Chapter 20
Fourteen Dragons (1)
The kitchen was in the side hall. Mu Wanwan took a small handful of spiritual grain, and after thinking about it, also cut a small piece of ginseng fibre.
She had thought it over; from today onwards, she would be eating separately from Mister Long.
They had very little money and very little spiritual grains too. If she were to eat this small bag of spiritual grain together with Mister Long, it would be gone in less than a month. But if only Mister Long ate it, it could last for two months if she controlled the portions well.
She also wanted to eat spiritual grain, but it couldn’t be helped—poverty rendered one powerless and desperate.
Mu Wanwan sighed and walked to the kitchen.
The kitchen stove was made of some kind of material she didn’t know of. Its surface was very smooth, and the fuel used was neither modern natural gas nor ears of rice used in rural farms, but a very special plant called burning grass.
After igniting this long, light green plant with flint, not only did it burn for a long time, but there was also barely any smoke either. A single stalk of burning grass was enough to make a meal, and the taste of the food would also be much better than if it was prepared with those coals that produced smoke.
This kind of burning grass was not cheap. Moreover, they could only be cultivated with wood-based spiritual power. One stalk of burning grass was a silver coin; basically, only some well-off families could afford to use it.
She lit a burning grass and started cooking Mister Long’s congee first, then found another stove next to it and started cooking her own dinner well. She stared at the dozens of stalks of burning grass piled up in the corner of the kitchen for a while. Suddenly, her eyes lit up——
She really was stupid; at the very least, the original body was a Rank 1 wood-based cultivator. It might be difficult to cultivate other spiritual plants, but it was more than enough to cultivate semi-spiritual plants without grade levels like this burning grass. She could totally buy some burning grass seeds to plant, then take them out to sell for money to raise the dragon!
The burden of livelihood that had been weighing on her like a mountain that afternoon seemed to have become less heavy in the presence of this glimmer of hope.
Mu Wanwan picked up a stalk of burning grass and put it in her hand. She tried tentatively to extract a trace of wood-based spiritual energy from her dantian and channel it slowly into that slightly dried-up burning grass. Drawing upon her previous memories, she pinched the stalk of burning grass, and according to its grain, guided the spiritual energy from the tip of the grass to its root.
She didn’t know if it was just her illusion, but she felt that the stalk of burning grass in her hand seemed to have a little more vitality than before, and when compared to the other burning grass, looked…
Greener!
The congee in the pot was almost ready, so Mu Wanwan didn’t continue to fuss over that burning grass. She sliced the skinny ginseng fibre and threw it into the pot, then stirred it again. After it was done, she placed the two different bowls of congee into the food carrier and carried it back to the room.
The day is already late. Mu Wanwan set the food carrier down, checked once more if the main door was properly locked, then collected the clothes and went back in. She shut the windows, lit the lamps in the room, and got ready to feed the dragon.
The sound of her busying about was neither too loud nor too soft, broken up in tiny scraps, but it was very clear in the ears of Mister Long, who had just regained his divine consciousness. It made him feel like he, who had been alone since birth, still had someone who cared about him.
Mister Long restrained himself from thinking about such fanciful thoughts, but he couldn’t help channelling all the spiritual energy he could mobilize to that half a dragon’s tail that was already showing signs of rotting again.
Even if the warmth of these past few days was as brief as the blooming of the broad-leaved epiphyllum1, he still wanted to prolong it, just a little longer.
Cold air gradually permeated the late autumn evening. It wasn’t to the extent where it pierced one to one’s bones, but was like fine, incessant needles, making one rather uncomfortable. This bit of cold was nothing at all to Mister Long in the past as the pre-eminent powerhouse of the continent, but he was now seriously injured. Despite being covered with a quilt, he could still feel the chill climb up his skin—it was rather cold.
Footnotes:
1 broad-leaved epiphyllum: Epiphyllum oxypetalum, a species of cactus that bears large, strongly fragrant flowers that each usually open for only a single night a year.