Winter.

Autumn flew by far too quickly as I became obsessed with improving my surviving crop.

Snowflakes drifted lazily from slate-gray skies as I walked through my garden of horrors, checking on my disturbing cabbage patch.

"C-cold..." a weak voice suddenly muttered from one of the larger specimens.

I froze mid-step, turning slowly toward the source. There, among the frost-covered rows, one of the people-cabbages was stirring. Its face - a slightly twisted replica of the Young Mistress's - was scrunching up in discomfort as snowflakes landed on its violet-hued flesh.

I crouched down next to the awake cabbage-person. "Hello there. Can you understand me?"

"C-cold..." it repeated, its faceted violet eyes opening slowly to stare up at me. Was it staring at me? I wasn’t entirely sure. Its gaze wasn’t exactly human, more like something between a person and a plant, languid and slow, made up from a spiral of cabbage-like microscopic leaves that curled into themselves to produce an iris-like structure.

"Yes, it's cold," I agreed. "Can you say anything else?"

The cabbage-person's face scrunched up in concentration. "Coooold... so... cold."

"What's your name?" I asked.

Confused, big violet eyes slowly blinked at me.

"Right," I said. "You're Zen-1. Can you repeat it? Zennnn!”

"Zzz... Zennnn," the cabbage girl repeated.

“One.” I added.

“Onnnnnnnnn,” the cabbage murmured.

I stared at it with my Qi-sighed, wondering how the hell she produced sounds without lungs, without breathing.

There it was. Deep inside.

Unlike humans, cultivators, or spirit beasts who centralized their Qi processing through organs like the heart and dantian, Zen-1's entire cellular structure was decentralized like that of a plant life.

Each plant cell acted as its own tiny cultivation furnace, absorbing, processing and storing spiritual energy in microscopic amounts.

When I channeled more Qi into my eyes to examine her internal structure, I could see the fascinating network - billions of tiny purple cells, each one containing a miniature version of the curse-cycle I'd observed in the glacier. The spiritual energy flowed from cell to cell in complex fractal patterns, like a living cultivation formation made of vegetation.

This explained her slow movements and speech - there was no centralized nervous system or quick-response organs. Every action had to propagate through this vast network of individual plant cells, each one processing the spiritual energy needed for movement or speech at its own glacial pace.

. . .

I carefully dug around Zen-1's root system, gently disconnecting and lifting the crouched cabbage-person from the frozen soil. She was about the size of the long dead girl, perhaps a bit smaller, the body made from flowing patterns of fiber and violet leaves.

"Coooold," Zen-1 complained as I carried her to my modest house.

"Yes, yes, we've established that," I muttered, shouldering open the door. Inside, a fire crackled in the hearth, filling the single room with warmth.

As I settled Zen-1 near the hearth, her violet leaf-hair began to unfurl slightly in the warmth. Her face relaxed from its pinched expression, her entire body slowly unfolding out of the cabbage-sphere to stand upright like a person, replicating my movements.

"Warm..." she sighed contentedly, swaying slowly and reaching out towards the fire.

"No!" I quickly pulled her rapidly cooking leaf-hand back. "Fire bad! No touching!"

"Wwwwarm..." Zen-1 insisted, straining toward the flames again like a giant moth to a lantern.

"For heaven's sake," I muttered, dragging her further from the hearth. "Stop pawing at the flames! You're literally made of leaves. You'll catch fire instantly!"

Zen-1 pouted, her violet face scrunching up in what was likely her progenitor's infamous "spoiled young mistress" expression. "Want warm!"

"Here," I grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around her. "This is safe warm."

She immediately tried to eat the blanket.

"No! Bad cabbage!" I chided her. "We don't eat blankets!"

Zen-1's violet eyes welled up with tears, moisture relocating itself from the rest of her leaves towards specific spots. "Huuuungry..."

A strangely human action from a distinctively non human thing.

"Right," I sighed. "You probably need nutrients. Uhhhh… What do cabbage people even eat? Let me get you some water first."

I fetched a cup of water, only to turn around and find Zen-1 trying to climb into my rice barrel that I acquired from town for some beast furs.

"No! Get out of there!" I pulled her leafy form from the barrel, spilling rice everywhere. She had somehow managed to get grains stuck all over her violet leaves, blinking at me with big, confused eyes.

A cry resounded from outside. Other cabbages were waking up.

With a sigh I smothered the fire with a pot of water.

