The Tree That Grew Clouds

This story is childish, stupid, and extremely immature. Don't read it, don't read it, don't read it! Please, ORZ

Blurb:

On Valentine's night, when young couples are whispering sweet nothings to each other, good-for-nothing college student Ling Xiaoxiao is busy planning a route for picking up trash.

Before long, she finds an antique-looking bottle. Ling Xiaoxiao thinks to herself, I'm going to be rich, I'm going to be rich!

Just then, a man dressed in white emerges from the bottle.

"I used to be the Matchmaker. Because you were single for ten lifetimes, I couldn't complete my assignment and the Jade Emperor fired me. Then I had the bad luck to run into a great demon king. He said it was all my fault he'd been single for twenty thousand years, so he sealed me in this bottle. For eight hundred years!" The former Matchmaker covers his face and weeps. "Do you know what those eight hundred years were like for me?"

"Yeah, that's pretty rough," Ling Xiaoxiao says, offering a perfunctory word of comfort.

The Matchmaker wipes his tears. "So this lifetime, I have to make you fall in love!"

Ling Xiaoxiao spreads her hands to show she isn't interested.

The Matchmaker shakes his head helplessly. No, you have to get a boyfriend!

A flash of golden light, and a turtle appears in the palm of her hand???

What is going on? Did she save this turtle in a past life, and now it's come back to repay her like the White Snake's companion? While Ling Xiaoxiao wonders whether she should play Xu Xian, the turtle suddenly wakes up and says, "I'm just a guardian beast."

In college, Ling Xiaoxiao is a good-for-nothing, loafing around and drifting aimlessly. Even the turtle can't stand it. "Don't you have any dreams?"

"Sure. To get rich overnight."

But who could have guessed that the goofy Ling Xiaoxiao, always smiling and carefree, with her wonderfully weird imagination, is actually a sensitive girl with low self-esteem and a tendency toward depression? Deep inside her barren heart stands a withered tree.

What lies buried in that soil isn't a seed, but a young girl's dream, rotted away until nothing remains.

Transmigrate through time and space, and embrace the self you were in the past as you heal. Look up at the sky: that isn't a dead tree, it's a tree growing clouds.

Someone will cross an ocean five moons wide just to find you. That person isn't anyone else. It's you.

P.S. 1. The heroine is an introvert. She seems goofy, but inside she's gloomy and insecure. She'll grow as the story goes on.

2. The romance comes later. The beginning is mostly everyday life, the middle focuses on growth and healing, and the later part mixes things up. The goofy humor runs throughout.

3. There will be a very subtle BL plotline, but not much.

4. My writing is amateurish, and it falls apart a bit later on. I'm sorry about that! But I still want to thank everyone who read this story. Thank you for being willing to read such an immature work.

Theme: You should spend your life in a way that makes you happy