Chapter 181: Chapter 143: Buying Kittens, Chicks, Ducklings, and Goslings, Little Fox’s Breakthrough

In Li Xiang’s backyard, along the tall courtyard wall, the rapeseed flowers bloomed a brilliant gold. Many butterflies and bees danced among them, gathering nectar.

A spring breeze carried their sweet fragrance through the air.

This wasn’t their peak beauty, however. In another ten days to half a month, the flowers would be in full bloom, reaching the height of their splendor.

The kittens, captivated by the butterflies’ fluttering dance, stalked and pounced through the flower field. They were still too small to have any real chance of catching the winged insects, but they never tired of it.

The mother cat used this as an opportunity to teach them various hunting skills.

As spring blossomed and the weather warmed, the kittens gradually grew bigger. The mother cat was nearly done raising them and would probably go into heat again soon.

Li Xiang had originally planned to get her spayed. She was getting old, and another pregnancy and birth would be dangerous. But after he started feeding them Spirit Medicine Porridge, not only did the kittens grow well, but the old calico cat’s constitution also improved significantly. Li Xiang figured it was best to just let nature take its course.

Besides, spaying wasn’t necessarily a good thing. For the cat herself, the desire to reproduce was in her genes. The surgery also carried many risks, not to mention potential side effects and psychological trauma.

If she had too many kittens, he could always raise them somewhere else, like in the Holy Realm Garden.

There was a café over there. ’A cat café?’

Li Xiang didn’t go back to sweep the mountains of the Hailuogou Primeval Forest. He had already gone over it once, and he had enough Spiritual Medicine in his system inventory to last for the time being—a supply for three to five months.

He once again rode his tricycle into town to buy liquor from the pure-grain distillery.

The owner was ecstatic to see him. Li Xiang picked out thirty kilograms of their best liquor, and the owner helped him load it onto the tricycle, even throwing in a jar of newly brewed rice wine for free.

This rice wine was also known as sweet fermented rice. It was delicious when used to make sweet fermented rice balls.

It could also be used in other recipes, like sweet fermented rice with brown sugar and egg, steamed apples with sweet fermented rice, or a white fungus, corn, and sweet fermented rice soup. These dishes were considered especially good for women.

Afterward, Li Xiang went to the wet market, planning to buy some vegetables, seasonings, and vegetable seeds.

With the warm spring weather and plentiful rain, it was the perfect season for planting vegetables.

He’d had a surplus of energy since returning home, so he had tilled the empty plots in his front and back yards over and over again. He’d created neat, level vegetable beds with fine, uniform soil that was loose and moderately moist. He had even buried some homemade organic fertilizer at the bottom. His grandma said it would be a huge waste not to plant such good land full of vegetables.

His grandma had saved some vegetable seeds from last year, but the variety was relatively small. Since there were plenty of seeds available on the market, Li Xiang decided to go to town to get some more.

He went into a shop that sold a wide variety of seeds. He browsed and chose, occasionally asking the owner which brands were better. In the end, he left with over ten packets of seeds.

He bought seeds for loofah, winter melon, bitter melon, pumpkin, eggplant, cowpea, green bean, edamame, cucumber, bottle gourd, potato, chili pepper, water spinach, tomato, cilantro, daylily, and choy sum, among others.

Besides regular tomatoes, Li Xiang also bought some cherry tomatoes, also known as Saintess tomatoes. They tasted better eaten raw, and he got both red and yellow varieties.

The yellow ones had pretty names, too, like Imperial Consort or Empress Jin.

The choy sum seeds he bought were different from the rapeseed he planted last year.

Choy sum, also called a flowering cabbage stalk, is a variety of Chinese cabbage and comes in two types: white and red.

Li Xiang bought both types. Only children make choices.

Both white and red flowering cabbage stalks were sweet and crisp, and they were absolutely divine when stir-fried with cured pork.

Although choy sum and rapeseed are both plants of the *Brassica* genus in the mustard family, and their flowers look similar, they are different species with different uses.

Choy sum is mainly grown as a vegetable. It’s relatively thick, sweet, and crisp. Its tender leaves are oval-shaped, softer, and a vibrant green, making it obvious that it’s meant to be eaten. Rapeseed, on the other hand, is much lankier and grows taller. Its leaves are triangular or diamond-shaped, with a yellowish-green color and a harder texture. It’s primarily grown for its flowers and for its seeds, which are harvested to make oil.

The brilliant golden rapeseed blossoms form a sea of flowers, a beautiful sight beloved by many.

It wasn’t just people who loved it; bees, butterflies, cats, dogs, and the Little Fox all did too.

Of course, the tender tips of the rapeseed plant could also be picked and stir-fried, though they weren’t as plump, tender, and delicious as choy sum.

Outside the wet market was a street where many people had set up stalls. At this time of year, many of them were selling chicks, ducklings, and goslings, so Li Xiang went over to pick some out.

Of course, his Mutant Creature Identification Function was active, but they were all Mortal Items. He bought them to raise for eggs, or to be slaughtered for the dinner table during holidays and festivals.

There were also some kittens and puppies for sale, but the system didn’t give any notifications for them. He decided against getting a dog. He already had Er Huang and the Little Fox at home, and bringing more back might disrupt their bond. However, Li Xiang decided to buy some kittens.

The five kittens at home were all siblings. Cats have no concept of incest, and it would be bad if they started breeding indiscriminately once they grew up. So, Li Xiang picked out seven good-looking kittens, both male and female, from different vendors to take home and let them "choose their own partners."

