Chapter 67: Hongshanling and Dandelions

Two hours later.

Outside Yujing Cheng, on the mountainside of Hongshanling.

The winding dirt road ends here, where there is a wide open space for parking; they parked their rented car here and hiked up the mountain.

Hongshanling is steep and towering; it is not a scenic area, but the scenery is beautiful and tourists are endless. This time of day is a bit late; if they had come earlier, they could have seen the scene of the whole mountain turning red with layers of dyed forests, stopping to play, with frost-covered leaves redder than the flowers of February.

Currently, the maple leaves are falling, and the mountain has also withered and yellowed somewhat.

It is cloudy today, and the weather is fine.

Clouds and mist are drifting on the opposite mountain; looking closely, one can see a small path leading into the clouds, and the tiled corners of ancient houses are faintly visible in the depths of the white clouds. It is unknown which hermit built them in what year or month, or if anyone still lives there today.

The elder sister walks at the very front, followed by Taozi.

Chen Shu and the little girl lag slowly at the back, dawdling as they walk up the mountain, looking left and right, whispering about the flowers, plants, and scenery by the roadside, occasionally picking up a small stick to knock off the tender tips of plants.

Sometimes they encounter people coming down the mountain.

There is already some altitude here, the air has become exceptionally cold, and the temperature has dropped quite a bit. Chen Shu is not afraid of the cold; he looked at the little girl and found that she did not feel cold at all either. Instead, because she was climbing the mountain, her cheeks were flushed hot, which was very cute.

"There seems to be a house over there."

"There's one over there too..."

"Where?"

"There—"

Chen Shu stopped and stood on the side of the road, with a cliff right in front of him. He stretched out his finger and pointed to a spot in the white clouds in the distance.

The little girl moved closer to him, stood on tiptoe, raised her head, brought her eyes close to his arm, and looked forward along it. She soon said, "It seems to be smoking..."

"Someone must be cooking."

"Brother-in-law, what do you think they eat living on the mountain? Do they farm and raise pigs themselves?"

"Maybe so."

"Then do they buy toothpaste?"

"I don't know."

"Are they High-level Practitioners?"

"Possibly."

Ning Qing had already walked quite far ahead; she stopped silently at a turn in the road and stood waiting for the two of them.

The long-haired white cat also stopped, sat down, and looked at Ning Qing, then followed her gaze to look back. Seeing the two of them talking as they walked, it felt a bit bored, raised its paw, and licked it. It felt cold and cool, but it was covered in mud and sand, which was a bit gritty on its tongue.

Those two didn't walk two steps before stopping again.

They were actually more dawdling than she was, even though she practiced the Jingxin Dao.

Ning Qing saw them pluck some unknown wildflowers still blooming by the roadside and stick them into cow dung. They were also whispering and discussing while looking at her; she vaguely heard that they seemed to be comparing her to cow dung and Chen Shu to a fresh flower.

Ning Qing's heart was very calm, very, very calm.

"Haha..."

Chen Shu walked up while laughing, seemingly unaware that she knew anything, and asked her with a grin: "Why are you walking so fast? Aren't you supposed to calm your heart and observe everything in this world? Look, the world here is so big, why aren't you observing it?"

Ning Qing silently turned around and walked forward.

Taozi let out two barks, as if urging them on, acting as Ning Qing's spokesperson.

Finally, they reached the summit.

The scenery at the summit is the best.

The winter mountains still look green from afar, with green hills stacked and undulating, hazy with smoke and mist; the furthest layer of mountains could no longer be seen clearly. One only knew that where those mists and clouds gathered, perhaps high-level practitioners were living in seclusion; they saw someone flying up from the white clouds on the road, heading into the distance.

The distant mountains are mysterious, making people curious.

After discussing for a few sentences, the three people and one cat took out a picnic mat, brought out the snacks they bought in the morning and a trash can, and began to eat lunch.

They looked around while eating.

There are two interesting places here—

In the direction of Yujing, there is a mountain in the distance with ancient palaces built on it, with blue smoke curling up.

It is the ancestral court of the Daoist sect, Yuan'an Temple.

When Yuan'an Temple was established, it was to protect the peace of Yujing from foreign invasion. Now, it is a very famous tourist attraction around Yujing; if out-of-town tourists come to Yujing, they must visit Yuan'an Temple. However, the places tourists can go are limited; they can only wander around the front mountain palaces, and they absolutely cannot go to the back mountain.

Every year, there are tourists who force their way into the back mountain, only to get lost in the Illusion Array and be helplessly handed over to the police by Yuan'an Temple.

At least they don't charge an entrance fee, which is a plus.

Chen Shu had taken Ning Qing and Xiaoxiao there before.

If he were to encounter an attack here today, Chen Shu would directly fire a Tracer Technique at Yuan'an Temple; perhaps he would become the first person in the last few hundred years to attack the ancestral court of the Daoist sect.

Just thinking about it is exciting.

Facing Yuan'an Temple, in the direction of the right hand, that expanse of green mountains is embedded with many huge, bowl-like facilities, looking like the radio telescopes of a past life.

But they are actually facilities for collecting the Spirit Power of the stars.

This belongs to environmentally friendly Spirit manufacturing; it's just unclear if it was built by Qingzhou Spirit Power.

A Cultivator's Spirit Power actually all comes from celestial bodies, and the Spirit Power of different celestial bodies varies; it is often divided into three types according to the source—

The first type comes from the mother planet beneath our feet.

It is the closest to us.

The second type is the stars in the sky.

Most stars are very, very far away from us; by the time their Spirit Power spreads evenly and reaches Earth, it is already very thin. However, there are many of them, and the countless stars in the sky can also provide a source of Spirit Power no less than the mother planet.

