Elder Redcheeks and Sage Brother Long‑Tail sat perched on the moss‑covered roots at the forest's edge, watching Xiulan's first steps into human society.
Elder Redcheeks, the venerable squirrel with puffy, rosy cheeks and a tail bushy as a cloud, nibbled a nut in astonishment. "Is that—our Lan‑Lan—in human robes?"
Sage Brother Long‑Tail, the lanky monkey crowned with graying fur and a tail that curled like a question mark, crossed his arms. "He looks… so proper. No leaf in his hair, no dirt on his boots. Where is my mischievous cub?"
Xiulan emerged between the ferns, flanked by three young cultivators in crisp white tunics. He clutched a booklet of human script and hesitated as polished boots squeaked on the forest floor.
Redcheeks's whiskers twitched. "Boots! He is wearing boots!"
Long‑Tail sighed dramatically. "He will never remember the feel of moss underfoot. He has gone over to the human side—sipping tea with stiff collars!"
One cultivator bowed and offered Xiulan a delicate folding fan. "Please, Lan‑Lan, keep your posture."
Xiulan took it, fluttered it once, and smiled shyly. The cultivators clapped.
Redcheeks shook his head in wonder. "They're already smitten."
Long‑Tail clapped his hands once. "We must remind him who he is! When he returns, I will throw a cocoa‑bean festival—mud pies, vine swings, and stolen bananas!"
Redcheeks's eyes sparkled. "And I'll prepare a feast of spore‑stew and acorn cakes—forest flavors only we know!"
A distant rumble of thunder rolled through the trees.
Long‑Tail's ears perked up. "Even Heaven's giving its approval."
Redcheeks nodded solemnly. "He may be walking among humans now, but the forest waits for him, always."
As Xiulan took his first graceful steps into the human world, Elder Redcheeks and Sage Brother Long‑Tail settled back to guard their cub's roots—ready with acorn cakes, banana ambushes, and enough forest mischief to ensure he never forgot home.
Meanwhile, Xiulan was going to be out for a day. Just a day. A teeny-tiny one-day trip beyond the comforting chaos of the Eternal Spirit Forest, more akin to a kindergarten field visit than anything remotely serious. Or so they said. For Xiulan, it was a weird thing to do. Going out of the forest he called home? What is the need?
It was Uncle Hei's idea. Or rather, his resigned grumble when the human cultivators had insisted, "He must be exposed to civilization at least once a week! Let the child breathe copper and taste the concept of commerce!"
Baby Po had been delighted. "Think of it as educational enrichment!" he chirped while shoving half-dried spirit herbs into Xiulan's new, very pink, very frilly satchel. "Maybe you'll learn how to shop!"
"I don't even know what a shop is," Xiulan muttered. "Is it a type of deer?"
The forest sighed while he grumbled.
Still, there he was—standing in the middle of a bustling human marketplace, his hair (once a glorious cascade of soft leaf-green) now forcibly dyed black "for better assimilation," and dressed in something the disciples swore was a unisex robe, but looked suspiciously like the backup gown of a female disciple from the Gentle Plum Peak (The cultivators only sighed when Xiulan asked how to grow it, is it a kind of plum, a peaky plum?).
"I feel like a peach blossom trapped in a thundercloud," he whispered into his leaf-diary, clinging to it for dear life.
The humans, however, had other concerns.
"Where did this child get such flawless skin? Look at that peachy glow!"
"And those eyes! Is this one of the sect's inner disciples? Or a spirit beast reborn as a human?!"
Xiulan's ears twitched in mild irritation. Compliments, always. Flowery phrases like poisoned needles. Not one person noticed the real tragedy.
His vegetables.
The ones that did not give you a tail, or a blush, or emit a faint golden light from your pores? Apparently, humans paid real money for them. They even play with some metal lint's called coins.
"A whole sack of these spiritual potatoes sold for fifteen gold taels," murmured one of the cultivator girls, eyes wide.
Xiulan blinked. "...Fifteen?"
Coins. Round metal lint that jingled and had no taste. He tried biting one. It cracked his molar slightly.
"These are useless!" Xiulan wailed. "They do not even glow! I want to go home!"
It was at that exact moment that Young Master Jin, his honorable brother descended from the heavens—well, not literally, but his golden fox tail practically glowed with wealth-lust as he slid beside Xiulan with the flair of a true merchant.
"Useless?" he gasped dramatically, his luxurious human robes flapping in the wind like a theatrical flag. "How dare you? My darling brother! These are the things that can keep your life full of warmth and happiness in mortal land!"
Xiulan stared.
"…Why? They are cold and I do not like them."
Young Master Jin gasped again—louder this time, for maximum scandal. Several passing cultivators stopped. One woman dropped her fruit basket. A boy tripped on his own sword.
