Chapter 694: Chapter 694

“It’s been a while. Have you two been well?” the Daoist asked casually as he entered, leaning on his staff.0

“The swallow and I are doing great!” Lady Calico replied without hesitation.0

“All is well,” the swallow also answered.0

“And little Jiang Han?” the Daoist asked again.0

“Little Jiang Han is well too!” Lady Calico said. “I play with her every day, teach her to talk, and go into the city every day to exorcise demons and drive away evil to make money to buy her meat buns and porridge!”0

“Thank you, Lady Calico.”0

“You’ve been gone so long!”0

“Just a little longer than expected.”0

“You said it wouldn’t take long!”0

“As it turns out, I’m certainly no Grandmaster Tiansuan, I don’t have his skills.”0

“Were you hurt again?”0

“It hardly took any effort[1] at all.”0

“Hardly any effort?”0

“It means it was very easy.”0

As the Daoist spoke, he turned to look at the baby girl in tri-colored clothes, which were similar to Lady Calico’s but in slightly different shades. Seeing her fair, clean face and eyes dark as night, he couldn’t help but smile.0

“It seems you’ve truly taken excellent care of little Jiang Han. If Hidden Dragon Temple can continue its legacy smoothly, then you deserve the greatest credit.”0

“The greatest credit!” Lady Calico repeated out of habit, her expression serious. Then she turned her head toward the swallow, refusing to take all the credit for herself. “The swallow also helped take care of little Jiang Han. Without him, she’d definitely be dead by now.”0

The little girl said it so casually, as if life and death were just ordinary matters for a cat. But the Daoist was momentarily choked by the words, unsure whether to feel relieved or unsettled, happy or worried.0

Granted, in these times, even the emperor’s children didn’t always grow up safely, and for common folk, child mortality was painfully common. Before a child grew up, no one dared to be certain their family line was secured. Still, tossing around “dead by now” so lightly was… a bit chilling.0

“If she truly is Heaven’s chosen successor to Hidden Dragon Temple, she will have Heaven’s favor.” Song You could only pinch the little girl’s cheek with a smile, then looked her over from head to toe. “It seems little Jiang Han has grown quite a bit taller.”0

Little Jiang Han simply stared back at him with wide eyes, making smacking sounds with her mouth and her lips wet from drool.0

“Quite a bit?” Lady Calico asked doubtfully.0

“She really has grown quite a bit.”0

“It’s nothing. I just thought she’d gotten taller earlier, then figured maybe my eyes were wrong.”0

“You’ve been with her constantly, watching her every day. Her changes have been gradual, spread over many days, so they’re harder to notice,” Song You explained. “But I haven’t seen her for quite a while. Now that I see her again, those months of change are all showing at once, so of course it’s more obvious.”0

“Mm…” Lady Calico thought that made sense, but still seemed unwilling to believe it and asked again, “Quite a bit?”0

“When people are little, it’s , especially at this age. They grow fast,” the Daoist told her. “Every few months, half a year, the old clothes don’t fit anymore.”0

“Doesn’t that mean you have to buy a lot of clothes?”0

“You can also buy them a bit bigger,” Song You said. “If it’s a big family with many children, one set of clothes can be passed down for several people to wear.”0

“Too bad people can’t conjure clothes.”0

“Indeed, they can’t compare to you, Lady Calico.”0

The Daoist smiled, then looked at the little girl again, puzzled. “What’s she eating? How is it she’s still got it in her mouth after all this time?”0

Hearing this, the swallow, who had been preening on the windowsill with its head turned, finally stuck its head out again, tilting it to watch the room with one glossy black eye.0

“Meat!” The little girl answered expressionlessly, meeting the Daoist’s gaze.0

The smile on Song You’s face slowly froze.1

The little girl remained expressionless, still looking straight at him, not finding anything strange at all. She firmly believed that people were supposed to eat rats, that rats were good food, and eating them was how you grew strong.0

If the Daoist didn’t eat them, that was the Daoist’s fault. One mustn’t stop others from eating them.0

Song You was silent for a moment, then thought it over and finally gave a tactful piece of advice, “Lady Calico, perhaps it’s best not to give her such things. People and cats are different, and humans are not as strong as cats. Kittens grow a pair of sharp little teeth for tearing meat not long after birth, and in just one year can grow from kitten to full-grown cat. But after a year, a human is still a small child, only just learning to speak and walk, or perhaps not even yet, and their teeth haven’t developed enough to handle normal meat, much less the dried meat you make. Look, even after all this time, she still hasn’t chewed it apart.”0

“Lady Calico, better give her the filling from meat buns, or something like lean-meat porridge.”0

Lady Calico looked at him, then at little Jiang Han, thought for a moment, and decided he made sense. “Next time I will cook it into porridge and until it’s soft, then I’ll give it to her.”0

“Then why are you ?”0

“I’m just… just a bit tired,” Song You said helplessly. “I just came down from the heavens, so I’m a little worn out.”0

“Then take a nap. A nap will fix it.”0

“Thank you, Lady Calico.”0

Song You looked toward the bed in the room.0

It was an ordinary wooden bed frame, with a quilted mattress on top. The blanket was folded into a long strip and placed against the far side, as if it had remained exactly the same as when he’d left months ago.0

The Daoist did not believe Lady Calico was the type to fold quilts.0

He lowered his gaze to the side of the bed. On the floor lay a felt mat, with a cloth blanket on top of it, and a heap of wool blankets tossed on top. It looked a bit messy, but also rather warm.0

Even now, Lady Calico still didn’t much like sleeping on beds. Unless the Daoist was sleeping there, she might turn into a cat and curl up at the pillow or the foot of the bed, depending on the circumstances. If the surroundings made her feel comfortable and safe, she’d sleep at the pillow; if they made her wary, she’d stay at the foot of the bed, keeping watch for the Daoist. 0

Otherwise, she preferred stranger sleeping spots, like right next to a horse, inside the Daoist’s discarded robes, in a pouch, in a travel bag, or on her own little cloth blanket.0

“Does little Jiang Han usually sleep right next to you, Lady Calico?”0

“Then I’ll go take a nap first.”0

The Daoist went over and climbed into bed.0

By now, the chill of early spring had faded considerably. The bedding was cool at first, but quickly warmed once he lay under it.0 Fınd the newest release on ɴovelfire.net

Though she had told him to rest, Lady Calico hadn’t seen him for a long time, so she couldn’t resist turning back into a cat. She left the little human brat to her own devices, padded over to the Daoist’s bedside, and started pestering him with questions.0

“Is the Heavenly Palace fun?”0

“What does it look like?”0

“What does it look like… let me think…”0

“Have you thought of it yet?”0

“There are clouds like cotton, soft under your feet. You can pluck off a piece to play with. Without magic, it will slowly fade away, but with magic, you can keep it forever, even take a little piece from a big cloud and ride it through the skies… Inside the clouds are many immortal islands, and on each one stand palaces and towers. Immortals live there, and there are many cranes flying about…”0

The Daoist’s voice was already growing fainter. But the cat listened with rapt attention.0

She couldn’t help but follow his words, picturing the scenes in her mind. The softer his voice became, the deeper she sank into the vision.0

In the cat’s imagination, clouds ought to be soft, like cotton, the kind you could stand on. Thinking about it now, perhaps she shouldn’t have asked the swallow, and perhaps she shouldn’t have tamed the white crane so soon, because ever since she asked the swallow, clouds like that had vanished, and ever since she first rode the white crane into the sky, every cloud in her dreams had become untouchable, turning into fog the moment she approached.0

So the Heavenly Palace truly did have such clouds.0

No wonder so many people wanted to become immortals. In the cat’s mind, it was simple; if you could go play in such a place, then it was worth becoming an immortal.0

It would be best if there were rats in the clouds… Catching rats inside cottony clouds…0

Lady Calico sat still, lost in thought.0

When she came back to herself and wanted to ask the Daoist more, he was already asleep beside her.0

