On the Self-Cultivation of a Tea Tree

Dear readers, this novel will be available for purchase on Thursday, October 27. There will be three updates that day. Chapters 31-39 will be locked chapters, so if you've already read them, please don't buy them again. And finally, thank you all for your support. I'll work even harder.

[I]

I was a recent college graduate, starting out as an intern.

If nothing unexpected happened, my life should have begun in a simple, uneventful way, and ended just as simply and uneventfully, like the lives of ordinary women.

But that was all just an if.

Because somehow, I transmigrated.

I became a tiny tea seed that even an ant could threaten.

Before the seed took root and sprouted, I tried every way I could think of to get back. When it sprouted and grew into a little tea plant, I was still trying. Hundreds of years passed. I grew from a short, plump, beautiful glutinous rice blossom tree into the tallest, most striking, and most beautiful tree for miles around, but I still couldn't get back. At last, I gave up on ever being human again.

Since I couldn't go back or turn into a human, I might as well bring it all to an end.

Maybe if my tea tree body burned to death one day and I went down to the underworld, I'd get another chance to become human.

[II]

While I drifted through life as a lazy slacker, one day the peach tree beside me, who was 800 years younger than I was, was struck by lightning. I thought he was going to die, but instead, he transformed into a human.

In an instant, my mind cleared, and I stopped lazing around. I realized I had been living in an age of cultivation.

I worked hard at cultivation so I could become human again. Just as I thought I was ready to summon heavenly lightning and undergo my tribulation, the peach tree, my neighbor for thousands of years, came by to tell me something.

After the founding of the People's Republic, plants and animals in China aren't allowed to become spirits.

Me: ??? Meow meow meow? I just want to ask, how do I look anything like an animal?

[III]

With my hopes of becoming human dashed once again, I gave up and went back to being a lazy slacker.

But my little bro, the peach tree, came up with a plan.

If it wouldn't work in China, I could go to a country that recognized spirits, ghosts, and gods, and transform there.

I had to choose between staying a tea tree and going abroad to become a mixed-race human. In the end, I chose the latter. Japan, right next door to China, seemed like a good fit.

I successfully took human form. I was congratulating myself and looking forward to my wonderful new life when I discovered that I'd turned into a little girl barely over three feet tall!

That wasn't even the worst part. If I returned to China in this body, my growth would stop completely. In other words, I would never grow even a single centimeter taller.

I was furious. I'd never seen the laws of nature be so strict.

To grow up, to get my long legs, I left the home I'd lived in for thousands of years, guided by the peach tree. My heart was breaking the whole way.

[IV]

I arrived in Japan, and the peach tree found me a temporary guardian.

He was an old man who looked very fierce, but surprisingly, he loved children.

The peach tree also found me a high-paying job.

I became a Saniwa.

I still didn't really understand what a Saniwa was, but basically, my job was to provide spiritual energy to a group of handsome sword spirits.

That was easy for me, since I had successfully survived a heavenly tribulation and become a tea tree immortal.

And so, after the peach tree returned to China to work hard, I began my daily life in Japan.

1. This story is written in third person.

2. The story is half everyday life and half plot.

3. There will definitely be out-of-character moments, and plenty of them. I mean it!

4. I write whatever feels easiest and makes me happy, so please don't expect the story to be logical.

Theme: Without weathering storms, how can you grow into a towering tree?