Then, I left the rice-covered Zen-1 wrapped in her blanket and headed outside into the falling snow. More voices were rising from the cabbage field - weak, confused cries of "Cold!" echoing across the frozen ground.

I spent the rest of the day carefully harvesting my awakening crop, digging each cabbage-person from the frozen soil and carrying them inside. By nightfall, my modest house was filled with twelve violet-hued humanoid cabbages in various stages of awareness.

Night fell as I finished settling the last of my cabbage-people into makeshift beds of straw. They were all roughly the same size - slightly below the height of a normal human - with varying degrees of consciousness and coordination. All shared the Young Mistress's violet coloring and facial features, though each had subtle differences in their leaf patterns.

. . .

Sowwy ducked through the doorway that was too small for her inhumanly tall frame and then froze, her metallic feathers sparkling sharply as she took in the scene before her. Twelve violet humanoid cabbages stared back at her with identical pairs of purple, confused eyes.

"What." The Jingwei's beak clicked in shock. "The. Actual. Abyss."

“Behold!” I declared with a dramatic flourish. “They're alive!”

The spirit beast simply stared.

"They just started waking up in the snow," I explained to her. "Had to bring them inside before they froze to death.”

"This is wrong on so many levels," Sowwy muttered, backing away as one of the cabbage-people reached curiously toward her shimmering, metallic feathers. "They're like... like horrible vegetable clones of that awful Young Mistress!"

"Technically they're more like her spiritual offspring," I corrected. "See how each one has slightly different leaf patterns, body variety and face structure? They inherited her base template but clearly developed individual variations."

"They're abominations!" Sowwy hissed. "We should burn them all before—"

"Warm?" One of the cabbage-people asked hopefully, reaching toward the Jingwei's shimmering metallic feathers.

“Oi, angry birb,” I said. “Don't be rude to our babies!”

“Our babies?!” Sowwy barked, slapping the cabbage girl away. “What?! I refuse to…”

“Most of the formation hexagrams were your work,” I said. “I only provided the Qi and the general ideas. “Honestly, Sow, without your vast cultivator knowledge on dampening formations n’ such, I'd probably just blow up the entire valley or give up on this whole endeavor and raise magic chickens that explode or something.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Sowwy's metallic feathers vibrated with indignation. "I am NOT taking responsibility for... for these... THINGS!" She gestured wildly at the cabbage-people, who were now all staring at her with intense fascination.

"Pretty!" one of them slowly declared, starting a chorus of "Pretty! Pretty!" from the others.

"See? They like you," I grinned. "You're their spirit-beast mommy."

"I AM NOT THEIR MOMMY!" Sowwy shrieked, backing away as several cabbage-people began trying to touch her feathers. "I EAT people, I don't raise them! Especially not vegetable people!"

"Mommy?" one of the cabbage-girls asked.

"NO!" Sowwy flapped angrily. "I refuse to participate in this madness any further! This is NOT what I signed up for when I agreed to teach you formation theory!"

"Speaking of babies," I said thoughtfully, "where do spirit beasts like you come from anyway? Do you have, like, spirit beast parents? Little baby Jingweis running around somewhere?"

Sowwy puffed up indignantly. "That's... that's none of your business!"

"Come on," I grinned. "You can tell me! Do spirit beasts get married? Lay eggs? Build nests? Have awkward teenage phases where your feathers grow in all wrong?"

"We... we form naturally from concentrated spiritual energy!" she snapped, though her metallic feathers were distinctly ruffled. "Usually around sites of great power or significant events!"

"So you're saying you just... popped into existence one day? Like a spiritual zit?"

"I am NOT a zit!" Sowwy shrieked, her voice hitting glass-shattering frequencies. "I emerged majestically from the convergence of yin and yang energies during a celestial shard convergence, you freaking cabbage-brained disaster of a cultivator!"

"Sounds lonely," I mused, watching as the cabbage-people continued trying to edge closer to the agitated spirit beast. "No wonder you're so cranky all the time. At least now you have family!"

"They are NOT my family!" Sowwy protested. She glanced at the violet faces staring up at her with unabashed adoration. "Shooo! Stop looking at me like that! I'm a terrifying spirit beast! I eat people!"

"Go on then, explain to me how these spirit-cabbage girls are different from you exactly," I said.

