The out-of-season growth Grandma Yi described wasn't like anything Xu Huo had previously understood by the term—such as plants that normally grew in summer being made to flower and bear fruit in winter by changing their environment. She meant that some plants of a particular kind grew more slowly than others.
For example, there was a small light-purple flower that was supposed to bloom at the end of October. But when Grandma Yi went out sometimes, she would find that plants of the same kind growing together were in two different states: half had bloomed, while the other half were still buds.
It was normal for some flowers in the same patch to have bloomed while others hadn't. But it was strange when one side was uniformly a step behind the other.
Still, when Grandma Yi went back the next day, all the flowers had bloomed. She hadn't found any other traces nearby—not even footprints.
Grandma Yi had encountered several strange sights like this. Later, she asked a visiting Player who specialized in studying Mutated Plants. The Player said it might be that the growth of Mutated Plants had changed the soil. Plants on the surface had their own territories, and of course there were territories underground, too. Some plants' main bodies were underground. If the roots of two different plants happened to run beneath that patch of flowers, their influence on the soil might have left some areas short of nutrients or altered the temperature, causing them to bloom a little earlier or later than the rest.
After learning this, Grandma Yi stopped worrying about it. Besides, it wasn't a big deal in the first place.
After hearing her out, Xu Huo left the village with the painted woman. He planned to visit the place Grandma Yi had mentioned.