Mo Yuan watched Seventy-Three with pride. The young boy often preferred spending his time alone by burying his face in books at the library, rather than engaging in idle conversation with his elder martial brothers. Naturally everyone would assume that Seventy-Three was shy and hated to be around people, but in fact, he had good social relationships with all his martial brothers, particularly the young Jian Wei and Hao Xinzhi, who would often bring him goodie bags and desserts from the kitchen. In spite of his young age, Seventy-Three had a sweet tooth. But who could turn away that sweet, adorable face?
Seventy-Three would have the habit of immersing himself in books after classes and martial training. In addition to being a bookworm, he proved to show much potential in swordsmanship, performing remarkably when armed with a sword, but was noticeably weak in archery and often missed his shooting targets.
Mo Yuan enjoyed being with the boy, feeling like he had known him for a very long time. One day, the boy had come to him and presented him with a drawing of a very warm and beautiful place that resembled Bihai Cangling.
Seventy-Three had painted a clear sky overhead with few clouds, and the place had an abundance of tall trees adorned with purplish flowers. Purple was the colour of Emperor Donghua's robe then, when he had been alive.
"Seventy-Three, that's a beautiful work of art," Mo Yuan said. "Have you ever been to the place in your painting?"
Seventy-Three smiled shyly and said, "No, Master. I just imagined this place in my mind." As Mo Yuan had no idea how Bihai Cangling looked, he didn't ask more about the drawing. The only other living immortal who had known of and seen Bihai Cangling had been Zhe Yan.
Mo Yuan would later come to know that the boy was a prodigy when it came to studying. From the Bihai Cangling painting incident, Mo Yuan had seen for himself and would continue to see in future paintings, that though the boy seldom painted, his painting skills were remarkable and carried meaning to them, as if he had been to the places that he had committed to put in ink.
By the tenth year in the Kunlun Mountains, Seventy-Three had already mastered all the books in the library, and had even committed them to memory. It was due to this reason, that Mo Yuan decided to appoint him as the custodian of the library. Whenever anyone came to the library in search of a book, he was able to easily recommend which books would be of assistance and the locations of the books in the library. Although he had already memorised the content of all the books in the library, he still continued to read them out of his love for reading. He was interested particularly in Buddhist sutras and Taoist texts. Some time ago, while he was reading in the library, Seventy-Three came across some ancient records hidden in the library concerning Shao Wan, the ancestor of the Demon Clan and one of the earliest immortals. Seventy-Three's discovery piqued his curiosity. Due to this, he inquisitively asked Mo Yuan about the creation of the world and how the world had existed from the beginning. To placate his curiosity, Mo Yuan had told him in brief about the creation of the world, and about Shao Wan.
Shao Wan was about a few thousand years older than Mo Yuan and had been the second phoenix immortal to ever exist in the world, Zhe Yan being the only other phoenix immortal. She had been born out of the first light in the world, and had been the first demon queen. She had ended up forging a bosom friendship with Donghua and the goddess Zuti, whom along with Zhe Yan and Mo Yuan, were the earliest gods and goddesses born during the Great Honghuang Era. While she had been believed to have disintegrated, she was actually in a state of hibernation, and was yet to awaken.
No matter how hard or how many times he tried, Seventy-Three could not recall anything from his past. He often wondered how his childhood had been, or if he had a past lifetime. He was originally tasked with helping in the kitchen but had ended up creating even a worse mess than it was before. When he tried to cook, it had caused his peers to suffer from bad food poisoning, or if they had been lucky, they would just need to make a few trips to the bathroom. This was also another reason why Mo Yuan had assigned him to the library, thus swapping his role with that of Jian Wei, who was formerly an assistant librarian. It had been for the benefit of everyone.
On Seventy-Three's eight hundredth year in Kunlun Mountains, everyone was appalled when a strange foreign object appeared in the mountains. As it had been circling around everyone while still suspended in the air, Mo Yuan decided to investigate for himself. At that time, Seventy-Three had chosen to remain in the library instead of following the others outside to find out what the commotion was about. He was positive that if there were any signs of imminent danger or if there was an emergency, Mo Yuan would definitely send someone to get him. He assumed unswervingly that it was probably a joke by his elders to test him for his curiosity, or perhaps even an experiment gone wrong by one of the other disciples.