"They're completely different!" Sowwy hissed, her metallic feathers catching the firelight. "I'm a natural spiritual entity formed from pure celestial energies! They're... they're magical vegetables grown from a dead cultivator!"

"So you're saying you're also an artificial construct created by random spiritual energies combining in weird ways?" I grinned. "Sounds pretty similar to me. You're just a fancier vegetable."

"I AM NOT A VEGETABLE!" Sowwy screeched in ultrasonic, sending several cabbage-girls scrambling behind me in fear. "I am a majestic and terrifying spirit beast! I've devoured countless mortals! I've..."

"Been living alone in a valley screaming at people for centuries because you're lonely?" I suggested. "Face it, Sow - you're basically just a really fancy cabbage with abandonment issues."

"Not everything is a freaking cabbage, you bloody Limpblink!"

“Limp-what now?”

“A word for humans that I invented! You’re all just blinks of an eye to my limitless existence! Most of you just limp about, blink a lot, age and die.”

"Uh-huh. Anyways, they're spirit beasts, you're a spirit beast," I said. "I fail to see the difference. Look, angry birb, you can either help me figure out how to nurture newborn spirit beasts or you can piss off to your cold, damp, bat-filled cave up the mountain or wherever it is you sleep when you don't hang around me."

Sowwy glared at me, then glared at the twelve violet cabbage-girls who were still staring at her with undisguised fascination.

"Fine!" she finally snapped. "But I'm NOT teaching them to call me mommy!"

"Of course not," I agreed solemnly. "You're clearly more of a 'Supreme Feathered Menace' archetype."

"Meen-aceeee!" one of the cabbage-girls immediately drawled.

"Menace!" another cabbage-girl echoed happily.

Soon the entire room was filled with twelve violet cabbage-people chanting "MENACE! MENACE!"

The Jingwei's eye twitched violently. "I hate you," she hissed at me. "I hate you so much."

"Doors over there," I pointed.

Sowwy glared at the door, then at the chanting cabbage-people, then back at me.

"I..." she let out.

"Do you remember what it's like to have pets or children?" I asked her. "Come on, you must have eaten tons of parents, tons of cultivators who cared a lot about something they've created, be it a fancy magic flying sword or a new cultivation technique. Don't you get it - you and I created something entirely new. Something you should be proud of, happy with."

Sowwy's metallic feathers rustled like knives rubbing against knives as she considered my words.

"I..." she started again, then paused as one of the braver cabbage-girls cautiously approached her once again. The violet-hued girl reached out with a leaf-hand, gently touching Sowwy's shimmering feathers.

"Shiny... Menace," the cabbage-girl said softly, stroking the metallic plumage, tiny leaves unfurling.

I pushed Qi into my eyes.

"Oh," I said watching as minute green sparks floated up from the Jingwei into the cabbage-girl. "They're eating your cursed energy."

Sowwy jerked at me in alarm. "They're what?!"

"Look," I pointed at the faint green sparks drifting from her feathers into the cabbage-girl's leaves. "They're absorbing your spiritual energy. Makes sense - they're basically spirit beasts too, just... vegetable ones. They probably need to feed on a particular spiritual essence to develop properly."

Sowwy recoiled from the cabbage-girl, her feathers flaring defensively. "They're eating my essence?! That's... that's..."

"Natural," I said calmly. "They're baby spirit beasts. They need spiritual nourishment to grow, just like you probably did when you first formed. And since they were grown from a dead cultivator's remains, they're naturally attuned to death and cursed spirit essence. You're the most cursed thing around here. You're dead."

"I am NOT dead!" Sowwy bristled. "I'm a perfectly alive spirit beast!"

"You're a cursed manifestation of spiritual energy made from death and pain," I pointed out. "A wound in the fabric of the word. You don’t age, don’t change, don’t fade away like a human or a wolf would. Pretty much the definition of an undead. These girls were grown from a dead cultivator using formations powered by the same cursed essence spilling from the falls. No wonder they're drawn to you - you're like this tasty, big glowing buffet of cursed energy.”

She simply stared at me with her usual, extra-hostile glare.

“What did you feed from when you were born?” I asked her, wondering about what I saw. “Do you remember? Can you tell me what or who died up there in the glaciers long ago?”

Sowwy's metallic feathers drooped slightly, her silver-green eyes growing distant. "I... I don't remember. Just... hunger. And cold. So cold..." She shook her head sharply. "But that's different! I'm..."

