Cultivation Nerd
Chapter 259: A Cat’s Lives

Ling Huyin sat in silence on the gently swaying carriage, his legs loosely crossed as the wooden planks beneath him creaked with each bump in the dirt path. Sunlight streamed through the shifting canopy above, scattering into warm, golden fragments that danced across his face and robe. The breeze carried the earthy scent of leaves and distant dust, mingling with the quiet clatter of wheels and the occasional call of unseen birds.

He tilted his head back, gaze drifting toward the clouds, those slow-moving sculptures of vapor, meandering across an endless blue sky. There was a pattern to their motion, subtle yet deliberate, and he traced it without thinking. His breathing slowed. The warmth of the day enfolded him like a weighted cloak, lulling his body into stillness as his mind wandered ever on.

For once, there was no urgency. Only stillness. And that, in itself, was rare.

The season was autumn, but the scenery whispered of spring; lush, fragrant, almost too alive. Curious. There was an array anomaly affecting the flora's growth cycle around these parts.

Ling Huyin. That was the name he had chosen for this second life. "Hidden Spirit Tiger." A poetic nod to his origins, cloaked in metaphor. His previous name had been more literal, sounding less like a name for an intelligent creature and more like something summoned or a pet. Keeping it would've been... inelegant.

He had no desire to announce what he truly was. Not when his strength had been stripped from him, leaving only memory, millennia of it. Knowledge that some people would do anything to get. No, for now, obscurity was the better choice.

This new life came with limitations, yes, hunger, fatigue, and mortality. But it also brought novelty. The sensation of sleep, for instance. Curious how something so mundane could feel alien. He hadn't needed rest since his early days as a cultivator. Perhaps the last time he'd truly slept was the night before he broke through to Nascent Soul. Before he stepped beyond such things.

And carriages… Heavens. When had he last traveled in one of these primitive things? Thousands of years ago, perhaps? Back when he'd first roamed the mortal world to study their societies firsthand. It was around that time that the Rich Life Pill was discovered. He was one of the first creatures to experiment with it.

That pill had rewritten the rules. It aided the breakthrough to Core Formation for humans and transformed beasts and gifted them human form even before the Nascent Soul stage. A leap in evolution. Beasts rarely chose to remain in their natural state once they experienced the ease of cultivating in a human vessel.

A clever design. His design, though none knew it now.

It was almost pitiful to see how humans had fallen behind. Once masters of ingenuity, now prey more often than predator. The balance had shifted since the great heavenly calamity. Immortals, too, had retreated from mortal affairs. They no longer guided the world with hidden hands. They watched, perhaps. But they rarely moved.

Back then, it had all been a game. Immortals pulling the strings of bloodlines, grooming chosen heirs like livestock bred for fortune. Heaven's favored were gold-laying chickens, stripped of their treasures and their memories and thrown back into the cycle. Again and again. Efficient, if cruel.

Now? Silence.

But there was beauty in that silence. In the entropy. The lack of divine-like interference made this new era unpredictable, wild, chaotic, and wonderfully inefficient. And in that inefficiency lay potential. Opportunity.

Ling Huyin smiled faintly, eyes still tracing the sky.

The world was quiet. But he could already hear it stirring.

Ling Huyin shook his head, brushing away the heaviness settling behind his eyes. Sleep was creeping in again. A consequence, perhaps, of staying awake for over two weeks and forgetting that mortal bodies required rest. A minor oversight. Inconvenient but ultimately meaningless. Once he returned to the Nascent Soul Realm, or better, true immortality, such frailties would fall away like old skin.

To occupy his mind, he reached into the black storage ring on his wedding finger and withdrew three thin books.

This era had its curiosities. Primitive, certainly. But there was something quietly admirable in how mortal cultivators were beginning to adapt on their own, finding new ways to contend with monstrous beasts without leaning on only raw power. Perhaps they would stumble upon something novel. Unintentionally, of course.

He glanced at the covers and smiled.

Monstrous Beasts: Spring Edition

Monstrous Beasts: Summer Edition

Liu Feng. A name he hadn't known but perhaps should have. The man had compiled detailed classifications of regional beast populations, complete with observed behaviors, cultivation patterns, and seasonal migration habits. Crude in language but methodically sound. Impressive for someone likely with less than a hundred years of lifespan.

