Pastoral Daily Life
chapter-3

Grandpa Su and Su Lang stayed at the hospital for a while and then left. Wang Shuxiu also packed her things and prepared to leave. She was a supervisor in a KTV. Unlike during the day, the night was the time when there were many customers and many things to do.

“I’m leaving, you can manage alone, right?”

Wang Shuxiu looked at Lu Lingxi suspiciously. She wanted to stay, but she still had to earn money to support her family. If a woman couldn’t rely on her husband, she could only rely on herself.

Lu Lingxi nodded, “I can manage.”

When he said this, his expression was very serious, and his little face was solemn as if he was making some kind of promise. Wang Shuxiu hadn’t seen Lu Lingxi behave like this since he was three years old, so she smiled and squeezed Lu Lingxi in her arms, patted his head and kissed him on the forehead.

“Little bastard, with you looking like this I won’t worry about not having food to eat in the future.”

Lu Lingxi’s whole face was pressed against Wang Shuxiu’s chest, and his cheeks instantly turned completely red. He had never been this close to his mother for as long as he could remember, not to mention the fact that although Wang Shuxiu was the mother of this body, she was still a stranger to Lu Lingxi. He was embarrassed and tried to break away from Wang Shuxiu’s embrace. Looking at him, Wang Shuxiu kissed him on the forehead several times and reprimanded him with a smile, “What are you ashamed of? Did you forget it when you were a baby and were breast-fed?”

Lu Lingxi: “……”

The male family members in the same ward looked envious. When Wang Shuxiu stood up straight and nonchalantly instructed Lu Lingxi to ask the others in the ward to help him if he wanted to drink water or go to the toilet or whatever, they were all enthusiastic.

Lu Lingxi nodded awkwardly as Wang Shuxiu gave a few more instructions and, seeing that she was going to be late for work, left the hospital in a hurry on her high heels.

Once Wang Shuxiu left, Lu Lingxi didn’t know what to say to the people around him, so he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. The ward he was in was a four-patient room, with Bed 20 at the far end near the window. Lu Lingxi lay on his side facing the windowsill, and the words Su Lang had said earlier flashed in his mind.

His parents were very sad when he died. That was enough, Lu Lingxi thought. His operation had failed, but his brother’s operation to replace his kidney had been successful. He had used his own life to exchange for his brother’s, so he had repaid his parents’ kindness. As long as his brother’s health got better, it wouldn’t be long before his parents would gradually forget about his existence. In the future, he would have nothing more to do with the Lu family in Zhongjing.

He was now Lu Lingxi; Lu Lingxi, the son of Wang Shuxiu of Fengcheng. Although he did not know why he had entered this body, since he had become Lu Lingxi, he should take up the responsibilities that belonged to him. When he thought of Wang Shuxiu, what Lu Lingxi was most impressed with was the words “little bastard” and the closeness he felt when Wang Shuxiu kissed him at the end, the closeness he had never felt with his mother.

“I’m your mom, remember?” Wang Shuxiu’s words to him echoed vaguely in his ears.

Lu Lingxi hugged the pillow and called out soundlessly, “Mom.”

It was hard for him to describe how he felt about Wang Shuxiu. The other party acted completely different from his mother, without the dignity and elegance that his mother should have in his impression, yet he subconsciously wanted to be close to her.

Mom…

As it was in the hospital, everyone rested very early. The summer weather was sultry, and the family members who were taking care of the other patients in the same ward all haphazardly spread out a few newspapers and slept on the floor. Lu Lingxi, whose bed was shaking with a cacophony of various snores, tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Now he missed the days when he was in a coma. After staying up until 12 o’clock, Lu Lingxi couldn’t sleep and sat up with difficulty, holding the edge of the bed.

The corridors of the hospital generally did not turn off the lights at night, and the bright light shone through the large piece of glass in the ward door. Lu Lingxi looked around enviously; the other three patients and their families were all sleeping soundly, and he was the only one who could not sleep in the whole ward. In the middle of the night, Lu Lingxi could not do anything, and after he looked around the ward, his eyes unconsciously fell on a pot of chlorophytum on the windowsill.

The soil in the pot was completely dry and the leaves were yellow and dull, looking very unhealthy and lying limply on the edge of the flowerpot. Lu Lingxi’s heart moved and he gently stretched out a finger to touch the leaves in front of him. He remembered that at his bedside there was mineral water that Wang Shuxiu had bought, and one bottle was enough to water the plant. This thought flashed in his mind; he turned around and just reached for the mineral water bottle when a white panel suddenly appeared in front of him.

