This Damned Thirst for Survival

Jiang Luo saw a few birds flying through the green forest around the house, and Lian Xue explained with a smile, “The water of the Tianbi Pond permeates the ground of Lian’s house, and the four seasons are like spring. But outside the house the seasons are still normal. In half a month’s time, you may be able to see the snow-capped mountains in the back of the house, but the greenery in front of you.”

Jiang Luo smiled as he imagined it, “It must be beautiful.”

Lian Xue nodded readily, “Indeed it is that.”

Jiang Luo looks around the room, the bedroom has a large window looking out onto the hill behind it, where the plants and trees are in their normal autumn/winter state, the dry black tips of the trees, the ground yellow and the hills bald all over again.

“Is that hill also owned by the Lian family?”

Lian Xue shook his head and looked bashful, “The Lian family’s ancestral home only occupies one acre of land, and that mountain was born and raised without any distinction as to who owns it.”

Jiang Luo laughed, “The Qi family has a small cottage in the mountains, but even the hills are included in it.”

Lian Xue sighs, “They just care too much about these things.”

The rooms are small, but they have everything you need. There is a kitchen in the room, but even the family will send meals on time.

“Can you network here?”

Lian Xue was silent for a moment, a pained look crossing her face, “I can’t.”

Jiang Luo drew in a cold breath and stared at Lian Xue in disbelief.

Lian Xue nodded heavily and Jiang Luo couldn’t stop laughing this time, “Is this a month of living without the internet?”

“There’s a TV at home that gets the national channels, and apart from the TV you can read books,” Lian Xue forced a smile, “and we still have plenty of books here.”

Jiang Luo was not in the same relaxed mood as before.

But sad as it may be, no internet is no internet. At bedtime, Jiang Luo picked out a fairly interesting book among the many healing arts, read a few pages, and quickly fell asleep.

From this day onwards, Jiang Luo began a life of boredom and disconnection from the Internet.

The main person responsible for Jiang Luo’s cleansing is Lian Xue, who soaks in a wooden bucket filled with water from the Tianbi pond for an hour, or two hours, every day at the height of the midday sun.

Jiang Luo would dress up for the bath, and Lian Xue would bring his younger brothers to help him every day, so over time Jiang Luo became familiar with the younger members of the Lian family.

The water from the Tianbi Pond can ward off evil spirits and cleanse away impurities, keeping one’s body and mind pure. The Liangs prefer to call the water from the pool holy water, and for people like Jiang Luo, who need to be cleansed of their impurities, they even use the water from the pool for food.

The water in the Tianbi pool slowly changes from murky to pure black with each dip. A large barrel of water only lasted a quarter of an hour under Jiang Luo’s immersion. Lian Xue had to keep changing the water for him, and every time Jiang Luo finished his dip, Lian Xue and his brother had to run around sweating.

At first, Lian Xue was relaxed. It’s like cleaning something dirty for the first time, the water is the muddiest. But after five days of soaking, Jiang Luo’s water would quickly turn black within a quarter of an hour.

The water was so wicked that even the pools of the Tianbi Pond could only combat it for a mere fifteen minutes.

This time Lian Xue panicked and called his juniors together to test whether there was a problem with the water in the Tianbi Pond.

Jiang Luo was a little embarrassed. He always felt that he had become a piece of ink in Lian Xue’s eyes, and no amount of water poured on him would only mix with the black effect.

The results of Lian Xue’s tests soon showed that the water in Tianbi Pond was clean, so Jiang Luo was the one with the problem.

Lian Xue found this result both logical and surprising.

What kind of evil spirits would it take for Jiang Luo to be soiled like this?

They could not solve the matter, so they had to let Jiang Luo soak for the time being and wait for Daoist Master Weihe, who was in retreat in the back of the mountain on the seventh day, to come down. He was the eldest member of the Lian family who had learnt the art of witchcraft and medicine most thoroughly, so he would know what was going on.

But after seven days, instead of coming down from the mountain, Daoist Master Weihe sent someone to inform the Lian family that he had not yet finished his enlightenment and had to postpone coming down for three days. But after three days, Daoist Master Weihe could not come down from the mountain even if he wanted to, because it was snowing in the mountain.

At the beginning of December, when winter had only just begun, a rare heavy snowfall fell.

Jiang Luo stands in front of the window with a cup of hot tea, watching the snow cover the ground with a white coat, which contrasts greatly with the lush greenery of the flowers and plants.

Jiang Luo had a momentary eerie feeling of not being in the human world.

Jiang Luo felt a little unreal when the sun was still sweating when he went out to sea, but a month later it was snowing.

He pinched himself and felt the pain. Jiang Luo drops his eyebrows wanly and yawns as he looks at the ground.

During his ten days at Lian’s house, Jiang Luo felt that the years were quiet, but more than that, he felt bored to death.

