Were all Immortals so above the attractions of the mundane world?
JUNE 19, 2016RUYI
Chapter 3: Foster Father Fang Hua
Were all Immortals so above the attractions of the mundane world?
I carried this question within me for three days until I wanted to pound my head with my own fists. It was too oppressing.
These few days, the beautiful person always watched me eat before control one’s hands and leaving. He would return to the residence after a long while, pleased, and then spend the entire afternoon reclining on a bamboo mat to doze.
He never arranged any work for me to do, and spoke to me very little.
He seemed to have thoroughly forgotten a person like me existed. Even if I tried to improve my popularity by wandering back and forth, he never looked me directly in the eye.
Although he vigorously ill-treated me this way, he always arranged for three meals a day and waited upon me comfortably.
It was as if, I wasn’t led here to be ordered about, but to enjoy a happy life filled with ease…
Seriously, what an abnormal guy…
Midday.
As usual, he cooked some dishes and placed them on the table. Without even touching his chopsticks, he immediately ignored me and grabbed his robes to head out the door.
I anxiously swallowed a few mouthfuls of rice, used my sleeve to wipe my mouth and bent forwards, holding my breath as I tailed along behind him.
The house he built here was pretty out of the way.
There weren’t even any neighbors around, and a field of medicinal herbs grew behind the building.
The shade of the green trees were thick beneath the summer sun, a pool of water rippled with jade-green waves that gave people an immeasurably cool feeling.
A white-robed silhouette disappeared into the ancient forest.
Huh…
Weird, why did this person slip noiselessly into a place where birds wouldn’t even poop at?
Enduring the rats of the scorching run, I broke into a run.
Leaning against the back of an ancient tree, I quietly craned my neck to look beyond.
Geez…
I saw the beautiful person rise to the sky with a leap, his reflection reversed in the pond below. The white robes were light as his foot stepped lightly on the surface of the pool, not even stirring a ripple. Then, his slender hands stretched forward and before I could see clearly, his body slowly floated to the ground. His form was as lovely as an Immortal. Only now, there was the stem of a lotus flower in his hand.
Ah… …I couldn’t tell before, but this had lots of emotional appeal.
A hot day spent using qinggong[1] to approach the surface of a pond and gather lotuses was already very bourgeoisie.
At that time I really wanted to express the surging within my heart.
The beautiful person was like a painting.
Long hair swirling in the air, falling flowers in riotous profusion.
His flawless movements caused the petals of the lotus to tear off… …please remember, he used tearing movements… …and then he stood up, holding the rest in his mouth, and began to chew.
His expression then…
It was as if he was trying a delicate, delicious taste of the mortal world.
I clung to the old tree, eyes widening as I watched this Immortal fly upwards. In the span of a moment’s time, he gathered many different types of flowers with a pinch of his hand. Then he reclined atop a tree and placed them all into his mouth.
After seeing him move like floating clouds and flowing water, I became as dumbstruck as a wooden chicken.
His table manners were refined, his lips slightly opened in a way that almost radiated a kind of appeal.
Suppose he was eating the Five Grains[2] or other grains, I still think the him of that moment would bedazzle a person.
Whoever heard of someone who ignored normal meals and preferred to eat these non-human things…
Wait, as the proverb says–many esteemed men of noble character didn’t follow conventional standards. With his martial prowess so high…it definitely had something to do with his diet. Perhaps those flowers could improve the strength of one’s inner energy?
Yes, that must be it.
Thus with my face filled with a greedy appetite, I ran below his tree to squat on my heels, head raised. The only thing I was missing was wagging a figurative tail.
He lowered his head to look at me without saying a word, but the expression in his eyes was obvious:Â why did you run over?
I feigned ignorance.
He tilted his head to one side, still chewing.
I stared fixedly, excitedly gazing at him with adoring eyes.
“…you want to eat some?” Finally, he opened his mouth.
My eyes shone and I couldn’t nod my head fast enough.
He really was generous, my hand hadn’t reached out before… …he gave me an entire bunch that I bent my head to sniff.
Fragrant…
But I couldn’t smell anything particularly extraordinary.
When I had no food earlier this year, I was even willing to eat tree bark…but I never ate flowers, because I couldn’t tell between poisonous and non-poisonous types. In addition, the texture on the tongue was unpleasant.
This…
Perhaps, it was different.
I imitated his style, savoring the pieces in my mouth before giving a fierce bite.
In a moment, the incomparably bitterness left me speechless.
It was extremely distasteful, both bitter and astringent. The only other thing was a fragrant aroma that spread across my tongue.
These were just ordinary flowers, wasn’t he just making himself suffer…phooey…the entire root of my tongue turned numb…
His eyes curved.
Bully.
“Does it taste good?”
“His mom! From the beginning, this wasn’t fit for human consumption!”
“Correct.” He gently propped up his head with a hand, half-reclining on the tree, the position giving off a feeling of high command as he looked at me. His almond-shaped phoenix eyes, with a drop from a single tear, had a certain indescribable charm. “This isn’t fit for human consumption.”
Then, since he ate it…
Would it be him criticizing himself?
He seemed to be expounding on a truth.
In any case, it was hard to say. He seemed respectably, and there was no emotions on his face. After looking at me for a while from his reclining position, he suddenly jumped off the tree, scattering crabapple cores all over the ground.
His expression was cold.
Ah…
Grand Elder, you’re not mad, right.
My guaranteed financial support for the rest of my life, my white rice , will I watch as it all leaves me like a bird…
If I had offended him, I’d probably need to return to that place where life was worse than death, and suffer the same days of unbearable hunger.
Hence, wickedness grew from the gallbladder.
Pulling up my robes, I anxiously hurried after him and caught him in an embrace from the back.
It was very soft and warm, as well as fragrant…
This feeling was like the one I remembered every night, calling to mind many different tastes of the past. So I cried out a word that the two of us would always pretend not to hear in the future:
“Mother…”
His body shook, as if frightened by me, and he tried to pry me loose.
I stood dumbfounded, knowing that I was in trouble.
Aye, how shameful.
Thus, using my forearms, I hugged him tighter.
He seemed to have been left in a fluster, helpless but unable to cast me off. Afterwards, he could only pat me gently until I calmed down from my sobbing before pulling me away. He knelt before me with a helpless gaze in his eyes, both indignant and distressed. “Listen, you can treat this as a home, but I’m not your mother…and also…” His low voice seemed to be mixed with a great effort not to let someone be conscious of something. “And also I’m a male, different from you mortals. I am a shou[3], you can call me Fang Hua, but don’t call me mother.”
I blinked a few times, raising my head to look at him, and observed in a moment that the space between his eyebrows was weighed down with sorrow.
Sadly, I understood too little back then.
Many years later I came to regret, because afterwards I called him by: