No Fated Chance

"It's all right, little girl. Don't cry. Grandpa understands."

Old Lu stroked the little tufts of hair on Lu Mingyue's head, a loving smile spreading across his face, as though he understood the strange thing that had happened to her.

"Go buy some groceries. We earned five taels of silver today, so the two of us ought to have a good lunch."

As he spoke, Old Lu took out the five taels of silver he had received that morning and placed the small, two-tael piece in Lu Mingyue's hand.

"Grandpa, I haven't finished washing the Corpse-Wrapping Cloth!" Lu Mingyue wanted to finish her work first.

"It's just a piece of cloth. Leave it there; Grandpa can wash it. Hurry to the market. If you're late, everyone else will have picked out all the good meat!"

Old Lu waved dismissively. Then he walked out of the main room, set a stool beside the wooden bucket, and began scrubbing the Corpse-Wrapping Cloth.

"Grandpa, rest once you've finished washing it. I'll go buy a big piece of fatty pork and cook it for you!"

Seeing that her grandfather trusted her completely and had no intention of questioning her further, Lu Mingyue inexplicably felt relieved. She tucked away the two taels of silver and put away the brush, ink, paper, and inkstone. Only then did she shoulder her little basket, open the courtyard gate, and head to the market.

Once Lu Mingyue's small figure disappeared around the mouth of the alley, however, Old Lu looked at the Corpse-Wrapping Cloth in his hands, and his smile slowly faded.

He turned the Corpse-Wrapping Cloth over several times. After confirming there was nothing on it, he could not help looking deeply rueful.

"The teachings cannot pass to six ears... the teachings cannot pass to six ears!"

"Mingyue's reaction just now was exactly like the old man's back then. That immortal clearly told him something, but he simply couldn't say it or write it down..."

A certain day thirty years ago surfaced in Old Lu's mind.

That time, the County Commandant at the county office had also captured an immortal who had been slaughtering innocent people in the city.

Unlike the Shen Household's young master, however, that had been a true immortal!

Though Old Lu had still been young then, he remembered clearly that of the dozens of constables sent by the county office to capture that immortal, only ten had survived!

The immortal had even broken the County Commandant's right arm!

Such a vicious, murderous villain had naturally been sentenced to the harshest punishment and dragged to the marketplace entrance to be executed by a thousand cuts.

Although immortals were different from mortals, even he could not withstand such a punishment. He died after nine hundred cuts.

Yet after his grandfather took him to collect that immortal's corpse, they found that the immortal still had a breath left in him!

Clinging to that last breath, the immortal reached out a blood-drenched arm and grabbed his grandfather, who was stitching his remains back together, pulling his grandfather's head toward his mouth...

Old Lu had been young and bold back then, but he had seen little of the world.

He thought the immortal was going to kill his grandfather.

So he picked up the box holding their needles and thread and smashed it viciously against the immortal's head, caving in his skull.

The immortal died for good.

But Old Lu received a savage beating from his grandfather, who then drove him out.

Old Lu remembered it very clearly. His grandfather had waved his arms and stamped his feet, trying to tell him something, but had been unable to get the words out.

Growing frantic, his grandfather fetched a brush, but what he wrote... was just like what Lu Mingyue had written earlier: nothing but ghostly scrawls, without a single recognizable character!

Not long afterward, the old man fell gravely ill.

With nowhere else to go, Old Lu returned to care for the bedridden old man.

Even then, the old man could not explain what exactly the immortal had told him before dying that day.

But before his death, the old man left him with a sentence that finally made Old Lu understand why his grandfather had resented him so deeply, and why he had suddenly fallen gravely ill from anger and died full of regret.

It was because that immortal had been teaching his grandfather a method of immortal cultivation that day!

And the sentence his grandfather left him contained only five words-the teachings cannot pass to six ears!

"That chance at immortality fell to the old man back then, but I forcibly... and the old man was angered to death, still unwilling to let go even at the end."

"Now that chance at immortality has fallen to little Mingyue..."

Old Lu murmured to himself. After confirming that there truly was nothing on the Corpse-Wrapping Cloth in his hands, he wrung it out and hung it beneath the eaves.

"It seems I'm destined to have no chance at immortality in this lifetime!"

Lu Mingyue knew nothing of her grandfather's past.

At the market, she bought five catties of fatty pork with a finger-thick layer of lean meat, then plenty of radishes and cabbages, before hurrying home with her little basket on her back.

On the way home, however, Lu Mingyue could not help going over the cultivation art in her mind.

"Feed qi into the body, temper the five viscera, open the Spirit Mansion, draw essence into the apertures..."

After going through the entire Qi-Feeding Spirit-Opening Art, Lu Mingyue's eyes shone brightly, and a glimmer of understanding arose within her.

"The qi consumed here shouldn't be the qi of heaven and earth, but the vital essence in grains and flesh!"

"Because this cultivation art clearly states that the spiritual qi of heaven and earth can only be sensed after cultivating a Spirit Mansion."

"So... whether a mortal can open a Spirit Mansion later in life depends entirely on how much good food they can eat?"

"There are medicinal baths, too. Ginseng and deer antler are only the most ordinary ingredients. The children of sect elders and people from immortal-cultivating Aristocratic Clans all bathe in heavenly treasures containing Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi..."

This information was not merely recorded in the cultivation art. Lu Mingyue had also "seen it with her own eyes" in Shen Yulang's brief life.

After thinking it over, Lu Mingyue could not help feeling an ache in her teeth.

Because she had remembered a saying.

"It really is the poor who study letters and the rich who practice martial arts!"

Eating large quantities of grain and meat every day alone would already be a considerable expense.

Let alone bathing her body in medicinal herbs!

The crucial thing was!

She was just a child right now!

Although her grandfather gave her one or two taels of silver whenever she bought groceries, something almost unheard of in other ordinary households, still...

Could one or two taels buy ginseng and deer antler?

Besides, whenever she returned from buying groceries, Lu Mingyue handed the remaining money back to her grandfather.

Her grandfather was decades older than her and had lived in this city for so many years. How could he not know the prices at the market?

So-

"Forget medicinal baths. At most, I can only eat more. Yes, more meat. That's the only cultivation resource I have available right now!"

"If I could tell Grandpa about this cultivation art, perhaps we could cultivate together, and he would definitely be willing to spend silver by the handful. But now... sigh!"

Lu Mingyue felt rather downcast, but by the time she returned home with her little basket, she had already adjusted her frame of mind.

"Who cares? At least I can cultivate now, can't I? I'm only seven! I have plenty of time! There's no hurry!"

Though that was what she thought, once she had finished making the braised pork, Lu Mingyue still ate two extra bowls of rice.