Compared with hot and energetic fire, wood is cold and weak. Leaping flames bring people a mixed feeling of safety and danger, but what about wood? Even towering trees may also be cut down by human beings and then made into tables, beds, soft white paper, and disposable wooden chopsticks.
Humans cannot have total control of fire, so they use it and fear it simultaneously. How about trees? They won’t fight back, so people just use trees and don’t hold them in awe.
Lin Luoran let her thoughts run wild, thinking of the spirit herbs with miraculous efficacy and Chinese herbal medicine of all kinds. Some of them are poisonous while some can save lives: nature is really a wonderful creator.
Compared with flexible and gentle water, wood is dull and stiff. Floods can also claim most animals’ lives, including humans’. Moreover, without water, crops can’t grow and energy cannot be obtained. Gentle water, equally useful to mankind, always reminds people that it is not a spineless coward.
But what about wood?
Is wood really a coward?
Lin Luoran thinks of Eichhornia crassipe whose common name is “water hyacinth”. The water hyacinth is native to the Amazon River Basin in South America, and blossom out strings of beautiful purple flowers in summer. Though it is a kind of aquatic plant that can purify waters and can be used for pig forage, its amazing reproduction ability facilitate them to occupy waters in a short time. They block waterways, rob necessary sunshine and oxygen for plankton and fish sunshine, and break food chain… But it is not the fault of water hyacinths: they just want to survive.
They want to grow, so they can tolerate humans putting them in heavily polluted water. They absorb residual pesticides and heavy metal pollutants into their bodies. In summer, they are still abloom with gorgeous purple flowers. In the lake filled with strings of fabulous purple flowers, who can know these green floating water hyacinths are poisonous?
Why do they strive so hard? For staying alive!
The essence of the Wood is vitality and inclusiveness—
When green forage grass is eaten, it sends its seeds to animals’ stomachs. Excreted in the feces, seeds will break through the soil again in rain of the coming year. As prosperous as a wildfire, it takes root in this land again, just like the reincarnation of its ancestors’ life.
When birds and beasts eat berries and plants, in feathers or in the dirt hidden in their claws, they may unknowingly carry seeds that cling to them for a ride. Flying over lakes and mountains, these seeds can be spread to distant places.
Some of these seeds are fortunate enough to land on a fertile plain, however, they may still can’t grow well. Perhaps just when they are out of the ground, they will be trampled by humans and chewed by cattle and sheep. But there are still some survivors. They will develop and mature, continuing to reproduce the next generation.
What about seeds that fall into the water and desert?
In the water, these seeds sprout after soaked. They can’t cling to the soil so that they can only drift with the water and then die alone. Or maybe, generation after generation, they evolve into semi-aquatic plants.
In the desert, scorched by the sun, seeds their roots firmly in the sand to seek a little water. For absorbing hard-earned water and reducing evaporation, leaves evolve to the size of needles… Like the cactus.
How much do these fragile plants pay for survival?
These thoughts flash through Lin Luoran’s mind. She feels herself floating in the water and struggling in the desert with grass seeds. She is experiencing different lives.
To different species, a blade of grass can be very humble or very great.
For humans, just one step can kill it. Nonetheless, for ants, the grass is also a towering tree.
Lin Luoran attaches her spiritual mind to a straw of grass in the valley. As time goes by, she gradually forgets her identity, as if she were born as grass.
As a grass, she is happy most of the time. She stretches out in the wind, communicates with wildflowers, and looks down at the insects and ants passing by her roots. When it rains, her leaves are washed. Sweet water vapor from Snow Mountains makes her feel that all her pores are open.
Sometimes it hasn’t rained for a long time, so there are intense expressions of terrestrial heat in the valley. Such kind of “baking” makes her drowsy.
Suddenly one day, a black hoof steps on her. Lin Luoran is very frightened. However, her roots are deep in the soil so she cannot dodge it.
At that moment, she totally forgets she is actually a cultivator near Bearing Essence, who should not be afraid of a hoof coming suddenly.
Unable to escape, she is trodden. Two of her leaves are broke off her body and she can’t stand up anymore. At one moment, Lin Luoran suddenly complains about the injustice of God. She wonders why did God make her a weak creature that can only passively suffer without the ability of self-protection…
Meanwhile, Lin Luoran’s real body is in the closet, sitting on the trough.
The rolling, translucent, sticky, and warm liquid and the meltwater that constantly drips on her head are shaping her body, as the original “green light flower”.
Only in this kind of environment can green light flower of the Wood grow. Under these conditions, finding the origin of the Wood is naturally easier.
In this environment, nebulas in her body constantly absorb the Wood Reiki gathered because of the special topography of the valley, and her Wakan becomes thicker.
…
Unconsciously, four months have passed. At first, Lin Luoran got out of the closet frequently, so Ze Yitong did not feel lonely.
But this time, Ajia has not been out for a month.