While he couldn’t completely prevent any "indiscretion," having more options would lower the chances. The only other alternatives were to give them away or raise them in separate locations.

The seven kittens, meowing chaotically in a bamboo cage, had no idea what a happy home they were about to enter.

At Li Xiang’s house, there was Spirit Medicine Porridge to eat, an endless supply of dried fish, and even frequent chances to eat a rare and precious variety of Spicy Strips. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

They were only Mortal Items now, but there was no guarantee their offspring couldn’t become Extraordinary. This was another reason why Li Xiang hadn’t had the mother cat spayed.

After all, the mother cat had produced three Extraordinary kittens in one litter—a truly remarkable mother.

System: "Detected one Tier Five Mutated Creature: Red-Crowned Silver-Feathered Goose. Detected one Tier Three Mutated Creature: Black-Beaked Dark-Feathered Goose."

Li Xiang was instantly overjoyed. ’Finally, some with Extraordinary potential! And they’re the super-aggressive village-tyrant geese!’

He had some chicks, ducklings, and goslings in another bamboo cage in the back of his tricycle, but he had bought those earlier. It definitely wasn’t them.

Li Xiang looked down the road and, sure enough, about ten meters away, there was another vendor selling chicks, ducklings, and goslings. He walked over.

The vendor had nine goslings left. Aside from one that had black feathers, the rest looked more or less the same.

"Ma’am, how much are your goslings?"

The owner was an older woman who said with a smile, "Females are twenty yuan, males are ten. My geese are good! Easy to raise, and they lay lots of big eggs."

Li Xiang thought to himself that the woman was honest for selling the males and females separately. With goslings this small, most people—especially younger ones—couldn’t tell the sexes apart. Everyone wanted to buy females, so the males were often left unsold.

Some vendors took advantage of clueless buyers, deliberately picking out males while charging the same price.

"I’ll take them all, then. Could you tell me the total?" Li Xiang said.

The woman was delighted. She even picked up a gosling and taught Li Xiang how to distinguish their gender, mainly by checking for a bump on their rear, but also by observing their head features, body shape, feather color, and nostril shape.

Some people couldn’t even tell the difference between ducklings and goslings, let alone tell the sex of a gosling. The two little creatures looked very similar when they were young.

This was especially true for city dwellers who had no experience with them, a classic case of not being able to tell leeks from wheat shoots.

Actually, Li Xiang didn’t need the woman to teach him; he could already tell them apart. There were tutorials online, including a handy rhyme about sexing goslings.

"Young man, that’s four males and five females, so 140 yuan in total."

"Alright." Li Xiang paid without hesitation, and the woman kindly helped him put the goslings into his bamboo cage.

Li Xiang headed home, his tricycle loaded to the brim. In total, he had bought seven kittens, eighteen chicks, twelve ducklings, and fifteen goslings.

The "singing" was nonstop on the way back; the little ones were quite a lively bunch.

When he got home, he presented the new kittens to the mother cat, but she rejected them and even tried to drive them away. The other kittens were also hostile. The little tuxedo cat and the little calico hissed at the strangers.

"You silly things, these are your future husbands and wives!"

Li Xiang sighed helplessly and had to put the new kittens in a separate area. He hadn’t made a proper cat bed for them yet, so he used a large bamboo basket lined with old clothes as their "dormitory."

These newcomers didn’t know each other either; Li Xiang had picked them from different stalls, so they weren’t related. But having been cooped up in a cage together for the journey and now arriving in a completely new environment, they were relatively closer to each other, "huddling together for warmth."

But with time, the new cats and the original residents were sure to get along.

He left the chicks, ducklings, and goslings in his grandma’s care. She fenced off an area near the chicken coop to raise them. Since the little ones were too small, they certainly couldn’t be housed with the adult chickens and ducks.

The mother cat brought her kittens over to see the little creatures, which sent the chicks, ducklings, and goslings scattering in fear. When Er Huang and the Little Fox came over, the little ones huddled in a corner, trembling even more violently.

Li Xiang shooed away the "ferocious beasts" that had gathered to watch, telling them not to scare the babies.

Afterward, Li Xiang specifically called the Little Fox over and instructed it to protect its new little companions. It absolutely could not let a weasel snatch any of them.

"CHIRP CHIRP~" The Little Fox stood up on its hind legs and patted its chest, signaling that it understood.

In the middle of the night, Li Xiang heard a sharp, excited fox cry. He went outside to see a flash of fiery red darting through the Chicken Blood Stone Jungle, weaving back and forth like a flicker of light.

Of course, it was no match for Li Xiang’s speed. With a single flicker, he was in front of the Little Fox. It leaped excitedly into his arms, chirping chaotically.

"A breakthrough? Let me see." Li Xiang stroked its fur, which was as smooth as satin. The Little Fox was very cooperative, squinting its eyes and acting quite fawningly as it allowed Li Xiang’s Spiritual Power to enter its body.

’This little thing really is exceptionally talented,’ Li Xiang thought. He discovered that the Little Fox had already formed its first Spiritual Power vortex and awakened its first Superpower: the Lightweight Technique.

It was different from the Divine Movement Technique. Divine Movement was best for straight-line, long-distance sprints, while the Lightweight Technique was more suited for nimble maneuvering and complex Body Techniques within a small area.

Er Huang ran over, a look of envy on his doggy face.