The third book caught his attention more sharply.

Monstrous Beasts: Autumn Edition

Different author. Jiang Yeming.

Ling Huyin flipped through the pages, noting the familiar structure and tone. Clearly derivative, an imitation of Liu Feng's work in everything but the price. This volume cost nearly three times more than the others. Commercial instinct over academic integrity. Still, the imitation was competent enough, which meant Liu Feng had unknowingly sparked a trend. That, too, was very interesting.

He exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh, not quite amusement.

It would've been nice to enjoy this era a little longer. There was novelty in obscurity, after all. But fate, it seemed, had other plans.

Ling Huyin felt heaven's gaze weighing down on him. He had felt it the way others might feel a change in weather: subtle, undeniable, and entirely unwelcome. The Four Way Immortal had done something brash. He had drawn Heaven's Will toward him and, in doing so, condemned Ling Huyin to a future calamity.

He could not recall any enmity between them. Then again, old grudges often outlived the immortals who birthed them.

Now, barring some unprecedented change, he would likely face a heavenly tribulation within the next century. As a mortal cultivator, no less.

Still... there was always a chance. The Age of Immortals might return sooner than predicted. The divination-type immortals hoarded that knowledge tightly, guarding the when and how as if it were a treasure. But Ling Huyin had studied their patterns. He had survived the last apocalypse engineered by Heaven's Will. If history repeated itself, then a mass calamity might once again precede the next age.

That scenario, at least, was one he could work with.

Because if not, if it came to a solo tribulation before he reached immortality, then he was, quite plainly, doomed. The progression from Foundation Establishment to the peak of Nascent Soul had always been a brutal crawl. Even with monstrous beast bloodlines and near-perfect talent, it had taken him eight centuries in his previous life to move from one-star Nascent Soul to nine-star.

And now? This body he had taken over barely qualified as cultivator stock. Mortal-blooded. Average meridians. Dull spiritual sense. Trash, really.

Two years in this vessel, and he was still just a three-star Foundation Establishment cultivator, even after consuming two heavenly treasures.

Progress was glacial.

And yet… Ling Huyin's eyes narrowed ever so slightly as a quiet calculation began to form behind them.

It wasn't impossible.

Just improbable.

And improbability, after all, was something he had defied many times before.

But Ling Huyin wasn't particularly concerned. Even if he died before reclaiming immortality… it wouldn't be the end. His reincarnation hadn't been the result of divine luck or cosmic charity. It was the consequence of a technique, one he had devised, refined, and buried within the folds of cause and consequence.

Still, he had never intended to test it.

He remembered the moment of death clearly: the weight of Heaven's Will crashing down like a blade, and his soul shattered. Or so he had believed.

Two thousand years had passed since then. He wasn't entirely certain what governed the time between each reincarnation. Perhaps it depended on how long it took the soul to mend, how long before it could reassert itself into a body once again.

He was still turning the question over when he noticed it: a pigeon perched on a nearby tree, its beady black eyes fixed on him.

Gray and white feathers. Ordinary at a glance. But the faint ripple of Qi in its presence betrayed its nature, a monstrous beast, artificially created.

A technique long thought lost.

Ling Huyin narrowed his gaze. He hadn't seen one of these since the final century of his last life. The method of forcibly imbuing beasts with Qi had fallen into obscurity even then, dismissed as inefficient, unstable, and a waste of resources. But now… it had resurfaced.

Who had gone through the effort of developing a technique like this?

Much had changed in two millennia, and yet, much had not. The Three Great Sects still existed. Their names had endured, but their practices had evolved. Techniques had grown more refined. Cultivation standards more demanding.

He'd heard, both from memory and overheard rumors, that youths were now reaching Foundation Establishment before the age of thirty. Even one or two per generation in the major sects. That had once been unthinkable.

Dying and waking in a new era was, if nothing else, educational.

He had once believed his immortal technique might allow him to slip beneath Heaven's gaze. But now, it seemed, even that safeguard had faltered. He had not felt irritation like this in centuries, but the Four Way Immortal had truly earned it. Drawing Heaven's Will to him for whatever petty scheme had undone years of careful planning.

The carriage jolted to a halt.

They had reached the end of the road. A desolate clearing where once a human settlement had stood, now swallowed by time.

