Huaxia cultivators gain a great victory in their fight against the vampires. Citizens in Huaxia never receive news of the success, but people are talking heatedly about it on every BBS, or they may call the discussion as a celebration.
Lin Luoran later knows that the BBS for cultivators has over 8000 active users. It seems to be a lot, but Huaxia is a country of a mass population. Besides, there are many of the yet-to-be cultivators among the 8000 users.
When the news is out, the number of online users of the BBS peaks. The entire BBS is talking about the victory with zero casualty. The young cultivator with a broken hand is pitiful, but his injury has been taken care of by Master Lin, which is quite a blessing in disguise.
Maybe because of the influence of the fight in the R City, the cultivators then gain two more victories in the fight in the northern and coastal cities.
Lin Luoran is the absolute center of the discussions on the BBS. Female cultivators are rarely seen. After seeing the video of Li Xi’er fighting in a bar on the news, though Li’s face is covered with mosaics, most of the male cultivators who never meet Li are excited. Those who have seen Li Xi’er say that she is sweet and cute. The male cultivators now worry that as her cultivation grows, she will sooner or later become “elder Sister Li”. When Li Xi’er becomes a “master” like Lin Luoran, they will lose their chances of pursuing her.
Lin Luoran doesn’t realize that the gender of she and Li Xi’er and their level of cultivation have stimulated many “men with dreams”. Many of the male cultivators start to cultivate themselves harder than ever.
Compared with the hot discussion on the BBS and people’s doubt on the strange cloud over the R City on that day, Lin Luoran is having some leisure days recently.
To be frank, she is getting bored with her current life—
She doesn’t practice her sword or meditates these days. She gets out of bed when the sun rises and goes to sleep in her room at night. Lin feels that she is living a retired life. That’s right. She actually sleeps every night, instead of meditating in the basement.
Although Mrs. Lin suspects that her daughter has experienced something bad, she gladly accepts Lin Luoran’s leisure lifestyle after Mr. Lin talks her through this. After all, the Lin family is rich and no one has to work to support the family.
Being leisure doesn’t mean that she only eats and sleeps all day. It’s like that Lin Luoran suddenly forgets about cultivation and ignores her proper occupation.
Nevertheless, Lin Luoran keeps herself busy.
She organizes her space for an hour every morning. She picks the vegetables and fruits and waters the spiritual herbs and flowers. Sometimes, she plays with the shy little silverfish. The large pile of dragon bones that used to pile up in her space is gone. The little silverfish tells Lin that the fire phoenix has moved the bones into the log cabin.
Lin Luoran wonders how the small cabin can store so many dragon bones. She has promised the fire phoenix that it can take the dragon bones so she doesn’t care about what the phoenix does with the bone. However, Lin Luoran is curious about the log cabin!
“Is the log cabin well-decorated inside?”
Lin Luoran asks the silverfish to tell her more about the log cabin. The phoenix drags the silverfish away angrily and gives Lin Luoran a despising look. Lin Luoran feels ashamed because she just tried to get some information from this little childish fish.
After being called a “master” by so many people, Lin Luoran has become more thick-skinned. She refuses to admit that she was trying to get information from the silverfish.
Lin pulls up two cabbages from her space and picks some chives. She picks some agarics from the wet wood and puts all of the vegetables in the kitchen. Then she goes to the backyard with her mother to trim the trees.
The environment around Lin’s house is nice and Lin Luoran can’t bear wasting the precious Reiki. She has thrown away the useless flowers and trees in the backyard and planted new fruit trees along the wall. There are peach trees, apple trees, and other common fruit trees like pear, cherry, loquat, strawberry, orange, and persimmon. She also manages to plant mangosteen and coconut trees, which can never grow in the Sichuan basin. Lin Luoran is able to do this because all of the saplings of these fruit trees are nourished in her space.
Because of the differences between the time of planting and the species, some trees may bear ripe fruit when others have just sprouted. The flowers attract bees to settle down in Lin’s house and the bees take the pollen to make honey every day. The little cyan fox is the one who gets most of the honey. Even Lin Luoran only has a taste once.
Lin Luoran has planted so many kinds of fruit trees in the yard. This is just an experiment for her so there are only one or two trees for each kind. The path in the backyard is narrow. Mrs. Lin has planted vegetables on part of the vacant field and the little fox takes the other field to plant its medicine. Sometimes Lin Luoran even finds her own backyard unfamiliar.
It’s late autumn. Chestnuts are hanging on the trees and strawberries have riped. The season for peaches and loquats is gone, which is the reason why Lin Luoran and her mom have come to trim the trees.
No matter how nice Lin’s backyard is, it is no match for the space in the bead. They must treat the trees well so that they can harvest more fruit next year.
Mrs. Lin doesn’t seem to age much in recent years because everything she eats and drinks is filled with Reiki. Her cheeks are rosy and her hands and legs are strong. She cuts off a thick branch of a tree with a flower scissor easily.
