"Why cut one down?"
Pei Ye did not know why either. The thought of cutting one down had leaped into his mind before what he would use it for. He thought for a moment and said, "Make a fishing rod?"
Ming Qitian said nothing more, lowering her head and parting the grass with her staff as she searched.
She pointed out each mushroom she found to the boy.
Just as the senior at the Medicine Hut had said, ground aconite was abundant in this bamboo grove. Pei Ye grew puzzled. "Fungi mostly grow on dead wood and rotting leaves. The ground in a bamboo grove is cleaner than elsewhere, so why does more ground aconite grow here?"
Ming Qitian shook her head. "I don't know."
They walked through the entire grove and indeed saw plenty of medicinal fungi, but the few they dug up were no different from those they had first found.
Pei Ye picked a few of these fragile living things too, and even tasted one. Soft and quick to rot, they sprang up and died abruptly, emerging with rain and drying out with wind. He truly could not see anything about them that deserved to be called "immortal."
But Pei Ye felt no urgency either, just as Ming Qitian kept stopping along the way. He also dug up two mountain bamboo shoots that looked crisp and tender, intending to take them back and stir-fry them.
They followed their plotted route, identifying the mountain fungi recorded in the illustrated booklet one by one. Whenever the booklet said "edible, delicious," Pei Ye picked a few.
Gradually, he stopped dwelling so much on their original purpose. He had already grasped half the true meaning of "Nether Immortal"; even if he could not grasp the other half, the journey would not