"Is this your destination, sir?" the carriage driver asked.

He was a man in his forties, though the lines etched deep in his sun-beaten face made him look closer to sixty.

Ling Huyin nodded and reached into his storage ring. He pulled free a sack of coins the size of a watermelon and jumped down from the carriage, tossing it to the driver in a single motion.

The man scrambled, grunting as he caught it, arms nearly buckling from the weight.

"Heavy," he muttered, but as he untied the sack and the mouth opened wide, his voice caught. Gold coins spilled like water, dozens clinking against the ground in a flash of sunlight and sound.

"Generous Lord…" he managed, eyes wide. "Though the journey was long, this is… too much–"

"Too much?" Ling Huyin frowned, his voice cool, almost affronted. "Do you value me so little?"

The driver froze.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Driving me should be a memory you pass to your grandchildren. A family honor that should last a hundred generations."

He hadn't meant to sound arrogant, only honest. Pride, after all, did not vanish with power. He no longer had cities to bestow or palaces to gift, but once, such things had been his to give without thought.

A sack of gold? It felt pitiful by comparison.

He believed himself worth far more.

The driver lowered his head, overwhelmed. "Thank you, generous lord," he whispered. "With this, I can start anew. I won't have to live so far from home anymore."

Ling Huyin waved him off with the same ease one might dismiss an insect, his gaze already fixed on the wilderness ahead.

The man, wisely, bent to collect the coins that had spilled before climbing back into his carriage. Without another word, he turned it around and drove off, fading into the dust and trees behind him.

Ling Huyin didn't look back.

Ling Huyin wandered off the road, boots crunching softly over loose gravel. A faint sweetness hung in the air, sugary, earthy, with notes of roasted nuts and something floral. Odd. Tempting. He followed it without haste, threading through the sparse trees as the wind stirred dry leaves into lazy spirals around his feet.

Then, as the forest parted, he saw it.

A wooden shop sat nestled against a low rise, untouched by time. Its walls were smooth and polished, its roof recently thatched, and the sign above the doorway bore no name, just the simple carved image of a white rabbit. There were some seats in front of the shop that looked newly made and polished.

The scent grew stronger, richer. Warm dough. Toasted herbs. Ling Huyin paused, eyes narrowing slightly.

This looked so out of place in terms of the surroundings.

Through the open window, an old man worked at a counter, his hands steady and sure. He folded green dough with practiced grace, his movements calm and measured, like someone who had done the same task every day for centuries and still enjoyed every motion.

The shop radiated a nostalgic warmth.

Ling Huyin stared, a strange pang rising in his chest. Something like… recognition.

Old rabbit, he thought. You're still here? Still making sweets in the middle of nowhere?

The feeling swelled, foreign, too tender for someone like him. It must have been a leftover trace of sentiment from this mortal body. He suppressed it quickly.

"I remember this place," Ling Huyin said, voice quiet. "Last time I came through, there was a village. Some of your descendants lived there. What happened to them?"

The old man looked up, squinting at him. For a long moment, he studied Ling Huyin's face with unreadable eyes. Then he exhaled through his nose and returned to kneading.

"You're still alive, old cat?" he said flatly. "I heard you died during your fourth heavenly calamity."

"So did I," Ling Huyin replied. "Apparently, I got better."

The old man grunted. "People around here moved to the cities after the dark age ended. When the Great Barrier fractured the world, there wasn't much reason to stay in small places anymore."

"Hm. I figured you'd just skipped ahead again during the calamities. You always had that nasty habit of ducking out through time."

"We weren't built to survive those things," the old rabbit said. "And I've never had your talent for throwing myself at lightning until something breaks."

The door creaked as he stepped out, carrying a wooden tray with neat green dough balls. They glistened slightly in the sunlight, steaming, fragrant, absurdly perfect.

"You always keep the spring array active?" Ling Huyin asked, eyeing the glimmer in the air. "Locals think this place is part of the Eternal Spring Forest now."

The old rabbit didn't answer. He stepped forward, the movement slightly uneven.

That's when Ling Huyin saw it.

The man's left leg ended just below the knee, replaced with a polished wooden peg bound in runic iron.

Ling Huyin's eyes narrowed. "Injured? What happened?"

The old rabbit adjusted the tray, his voice still maddeningly calm. "Apparently, the future version of me thought it wise to send the injury back."