The third type is the sun, the moon, and the celestial bodies of this star system.

This is a very balanced one; it is further away than Earth, closer than the stars, more numerous than Earth, and fewer than the stars, and the Spirit Power Total is also quite substantial.

Ancient Cultivators also called them the essence of the sun and moon.

This Spirit Power fills the space between heaven and earth evenly, with no signs of depletion; what Cultivators use is perhaps not even a drop in the ocean.

To put it bluntly, humans are very insignificant.

If you killed all ten billion people in the world, the corpses wouldn't even fill a large reservoir.

Human civilization is also so short-lived.

In the novels he read in his past life, ten thousand or a hundred thousand years were often written about, but since Chen Shu came to this world, even the ancient Ninth Stage only had a lifespan of a few hundred years; he didn't know about gods, but in any case, they were not immortal or indestructible. He initially thought it was very short, but later he remembered that in his past life, Upper Cave Man was active thirty thousand years ago, another human species besides Wise Human—the Neanderthals—only went extinct forty thousand years ago, and the Banpo people were active five or six thousand years ago; if a person could really live for ten thousand years, when they stepped back into the mortal world, they would find that all the humans in the world looked different from them.

"Like a mayfly between heaven and earth, a tiny drop in the vast ocean..."

Chen Shu sat on the picnic mat, the sun having just come out; he tilted his head back to let the sunlight shine on his face and said leisurely, "Life is limited, but its joy is boundless..."

He cast a glance to the side with his peripheral vision.

Ning Qing and Xiaoxiao were cleaning up the mess.

Even the little white cat was holding a piece of used tissue in its mouth to throw into the trash can; only he was sitting here feeling sentimental—the cat even shot him a glance, that highly human-like look seeming to express dissatisfaction with him for slacking off.

"Emmm..."

Should I say I shouldn't have bought a spirit cat back then?

Chen Shu ignored it and continued to slack off; when they finished cleaning up, he stood up, pointed to a wild herb nearby, and said, "Guess what this is?"

Ning Qing remained silent.

The little white cat raised its butt to stretch, opened its mouth wide, and stuck out its pink little tongue.

Only the sister-in-law played along: "What?"

"Dandelion."

"Dandelion?"

The little girl opened her eyes wide and looked carefully.

"Yes, it just hasn't bloomed yet; it might bloom when the spring warms up," Chen Shu said. "Have you ever eaten dandelion?"

"Can it be eaten?"

"Yes, rabbits love eating dandelions the most, and the rabbit spirits of Dongzhou also love eating dandelions."

"Is it delicious?"

"It's alright."

"Oh..."

The little girl ran over, pulled a dandelion leaf from the ground, held it up to look at it, and wanted to stuff it into her mouth.

"Hey, hey!"

Chen Shu hurriedly stopped her. Seeing the little girl cast an uncomprehending look at him, he explained, "It can only be eaten after it's cooked. I haven't eaten it in a long time either. Hmm, I see there's quite a lot growing here, how about this—we'll work together; you go pick some, and I'll cook them when we get back to see if they're good."

"What about sister?"

"Ah?"

"What will sister do?"

"Sister will pick some too."

"Oh..."

The little girl happily started picking wild vegetables.

As she picked, she looked up and noticed that her sister was standing in front, motionless, staring at her quietly, not picking anything at all.

The little girl felt unbalanced. After two seconds of silence, she immediately stood up, pointed at her sister with one finger, but looked at her brother-in-law: "Brother-in-law! Sister isn't picking any!"

Her sister continued to stare at her, pondering as she watched.

"Brother-in-law, look at her!"

Her sister turned her head to look at Chen Shu again, carefully scrutinizing the expression on Chen Shu's face, performing an analysis.

She had the air of "I am just an observer; I won't pay attention to whatever you say."

"Emmm..."

Chen Shu pondered for a moment before saying, "Sister is too overbearing, and I can't afford to provoke her either. How about this: you pick, I cook, and we won't give her any to eat when we go back."

"Okay!"

The little girl clenched her fists and agreed.

The temperature dropped again in the evening.

Water rushed down from the faucet. Chen Shu turned on the hot water and rinsed the dandelions the little girl had pulled up on Hongshanling during the day, needing to wash them carefully.

The little girl stood right beside him, her hands resting on the kitchen counter, leaning over and peering intently at his movements.

At the kitchen door, Ning Qing leaned against the frame, also tilting her head slightly to watch them.

These two sisters probably had some kind of serious illness.

The sound of the news came from the living room: "Affected by a strong cold front, the temperature in Yujing is expected to continue to drop over the next seven days. Starting tomorrow night, most areas of Yujing will experience heavy snowfall; this will be the first snow since the beginning of winter..."

"Did you hear? It's going to snow," Chen Shu turned his head and said to the little girl beside him.

"I heard."

"You're so lucky."

"Mm."

Chen Shu had already washed all the vegetables, cut off the dandelion roots, and left only the leaves; he tossed the roots aside and said to the two of them, "Actually, these roots can be used as medicine if dried; they are very useful for ordinary people."

The little girl's gaze followed his hands.

Her sister still didn't make a sound.

Chen Shu blanched the leaves, chopped them up, added eggs, flour, and a little salt, and stirred them. He started the pan and heated the oil, preparing to make a dandelion omelet; in his memory, this was the most common method his grandparents used in his past life.

As he cooked, he felt an inexplicable sense of nostalgia. When he stood in front of the pan holding a small spatula, it was as if memory and reality were overlapping, and time and space were in disarray.

The little girl seemed very interested in the vegetables she had picked herself, watching without blinking, occasionally glancing at her brother-in-law as well.

Behind him, his elder sister's expression was serene.