Even staying in the dormitory with Lu Youyi and playing poker is better than living a life without any desire.

It’s only been ten days, and he feels like he’s going crazy, Jiang Luo’s soul screaming with discomfort and tedium. The memory of the bombing of the boat was clearly half a month ago, but when Jiang Luo recalls it, it feels like almost a month has passed.

When he first arrived in this world, Jiang Luo’s quest for excitement was not so strong, but one crisis after another, he could no longer tolerate the blandness that he once could.

He didn’t fit in with the whole Lien family, even if he pretended to, but in reality Jiang Luo found the Angonese, covered in blood eels, much more attractive to him.

Lian Xue and the others did not see anything different about him, but thought that Jiang Luo’s listlessness over the past few days was due to his concern about the filth on his body.

In fact, Lian Xue’s juniors were even more worried than Jiang Luo.

Lian Xue had vowed to the Heavenly Master that Jiang Luo would be clean in a month’s time. But a third of the time has passed and there has been no improvement.

“Big Sister ……” The siblings looked at Lian Xue with a sad face.

Lian Xue looked out the window at the snow and frowned, “Let’s see if it will stop tomorrow.”

But it snowed for three days in a row before it stopped, and the back of the mountain, an ordinary deep mountain, looked surprisingly like a snowy mountain that has been snowed on all year round.

The snow has stopped, but the mountains are snowed in. The people down the mountain could barely get in, but those on the mountain couldn’t get down.

Lian Xue gritted her teeth, and without further delay, told Jiang Luo to get her things, “I’ll take you up the mountain to the Taoist Master.”

Jiang Luo did not hesitate and packed up his things immediately, as if he was afraid Lian Xue would regret it.

By the time he exited Lian’s house and walked into a blanket of snow, Jiang Luo took a deep breath of cold air and muttered, “Cool.”

He was finally leaving the Lian family.

When it’s not snowing, there is a path up the mountain. But now the snow has buried the path, so Lian Xue takes them on a smoother route.

In addition to Lian Xue, he was accompanied by two strong brothers, Lian Qiang and Lian Bing.

The two of them had just turned eighteen last year and were at the height of their youth. They didn’t feel the cold, and climbed with a hot sweat, like two steaming chimneys in the snowy mountains.

They were a bit afraid of their elder sister Lian Xue, so they chattered next to Jiang Luo, who was pinned between them and was hot.

Halfway down the road, Jiang Luo’s goggles were already covered in water spray from the heat. He took them off and wiped them off, asking casually, “When can we reach the Taoist Master’s residence?”

“They live at the top of the mountain, usually it takes three or four hours to reach the top, but today the road is not good, so it will take six or seven hours,” Lian Xue gasped with exhaustion, rubbing her chilled hands, “at most we will arrive at six o’clock in the evening.”

“Oh,” Jiang Luo’s response was muted, “tomorrow night at six? So where are we staying tonight?”

Lian Qiang laughed out loud, ” Brother Jiang Luo, what’s wrong with you, Sister said it was clearly six o’clock tonight.”

“Tonight at six?” Jiang Luo stopped moving his hands and frowned at them, “Are you serious?”

Lian Xue was a little confused, “What’s wrong?”

Jiang Luo’s pretty eyebrows shot up in disbelief as she said, “You’re going to walk to the top of the mountain in a blizzard?”

Three cold breaths rang out, and Lian Xue asked the three men more incredulously in return, “A blizzard?!”

Jiang Luo was even more confused than they were, “Didn’t you see the sky last night? I thought you were prepared and had a place to hide midway before you went out, didn’t you know that?”

“Isn’t it customary to go out and observe the heavens?”

Lian Xue and Lian Bing looked embarrassed and said, “Brother, we haven’t been out for a long time, we don’t even remember watching the weather …… we watch the weather forecast, it doesn’t say there’s a snowstorm today.”

Jiang Luo : “……” He was momentarily confused as to who was actually indigenous to the world of metaphysics.

Jiang Luo took a deep breath and said as calmly as he could, “The weather forecast is giving widespread figures and I’m sure we’re in for a blizzard this afternoon.”

The two big boys looked at each other and instantly panicked, “Really? Brother Jiang Luo, don’t lie to us!”

Jiang Luo was already surveying his surroundings, “You think I would lie to you about something like this?”

“How long before the storm hits?” Lian Xue, who rarely faced such things, was out of ideas, her lips pursed and her chest thumping, “Can we get back in time?”

Jiang Luo looked up at the sky and shook his head with a stern look on his face, “There’s not enough time for us to go back, the storm is coming in an hour.”

It really says excitement, and the life and death challenge comes immediately.

Jiang Luo suddenly felt lucky that he had not said what he had in mind, otherwise his reputation as a poisonous milkman would have spread to the Lian family.