The Fruit Tree Would Soon Ripen

"Boss, two bowls of milk-broth noodles and an order of bobo chicken, please."

The two girls in outdoor jackets walked back into town, their legs already trembling with exhaustion. They picked a noodle shop at random and went inside.

The two bowls of noodles arrived quickly.

Milk-broth noodles were not made with milk. The broth was boiled over high heat using pork bones and an old hen until it turned milky white. Some places also added beans to make it whiter, hence the name.

A mouthful of steaming noodles and savory broth gradually washed away the two girls' fatigue.

"Not bad!"

"Pretty tasty!"

"Seriously, I was scared to death last night! The wind was howling on the mountain, and the tent was nearly blown over!" The girl in the yellow-green jacket was still shaken. "I wasn't afraid at first, but what we saw at the Daoist temple yesterday morning was so bizarre. I kept worrying there were monsters or ghosts or something on the mountain!"

"I wanted to say the same thing! But I didn't dare tell you. You've always been brave, and I was afraid you hadn't thought of it until I said something and scared you too. Then I'd have been scared to death."

"Same here! I didn't dare tell you either. You're already a scaredy-cat, and people can scare each other to death!"

The two chatted enthusiastically as they slurped their noodles.

"Too bad that Daoist priest was so stingy. I even gave him the milk tea I'd lugged all the way up the mountain to drink while watching the sunset, and he wouldn't give me a single talisman."

"I looked it up online. Daoists are divided into the Elixir Cauldron School and the talisman school. Only the talisman school has talismans; the Elixir Cauldron School doesn't. Maybe that priest belonged to the Elixir Cauldron School."

"Let me look..."

But after searching all over, neither of them found anything.

All they found was that the temple had some history and primarily enshrined a deity called the Earth Sage. He was neither Great Emperor Earth Official, one of the Three Officials, nor Lady Houtu, one of the Four Sovereigns. He was not the True God of Fortune and Virtue, much less Zhenyuanzi, the patriarch of earthly immortals from the novel, although an ancestral master of the temple had probably read the novel in ancient times and stolen his door couplet for one of its rooms.

Locally, there was only one legend about the Earth Sage subduing demons and vanquishing devils there. There were no records of this deity elsewhere, so he was most likely just a local god.

"Your bobo chicken is here!"

The owner came over carrying a plate of sliced chicken.

In other places, bobo chicken consisted of skewers served in a cold pot. Here, it really was chicken, beaten with a stick as it was sliced so that the pieces came out thin and even, then tossed with chili oil and seasonings.

"Oh, boss!" The girl in the yellow-green jacket stopped him. "Do you know about the Daoist temple on that mountain over there?"

"A Daoist temple? There is one!"

"Do prayers there work?"

"Don't know. We hardly ever go. Even when some of the neighbors want to visit a temple to pray during festivals, there's Guanyin Monastery and the Great Buddha Chan Temple in the old town over there, with a straight road leading right to them. There's also a little temple here in town. You have to climb the mountain to reach that Daoist temple, at least a two-hour walk, so we hardly ever go."

The owner smiled. Clearly, he did not believe in gods, but seeing the curiosity in their eyes, he merely put it tactfully. "Well, if you believe, it works. If you don't, it doesn't."

The girls did not catch his meaning. Instead, they found it even more mysterious and continued asking:

"Do you know the priest there?"

"I remember a little. I think there used to be an old Daoist there. Later, he took in a young one, who even went to school here in town. After that, I didn't hear much about them."

"Oh..."

"Are you two looking to go pray?"

"We just came down from there," said the girl in the rose-red jacket.

"The priest there seemed a little mystical," said the girl in the yellow-green jacket.

"Haha, what century are we living in? Be careful you don't get swindled." The owner was kindhearted. "I heard the older folks say that Daoist temple is a historical relic. The government used to want someone to take it over, saying the Daoist arts they practiced weren't orthodox. But there are fewer and fewer people in the countryside now, and the temple is halfway up the mountain. There was a mudslide up there once, too, so they couldn't find anyone to take it over. Besides, it wouldn't be good to leave the temple abandoned, and they'd always been there, passing it down from master to disciple. It wouldn't have been right to just drive them out, so they were allowed to keep living there."

"I thought they were very nice..."

"And he keeps a cat that understands human speech. He could even make a snake blocking the road leave with just a word."

The owner only smiled and told them not to be fooled by little tricks.

The two girls exchanged a glance and said no more.

Even if asking the snake to leave had been a coincidence, the cat at the Daoist temple really could understand human speech. Had it happened anywhere else, that would have been one thing. But it had happened at a Daoist temple, and the way the priest had calmly ordered the cat to drive off the snake that day made him seem anything but ordinary.

After eating, they soon boarded their ride home.

The owner found it amusing and laughed about it with his wife as he cleared the table.

But the owner's wife was clearly different.

"Really? Haven't we both been feeling cold and weak all over these past few days? And we've had nightmares several nights in a row. Should we go and have a look?"

"Didn't you already go to the hospital? I'll just take some Liuwei Dihuang pills."

"Are they helping? Doesn't look like it to me."

"Then where do you suggest we go?"

"Let's try Guanyin Monastery and the Great Chan Buddhist Temple first. We can get there on the electric scooter. If that doesn't work, we can try the Daoist temple on the mountain."

"You're nuts!"

The owner went on wiping the table.

