“I want to eat—”
Xi Zhiruo hesitated for a second and blurted out, “Ice cream.”
She wanted to eat the ice cream sold at the shop with the snowman mascot wearing a crown and holding a cone. She had seen similar shops in many places.
In the past, she had been too small. No matter how much she pleaded, her mom would only let her take a single lick, never giving her the chance to eat her fill. Now that she had finally grown a bit, her mother would surely agree.
There were many times she wanted to grow up quickly, but at other times, she did not want to grow up so fast. Contradictory thoughts filled her heart. Just like the childhood wishes of countless children, growth was a call to embrace freedom, but it was also a prelude to loss.
“Wait a few more days, and then you can have some ice cream,” I said. Then, it suddenly occurred to me that I could probably make ice cream myself. We were already in a family of cultivators; the people at my beck and call were each more powerful than the last. Simply using spells to condense ice and achieve the effects of an ice cream maker would be effortless.
Meeting my daughter’s expectant gaze, I slowly offered a turning point. “Perhaps we can make a bucket of ice cream ourselves?”
Xi Zhiruo tilted her head. “Will it be as tasty as the ones from the shop? Besides, Mom isn’t a snowman doll holding an ice cream cone.”
I blinked and said through gritted teeth, “It’s just a snowman. I’ll play the part.”
Su Liumeng had just finished dealing with the others. As she walked over quickly, she happened to overhear this part of the conversation.
“Where are you going to find a mascot costume?”
Xi Zhiruo obviously would not consider such logistics. She buried her small, clever head and said, “Zhizhi wants to be a little snowman, too.”
Well, now that my daughter was excited about it, I could not refuse. I had a feeling that she wanted to experience being in a mascot costume more than she actually wanted to eat the ice cream.
‘Why are you asking me where to find a costume?’ I did not reply, only spreading my hands innocently.
Meeting my gaze, Su Liumeng clearly saw my unspoken words: ‘If I can solve everything myself, what do I need you as a Dao companion for?’
Thus, she immediately added, “It’s not complicated. I’ll have someone rush the production now. We should see the results the day after tomorrow at the latest.”
See? If you truly want to do something, it is not difficult at all.
Su Liumeng justified it to herself this way in her heart. It was just like her persistent search for the recipe for the Beauty-Preserving Pill. It was likely difficult, but the result was no longer far off. Making someone happy was actually not as hard as she had imagined.
I stared at her fixedly. Xi Zhiruo suddenly reached out her small hands and grabbed the air in front of me, shattering the ambiguous and romantic atmosphere. Su Liumeng’s eyes curved as she let out a light laugh.
I gave her a mock glare, then coaxed my daughter over to the bed in the shop.
Time ticked away. The mascot costumes were finished long ago, and Zhizhi personally helped make the ice cream cones. The bok choy in the vegetable garden grew sturdily, finally becoming a dish on the dinner table on a certain day in late February.
Stir-fried vegetables alone were surely not enough to satisfy, so I sprinkled some of my favorite chili flakes over them. Finally, they looked, smelled, and tasted perfect.
Xi Zhiruo swung her small legs at the side, picking up her chopsticks expectantly. She had long wanted to taste the vegetables she and her mother had planted. Xi Zhiruo took a gentle bite with her baby teeth. It was sweet and refreshing. The taste was quite good.
Time flowed once more. Time did not actually pass slowly, but it always slipped away in these small, daily moments.
I was keen on watching my daughter grow day after day under the setting sun. The ruler used to measure her height was constantly marked higher, and the line on the wall belonging to her rose again and again. Every time this happened, my daughter would look at the lines on the wall and hug my arm, acting spoiled while wishing that time would not pass so quickly.
I would rub her head and give her a doting smile. ‘Who in their right mind would want time to stop? Your mother still wants to see you grow into a young lady.’
The day to leave the Su Family drew closer and closer. Su Liumeng would not stay in the Su Family’s ancestral home forever. After three failed attempts to push through reforms, she stopped insisting on implementing the policies so early.
She would wait a little longer. Once she possessed enough strength to have the final say, she would be able to completely overturn all the bad habits of the past. The dawn of a new era would descend upon the land. This was a promise Su Liumeng had once made to herself, and it was also the explanation she owed for the words she had spoken to Si Xinyan in the past.
March 1st.
Holding my daughter’s hand with one hand and Su Liumeng’s with the other, I stepped into the massive formation of shifting stars ahead. Boundless energy swirled in the void, and our figures within the light and shadow were enveloped by starlight, eventually disappearing completely from the small world.
Chunlan breathed in the air of the outside world again and gently tugged on Spring Qiao’s sleeve. The latter remained expressionless, giving her a silent warning not to lose her composure in front of the Mistress.
Xi Zhiruo’s large eyes darted back and forth between Spring Qiao and Chunlan before she finally raised her small head to look at me. She wanted me to explain what the two of them were doing.
I remained silent, pretending I had not seen the small movements of the two maids. Su Liumeng generally did not bother with such matters and remained as steady as usual. She was checking the world map in her hand. The formation involved random teleportation, so the first step was to determine our location.
Spring Qiao lowered her head and fidgeted with her hands.
Mom clearly had no intention of explaining, so Xi Zhiruo’s eyes continued to roll as various plots from novels automatically popped into her head. Many of them were the abnormal, mainstream-shunning novels that had been sealed away on Si Xinyan’s bookshelf.
‘Let Zhizhi guess. They wouldn’t happen to be secretly dating, would they!’
Little Zhizhi was clearly very interested in “drinking the tea” regarding things the adults did not want to manage.
I picked my daughter up directly. The sudden lift made Zhizhi’s watery, large eyes look a bit dazed. She did not want to be picked up just yet; her two smooth, little legs struggled in the air twice before settling down after a light, playful swat.
“We’re getting on the magic tool.”
Xi Zhiruo’s gaze turned slightly aggrieved. Her train of thought had been suddenly interrupted. A child’s interest comes quickly and fades just as fast. She was no longer thinking about the two maids, instead looking at the blue sky and white clouds, imagining all sorts of whimsical shapes in her mind.
‘Doesn’t that piece look a lot like a marshmallow?’
The little girl was craving sweets again, licking her lips.
Su Liumeng took out a very precious spirit boat. In today’s cultivation world, even medicinal pills had fallen into decline, let alone the path of artifact forging. Anyone who could still produce a flying magic tool was undoubtedly a high-ranking authority of a first-tier power.
This was what I had once called “riding the clouds and mist.” I had not expected to achieve it in this way.
A speed of Mach 50 was enough to surpass all fighter jets. This was a sign of the cultivation side completely crushing the technological side. Once upon a time, Su Liumeng would laugh and discuss this with me. Eventually, we reached a common conclusion. Briefly floating in the air hardly counted as riding the wind. Only by soaring at an altitude of tens of thousands of meters at a speed of Mach 50 could it barely be considered riding the clouds and mist.
(PS: The story will conclude this month. There will be more mass releases later. It will end at 1,000,000 words.)