The calico cat blinked in surprise, then got up and padded over to check, making sure the Daoist was still breathing before shaking her head and going back inside, pulling little Jiang Han down from where she had almost climbed up onto the windowsill.0

It had been a long time since he’d slept in the mortal world.0

The Heavenly Palace was truly marvelous. Immortals in the heavens didn’t need to sleep. They might rest occasionally, but never on a set schedule. While in the heavens, the Daoist hadn’t had a proper sleep at all.0

Now, he was truly tired. Sleep in the mortal world was different from sleep in the heavens. The mortal world had dreams; the heavens did not. Perhaps the heavens themselves were nothing but the mortal world’s dream.0

Back in the mortal world, the Daoist fell asleep and dreamt. In the dream, it was dusk over a desert.0

It seemed to be a desert he and Lady Calico had once crossed, though he couldn’t be sure; after all, they had crossed so many deserts, and deserts all looked much the same, making it hard to tell one from another.0

The desert at dusk was a beauty rarely found in the world. The sky had already darkened, revealing countless stars; at the horizon, breathtaking gradients of color lingered, and the rolling dunes stretched like silhouettes. A woman approached the Daoist, carrying a small lantern in which glimmered a star plucked from the earth itself, and her white robes billowed as she walked. The evening wind was strong, sending her sleeves fluttering and her hair streaming in a single direction0

Such a woman did not seem like someone who ought to exist in the mortal realm.0

The woman seemed to be speaking to him.0

She said it had been a long time since they had parted, that she had missed him somewhat. When she saw such a beautiful scene, it was like that year in Changjing when she had seen the wax plum blossoms bloom, and her first thought was to share it with him. But after they had parted, the distance between them had grown too great.0

The desert wind was fierce at night, and her voice was blown thin and hard to hear.0

There was also a maid beside her.0

This maid was especially well-behaved, kneeling in the sand, looking up at him. She told him that since parting the previous winter, they had been following the path he and Lady Calico had once walked, and had seen many sights that, in all the hundreds of years she had lived in Yuezhou, she had never witnessed before. She was often amazed.0

The woman then told him that beyond the deserts of the Western Regions, plum blossoms also bloomed, not wax plums, but white plums. Among mortal friends, it was a refined custom to exchange plum blossoms as gifts, so she had picked a branch.0

When the Daoist awoke, morning had already turned to afternoon.0

The things of dreams did not belong to the mortal realm, and faded quickly from memory. All he could remember was the woman in white, lantern in hand, running barefoot through the desert as if chasing the wind and the sunset’s glow. The sand dunes were high, and she ran all the way to the edge of a dune’s crest before stopping, turning to look at him, and asking where this place was.0

How could the Daoist remember?0

Half-dazed, he opened his eyes and sat up. The inn’s window was still open; it faced west and framed a golden-red sunset.0

The sunlight poured through the window, pooling on the floor where a cat and a little girl sat neatly side by side, showing him only their backs. Both were staring at the sunset, basking in its warmth. Aside from the difference between human and cat, their postures were almost identical.0

The Daoist sniffed and caught a faint fragrance.0

He looked down, and by the bed lay a branch of white plum blossoms.0

The Daoist picked it up and examined it carefully.0

The branch bore blossoms but no leaves. The petals were snow-white, and on closer look, faintly tinged with yellow and green. It was utterly charming. At the center, the stamens held a clear hue of yellow and green, delicate in every detail, each blossom perfectly set along the branch.0

Its fragrance was distinctly different from that of wax plums.0

Among mortal friends parted by distance, there was a line of verse, “Since parting here, we have each gone our separate ways to the ends of the earth. I wish to send you a sprig of plum blossoms, yet I no longer know where such blossoms should be sent.” But to a great demon of immense power and magic, the ends of the earth were hardly an obstacle at all.2

The sound of someone inhaling came from ahead.0

The calico cat turned her head toward the Daoist. She was just about to ask if he was awake when she saw the plum blossoms in his hand. She sniffed a few more times at the fragrance and asked, “Eh! Where’d you get those tree-flowers from?”0

The Daoist hesitated, momentarily unsure how to explain.0