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"Do all you spirits have this ability to bewitch people's hearts?"

Mushroom did not understand why he had brought this up. Seeing Shi Changyuan tilt his head, he copied him. "Not necessarily. Besides, I've never seen any other spirits."

"Why did you suddenly ask that?"

Seeing Lin Ling's bewildered expression, Shi Changyuan's lips curved slightly. He picked up his brush and wrote the three characters for "Shi Changyuan" beside the two characters for "Lin Ling."

Mushroom craned his neck to look at the black ink on white paper. His first thought was: So complicated.

He watched Shi Changyuan put down his brush and lift the sheet of rice paper, looking it over from left to right. First, he proudly stated a fact. "It's not as simple as my name."

A few seconds later, Lin Ling tried to make it out, but he recognized only the simple character for "long."

He looked at the paper, then at Shi Changyuan, and pointed at the last character as he guessed, "Does this mean water too?"

The youth before him possessed a clarity untouched by knowledge. His round, dull-looking eyes blinked and blinked, and despite wearing clothes from the imperial palace, his inhuman nature as a spirit was exposed in an instant.

Shi Changyuan nodded faintly. "Deep water is called an abyss."

"Abyss..." Lin Ling deliberately ignored the first character, which he did not recognize at all, and tried to read it aloud. "Changyuan?"

The youth's voice was distinctive, like jade falling into a clear spring. Yet he spoke softly, with a sweet, soft lilt at the end of his words. It truly suited a plump little mushroom.

Seeing that Shi Changyuan did not correct him, Lin Ling's eyes lit up. Just as he opened his mouth to say it again, his forehead was flicked.

It did not hurt, but the mark turned red.

"Taboo."

Shi Changyuan's gaze swept over the palace servants, who had their eyes and ears shut, before he said slowly, "This time, your ignorance will be forgiven."

Lin Ling froze for a moment, rubbing his forehead. But his eyes curved with a smile. "Okay."

There had always been many rules in the human world, especially within the Imperial City, before the Son of Heaven. Lin Ling knew this much. Even before he had become a spirit, when he lived atop the roof beams, he had already witnessed it.

The human sovereign before him had already shown him great leniency, but he still did not quite like this feeling.

So that very night, Mushroom began preparing to plant his spores.

His human identity was very useful. He merely had to tell the human named Shunde at Shi Changyuan's side that he needed another flowerpot. In less than the time it took to burn an incense stick, Shunde delivered one to him without asking for any payment. He was a very good human.

As long as the spores in this flowerpot grew, and he fulfilled what he had promised, he could bid farewell to his friend and return to the deep mountains and old forests he longed for.

Under suitable conditions, mushrooms had a very short growth cycle. It only took a few days.

Late that night, Shi Changyuan sensed someone approaching him in his sleep. He gripped the dagger hidden in the secret compartment and opened his eyes at once, his gaze clear.

When he met those harmless eyes, his nerves relaxed. Somewhat annoyed, he rubbed the space between his brows, though his tone remained calm. "What are you...?"

Lin Ling crouched before Shi Changyuan's bed, holding an empty flowerpot. When he saw that Shi Changyuan was awake, his eyes lit up. With great solemnity, he offered the empty pot to him.

"I came to secretly give you a Good-Dream Mushroom." Lin Ling lowered his voice. "I can't expose my identity, but there's no way to send physical objects through the dream mirror, so I picked a time when no one was around."

A time when no one was around...

Shi Changyuan's brows rose slightly at those words, but he did not correct him.

The imperial palace was heavily guarded. There was no such thing as a time when no one was around, especially while Shi Changyuan was resting.

The palace servants keeping watch outside the study were silent, and perhaps they truly had not heard the commotion inside. As for the hidden guards, anyone who knew Lin Ling could not muster much vigilance toward this harmless, foolish-looking youth.

Surely he could not do anything earth-shattering.

Lin Ling carefully placed the flowerpot by Shi Changyuan's bedside and instructed him, "These are the spores I planted. As long as you take good care of them, Little Mushrooms will sprout soon."

"Then you'll be able to sleep well every day."

Shi Changyuan looked at the flowerpot Lin Ling was offering him, and his tone suddenly carried a trace of hesitation. "...Your child?"

"They're not my children. They're part of me," Lin Ling explained earnestly.

"Although mushrooms have no male or female sex, after becoming a spirit, I gained a gender."

"You male humans can't have children." After saying that, Lin Ling looked at Shi Changyuan with a strange expression that seemed to say, You didn't even know that?

Shi Changyuan, who had somehow been blamed instead, fell silent. He looked again at the flowerpot in Lin Ling's hands, hesitated to speak, then stopped himself, then wanted to speak again. In the end, he said nothing and accepted the flowerpot.

Seeing Shi Changyuan take the flowerpot, Lin Ling's exposed eyes curved at once.

"Don't worry. Until Little Mushroom can work, I won't abandon my post without permission!"

Holding the flowerpot, Shi Changyuan looked at the youth sneaking about beside the bed as though he had thought of something. He chuckled. "You even know the phrase 'abandon one's post without permission' now?"

Mushroom had been caught off guard by the bad human's teasing and puffed up with indignation.

Why did those hidden guards tell him everything? He had only heard the phrase for the first time and mistaken "abandon" for "mountain pear," that was all!!

What was wrong with mountain pears? Mocking mountain pears—humans truly were bad.

Humans might be scheming, but they were unexpectedly excellent at cultivating mushrooms. Lin Ling's little potted plant had sprouted a tiny tip in less than three days.

By the fourth day, all the little mushroom tips in the flowerpot had grown out.

The newborn Little Mushroom was only the size of a peanut, short and plump. Though its cap had not fully opened yet, its unusual appearance was already apparent.

If other mushrooms all looked more or less the same, then this mushroom's cap was especially small. Once fully opened, it seemed as though the cap would curl upward, growing completely the opposite way.