Pastoral Daily Life
chapter-7

One battle made Lu Lingxi and Wang Shuxiu famous. The whole hospital had heard that there was a mother and son on the third floor of the inpatient department. Even when the doctors came to check, they couldn’t help but stare at Wang Shuxiu’s ten-centimetre high heels, imagining how much it would hurt to be hit by such a sharp and thin heel.

Through this fight, Wang Shuxiu unexpectedly got closer to the others in the ward.

Sister Tian smiled and joked with her, “Your son was not raised for nothing, he’s on his mother’s side when it matters.”

Wang Shuxiu looked happy, “That’s right!”

With the others following suit and joking as well, Wang Shuxiu felt even happier.

Lu Lingxi was a little uncomfortable being the protagonist of their conversation. This experience was very new to him. He could feel Wang Shuxiu’s heartfelt pride; she was proud of him. He felt that he hadn’t actually done anything but held the waist of the man he should call his father amidst the confusion. Did Wang Shuxiu need to be so happy about such a small thing? Lu Lingxi tilted his head and gazed at Wang Shuxiu’s profile. The slight redness in her eyes had dissipated and her smile at this moment was completely sincere.

Noticing Lu Lingxi’s gaze, Wang Shuxiu looked back at him quickly and asked nervously, “Do you feel uncomfortable somewhere?”

When Lu Lingxi shook his head, Wang Shuxiu breathed a sigh of relief and couldn’t help but instruct, “Next time you encounter that old bastard, run, don’t just stand there and be fooled by him.” This was also because Lu Lingxi had lost his memory. If he hadn’t lost his memory, Wang Shuxiu wouldn’t have worried.

Lu Lingxi digested the words “old bastard” in his mind for a few seconds and nodded obediently. Wang Shuxiu continued to chat with Sister Tian, while Lu Lingxi had nothing to do but pretend to read the newspaper while quietly opening the white panel. The results of the morning’s fertilisation came out, and he gained fifty points of plant hearts. Although he didn’t do it for the sake of plant hearts, he couldn’t help being happy when he saw the words 56/100 (Level 0) displayed at the lower end.

This time Lu Lingxi figured out another rule of the panel. Satisfying the needs of a single plant, he could get one point of plant heart, but with a flower bed of pansies, the panel did not count every single pansy, but a flower bed as a whole, and the whole could get him ten points of plant hearts. Lu Lingxi was responsible for five flower beds in the morning, and the final result was equal to him taking care of the chlorophytum for several months.

Speaking of chlorophytum, Lu Lingxi didn’t know if it was his illusion, but he felt that the pot of chlorophytum on the windowsill seemed to have recovered a bit too well. In just a few days, the previously yellow and limp leaves had completely straightened and were as green and shiny as if they had been specially tended to. Yesterday, when the doctor brought a group of nurses to check on him, they even complimented him on how well he was raising the chlorophytum and asked him for advice. Lu Lingxi had never raised flowers and plants before, and he wondered if he was being paranoid. Did the chlorophytum recover so well just from watering, or did it have something to do with the mysterious white panel?

The morning passed quickly and Wang Shuxiu had to get ready for work again in the afternoon. Lu Lingxi looked at the traces of fatigue in the corners of Wang Shuxiu’s eyes and hesitantly suggested that he wanted to leave the hospital. As soon as he had been able to get on his feet, he had advised Wang Shuxiu not to come to the hospital so early. His body almost recovered and he was able to take care of himself. Wang Shuxiu did not listen to him at that time but Lu Lingxi still had the intention of being discharged from the hospital. Today, after Lu Yishui had made such a show, Lu Lingxi thought of leaving the hospital early even more. From Lu Yishui’s words, he could tell that the family was in a bit of financial distress. Whether it was his hospitalisation or Lu Yishui’s gambling money, it was Wang Shuxiu’s hard work that earned money. There was no way for Lu Lingxi to justify watching Wang Shuxiu’s hard work, so he wanted to do what he could to ease some of her burden.

