My Path to Immortality with a Blade of Grass - Chapter 8

09

At last, my little Immortal Grass took human form and became a spirit.

“Sis! Sis! Look! Am I handsome?” he asked excitedly, now in the form of a tall, fine-featured youth.

But I couldn’t see him.

I was a snake. A snake born nearsighted. A snake who couldn’t tell a human from an animal beyond a meter.

And this fellow was at least a meter eighty-five after transforming.

Standing at his feet, I couldn’t even see all of his legs.

In the days that followed, I eagerly awaited my own transformation. I longed to see what my little Immortal Grass looked like as a human!

I wasn’t entirely sure what humans looked like, but that didn’t stop me from imagining his face.

Would he look more like grass? More like a chicken?

Could he look like a snake?

Whatever he looked like, I knew I’d love him.

At last, the night of the total lunar eclipse arrived.

The night I would transform.

As the celestial hound swallowed the last trace of moonlight, pain erupted through every bone in my body, nearly tearing my soul apart.

Little Immortal Grass, already human, stayed by my side throughout. With aching tenderness, he stroked my slowly shedding snakeskin and the soft, delicate human skin growing beneath it.

The old immortal set up an altar and performed a ritual, pleading my case before the Heavenly Dao over my little trick and drawing on Kunlun’s spiritual energy to bless me.

When the bright moonlight returned to earth, bathing the world in its gentle glow, I had shed my snake bones entirely and taken human form.

I’d finally become a spirit.

But the Heavenly Dao wasn’t going to let a schemer like me off so easily.

It gave me human eyes, but not human eyesight.

I was still half-blind, unable to tell a person from an animal beyond a meter.

Standing, I couldn’t even see my own belly button. Sitting down, I could barely make out the ground.

After becoming human, I spent my days feeling unsteady and unmoored. The carefree little snake had become a person terrified of this unfamiliar world.

Heavenly Dao, you petty thing!

You’re not human!

Perhaps it heard me insulting it. Lightning split the sky, followed by rolling thunder.

I felt wronged.

The Heavenly Dao wasn’t human. That was a fact.

But I supposed I could take back the part about being petty.

Only because I was a gentle little snake who didn’t like quibbling, mind you. Not because I was afraid!

Another bolt of lightning split the sky.

Another roll of thunder.

Fine. I was a tiny bit afraid of you. Just a tiny bit.

Hmph!

Foxtail grass was heartbroken for me. Behind my back, he went to the old immortal and asked him to exchange our eyes.

The old immortal had always doted on me, so he readily agreed.

And when I next opened my eyes, I saw the world clearly for the first time.

I saw flowers in all their colors. I saw the distant mountains and the setting sun. I saw that the parrot really did have beautiful feathers…

And I saw my little Immortal Grass.

He looked nothing like grass, or a chicken, or a snake.

Yet he’d become exactly what I loved most.

Because he was the person I loved most in the world.

When I tearfully demanded how he could have made that decision without me, he only smiled.

“What does a blade of grass need such good eyesight for? You’re a snake, Sis. We’ll be relying on you to hunt and feed our family.”

He did have a point.

Wait.

Who said I was starting a family with him?

If you ever see a woman with a wonderfully supple waist leading a tall, half-blind man down the street to buy chicken, don’t be surprised.

That’s a snake holding on to her foxtail grass.

No—her little Immortal Grass.

“Wait.” Something suddenly struck me. “Why did you give me both eyes? We could have had one each!”

“Holy shit!” My dog-tail grass—now a mutt of a man—looked aghast. “That was an option?”

“Ha! You big idiot!”