The kitchen was in the side hall. Mu Wanwan took a small handful of spiritual rice, thought for a moment, then cut off a tiny piece of ginseng root.
She had decided.
Starting today, she and Mr. Dragon would eat separately.
They had very little money and very little spiritual rice. If she and Mr. Dragon both ate from this small bag of spiritual rice, it would be gone in less than a month. But if only Mr. Dragon ate it, and they saved carefully, it could last two months.
She wanted to eat spiritual rice too, but there was nothing she could do. Poverty made people powerless and despairing. QwQ.
Mu Wanwan sighed and walked into the kitchen.
She did not know what material the kitchen stove was made of. Its surface was very smooth. The fuel used was not modern natural gas, nor the rice stalks used in rural areas, but a very special plant called burning grass.
After this pale green, long-strip plant was lit with a flint, not only would it burn for a long time, it would also produce hardly any smoke. One stalk of burning grass was enough to cook one meal, and the food made with it tasted much better than food cooked with smoky coal.
The price of this burning grass was not cheap. It could only be cultivated with wood-type spiritual power. One stalk of burning grass cost one silver coin, so basically only fairly well-off families and above could afford to use it.
Mu Wanwan lit one stalk of burning grass. First, she put Mr. Dragon’s rice in to cook. Then she found another stove nearby and put her own dinner on as well.
She stared at the dozens of burning grass stalks piled in the corner of the kitchen. After looking for a while, her eyes suddenly lit up.
She really was stupid.
The original owner was, at any rate, a first-rank wood-type cultivator. Cultivating other spiritual plants might be very difficult, but cultivating a rankless semi-spiritual plant like burning grass was more than within her abilities. She could completely buy some burning grass seeds, plant them, then sell them for money to support her dragon!
The heavy burden of life that had pressed down on Mu Wanwan like a mountain that afternoon seemed, before this tiny thread of hope, to become not quite so heavy.
Mu Wanwan picked up a stalk of burning grass and held it in her hand. Experimentally, she guided a thread of wood-type spiritual energy out from her dantian and slowly sent it into the slightly dried-out burning grass. Relying on the original owner’s memories, she held that stalk of burning grass and, as if smoothing its fur, guided the spiritual energy all the way from the tip of the grass to its root.
She did not know whether it was her imagination, but she felt that the stalk of burning grass in her hand seemed to have gained a little more vitality than before. It also looked more…
More green. =_=!
The congee in the pot was about to boil, so Mu Wanwan stopped fiddling with the burning grass. She chopped up the thin piece of ginseng root, threw it into the pot, stirred it, and once both different portions of congee were cooked, she served them into bowls and placed them inside the food box before carrying it back to the room.
It was already getting late. Mu Wanwan set down the food box, checked once more that the main gate was locked, then brought the clothes inside, shut the windows, lit the lamps in the room, and began preparing to feed the dragon.
The sounds she made while working were neither loud nor quiet, small and scattered. But to Mr. Dragon, who had just regained awareness, they were extremely clear. They made him feel as if, even though he had been a lone dragon since birth, there was still someone who cared about him.
Mr. Dragon restrained himself from letting his thoughts run wild, yet he could not control himself from sending all the spiritual power he could mobilise into the half of his dragon tail that was already showing signs of rotting again.
Even if the warmth of these few days was only as brief as a flower blooming once, he still wanted to extend it a little. Then a little more.
A late-autumn evening carried a gradually rising chill. It was not bone-piercing, but it was like endless fine needles, making people uncomfortable. This bit of cold would once have meant nothing at all to Mr. Dragon, one of the continent’s top experts. But now he was seriously injured. Although a quilt covered him, he still felt that trace of cold crawling up his skin. It was a little chilly.
Perhaps that person shared a connection with his thoughts, because in the next second, she actually stood up and closed the door, blocking the wind that had been blowing in continuously.
