35. Zhan Xia

After Zhan Liang left, Mei Lin remained on the second floor, choosing not to retire to her room immediately. Instead, she entered a cultivation state so that she could calm her mind and more clearly think about what to do.

After another hour of deep thought, Mei Lin finally returned to her room. She removed her clothes and carefully inspected her injuries from the fight with the bandits, before finally settling into bed. Exhausted from the day's new disturbing events and intense cultivation, she quickly drifted off to sleep.

*****

At the dining table in the largest building of the merchant caravan, the Zhan family gathered for dinner once again. Li Lie Zhan Liang's wife, showing interest, turned to her husband and asked him a question. "Did you manage to find a mysterious cultivator? Asked quickly with sparks in her eyes. No, I didn't! But I find a girl in a red robe instead." Just as words left Zhan Liang's mouth, Zhan Xia's eyes started burning with excitement as she heard them. "What did she tell you, father? Did she know the mysterious cultivator? Did she defeat Feng Jing?"

Zhan Lian didn't answer any of her questions. "I will inform Feng Huayuan that he can stop looking for a mysterious cultivator. Father! Why are you not answering any of my questions?" Zhan Liang looked at her with an angry face, which stuck deep inside her soul and her cultivation base shook. "And what will you do with the answers?" roared Zhan Liang annoyed by all the questions. "Well I don't know really, I want to find out what happened to Feng Jing!" Zhan Xia gazed at his father with bloodshot red eyes and a pale face, resembling someone who had been drained of all their blood.

"What did the girl in red cultivate, that she is so strong? Did you figurate?" Zhan Liang didn't answer, so Xia didn't wait anymore and stood up from the table, ready to go find Mei Lin herself. "I will go find her right now!" As she made a step, Zhan Liang sent her back with his cultivation pressure. "If you want to find her, go tomorrow! She is not even at the first stage of BT so she needs regular sleep not like you! Additionally, I told her that you and Feng's family will try to find her, so she might consider changing her robe for better concealment."

*****

The next morning, Mei Lin awoke early and, after preparing herself, assumed the lotus position in preparation to enter her cultivation state. Half an hour later, she retrieved a crystal bottle from her storage ring containing the blood of Feng Jing and the shop attended. Once she opened the lit the bottle smell of blood radiated from inside, which was branded with rich natural energy from first-stage BT, which was extremely addictive for Mei Lin.

Without any other thoughts, she ingested two drops of blood and immediately entered her cultivation state, focusing on absorbing the blood within her stomach. It took her two hours to complete the absorption process, which was much faster than tea resulting in a one percent increase in her natural energy.

Mei Lin was now at eighty-five percent completion of her first wisp of natural energy, on the brink of stepping into the first stage of the BT. With a joyful smile, Mei Lin put on her red cultivation robe and bamboo hat with a veil. Making her way to her favorite spot on the second floor.

Outside, the surrounding of the tea-house was transformed by the gentle descent of snowflakes, each one a testament to the timeless dance of nature's beauty. And as Mei Lin immersed herself in watching snowflakes fall.

As she watched the snowflakes, for the first time after becoming a cultivator she immediately had completely different feelings about them. With each falling snowflake, slowly moving down on the ground, she felt more and more pulled into a deep state of enlightenment.

The snowflakes weave their intricate patterns against the backdrop of the frozen lake, Mei Lin couldn't help but marvel at the ephemeral harmony of nature's creations. Each snowflake, unique and delicate, seemed to embody the fleeting nature of existence.

As she was completely immense in the snowflakes, Yu Xi brought Mei Lin breakfast and interrupted her from her trance state. "Next journey will be very dangerous. If the slow will not stop slugs will have a hard way to go down the mountains and some of them may even die. If our slug dies, we will need to leave the tea-house here and go into another slug house to wait until we arrive in the city where we can buy a new one. Raising a new slug is very hard and expensive. This slug has been in our family for more than eighty years so he is very smart and calm."

Xu Yi continues the story aboutravelingng and how morning passes like water. Mei Lin enjoyed it very much and didn't enter the cultivation state. She was looking from the window looking at the falling snowflakes once again. It took Xu Yi nearly two hours to describe every detail that he remembered about wandering with the caravan, but Mei Lin didn't hear a world from the moment she immersed herself in her strange state.

Once Xu Yi ended his story, Mei Lin asked him a question that caught him off guard. "Why are you cultivating?" Xu Yi looked at Me Lin very surprised, because after he told her tails about the cultivation caravan her first question was completely different. He looked at Mei Lin and didn't know what to say. Mei Lin looked at him with open eyes which imprinted deep inside his. "Snowflakes are born high in the sky thanks to very fortunate encounters of different consequences, but once they fall on the ground they die."

"Why do we cultivate, when we sooner or later end up just like the snowflakes? Even the strongest cultivators with mighty realms one day eventually perish. Who decided that we need to die?" Mei Lin asked him these questions leaving Xu Yi in deep thought not certain if he had some kind of answer. 

One of the couples, who was usually all day long on the second floor suddenly answered Mei Lin's questions. He had a very strange voice, which was similar to the young child, even despite his old look.

"Perhaps the pursuit of cultivation is not solely about defying death, but rather about embracing the fullness of life. Through cultivation, we seek to unlock the latent potential within ourselves, to strive toward enlightenment and transcendence. And though death may ultimately claim us all, it is the journey."

"The experiences, the relationships, the moments of beauty and wonder, that give our lives meaning." Old man's words hung in the air, a testament to the complexities of existence and the profound mysteries that lay at its heart. As he looked at Mei Lin, he saw reflected therein a spark of understanding. A shared recognition of the fleeting beauty of life, and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of inevitable mortality. And as they sat together in the quietude of the tea house, enveloped by the gentle embrace of falling snowflakes, the old man found solace in the knowledge that, in Mei Lin, he had found a kindred soul. A fellow traveler on the winding path of life's journey, seeking answers to the same timeless questions that had haunted humanity since the beginning of time.