Don't farm, cultivate immortality!

He spent two days camping in the wild, his footsteps never faltering, until he came across the old site of the village, as if from another world.

This is exactly the same place where he lived when he was a child. Over there is the village chief's house, and over there is his old house, but half of the old house has collapsed and no one has repaired it.

The village was silent; at noon, not a soul was in sight.

Across the river, wisps of smoke drifted from the only thatched hut.

The house was quiet and everything was natural, except that the jujube tree inside the fence was evergreen and even bore fruit, with no green caterpillars in sight.

According to what Zhuang Xing found out, that should be the house of the Immortal Physician.

He planned to visit, but before he could even go up to greet them, the door was already pushed open.

First, a woman with white hair came out. Although her hair was white, it was as shiny as a crane's feathers. Her face was that of a young woman. In short, she had white hair but a youthful face, seemingly old but with a young appearance.

Zhuang Xing was taken aback; he recognized the face.

He also remembered whose house it was. Back then, he couldn't walk yet, and the female knight carried him and a group of villagers to see the remains of the demon tiger. He had seen this house on the way.

The house wasn't as intact as it appears now. In my memory, one wall of the house had a large hole, bloodstains, and a little girl was hiding inside.

The little girl's name is Yunling. This is Yunling's home, not the home of Yunling's uncle and aunt, but the home of Yunling and her father.

The woman who pushed open the door had a face that was almost identical to Yunling's.

The woman was expressionless, holding a fat white mouse in her arms, watching Zhuang Xing from a distance. Behind her, another woman in green walked forward.

The woman in green did not seem to be human; she had the scent of plants on her body, as if she were a rare plant spirit.

"My name is Huai Xia, and I am a spirit born from Huai Mountain." The woman in green smiled slightly and greeted Zhuang Xing. "I won't harm anyone, so please don't try to cut me with your sword."

Attribution

Zhuang Xing looked at Huai Xia. He knew that Huai Shan was a medicinal herb, which, in layman's terms, was yam. The girl in green in front of him was actually a yam spirit that was a rare sight in a hundred years.

It is much more difficult for plants to become spirits than for wild animals. A yam spirit that can transform into a human is as rare as a ginseng spirit. She is truly a treasure from head to toe. I reckon even her hair could be a good tonic and save lives.

Logically speaking, she shouldn't have introduced herself.

Telling others that she is the spirit of Huai Shan Cheng is almost like saying "I am a big treasure." Few people don't understand the principle of not flaunting wealth. Either this yam spirit is a naive and innocent girl who has never seen the world, or she has the confidence and strength to reveal her identity.

However, it seems that Huai Xia's reasons for revealing his identity to Zhuang Xing were not either of these two.

"Are you Zhuang Xing?" Huai Xia asked.

"You know me?"

Zhuang Xing was quite certain that he didn't have a yam spirit friend, but he could only guarantee that he didn't know them, not that "Zhuang Xing" didn't know them.

“I’ve heard Yunling talk about you,” Huaixia said.

Zhuang Xing looked at Yunling, who had white hair, but she showed no interest in getting close to him.

A moment later, a tea table was brought into the courtyard, and Huaixia served Zhuang Xing hot tea.

“Zhuang Xing, you have been kind to me,” Yunling said. “I have been living in seclusion here for a long time and do not want to have any more entanglements with the outside world. Please take these pills as a way of repaying your kindness.”

After saying that, she patted the white mouse on the head, and the white mouse jumped off her lap and carried a sandalwood box out of the house.

The box contained ten small bottles, which emitted a faint, pleasant fragrance; these were all excellent elixirs.

On the other side, Huai Xia also brought over a bunch of roots tied with red rope, showing that a lock of her black hair was missing.

"This is my root. It doesn't need to be refined into medicine. Eating it raw will increase your cultivation and open up your meridians. Although it can't bring the dead back to life or heal the wounded, it can prolong your life and keep you looking young. I'm giving it to you."

Zhuang Xing shook his head and did not accept the elixir or the root of the Chinese yam.

“That’s not why I came here,” Zhuang Xing said.

"I have avenged my great enemy, and only these pills can serve as a token of my gratitude," Yunling said.

"The Zhuang Xing that the Immortal Physician knows is not the same person as me. I have come here only to visit the Immortal Physician," Zhuang Xing said.

Yunling frowned slightly and said, "You came here just to pay a visit?"

"I'd like to ask you about a few more things," Zhuang Xing said.

Yunling looked closely at Zhuang Xing and then at the red panda that had crawled out of the bamboo basket.

The red panda rubbed against Zhuang Xing's legs, and Zhuang Xing picked it up and placed it on his lap.

"I wonder if the Immortal Physician would like to chat with me for a few minutes?" Zhuang Xing asked again.

Yunling hesitated for a moment, but still put the sandalwood box away.

"It's not impossible."

So the two of them began to drink tea in the courtyard.

Zhuang Xing asked, "The Immortal Physician said that a great grudge has been avenged. May I ask what this great grudge is?"

"You really don't know?" Yunling asked.

"I don't know."

"What I have avenged is the murder of my father."

"The revenge for killing my father?"

“When I was three years old, a tiger demon passed through this village from Xizhou. The demon was cruel by nature and loved to eat human flesh and blood. He was also carrying an old wound, so he took advantage of the night to enter the village and ate my father alive. This is the hatred of killing my father.”

"Is that tiger demon the one who reigns supreme in the Western Continent and is called the Great Sage Tiger?"