Mr. Dragon endured the pain brought by the curse and his wounds. The fragrance of spiritual rice filled his nose, and the tip of his heart trembled a little.
But very quickly, he fell into another kind of distress.
The lamplight was ambiguous.
A lone dragon and a solitary woman.
“Time to eat.”
Mu Wanwan did not know that Mr. Dragon had already woken. Thinking that she could not dirty the quilt while feeding the dragon later, she first went to the bedside and lifted the quilt slightly.
Then she took her own pillow, gently said, “Pardon the offence,” and supported Mr. Dragon’s head with one hand, placing another pillow beneath it.
Mr. Dragon’s eyelashes trembled and trembled. When her slightly cool fingertips touched his neck, it felt as if his blood was about to flow backward.
Even for the powerful dragon race, the neck was their fatal weak point. When he had been weak, everyone who had touched his neck had died. After he became powerful, even fewer people dared to touch his weakness.
But when she touched him, he did not feel disgusted. There was only an indescribable feeling—stimulating, and making him shudder.
Mu Wanwan had not cooked much congee for Mr. Dragon, only about one bowl’s worth, but it was very fragrant. A bowl of spiritual rice congee contained roughly the spiritual power of one-third of a low-grade spirit stone. Her movements were neither too fast nor too slow. Each time, she blew the congee cool before feeding it into Mr. Dragon’s mouth.
Fortunately, Mr. Dragon still had the instinctive reaction to swallow, so feeding him was not too difficult.
This time, after Mu Wanwan finished feeding him, she remembered his mouth with that slightly lip-gloss-like effect. Very thoughtfully, she took a handkerchief and wiped Mr. Dragon’s mouth for him. Her movements were very gentle, but through the handkerchief, the warmth of her fingertip still clearly reached Mr. Dragon’s lips.
Her touch was very distinct. Mr. Dragon pressed his lips together, and his fingertips beneath the quilt trembled.
“Haa, finally done.”
Mu Wanwan rubbed her waist, which had grown even more sore from bending for so long, and began eating her own dinner. Because it had been left for a little while, the congee had already become warm rather than hot.
She did not eat quickly. After all, only when she was eating and sleeping could she temporarily forget many of her worries.
She had eaten for a while before Mr. Dragon gradually recovered from her earlier touch.
His sense of smell was very sharp. But aside from the spiritual energy near his own mouth, he could not smell even the slightest fragrance of spiritual rice.
A thought slowly rose in his heart, one that he was unwilling to believe yet selfishly very much wanted to believe. Mr. Dragon slowly released a thread of divine consciousness, drifting it toward Mu Wanwan.
He saw her holding a bowl of ordinary rice congee and drinking it happily. There was not the slightest trace of spiritual energy in that congee. Yet the satisfaction that arose in Mr. Dragon’s heart after this was confirmed did not make him as pleased as he had imagined.
Instead, that sense of helpless frustration, mixed with self-blame, pressed down on him like a tide, almost suffocating him.
The warm spiritual rice in his stomach felt like a sharp dagger.
It was only spiritual rice.
It was just spiritual rice, something that had once counted for nothing.
Yet now, he had to rely on her pity and charity.
Yet he did not have the ability to let her live without having to save so carefully.
She had married a useless dragon like him, and he had not been able to give her anything.
If he had known that she was saving the spiritual rice for him, then he would rather not eat it. Going hungry was uncomfortable, but he had starved for so many years when he was young; he should have been used to it long ago.
The thread of divine consciousness that Mr. Dragon had floating in the room seemed to touch something that made him suffer, and slowly dissipated.
All that remained was his warm stomach and the spiritual rice that had few impurities. It turned into strands of pure spiritual energy. Although it was only a drop in the bucket, it was like a warm candle flame, nourishing his shattered meridians bit by bit.
**Author’s note:**
As for Wanwan eating ordinary rice, should we feel more sorry for Wanwan, or more sorry for Mr. Dragon? After all, Mr. Dragon is so delicate. QAQ
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