"You dare speak such heresy!" Jin clutched his chest as though Xiulan had just renounced gravity. "Brother, these coins—these shimmering, noble, cold things—are the true spirit root of mortal success! With enough coins, you can buy yourself a mansion, servants, spirit beast feed pellets in sixteen flavors—"
"I do not have a mansion," Xiulan said flatly. "I have a tree."
"Then buy two!" Jin flared his sleeves dramatically. "Coins, dear Lan-Lan, mean you never have to dig up winter radishes barefoot in the snow again!"
Xiulan blinked. "But I like the radishes."
A group of female cultivators nearby squeaked in a mix of horror and awe.
"He… he likes radishes?"
"Barefoot??"
"Is he ascetic? Or just rustic?"
One bold disciple leaned toward her friend. "I heard he used to water his crops with spiritual dew collected in the folds of flower petals. With his tongue."
Xiulan looked increasingly alarmed. His fingers twitching and a cute little vine wrapped around his sleeves wiggled.
Jin, however, was delighted. "Yes! Let them whisper. Let them marvel. Let them see you as you are: a being of mystery and dirt-stained divinity."
Xiulan clutched his leaf-diary tighter. "They are calling me rustic." I want to go home.
"They are calling you untamed, and it's working." Jin leaned in, voice silky. "Do you know how much mystery sells for?"
"I thought mystery was an emotion," Xiulan mumbled. "Like confusion. Or missing Baby Po."
From a distance, Baby Po waved enthusiastically with a deep-fried bun halfway into his snout. "You're doing great, Lan-Lan!"
Jin sighed dramatically. "Listen well, forest child. These coins—they are more than currency. They are influence. Power. If someone tries to throw you out of a sect? Throw a coin bag at them. If someone wrongs you? Buy their ancestral estate. Want a talisman sword? Commission three, then use them to hang your undergarments."
"I do not wear undergarments," Xiulan stated.
Gasps echoed around them.
"I," Jin said, fighting back a giggle, "am beginning to see why they made me your market escort. Brother, if you keep talking like that, the entire sect will write folk songs about your rustic rawness."
Xiulan's frown deepened. "Why would anyone want to hear about someone raw?"
"You are a legend in the making!" Jin declared, throwing a hand in the air. "But only if you stop biting the coins."
Xiulan dropped all his metal lint's that were picked by young master Jin who carried them in his pouch.
Back at the sect's stall, the disciples were still staring at the vegetable crates that were now half-empty, the copper and silver clinking happily in their storage rings.
"These carrots make your eyes sparkle with spiritual resonance!"
"This one turned my inner meridians slightly more aligned!"
"Does anyone else feel… emotionally supported by this daikon?"
The produce was a hit.
The sect was stunned.
The world was changing.
And Xiulan? Xiulan was just trying to cope.
"People keep saying I look nice in this robe," he scrawled in his diary that evening, nibbling on a vine-ripened tomato he had personally grown in twenty-three minutes using hummingbird chants and rhythmic soil stomps.
"They mean well. I know. But if another person calls me ladylike, the lightning will come."
And it did but for different reasons. At least five market stalls suffered light singeing when a merchant casually commented, "Isn't that young boy looking lovely?"
BOOM.
Lightning. Thunder. A cracked display of phoenix-themed combs.
The humans learned quickly: never refer to Xiulan's gender incorrectly.
The heavens had no patience for this nonsense.
It was not even about identity—it was about rules. Specifically, a certain page in the Heavenly Emperor's "Rule Book for Bored Celestials," which stated, quite plainly:
"A being possessing High Yin can only be female. All else is sacrilegious and shall be corrected by thunder."
(There was a footnote, added by the emperor's concubine in a fit of wine-fueled rage: "Unless the High Yin carrier is adorable. Then, may the heavens cry from confusion.")
So, the heavens did.
Occasionally. Violently.
Meanwhile, Xiulan found himself accumulating silver, gold, and "platinum clovers" (whatever those were) thanks to his crops. The vegetables that did not explode into mist or cause spontaneous glowing hair had become rare delicacies in human cities—refreshingly normal amidst a world of spiritual chaos.
On the way back, their little group rested under a plum blossom tree where Jin practiced coin-toss meditation.
"Did you enjoy your trip, Xiulan?" Baby Po asked brightly, feeding him a grape that glowed faintly with starlight.
"No," said Xiulan flatly. "Humans are weird. Their clothes are itchy. Their coins do not glow. And everyone stares at me like I am a moon rabbit in a tutu."
"Did you like selling vegetables?" asked one disciple.
"…A bit, but they are cold." Xiulan admitted. Only because it might help grow metallic green turnip
Xiulan closed his leaf-diary with a thoughtful sigh. Maybe this world beyond the forest was not entirely bad. A little strange, yes. Obsessive about glowing coins and aesthetics? Definitely.
But perhaps, just perhaps, if he could wear his green robes again, regrow his leaf-colored hair, and stop being called a girl by every passing merchant, it would not be too unbearable.