He heard the door being pushed open by someone, and all of a sudden something passed swiftly in the air and whizzed through the gap from the open door towards him. Mo Yuan watched as it appeared that the object, which he now identified as a small dagger, had chosen its owner. Following what had just happened, a stampede of young disciples barged into the library like wild bulls, clumsily knocking into the bookshelves in their shock. Seventy-Three's neatly arranged books started crashing down on their heads, waking them from their trance. In their minds, the sight of Seventy-Three being chosen by the weapon had been so intriguing and yet startling to them, that the disciples had all offered to dust and rearrange the books back on the shelves without a single question or word about what had just happened.
It was only Mo Yuan and the senior disciples from Bai Qian's time, particularly Four and Ten who stayed with Mo Yuan, whom remained calm and composed despite the incident before their very eyes. Mo Yuan was not shocked by the incident as he had always believed Seventy-Three to be special, as he he had seen Bai Qian to be. He decided to impart some of his skills and knowledge to Seventy-Three, giving him some scrolls to help him improve his skills in swordsmanship and immortal magic (xianshu). However, when he put Seventy-Three's skills to the test, he realised that he was not wrong in his judgment of Seventy-Three. His youngest disciple had indeed defied all odds by exhibiting to him the reality that despite what was taught to him, Seventy-Three excelled in immortal magic, to the extent that he even knew how to cast higher level spells that were beyond Mo Yuan's younger disciples' capability. This caused him to believe even more strongly than before, that Seventy-Three was Donghua.
Yet another incident would shake the Kunlun Mountains. It was three hundred years later, when they would discover Seventy-Three lying on the ground outside the temple one morning, motionless but still very much alive. Quickly Four and Ten called for their master to come, and Mo Yuan did not hesitate to quickly transfer some of his cultivation into the boy's body. How could a mere child have survived such torture, Mo Yuan thought. His age had been a myth, and Mo Yuan estimated, basing from the time Donghua vanished, that he was no more than 1,500 years of age. By then, he had lived and studied in the Kunlun Mountains for 1,300 years. But upon recalling his appearance when he was brought to the Kunlun Mountains, it dawned upon Mo Yuan that the boy did not appear to be only 200 years of age at that time. Was there a possibility he wasn't Donghua? Again, Mo Yuan wasn't sure if Seventy-Three was older than that, and if he wasn't actually Donghua but another immortal reborn into the world to help them.
After resting for a month to recuperate from his wounds which had appeared to Mo Yuan to be the result of repeated strikes of lightning, Seventy-Three had been plagued by nightmares every night. In his nightmares it had been chaotic. He faced wave after wave of enemies, while the grounds of the battlefield were covered in bloodstains and corpses of those who had fallen in battle. The nightmares had scared him so much that he was afraid to go back to sleep.
He revealed to Mo Yuan what he had seen in his dreams and what had happened the night before he had been found unconscious. He had gone out to help Jian Wei find something that he had lost in the woods. The sky had been very dark, and all of a sudden he felt a bolt of lightning penetrate his little body. This was followed by more bolts, one after another. In the end he had counted nine, and as he lay on the ground with his body scrunched in tremendous pain, it seemed to be that meteorites were falling from the sky. Mo Yuan recalled how Zhe Yan had mentioned that meteorites had been seen to catapult themselves at Donghua before he allegedly died. Mo Yuan put the facts together, and this just made him even more suspicious that the boy was Donghua.
Seventy-Three had trusted and regarded Mo Yuan as his own father, and Mo Yuan treated his disciples as his own children, but Seventy-Three had been exceptional to him. Mo Yuan seldom listened to his disciples' personal problems. Similarly, Seventy-Three would only reveal his issues to Mo Yuan. Now that Mo Yuan had 75 disciples in total, he had been very particular to not talk to them about personal issues.
Seventy-Three also told Mo Yuan that he was unable to see his own face in the nightmares, but he was able to see that he was wearing a purple robe during the time of the battles. When he tried to look at his reflection in the nightmares, all he could see of his face were flashes of luminous light covering his face. Mo Yuan also reassured him that he might have been dreaming due to thinking too much and having expectations of his own looks in his past lifetime. But Mo Yuan assumed that his disciple was seeing a memory of his past lifetime.
Perhaps, he was right. And perhaps, not.
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