Lin Luoran keeps cutting off the useless branches of the trees by her mother’s side. She is familiar with this kind of work because she used to help her family do farm work when she was a little child. Cutting off the redundant branches will help the tree bear better fruit.
“Do you remember that we used to have an orchard?” Mrs. Lin rarely has the chance to work with her daughter in the yard and she loves to have a little chat.
How could Lin Luoran not remember? Her father wanted to improve the quality of life of his family and he signed a contract of ten acres of orange trees. The Lin family worked hard for two years. Lin Luoran used to go to the orange orchid after school and help to pull weed and cut branches. Mr. and Mrs. Lin picked waste in the village and made it into fertilizer. People in the Li’s village were all waiting to see Lin’s orange orchid fail. By the third year, the oranges were big and sweet and the Lin family made a high profit out of them.
If things went on like this, the Lin family would earn themselves a decent life by more years of hard work. Lin Luoran used to get angry every time she thinks about this, but she has been over this now.
“Yes. I remember that the villagers took the orange orchid back from us.” The Lin family was never accepted by the Li’s village. It is natural that the other villagers were jealous that the Lin family earned a profit. But they should not take away the orchid from the Lin family when the family had built a wall around the orange orchid and fertilize and sprayed insecticide on the soil. Therefore, the Lins never got the chance to invest all the money they made from the orange orchid back.
Without the orchid, the Lin family owed a debt, which was a bigger blow to Mr. Lin’s enthusiasm about starting his own business. Lin Luoran remembers seeing her father weeping secretly. The life in Li’s village made Mr. and Mrs. Lin, as well as Lin Luoran, silent and weak.
Why did Mrs. Lin bring this up today?
“Mom, why are you telling me this?”
Mrs. Lin replies emotionally, “I remember that because of the orange orchid, we didn’t have the money to prepare for the Spring Festival… Your Aunty Li was the only one who offered us help… She gave us two pieces of pork…”
Lin Luoran keeps cutting off the branches. She knows that her mom is talkative and she will tell her real intentions without anyone pursuing.
Seeing that Lin Luoran is calm but not talking, Mrs. Lin says carefully, “I guess you must need some help with the pharmaceutical factory. The son of your Aunty Li is out of work for two years after he finishes high school. Can you…”
Oh, this is what Mrs. Lin is thinking about. This is so strange. Aunty Li was the only one who was friendly to Lins. Mrs. Lin should know Lin Luoran well that she would not hesitate about offering a job to Aunty Li’s son. Why is Mrs. Lin so bashful?
Lin Luoran nows knows what this is all about. She takes a fat worm off a branch and says, raising her eyebrows, “Is there anyone else who wants a job?”
Mrs. Lin nods. Lin Luoran has a headache. Hey! She is generous and she never wants revenge. But she is not a saint!
“We can have Aunty Li’s son here for dinner. Tell him to ask Yuan Ye for the job.”
Mrs. Lin is in a dilemma. Aunty Li said that the village head was angry that Lin Luoran has never done anything to help the village after she got rich. Should she tell her? Mrs. Lin accidentally cuts off a nice branch and she is distressed.
Lin Luoran is speechless. She asks her mother about what has happened exactly. Then she finds out that her mother is bothered by these minor things. Lin feels sorry.
She thought that her family has reached a consensus that they shall just live their lives and cultivate together. It turns out that her mother still worries about Li’s village.
“Mom, we can tell Aunty Li that we’ll give her our old house in the village. We never belong to that village and we may never go back there. You shouldn’t worry about that village ever again.”
Mrs. Lin hesitates, “It is ok…? What if bad things happen to us and we won’t have a place to stay.”
Lin Luoran laughs. Does her father never tell her mother how rich the family is?
Lin Luoran points at the house and says, “I bought this house five years ago from Master Jia. It cost me 20 million yuan.” She is telling her mother that the house is more valuable now.
Mrs. Lin is surprised and speechless. She is aware that houses in R City are expensive, but she can’t accept that the house is worthy of 20 million yuan. The market is experiencing the inflating of currency, which means that the price of the house must have doubled.
Lin Luoran keeps saying, “Our villa on Mount Qingcheng is a gift from the others. The price is this.” Lin Luoran raises her hand.
50 million?
Mrs. Lin knows that her daughter is rich after becoming a cultivator, but no one ever tells her that their houses are so expensive! Mrs. Lin suddenly feels that she is an irresponsible mom and becomes sullen.
Lin Luoran holds her mom’s hand and comforts her, “Mom, we’ll do better. We’ll never have to care about what others think. Believe me!”
She will work hard on her cultivation to protect her family.
She is going to “water” the medicines in the base after lunch… Lin Luoran sees that the branches are perfectly trimmed and she drags her mom to the kitchen and prepares for lunch.
Lin Luoran now wants to stamp her feet like Li Xi’er does. Li Xi’er is really living a leisure life and Lin herself is always busy!
