My Path to Immortality with a Blade of Grass - Chapter 5

06

With the parrot’s help, I soon returned to the herb garden.

Little Lingzhi trembled all over with excitement at the sight of me.

I coiled gently around him, and he softly stroked my scales with his seed head.

Being secretly in love was wonderful.

It could also make a snake feel terribly wronged.

The day of my agreement with the old immortal drew closer and closer, but I couldn’t feel happy.

Not even the hundred-plus ways I could eat chicken in human villages once I became a spirit could cheer me up.

Little Lingzhi worried about me. He often watched my every move with concern in his eyes.

Yet he didn’t understand how much our impending separation hurt me.

What a blockhead.

Oh, right. He was a plant.

“Have you forgotten?” I said. “The old immortal and I made a contract. I guard you, his little lingzhi, for three years, and he helps me become a spirit. Won’t you miss me at all?”

A breeze passed, and the lingzhi slowly straightened his stalk.

“But Sis,” he said with difficulty, “I’m not a lingzhi.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The old man put me here to look after his lingzhi. How could you not be it?”

“The lingzhi was here then. But it wasn’t me.”

Horrified, I demanded, “Then where is it?”

He bent his little seed head toward the hole beside him—the one where the gray mushroom had been.

Good heavens!

I, a supposedly noble guardian spirit beast, had spent three years guarding the wrong treasure!

Still, while I hadn’t protected the old immortal’s treasure, I’d protected mine.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” The thought of never discovering those hundred-plus ways to eat chicken made me feel terribly aggrieved.

“You never asked.” My little grass sounded rather aggrieved himself.

Thinking back, he really had never said he was a lingzhi.

He’d just been noisy.

Curiosity got the better of me. “Then what are you?”

My little grass curled up his stalk and tucked in his seed head, looking shy.

“I’m foxtail grass…”

Still hoping to find some way to appease the old immortal, I asked, “Are you valuable?”

He laughed, a little self-mockingly. “Sis, with a name that means ‘dog-tail grass,’ do I sound like anything valuable?”

He said it lightly. But even in my despair over never seeing braised chicken, roast chicken, white-cut chicken…

My heart ached for him.

He might not be a lingzhi, but he was the foxtail grass I’d lovingly protected for three years.

No one was allowed to speak badly of him.

Not even him.

I slapped the ground hard with my tail.

Ow.

If only that fat mushroom—no, that real, fat lingzhi—were still here.

But I refused to call my little grass Dog-tail Grass. It was an awful name.

From now on, he’d be my little Immortal Grass. I was going to ascend someday anyway. Since he was my grass, naturally that made him immortal grass!

Besides, if I couldn’t become a spirit, I could stay in the garden with him forever.

The joy of being beside the grass I loved softened my craving for chicken.

No, it didn’t.

I still really, really, really wanted to eat chicken in over a hundred different ways.

Seeing how miserable I was, little Immortal Grass asked me to tell him the exact wording of the contract.

I repeated it word for word.

“During the three days the old man spends in heaven, I will watch over the lingzhi in his herb garden. Upon his return, he will help me become a spirit and take human form.”

Little Immortal Grass thought for a moment.

Then he actually laughed.

“What?” Humiliated, I smacked the ground hard with my tail again.

Ow.

“Look carefully at what your contract says.” He laughed. “You only promised to watch over it. You never guaranteed you’d do a good job, or that you’d keep the lingzhi safe!”

Wow.

Good heavens!

It looked as though I’d fallen for a pretty remarkable little Immortal Grass.