At dusk, the stars in the sky and the lights below the mountain came on almost simultaneously, setting one another aglow, with the Daoist temple and mountain woods between them.

"Ah, beyond the thirty-three heavens, beyond the nine clouds dwell immortals. Immortals were once mortals, their only fear that mortal hearts lack resolve. A word or half a phrase can reveal the profound; what need is there for ten thousand alchemical texts? If a person is not burdened by the physical form, Great Luo Heaven lies before their eyes. Great Luo Heaven, ah."

As he usually did when alone at the mountain temple, Chen Du walked through its courtyard, reciting idly out of boredom. A black-and-white kitten with side-swept bangs crouched nearby, licking its fur. Whenever he walked farther away, it would trot a couple of steps after him, then sit down and resume licking, keeping a distance that was neither too close nor too far.

As it licked, it suddenly turned its head toward the treasure tree in the courtyard.

Following its gaze, Chen Du glanced over as well. The treasure tree still radiated light.

"Huh?"

Chen Du suddenly noticed something was wrong.

This was different from usual. The light on the treasure tree now was not the spiritual glow produced by gathering the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and absorbing the essence of the sun and moon. He could only see that glow when he concentrated, but the faint light now radiating from the spiritual tree was visible to the naked eye.

To be precise, it was coming from the fruit.

Curious as cats were, the kitten went over first and looked up. Once Chen Du joined it, giving it courage, it climbed right up the tree to inspect the fruit more closely.

After growing for another day, the fruit on the tree was a little larger than peanuts. They were round and covered in a faint glow that would have been almost invisible had it not already been dark.

"You may only look. No biting, no touching, no knocking them down, and absolutely no eating them!"

The cat on the branch immediately turned to look at him.

Why are there so many things I can't do?

"Be good!"

Still looking back at him, the cat leaned its neck forward slightly, its eyes wide and round, but made no sound.

The moment Chen Du saw it like that, he had a bad feeling.

His cat was a stubborn one.

"They haven't finished growing. They can still get bigger, so it would be a real shame if you ruined them. Our temple is poor; we can't afford to waste them."

A thoughtful look flickered in the cat's eyes. It studied him closely too, and only after a moment did it turn back to continue watching the fruit intently and sniffing its fragrance.

Chen Du breathed a small sigh of relief.

Stubbornness was in a cat's nature. Fortunately, although his cat was stubborn too, it had been with him for so long that it generally listened to him. It was not easy for it to go against its nature and do that.

When Chen Du leaned closer as well, the faint light from the fruit shone on both their faces.

As he breathed, he caught the enticing fragrance of fruit.

It was somewhat like the Three-Pearl Tree of legend.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas recorded that the Three-Trunk Tree grew north of the Fire-Repelling Country, beside the Red Water River. It resembled a cypress, with leaves like pearls. But it did not say what its fruit looked like.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas also recorded a tree called the Pearl Tree. Their names differed by only one character, but the Pearl Tree grew in Kunlun. The book did not describe its appearance in detail, nor did it explicitly say that the two were the same kind of tree. It also described neither tree's fruit or what effects eating it might have.

People in later generations often confused the two.

By the time of the two Jin dynasties, the fashion for revering immortals and honoring the Dao had grown so strong that some even regarded the Pearl Tree and the Three-Trunk Tree as symbols of the immortal realm. Yet the ancient books contained no explicit record of them growing there.

At the time, there was a practitioner of esoteric arts named Guo Pu, who was also a famous man of letters. He had once written that the Three-Trunk Tree radiated light.

Thinking of it that way, it was very much like the treasure tree before him.

But Chen Du did not know how the Three-Trunk Tree, which was supposed to grow north of the Fire-Repelling Country beside the Red Water River, had come to grow in his temple courtyard. Nor did he know whether its fruit was edible or what effects it had.

"In that case, starting tomorrow, it won't be convenient to let visitors stay overnight at the temple. If it shines any brighter tomorrow, I'm afraid we won't be able to let people into the temple even during the day."

That morning, Chen Du had noticed the two hikers curiously approaching the strange tree for a closer look.

But trade was developed now and goods moved freely. Plants native to the other three continents often found their way into China, especially in landscaped gardens, so seeing unfamiliar plants was perfectly normal. Thus, the girls had not found it particularly strange; they had merely given it a few extra looks out of curiosity.

If it glowed, however, that would be far too abnormal.

So Chen Du spoke to the lit meditation room nearby:

"Yunzhi, the fruit on this tree has already begun to show a strange phenomenon. Starting tomorrow, if anyone asks to stay overnight at the temple, don't let them, lest the people down the mountain notice something unusual."

Yunzhi was meditating in her room, her hands resting on her knees, a flower petal held between the fingers of each hand.

Hearing him, she immediately opened her eyes. Though she was alone in the room, she did not dare be negligent. She lowered her head and nodded, saying respectfully:

"Yes, Immortal Master!"

She then continued trying to enter a meditative trance.

But she could not quiet her mind. The central news she had watched that morning and the Yizhou news she had watched that afternoon flashed alternately through her head, making her feel as though she had arrived in a new world, accompanied by a deep sense of insecurity.

Fortunately, after absorbing the spiritual essence in the petals, she had already restored thirty percent of her magic power.

Thinking of the petals, she could not help sighing in frustration again:

"Why is there one fewer every time I use one?!"