“Discharge from the hospital?” Wang Shuxiu froze for a moment at first when hearing Lu Lingxi’s proposal, and then objected vehemently, “You haven’t recovered yet, what discharge?”

Lu Lingxi deliberately tried to find an excuse. Wang Shuxiu looked at Lu Lingxi suspiciously, suddenly reached out and slapped him on the head with a smile on her face, “What? You’re afraid your mom won’t have any money? Little bastard knows how to care for his mom now. Don’t worry, how can your mom not have money? Don’t listen to your dad’s nonsense, even if there is no other money, for your hospitalisation there will be.”

When Lu Lingxi hesitated to speak, Wang Shuxiu laughed, patted Lu Lingxi to reassure him and hurried away.

Lu Lingxi leaned on the windowsill and watched Wang Shuxiu’s figure disappear, then quietly sat back down on the hospital bed. He had to seriously think about how to get out of the hospital.

In the next few days, Wang Shuxiu arrived at the hospital early as usual and stayed until she went to work every day. She was a bit worried that Lu Yishui would again take advantage of her absence to look for trouble with Lu Lingxi, and she told Lu Lingxi several times that he should run away when he saw Lu Yishui and wait for her to come. To be on the safe side, Wang Shuxiu not only begged the people in the ward to keep an eye on Lu Lingxi, but also went to the nurses she had fought with before, hoping that they would watch out for strangers and not let Lu Lingxi be fooled.

Some of the nurses had seen the situation with their own eyes, and even if they hadn’t, they had heard about the fight between Wang Shuxiu and Lu Lingxi’s father, and privately they all sympathised with Wang Shuxiu. Although Wang Shuxiu’s attitude was not good in the past, it was hard for a mother to be quiet when she watched Lu Lingxi lying unconscious in bed all the time. In addition, Lu Lingxi’s looks were so pleasing that they agreed to Wang Shuxiu’s request.

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In this way, Wang Shuxiu was relieved, but Lu Lingxi’s behaviour was restricted again. If he wanted to go to the small garden to see the flowers, he had to be surrounded by nurses. Knowing that Wang Shuxiu was worried about him, Lu Lingxi would always report to the nurses before he went out and tried to move with the other patients of the ward. He didn’t go anywhere else either, just to the lobby on the ground floor to look at the golden pothos and in the morning to the small garden to look at the pansies.

Since the last fertilisation, Lu Lingxi had met Elder Zhang once more in the small garden. Elder Zhang remembered his amnesia and asked him how his recovery was going. When he heard that he still had no recollection of the past, Elder Zhang made a point of comforting him. Lu Lingxi knew in his heart that he was not suffering from amnesia, but he was still grateful for Elder Zhang’s comfort. He accompanied Elder Zhang to water the plants once, and with the successive care of the chlorophytum and the golden pothos in the hall, the plant hearts on his panel finally rose to 99∕100 (Level 0), just one step away from being levelled up.

That night, the patient in Bed 17 of the same ward was informed that he would be discharged the next day, and the whole ward was very happy. No one was sleeping at the usual bedtime, and everyone gathered together to chat excitedly. Lu Lingxi was also happy for the patient in Bed 17, a big, burly man who everyone called Lao Ding. Lu Lingxi was the youngest in the ward and he was the only one who could not call him Lao Ding but had to call him Brother Ding. Like Lu Lingxi, Brother Ding’s injury was to his head, and it was also due to a fight. However, Brother Ding never said exactly why he was fighting.

Lu Lingxi was infected by the lively atmosphere in the ward and kept smiling as he listened to their conversation, occasionally saying a few words if anyone mentioned him. Having developed a regular daily schedule over the years, Lu Lingxi was actually a little sleepy, but he couldn’t sleep yet. He counted the time to water the chlorophytum tonight, just so that he could get a little plant heart and level up. He was all set, just waiting for everyone to fall asleep to level up.

It was well past 11 o’clock before the crowd in the ward washed up and went to bed at the reminder of the nurse on duty. Lu Lingxi had been waiting for this moment for a long time. He quickly washed up and sat quietly on the hospital bed, eyeing the chlorophytum.