Ling Huyin blinked. "... You're serious?"

"Unfortunately."

Ling Huyin fell silent. The old rabbit's technique was bizarre, less true time travel and more… temporal sidestepping. Limited, tightly constrained, and riddled with paradoxes. But even so, for the future version of this man to send back an injury…

"That's never happened before," Ling Huyin muttered.

At least never an injury that couldn't be healed.

"Then it must be important," the old rabbit said, offering him a sweet. "Eat. You look like someone who's forgotten how to enjoy the world."

Ling Huyin stared at the glowing green ball, warm in his palm.

For just a moment, he hesitated.

Then he took a bite.

"I think I'm trapped," the old rabbit said, voice calm, as though commenting on the weather. "Someone from the future and the past are communicating. Likely one-way. But still… a crack in the timeline."

Ling Huyin's brow furrowed.

"That's... not good," he said slowly.

"No," the old man agreed. "And worse, I seem to have developed something of a reputation as a time-traveling rabbit. Word travels fast, and it took only centuries for some dangerous immortals to get access to the information."

That was a disaster waiting to happen.

Time-travel techniques, especially ones that worked, invited attention from beings no one wanted attention from. Immortal arbiters. Ancient clans. Even Heaven itself.

"Who would risk exposing something like that?" Ling Huyin asked.

"Probably the Four Way Immortal," the old man said, still folding dough with the same meditative grace. "I suspect he discovered traces of future knowledge through his divination method. And whoever he glimpsed on the other side... understood. They found a way to pass information back."

Ling Huyin exhaled slowly. "Schemes on top of schemes..."

He had never been one for deep planning, at least not plans that spanned millennia. He didn't enjoy the mental gymnastics many immortals seemed to delight in. Sometimes, despite all his knowledge, he felt short beside the likes of the Four Way Immortal.

"Well," he muttered, "that would explain his death. That kind of manipulation could easily trigger a heavenly calamity."

"It did," said the old rabbit. "And he died for it."

He said it like a fact of nature. No emotion. Just inevitability.

"Well, you know how it is," the old rabbit added after a moment. "Life's never simple for those of us who advanced using non-combat immortal techniques."

"You sure complain a lot for someone who's probably the oldest among us," Ling Huyin said, chewing slowly on a soft green dough ball. It melted on his tongue but was chewy at the same time, light, floral, and quietly addictive.

"I've been in a foul mood for the last millennium," the rabbit muttered. "Ever since the injury, I used the divination part of my technique again. I saw it."

Ling Huyin stopped chewing.

"Your death?"

The old man nodded.

"Probably another trap by the Four Way Immortal. He is likely eliminating anyone who is an unstable factor in his plans," the old man said.

The old rabbit's technique was the kind that had an absolute future reading. The moment a reading was made, fate crystallized. It wasn't foresight; it was a curse. A locked path.

Ling Huyin had come here to request a reading of his own. A glimpse at the tides of fate so he could twist them to his advantage.

Now, he wasn't so sure.

"How long have you even been around?" he asked instead, letting the question hang.

The rabbit took a bite of his own sweet, then answered without ceremony, "A few centuries shy of fifteen millennia."

Ling Huyin gave a soft whistle. "That's a good run."

"I'm barely over seven thousand myself," he added. "Though most of it was spent as a Nascent Soul beast. My species had a... generous lifespan."

The rabbit's eyes flickered with memory. His voice grew distant.

"We've seen empires rise and fall. Watched monstrous beasts nearly wipe out humanity. Watched humans claw their way back. Civilizations reached impossible heights... then collapsed into ashes. We watched the peaks, and the ruins."

For a moment, the air grew quiet.

"Once I became immortal," the rabbit continued, "I thought I had time in the palm of my hand. So I was reckless. Always chasing loopholes. Always trying to cheat the end. But in the end... immortal techniques are absolute. Each in their own way."

Ling Huyin didn't respond right away.

An immortal fearing death was absurd. And yet, how could one not? When the end finally came, no matter how many millennia had passed, it still felt too soon.

He had felt it himself. That quiet despair. That cold surprise. When those creatures tore his soul apart.

And now he was here again, watching an old rabbit with a peg leg shape perfect sweets in a forgotten corner of the world.

