Re-birth: The Beginning after the End - Chapter 90

Chapter 90: BASKING IN THE COMFORT OF OUR HOME

Once the figures of the village chief and the others had disappeared, Li Hua walked back to the courtyard where their garden lay.

She stood there for a moment, the memories again resurfacing. The day they dug this garden and planted the first seeds remained vivid in her mind—her mother’s gentle hands guiding her own through the soil, her father’s quiet pride as he watched them work together. The garden had been her responsibility and her sanctuary, a place where she was able to cultivate life rather than death.

The garden was divided into sections, one for herbs, one for leafy greens, one for root vegetables, and a special corner where fruit vines climbed trellises her father had built by hand. Each section held its own memories, its own lessons learned through seasons of tending and harvest. The fruit section had been her particular joy—watching the delicate flowers transform into sweet berries and succulent fruits, a reminder of how patience yielded the sweetest rewards.

She gently caressed each plant, and as if understanding her, they swayed gently. There was no wind—just their own subtle response to her spiritual essence, a connection forged through years of nurturing.

“I wish I could take this garden with me,” she whispered. The thought of transplanting them to her space had crossed her mind—the soil there would be more fertile, rich with concentrated spiritual essence. But without Little Firefly’s guidance, she wasn’t sure if it would be possible.

Beyond the practical concerns, something deeper held her back. This garden belonged here, didn’t it? It was part of the life they’d built, the peace they’d carved out in this small corner of the world.

She quickly watered the garden with the spirit water from her space. As she worked, her eyes drifted to the right wing of the house, where her mother kept her most precious treasures.

She walked to her parents’ expanded room—what had once been two bedrooms and a common area now merged into a single, harmonious space.

The moment she opened the door, the familiar scent of jasmine and fresh soil wrapped around her like an embrace. For a moment, she stood frozen, letting the memories wash over her.

At the back of the room, behind another door, lay her mother’s pride: a small but extraordinary garden of rare herbs that she and her brothers had discovered during their forest adventures. Each plant held a story, each leaf a testament to their family’s shared joy in discovery.

A soft and sad smile graced her lips before she too watered her mother’s garden.

Once that was done, Li Hua returned to the courtyard. She settled into her mother’s chair at the wooden table, fingers tracing the worn surface where they had shared countless meals, and allowed her memories to take over.

She closed her eyes and sounds of laughter echoed in her mind—her brothers’ playful teasing, her father’s deep chuckle, and her mother’s melodic giggles that would ring through the courtyard like wind chimes in a gentle breeze. The wooden chair beneath her still held the warmth of countless afternoons spent together, as if her family’s presence had seeped into the very grain of the wood, refusing to fade even now.

Every corner of the courtyard held a memory: the spot where Li Hao had first managed to conjure fire at age nine, scorching his eyebrows in the process; the tree where Li Wei would sit for hours, lost in cultivation manuals while their mother secretly watched over him; the place where she’d first called wind to her fingertips, her parents’ proud smiles brighter than the morning sun. Thirteen years of love and laughter, of simple joys and shared secrets, all preserved in this space like insects in amber.

The afternoon light shifted, casting longer shadows across the courtyard as time slipped by unnoticed. The gentle evening breeze carried the scent of her mother’s herbs, and somewhere in the distance, a bird called out its twilight song. When Li Hua finally opened her eyes again, the first stars were already appearing in the darkening sky.

Without moving, she entered her space using her physical form—a departure from her usual spiritual projections. Despite years of rigorous training both in the physical world and through projected forms within her space, she knew today called for something different. She increased the weights for each exercise by 10 kg, and for her run and speed training, she crafted weighted vests from stone, her earth essence allowing her to mold them precisely to her form.

The contrast was striking. While she was intimately familiar with both physical training in the outside world and spiritual projection within her space, this—bringing her actual body into her space—created an entirely new intensity. Each movement demanded more effort, every muscle fiber crying out with an intensity she hadn’t experienced since her bond with Little Firefly. The resistance felt more real, more raw than either previous method—the weight of the stone vest bearing down on her actual body within this supernatural realm.

When three hours of physical and speed training were complete, she returned to her bedroom and settled into a cultivation stance beside Little Firefly’s cocoon, riding an unexpected wave of euphoria. Her muscles burned with a new kind of ferocity, a deep ache that penetrated to her bones, the weighted vest having left her inner robes completely damp with exertion.

The endorphins flooding her physical form within this mystical space created a natural high that surpassed anything she’d experienced before, and even as her body screamed in protest, her mind hummed with satisfaction. Though well-versed in the difference between productive pain and dangerous strain, this fusion of physical presence within her space brought a whole new dimension to that understanding.

Reaching into her night stand drawer, she retrieved one of multiple timers she had collected in her previous life. When she first started cultivating, she had brought these as a precaution but never needed them—Little Firefly’s innate sense of the outside world’s flow had always been her perfect timekeeper. She glanced at his dimly glowing cocoon, feeling the absence of his usual temporal warnings. Without his guidance, she would have to rely on more mechanical means.

One day outside equaled roughly twenty-four days within her space. She set the timer for exactly one hundred and twenty days—four months in her space, but only five days would pass in the outside world. The timer’s soft blue glow pulsed once, acknowledging the setting, before beginning its countdown.

Her core pulsed with careful eagerness as it sensed the pure energy surrounding them. Unlike her usual gentle cultivation rhythm, today she pushed harder—but with surgical precision. She drew in the dense spiritual essence of her space methodically, testing each meridian’s limit before expanding it further. When she felt the first warning signs of strain, she would hold at that threshold, allowing her pathways to adjust before pressing forward again. The pain was still intense, but it was a controlled burn rather than a wild fire. Every increment of power was earned through patience as much as persistence.

The first forty days were dedicated to strengthening her foundation as a low-tier Martial Phase Rank 3 cultivator. She could feel the boundaries of her current level—like invisible walls containing her spiritual essence. The dense energy of her space pressed against these boundaries, searching for weak points, places where breakthrough might be possible. Each cultivation cycle brought subtle changes: meridians expanding microscopically, spiritual essence growing incrementally denser, her core’s capacity increasing by tiny degrees.

The next forty days focused on the breakthrough to mid-tier and its stabilization. The barriers between tiers weren’t just about quantity of spiritual essence—they required fundamental changes in how energy flowed through the meridians. She adjusted her breathing technique, allowing her spiritual essence to guide the transformation. The breakthrough to mid-tier came not with a dramatic surge but with a quiet shift, like ice finally reaching the perfect temperature to crystallize. She spent twenty of these days just consolidating this new level, ensuring her foundation remained unshakeable.

The final forty days proved the most crucial. The progression to high-tier demanded more power, more precision, more patience than any of the previous tiers. She could feel her spiritual essence changing quality as well as quantity—becoming more refined, more concentrated. Where before it had flowed like water through her meridians, now it moved with the weight of mercury, dense with potential. Her golden core grew stronger, its essence integrating more deeply with her own.

The breakthrough to high-tier came during the hundredth day, but Li Hua didn’t rush forward. Instead, she spent the remaining twenty days meticulously reinforcing her new power. Each meridian was carefully strengthened, each energy pathway thoroughly mapped and stabilized. Her white essence was fully integrated into every aspect of her cultivation base, creating a harmonious whole that felt as natural as breathing.

As the timer approached its final hours, she felt satisfaction in her progress. The advancement hadn’t been achieved through desperate lunges or reckless absorption of power. Instead, each step had been carefully measured, each level fully mastered before moving forward. She had reached high-tier Martial Phase Rank 3, and more importantly, she had built a foundation solid enough to support future advancements.