Brother Li, who was in Bed 19, asked, “Xiao Lu, are you not sleeping yet?”

Lu Lingxi nodded sheepishly and whispered, “I drank too much water just now, I’m waiting to go to the toilet again.”

Brother Li laughed, thinking that Lu Lingxi was still a child. He could have gone to bed first and got up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet, was he afraid of wetting the bed? He admonished Lu Lingxi to hurry up and go to sleep, turned around and started snoring.

The people in the ward fell asleep one by one, and the sound of snoring rose from everywhere again. Lu Lingxi turned off the light and looked nervously at the white panel in front of him by the light from the corridor. When the word “none” behind the plant needs changed to “water”, he immediately perked up, quickly took the mineral water he had prepared and carefully poured it into the pot.

As the clear mineral water seeped into the soil of the pot, the long green bar at the bottom of the panel finally gave a prompt.

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

Immediately following this prompt was another prompt.

Collecting 100 plant hearts, start the primary mental scan, scanning range limited to three metres, also reward one packet of tomato seeds.

As this prompt flashed, Lu Lingxi only felt a weight in his hand, and a palm-sized black package appeared in his hand.

Lu Lingxi: “……”

He had imagined what would happen after collecting a hundred plant hearts, but none of those things included a packet of tomato seeds suddenly appearing in his hand in the middle of the night. It was too late to study what a mental scan was; his attention was focused on the small black parcel in his hand. Lu Lingxi subconsciously turned the parcel in his hand upside down, a little apprehensive as to whether these seeds would be like a panel that only he could see. Or were they physical objects that everyone could see? According to common sense, no matter what the white panel was, since he was rewarded with the seeds he must have been expected to plant them, so everyone should be able to see them.

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With that in mind, he couldn’t very well ask someone in the middle of the night to confirm if they could see what he was holding or not. One mistake, and he would be treated as a psychopath for his actions. Lu Lingxi turned the parcel upside down again and carefully put it away in the bedside drawer. If he guessed correctly, he would have to find an excuse tomorrow to explain to Wang Shuxiu why he suddenly had an extra packet of tomato seeds after a good night’s sleep.

Having settled the matter of the seeds, Lu Lingxi then focused his attention on the so-called mental scan. By now, Lu Lingxi was getting more and more confused as to what the white panel actually meant. The other side only gave a prompt, but did not even mention what a mental scan was and how to use it. Lu Lingxi tried to imagine the mind as a thought, and the mental scan as a diffused thought. A few dozen seconds passed, and just as his mind went blank and he was about to give up, he unexpectedly “saw” the chlorophytum on the windowsill in his mind.

Lu Lingxi looked at the windowsill in surprise. The feeling was so mysterious that he did not know how to describe it. He was sure that the chlorophytum that appeared in his mind was not something he saw with his eyes, but was more like the radar he had seen in a science programme before, transmitting the image to his mind through some kind of light wave scanning. Lu Lingxi had the illusion that when he was thinking about the mental scan, it was as if a strange wave of intent was emitted towards a three-metre radius around him. After this wave of intent returned from the emission and analysed the information, the previously scanned items, more precisely the scanned plants, would appear in his mind.

Of course, this series of emission and reception was very fast and did not take time. It was as if Lu Lingxi could see the potted chlorophytum within three metres in his mind just by having a thought. To confirm this, Lu Lingxi quickly got out of bed. He cautiously bypassed the person sleeping on the floor and estimated the distance of three metres in his mind.

Bed 19, Bed 18; by the time Lu Lingxi was standing in front of Bed 18, he could not see the chlorophytum. He tried to take a step back and deliberately turned his back to the windowsill. As the thought flashed through his mind, the chlorophytum on the windowsill appeared clearly in his mind.

Lu Lingxi tapped on the white panel and the same image of chlorophytum appeared in the centre of the panel. Unlike in the past when the image in the centre of the panel was flat, this time the chlorophytum on the windowsill appeared in a three-dimensional form in front of him.