It was strange.

It was sad.

And somehow, it felt... comforting. After all, Ling Huyin didn't want the old rabbit around either when his own plans came to fruition.

"Well," Ling Huyin said, brushing the sticky suggar from his fingers, "if you're still up for telling me my death, I'd owe you one."

The old rabbit laughed, a dry, cracked thing like brittle paper catching flame.

"Do you really want to know?" he asked. "You'd abuse it like I did. Use it to take risks and gamble with fate. You'd leap off cliffs knowing the ground won't rise up to meet you… not yet. Your fate of death is absolute, and nothing will change that."

His fingers twitched slightly as he set the tray down. "But once the moment does come, and it will, there's no escape. Trust me. I've tried."

Ling Huyin caught the wording.

So he's known for longer than he let on.

He considered making a remark, but held his tongue. This wasn't the moment to provoke fate, especially not in a place like this. Immortal techniques were absolute, and if the rabbit's divination really did carve a path in stone, then even hearing his own death might bring it closer.

He didn't know the full mechanism behind the old rabbit's technique, but its shape was clear: prophecy, unalterable, irreversible. A death seen was a death sealed.

It likely worked by projecting his current self through past, future, and present. That was how transferring injuries from one moment to the next was possible, and also why the future of his learning something was like it was already in stone.

But Ling Huyin doubted that the old rabbit could even see the future anymore. After all, there was a good chance that the future version of himself was already dead. He was just waiting for the present and past self to catch up with that moment of death, and they can't change anything.

Still, this was only a speculation.

Even on his deathbed, this man would never reveal the specifics of how it worked. None of them would. Immortal techniques were not shared. Not ever.

"Either way," the rabbit said, folding his arms, "why did you really come?"

Ling Huyin hesitated. He was well aware the old rabbit likely knew part of the answer already or could rip it out of his soul if he wanted to. Men who lived long enough always picked up a few high-grade mind-reading techniques. Still, paranoia kept his words cautious.

"I came for resources. And to plan how to survive a heavenly calamity… as a mortal."

That alone should've been enough explanation.

Heaven's Will didn't take kindly to what he'd done last time. Evading death through reincarnation, cheating death, that wasn't something the heavens let go. The next calamity would be colossal.

Less than a century remained.

The old man only chuckled. "You're not an immortal anymore. Stop looking so far ahead. Mortals who plan a hundred years into the future are the first to die."

Ling Huyin didn't argue. The old rabbit wasn't wrong. But still, nails had to be hammered down while the wood was soft.

"Just a hint," he said, lowering his voice. "For old time's sake."

That was as low as he'd stoop. He still had pride.

"I can't help," the rabbit said. "But I know a few who might. Seek the oldest and the youngest immortals. Between them, you'll find what you're looking for."

His prophecies were always vague. Always just enough.

Then, the old man tilted his head slightly. His voice dropped.

"But are you sure you want to be around for the new age? You're not the only one watching the signs. More than a few have prophesied that the beginning of the Age of Immortals… will also mark the end of immortals as a whole."

Ling Huyin's smile faded. "What would you suggest?"

"End this life. Reincarnate again. A few thousand years forward. Let the storm pass."

He knew.

Of course he did.

Ling Huyin wasn't even surprised. The old man had probably worked out the mechanics of his reincarnation technique already, enough of it, at least, to be dangerous. That was the problem with ancient immortals. They always knew more than they should. It was also why most people didn't like having them around.

Ling Huyin gave a slow nod. If the rabbit was right, then something else was coming. Something beyond calamities and sect wars. Likely an outer-world invasion. Something really bad.

The last time someone pushed past the boundary of the known, the sky cracked open and demons rained fire.

He rose from the bench, brushing the creases from his robe. "It was good seeing you again," he said lightly. "Will you be here next time?"

The old rabbit shook his head. "No."

There was no need to ask why.

Ling Huyin turned and walked away, the wind trailing his sleeves behind him.

He didn't know if the old rabbit had told him the full truth. Probably not. No immortal ever did. They hadn't become immortal by accepting their fate; they'd done it by breaking it, bending it, or pretending it didn't exist.

Still… Ling Huyin didn't fear the future.

Even without prophecy.

Even without knowing the shape of the storm.

He had his own technique.

And his technique was absolute.

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