"It's this one."

"May I ask when the great vengeance of the Immortal Physician will be avenged?"

"I received the reward twenty years ago."

"When that tiger demon came here, wasn't there a female warrior who chased after it and beheaded it?"

Yunling glanced at Zhuang Xing again and said, "There was a female knight-errant chasing after them along the way. The tiger demon was no match for the female knight-errant and dared to act cautiously. After eating a few people, it fled overnight."

"That night, when the heroine arrived at the village, she was too late and lost track of the tiger demon."

"It... escaped?" Zhuang Xing frowned.

“It probably went to the Jiangnan region,” Yunling said. “For more than ten years afterward, we heard nothing of its whereabouts or name. It must have been hiding in the mountains and fields, not daring to appear in the world as a demon again. It wasn’t until the Great Yu Dynasty was destroyed in name only and a great disaster struck the world that a ‘Great Tiger Sage’ appeared again from the Jiangnan region.”

"That 'Great Tiger Sage' has been hiding for over twenty years, and his cultivation has grown even stronger, but his nature remains unchanged. He sets up checkpoints where starving people pass by to create a human market. If people want to pass through the human market, they must leave behind their weight. Of a hundred people who pass through, usually only a dozen or so survive. Among them, women and children are not allowed to leave the checkpoint, because that tiger demon considers the flesh and bones of women and children as fragrant meat, while considering the flesh and bones of men and the elderly as rotten meat."

“Some people in Jiangnan wanted to get rid of this demon, but none of them were able to defeat it. Instead, it cut off their heads and hung them on the mountain gate.”

"Later, a man took up his sword and found the demon tiger. He killed all the evil spirits in the area and even cut off a corner of the tiger demon's mountain. Only then was the demonic scourge quelled."

During the conversation, Yunling glanced at Zhuang Xing's sword.

"What is the name of the man who slew the tiger?" Zhuang Xing asked.

“His surname is Zhuang, and his given name is Xing,” Yunling said. “He was born in the same place as me. During a time of great disaster, he went around eliminating demons. Some people respectfully called him the Sword Immortal. However, after he killed the tiger demon, he left his sword on that mountain and disappeared. No one has seen him for many years, and no one knows where he went.”

"However, he avenged my father's death, so he has done me a favor, and I will repay his kindness one day."

"..." Zhuang Xing remained silent for a long time.

He stood up and looked at the old site of the house.

The half-collapsed mud-brick hut was left unrepaired, and fallen leaves and weeds covered the courtyard, but several charred marks could still be seen.

Peeking into the other half of the room, you can see a half-finished bed. The room is completely empty, with nothing left.

Zhuang Xing had heard from the old man two days ago that during the great famine, the villagers could not grow food and basically all fled to Yidu.

If you have connections and someone in the city can vouch for you, you can enter the city and escape the disaster.

Many villagers often went to Yidu to work. With the village chief and the old hunter there, the villagers should be able to go to the city to seek refuge. Under the chaos of war, abandoning their hometown was an unavoidable choice.

Zhuang Xing guessed that no one should live in the village anymore, but he still wanted to come back and take a look, and he was prepared for the worst.

He stared at it for a long time, then let out a long sigh.

"Healer, how many people has that demonic tiger eaten in this village?"

"Three people."

"Does the Immortal Physician know the names of those three people?"

“One is my biological father, Yunshu, and the other is Huang Benliang, a farmer in the village,” Yunling said. “The last one is Zhuangxing’s biological mother, Zhuhe.”

...

At dusk, Zhuang Xing followed Yunling to the cemetery near the village.

Yunling placed a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in front of the tombstone and said, "Father, your daughter has come to see you."

She lit three incense sticks and placed them in front of the tombstone. The tombstone was swept extremely clean, and the bouquet of flowers had not yet withered, showing that she often came to sweep her father's grave.

Zhuang Xing also clasped his hands together and bowed, a gesture of respect for the deceased.

"Are you really going to leave your panda here with me?"

"It's getting old, and it's not a good thing for it to travel around with me. Besides, I don't belong here. I'll have to go back someday, and it would be too lonely if I left it all alone then."

Aren't you afraid it won't be happy here with me?

"The Immortal Physician is a kind person."

"Where did this statement come from?"

"How could someone who is not virtuous be revered as a healer by the people of this place?"

“The Immortal Physician…” Yunling touched the stone tablet. “When I was young, I found the jade slip of the White Lotus Hermit. I went through many hardships to read the teachings in it. Later, I traveled thousands of miles to the Hundred Flowers Valley in Xizhou to learn from a master, just to kill that tiger demon and avenge my father.”

"But before I could finish, I heard that the tiger demon had been killed. At that time, I even neglected my daily internal energy cultivation and didn't know where to go or what to do."

"With no one to belong to, I thought of going home to visit. For decades, spring and winter have passed like cotton, and only Huaixia and the white mouse have been by my side. I never thought I would become the medical immortal in other people's mouths."

"Does the Immortal Healer still have regrets?"

Yunling shook her head: "I have no regrets. This is where I belong. Your panda and I get along well. I will take good care of it. I also hope that you can find your home."

"Thank you, Immortal Physician," Zhuang Xing said.

He carried a bouquet of flowers and intended to pay respects at another stone tablet, but when he stood in front of it, he paused in surprise.

In front of the stone tablet inscribed with "Peasant Woman Wishing for Harvest", there was a sprig of magnolia.