Lu Lingxi: “……”

The panel in front of him was about the size of two sheets of A4 paper and as thin as paper, too. In the centre of the panel was a black display with a very textured appearance. Without the help of any external force, the white panel just floated lightly in front of him. Lu Lingxi subconsciously looked around; the other people in the ward were still sleeping, and their snores continued to sound non-stop. His gaze returned to the panel. Perhaps because he had just experienced the miracle of dying and coming back to life, he was strangely not afraid at all, but had a little urge to see what the white panel in front of him really was.

s

Lu Lingxi settled down, carefully reached out and tapped on the white panel. There was a flash of blue light like ripples on the water, and the black screen in the centre of the panel lit up, and a pot of somewhat yellowed chlorophytum appeared on the screen. Next to the chlorophytum were three short lines of text:

Plant name: Chlorophytum

Plant needs: Water

Plant viability: High

Lu Lingxi looked at the chlorophytum on the screen in shock, and then turned his head to look at the chlorophytum on the windowsill. Both were exactly the same, even the colour of the poor quality plastic pot underneath the chlorophytum was exactly the same. He wondered if he was dreaming and reached out to pinch his arm. It hurt! The feeling was very clear, so it should not be a dream. Since it wasn’t a dream, it meant that what was in front of him was real. His eyes flicked over the words ‘plant needs’, and after a few seconds of hesitation, he picked up the mineral water he had just unscrewed and poured it into the flower pot on the windowsill.

The dry soil in the pot was quickly wetted with water and the word ‘water’ behind the plant needs on the panel became ‘none’. He was surprised at the change in the panel when a green light flashed at the bottom end of the long bar below and the words appeared at the top of the bar.

Meeting the needs of the chlorophytum plant, reward +1 plant heart.

Lu Lingxi: “……”

What was in front of him was so fantastical that he had no idea what was going on. Out of some sort of exploratory mentality, Lu Lingxi tried tapping on the chlorophytum on the panel.

As he tapped his finger on the chlorophytum’s image, the plant that had been stationary suddenly rotated, showing itself to him from all angles, front and back, left and right. Lu Lingxi’s mouth opened in surprise and his eyes fell on the three small lines on the left. Whichever line he tapped on, the small characters in that line would become larger and jump out. After tapping on everything he could one by one, his finger finally moved to the long bar below.

1∕100 (Level 0)

This data made Lu Lingxi’s heart stir. He had just watered the chlorophytum once and gained 1 plant heart, so if he watered the chlorophytum a hundred times, wouldn’t he be able to gain 100 plant hearts?

Lu Lingxi was absorbed in his thoughts when the patient on the bed next to him muttered something and rolled over. Startled by the movement behind him, Lu Lingxi carefully glanced back to make sure everyone was asleep, and then his gaze returned to the white panel in front of him. Just as he had turned around, the white panel had also shifted its position with him, remaining at a distance of about 30cm in front of him.

Lu Lingxi tried shifting his body left and right for a long time, but no matter how he moved, the panel would always move with him. Was this white panel just going to keep following him in the future? Was there any way to make it disappear? This thought just flashed through his mind when Lu Lingxi was surprised to see that the white panel in front of him disappeared. He blinked and thought tentatively “Appear”, but there was nothing in front of him. “Panel appears”, still nothing. He struggled to recall the image of the panel in his mind, and this time the white panel reappeared.

Lu Lingxi’s interest was piqued. It was as if he had been given a fun toy; his full attention was focused on figuring out how to use the panel. Until the sky started getting bright, Lu Lingxi didn’t figure out what this sudden panel was. He just knew that he could see the needs of the chlorophytum on the windowsill through the white panel. And once he satisfied the chlorophytum’s needs, he would get a little plant heart as if he was playing a game. He looked at the long, pitiful display of 1∕100 (Level 0) below and wondered a little what would happen if he gained 100 plant hearts and upgraded to the next level.

s

The sound of nurses walking down the corridor came, and Lu Lingxi put away the panel, slightly exhausted; he had just had surgery, after all, and although he was mentally alert, his body was still not in the best condition. He lay on the bed with his eyes closed and couldn’t help but think once again of the white panel that had just appeared. What exactly was the panel? How did it appear? Did it belong to the original owner of this body?

Lu Lingxi didn’t know the answers to the first two questions, but he faintly felt that the answer to the last question should be negative. If the panel belonged to the original owner of this body, it was unlikely that the plant heart bar would be 0. But if the panel did not belong to the original owner of this body, then what the hell was going on here? He thought back carefully to his experience of waking up, and an absurd thought came to his mind.

Could it be that the mysterious white panel had appeared after the death of the original owner of this body, and that the key to his rebirth was this white panel? Lu Lingxi recalled that the doctor said that this body’s heart had stopped beating for more than ten seconds. What had happened during those ten seconds?

These unanswered questions plagued Lu Lingxi as he repeatedly thought about his experience during that time. He had died and come back to life, not only with a healthy body, but also with a strange “toy”. He rolled over gently, thinking of the way Wang Shuxiu had called him “little bastard”, wondering what would happen if he told Wang Shuxiu the truth. Probably she would slap him unceremoniously and decide that he was lying.

The corners of Lu Lingxi’s mouth curled up unconsciously as he imagined this scene; drowsiness enveloped him and he finally fell asleep in a daze.