five Elements Sect’s Taming Hall mostly raised gentle spirit beasts that could help disciples with daily cultivation and completing sect missions. Among them, Cave-Mountain Earthworms, Sharp-Burning Birds, Water-Spraying Bees, and Half-Moon Silver-Powder Mice were the spirit beasts most often rented by disciples who planted spiritual fields.
Cave-Mountain Earthworms had bodies like copper and iron. As long as they drilled dozens of times through the soil under a spiritual field, land that had hardened after spiritual plants were harvested would become soft again.
Sharp-Burning Birds had long beaks like hoes. They could help disciples plant spiritual plant seeds into the soil at accurate spacing and the best depth.
Half-Moon Silver-Powder Mice, during the first half of the month when they were silver mice, could help remove companion weeds from spiritual fields before the weeds grew large, protecting spiritual plants so they could absorb more nutrients.
Among these spirit beasts, Water-Spraying Bees were the ones disciples liked renting the most, and also the ones rented for the longest time. Disciples needed plenty of time each day for cultivation. When the feeling was good, even if they did not enter seclusion, cultivating for several days in a row was common. Most spiritual plants in spiritual fields relied on Water-Spraying Bees to spray water and irrigate them. Most Water-Spraying Bees could, according to the different auras of spiritual plants, spray different amounts of water at different times. They were even more accurate than disciples doing it by hand. In addition, Water-Spraying Bees drew river water into themselves and sprayed it back out. Their own brewing made the bee water slightly sweet and far more nutritious than ordinary river water, allowing spiritual plants to grow faster and better. So even though renting Water-Spraying Bees was not cheap, there were still many disciples who went to rent bees.
When Lin Mianmian arrived at Taming Hall, only three Water-Spraying Bees were left for the day. Fortunately, she was not trying to farm on a large scale. She took the three bees, exchanged some spirit stones for a small bowl of Water-Spraying Bee honey, and returned to her little courtyard.
Originally, the Water-Spraying Bee honey could be exchanged through a beehive-cleaning mission. But after working for several days, with everything ready except honey, Lin Mianmian truly could not wait. Luckily, Water-Spraying Bee honey was also an ordinary item, and a few low-grade spirit stones could be exchanged for a small bowl.
Ice Lotus, lotus pond water, Water-Spraying Bee honey, bee water, plus the Woman’s Wood she had bought a few days earlier… Lin Mianmian took out a small pot and, according to the Food Classic’s record, began cooking the first Food Classic dish of her human and grass life.