"They were cold too when they were born. Whatever, miser," I sat down in a lotus pose. "I'll feed them all myself. I know exactly what they need to nom now."

I began cycling Qi through my meridians, drawing spiritual energy from the valley's natural flows. Unlike most cultivators who had to carefully control and concentrate their energy, my abnormally wide meridians allowed me to channel massive amounts of raw Qi straight through myself nearly instantly.

The cabbage-girls immediately perked up, their violet leaves turning toward me like sunflowers tracking the sun. As I released waves of unfocused spiritual energy into the room, they began absorbing it eagerly, their leaves opening wide like radar dishes.

They crowded me, pawing at me like cats, eyes half closed, swaying with each released wave of Qi.

"Stop that!" Sowwy suddenly snapped, pushing through the crowd of cabbage-girls, her entire figure burning with emerald flames. "You're going to set your stupid house on fire pouring out raw Qi like that!"

I opened one eye. "Oh? Worried about me now?"

"No!" she bristled. "I just... it's... dangerous! They need properly refined spiritual essence, not this crude bombardment! You're like a bloody forest fire! Argh!"

"Well then," I smiled, ceasing my meditation, "feel free to demonstrate the proper Qi cultivation technique, Miss Supreme Feathered Menace."

The Jingwei clicked her beak in annoyance, then settled into a more comfortable position. Her metallic feathers began to glow with a soft emerald light as she carefully released controlled streams of refined spiritual essence.

The cabbage-girls immediately gravitated toward her, their violet leaves gently brushing against her shimmering plumage as they absorbed the offered energy. Unlike my crude Qi-dumping that made the entire house glow with orange, radial flames, Sowwy's spiritual essence was precisely modulated, dancing in soft patterns like green, beautiful auroras.

An emerald snowflake ignited beneath her, edges spreading out to make more snowflakes under each of the twelve cabbage-girls, magic converging into incredibly precise, complex multidimensional geometry.

There were more edges to each snowflake than possible in reality, Qi folding into itself in incredible Mobius loops and Non-Euclidean shapes in my Qi-enhanced sight.

"Show off," I muttered, watching as my cabbage-girls swayed contentedly in Sowwy's spiritual light show.

"This is how you properly dispense Qi to your disciples, idiot," she clicked. "Not whatever imbecility you're trying to pull with that simply drowns everything in your Qi until reality catches fire. Are you trying to kill them and yourself? Who taught you how to cultivate?"

"Well excuse me," I retorted, "Not all of us had four hundred years to nom on cultivators to perfect our fancy ass spiritual light shows. Some of us had to flee magic schools in shame after dying horribly."

"Maybe if you'd paid attention in your formation classes instead of setting teapots on fire or whatever, you wouldn't have died in the first place!" Sowwy retorted, still maintaining her delicate emerald light show.

"I didn't set the teapot on fire - Wei did," I corrected. "I just inherited his terrible cultivatory body and memories."

Sowwy's emerald eyes flickered slightly as she turned to stare at me. "What?"

"Oh right, never told you," I said. "I'm not actually Wei."

"WHAT?" Glowing eyes blinked at me.

"I got yanked into Wei's body from some distant elsewhere after he died trying a lightning-summoning technique," I explained. "Got all his memories and cultivation knowledge, but I'm not him. Pretty sure the original Wei's soul moved on during those 42 seconds of death."

Sowwy's emerald snowflakes stuttered and wavered as she processed this information. "You're... you're a body snatcher?!"

"I didn't choose to be in this particular body in this particular location," I crossed my arms. "It just sorta happened. Outside of my control. And I sure as hell wasn't going to stick around in a cult compound filled with people who knew exactly how Wei behaved for years."

The Jingwei stared at me for a long moment. "That... actually explains a lot. You're an Outsider. An Entropic entity from the Astral Ocean. A deranged spirit from the Infinite Abyss. Someone who somehow... avoided the Wheel. Hrmmm."

"I'm not that deranged," I huffed.

"Not that deranged?" Sowwy waved a hand at the cabbage-people. "You literally grew these bloody THINGS from a CORPSE! Using cabbage-reinforcement formations! What kind of twisted Abyssal entity ARE you?"

"A practical one," I replied. "Look, I woke up in a body with incredibly wide meridians that made normal cultivation dangerously explosive for my person. But those same wide meridians are perfect for channeling massive amounts of raw Qi into growth and reinforcement formations. So I figured - why not try something new?"