As the spell becomes invalid, the cellared ice melts. Ze Yitong looks at meat, worrying it will decay and then be wasted. Soon the little girl comes up with a solution. She ties up stockpiled meat that Lin Luoran hunted for her with a leather rope, and then puts it on White Cloud’s back. Ze Yitong pleads with White Cloud to take it to Dun Zhu.
Taking the job as a “messenger”, White Cloud’s honorable days as the horse of heaven have gone forever. It accepts its new destiny and carries dozens of pounds of meat. Before dawn, it puts the meat in front of Ze Yitong family’s yurt.
Ze Yitong thinks it is a great pity that she doesn’t have a bag. Otherwise, her mom and nana can also taste the rice and flour here. She loves the crystal chewy rice and white flour so much… Ze Yitong weeps while stuffs her mouth with grapes.
There are plenty of animals here to accompany her and play with her and White Cloud is willing to carry her to see vast Snow Mountains. Besides, there is plenty of delicious food for her to eat and the warm climate here is always like spring… However, Ze Yitong is still missing home a lot.
She misses nana’s buttered tea and how rusty Dun Zhu is when she helps with braiding hair.
White Cloud has sent so many letters without being noticed. Then maybe it is also fine if she goes back to check them on?
A few days later, Lin Luoran still doesn’t go out. Ze Yitong finally can’t resist it. She stealthily rides White Cloud and sneaks back home.
White Cloud runs really fast, and Ze Yitong gets to the yurt before daybreak. Because it’s the familiar smell of its little owner, the dog does not bark. Cattle and sheep are also quiet. She tiptoes in. By the moonlight, she can see the sleeping faces of Dun Zhu and nana.
In just four months, nana looks ten years older than when she saw her last. As for mom Dun Zhu, her face is ghastly skinny.
How worried they must be when their only daughter is missing!
Ze Yitong accidentally knocks against a wooden bowl and then Dun Zhu turns over. She suddenly remembers what Lin Luoran told her. If she still wants to live her peaceful life, now Dun Zhu and nana cannot see her with a broken arm… Even if they are not scared by the strangeness of a regrown broken arm, they will still be very sad when they see her with only one arm.
Ze Yitong holds back her tears and runs out of the yurt. She rides on the horse immediately.
Mother’s and daughter’s hearts are closely linked together. Dun Zhu wakes up from her sleep. She can feel her daughter’s breath was just beside her a few seconds ago. Dun Zhu pulls away the felt and chases out quickly.
Under the dim sky, there is only a flying white horse. It runs on the spring grassland and soon disappears under the horizon.
“Ze Yitong, mom knows it’s you… You came back, didn’t you?”
The only thing that answers her is the roaring wind on the grassland.
…
Back in the valley, Ze Yitong finally can’t hold her tears anymore.
She gets down from White Cloud’s back and squats on the grass. Her tears stream down her face and fall on a pile of grass trampled by wild horses currently.
While she is crying, she has no idea that Lin Luoran’s spiritual mind is attached to a draw of this grass.
Lin Luoran wakes up from her “deep slumber”. She can feel hot and salty drops of water. Is it raining?
It’s not raining, but a little girl’s melancholy tears.
She is so touched by the grief that she forgets she is only a grass. She has so much compassion for this little crying girl and really wants to comfort her. However, she is just a grass broken off by wild horses. All she can do now is twist her leaves in the wind, which looks very funny.
Looking at the broken grass’s strange “dance”, Ze Yitong turns tears to laughter.
A bright smile drives away sadness. Seeing that, the grass is stunned, and then it suddenly understands the meaning of life.
Live, live for this smile.
Live, live for the tears several seconds ago.
Live, live for this beautiful world, for the more beautiful landscape outside the valley.
I am just a humble grass, but I also have my own pain, sorrow, pity, and happiness—these are the essence of life.
Lin Luoran suddenly opens her eyes in the stone trough.
The fast-rotating nebulas inside her absorb unyielding life under the snow in the mountains. The moment she opens her eyes, the chaos nebula differentiates a green nebula.
The Wood has been separated!
The four nebulas are still moving at high speed. She continues to take in the endless Wood Reiki and transforms it into Wakan.
Red the Fire, blue the Water, white the Chaos Wakan, and new green the Wood: the four colors interweave into a majestic spectacle—as they rotate, they become smaller and smaller. Are they in compression?
In the Sea of Reiki of the pubic region, four rotating nebulas represent different elements. Lin Luoran knows this moment is extremely critical. Passing this test, she will become a cultivator of Bearing Essence, taking another step forward in her personal ability… Failing it, maybe she will lose all her personal ability and then die?
Trampled grass can still be revitalized, so can she!
Lin Luoran smiles. Nebulas in her pubic region seem to know her thoughts. They condense and then rotate at a greater speed.
Are they condensing into a golden elixir?
She is not short of Reiki or state of mind. At the moment, the only thing she can do is quietly waiting for the accomplishment of this step of Bearing Essence.
Lin Luoran can’t wait to see her own golden elixir.
