Notes on Longevity

Chapter 146 Linglong is a flower spirit, Yisheng is a tree demon

"Taihua is gone?"

That night, after Dao Yisheng woke up, the woman in green told him about Taihua's search for people.

He sat on the bed in tattered clothes. All the wounds on his body had completely healed, except for his eyes.

Those eyes, shrouded in darkness, looked somewhat frightening.

He took a deep breath. Upon learning that Taihua had left, he was visibly flustered. Because Taihua was gone, he didn't know where to go next.

Should we return to the Taoist temple once our eyes have recovered?
But what the man in green said next made him give up the idea.

"He told you to stay with me, and he'll come back after he finds the person."

Green-clad sat at the wooden table on the second floor, sadly looking at the scattered, withered "Forsythia" in front of her.

She said she would protect them.

Green Robe gently wiped away her tears, unseen by Dao Yisheng.

Did he say who he was going to see?

Knowing that Taihua would return, he stopped thinking about other things; Taihua would never lie to him. If he said he would come back, he would definitely come back.

"No," the woman in green answered him, sadly sweeping her hand over the "Welcoming Spring" inscription. Instantly, the withered forsythia transformed into starlight and vanished from her hand.

The woman in green choked up.

Dao Yisheng didn't notice Green Robe's sadness and instead sighed and lay down on the bed. "This guy is really something. Couldn't he have waited until my eyes were better before going to find someone? He just left me here all alone."

Dao Yisheng's complaints made Green Robe even more heartbroken. She didn't want Yingchun to leave like this either, but her magical powers were limited, and she really couldn't save her. Rather than letting it wither away and eventually turn into dust, it would be better to let it transform into starlight and remain in this world forever.

She had heard her grandmother say that whether human or demon, a star would light up in the sky after they were born or cultivated into human form, and that star would be their destiny star. If they died one day, that star would dim or they would fall from grace.

But after night fell, she stared at the starry sky and didn't find any stars that had dimmed or disappeared. Everything was the same as usual, so she thought that "Welcoming Spring" should still be "alive". She went to look for her own star.

The atmosphere in the room was quite subtle. Dao Yisheng lay on the bed with his hands raised high, staring at them with his dark, unseen eyes, muttering to himself from time to time, "If I had known that Taoist was so powerful, I should have let him hit me a few more times. That way, my cultivation could have reached a higher level."

Dao Yisheng's cultivation method was no different from that of ordinary people and demons, except that the cultivation technique he practiced was somewhat peculiar. That technique was given to him by Taihua, who said, "Breaking through to establish oneself—this technique is most suitable for demons like you. Not only can it protect your life, but if you encounter powerful demons and fight them, your cultivation will not only advance to a higher level, but if you have enough fortuitous encounters, you can even reach the realm of glimpsing immortals." Dao Yisheng complained about not being beaten more by Yun Gong, while Green Robe stood up by the window, gazing at the flowers drooping in the sea of ​​blossoms under the night sky. She wondered what would happen to them if she died in three months.
She thought about it a lot and felt that the safest option was to send them back to Jiangnan, back to her grandmother. But this was also her biggest worry: what if something happened to them on the way back? In that case, she would have completely ruined them.

So she wanted to send them back herself, but what about Dao Yisheng?
Although he was very capable, judging from his condition after waking up, Dao Yisheng's mind was clearly that of a child. If she left, Dao Yisheng, who was currently blind and didn't know when he would recover, wouldn't feel at ease leaving him alone here.

She was torn; no matter who she chose, she couldn't let go of the other.

"Oh, right."

Dao Yisheng, who was lying on the bed, suddenly sat up. He suddenly remembered something and asked Green Robe, "I heard that forsythia call you Sister Linglong, but I remember you were called Green Robe."

Upon hearing Dao Yisheng's voice, Green Robe turned around, looking at Dao Yisheng in his tattered clothes, her head turned away sadly. She glanced at the stars in the night sky and said, "My name is Hua Linglong, and I am a flower spirit. Green Robe is just the name I use in the human world."

"I see." Dao Yisheng nodded, then frowned. "A flower spirit? You're not a demon, are you?"

"Of course not," the woman in green replied dejectedly.

Dao Yisheng sighed, then smiled slightly and lay back down on the bed with a soft "Oh dear": "No wonder that Taoist priest insisted on taking your inner core. It turns out you are a spirit, not a demon. No wonder your cultivation speed is so fast."

"What? What's the problem?" Green Robe knew that there was a big difference between demons and spirits, but there were still many things she didn't understand.

“No problem. To be honest, I’m quite envious of you.” Dao Yisheng smiled slightly. “You spirits are probably the easiest to attain enlightenment. Unlike us demons, we don’t know how many years we have to cultivate before we can attain human form and the Great Dao.”

Upon hearing this, Lvyi frowned slightly. From Daoyisheng's words, she felt that he must know a lot about cultivation, so she asked, "Is mastering cultivation easy?"

Dao Yisheng sat up again, looking in the direction from which the green-robed voice came. "Of course, you spirits only need to follow the natural course of your cultivation; when the opportunity arises, you will naturally attain enlightenment. But we demons must first spend hundreds of years to develop sentience; then we must spend hundreds or even thousands of years cultivating to attain human form. After that, there is a tribulation that begins thirteen hundred years after birth, and this tribulation is the most important. If you overcome it, your subsequent cultivation will be much faster; if you fail to overcome it or fail, you will either be reduced to ashes or lose all your cultivation, and you will have to start all over again. And after that, there are several more tribulations, each more difficult than the last."

"So, have you begun your tribulation?" The man in green was greatly shocked after hearing Dao Yisheng's explanation of the differences between demon and spirit cultivation. He had originally thought that the cultivation methods of demons and spirits were only slightly different, but he hadn't expected that there would be such a tribulation involved.

Moreover, she had never heard anyone mention these things before, not even her grandmother. Even the Taoist priest she met on the road told her to cultivate herself well and remember not to harm others easily.

Moreover, she remembered that her grandmother once told her that spirits are a gift from heaven and earth among all things.

Before tonight, she had never understood this sentence until Daoyisheng told her about it.

"Not yet. I'm only a thousand years old, and I still have three hundred years before I begin my tribulation."

(End of this chapter)