In the mortal world, where Fengjiu and Seventy-Three are both at.
As each day went by, Fengjiu got used to living in the wilderness like birds flying in the sky. Never did a day go by that she needed to hide her youthful looks or her birthmark behind makeup. Neither did she have to don men's clothing to protect herself from the danger of lecherous men. The only exception had been when she left the mountains to buy special materials from the village closest to the mountains. She would use different disguises when she left the mountains temporarily.
In the decades that Fengjiu spent in the mountains, rumour spread like wildfire that there had been an evil spirit residing up in the mountains that would kill and eat human beings. The mortals believed that if one went to the mountains, there would be no hope of them coming back again, so they avoided going to the mountains. Thus, Fengjiu was safe from being discovered by mortals, and was able to indulge in a life of seclusion, cultivating in the mountains.
On the third day of the second month in the lunar calendar, Fengjiu watched the full moon with a jar of wine in her right hand, when suddenly the moon turned red. It was a full lunar eclipse known as the blood moon. Her cultivation allowed her to conclude that something out of the ordinary was about to happen.
Meanwhile, on the same night, in Zitong, Sichuan Province, a poor widow birthed an infant with a full head of silver hair. Upon seeing the infant's hair, she was overridden by guilt, thinking that due to the despair she had gone through while pregnant, it had caused the infant to have been born with white hair. She named the boy Zhang Ya, in the wishes of her late husband.
Ten years passed in the blink of an eye. Zhang Ya was ambushed from a distance at the foot of the so-called cursed mountains by hunters wanting to take his life, as he had been believed to be an evil spirit. He had fainted from his injuries. Just in the nick of time before the hunters could approach the unconscious boy, a beautiful young woman materialised before them and defeated the attackers with a mere swing of her sword.
When the boy came to, he found himself in a cave. His injuries had already been wrapped and treated. A beautiful lady hovered above him, seeming to have been taking care of him as he slept. He instantaneously knew that this beauty had to be his saviour. "Who are you? Why have you saved me?" he asked.
As he received no response from her, he continued, "Everyone discriminated me and many thought I'm a demon due to my hair colour. Why are you so kind to me?"
She looked at him sadly. "Why should I be unkind to you, just because they did? After all, you're only a mortal." The weight of her words had shocked him. Was she not from this world, since she referred to him as 'only a mortal'? Where could she be from? Thoughts were lingering in his mind. In years from now, these questions would still remain unanswered.
"You remind me of someone I know," she added a few minutes later. "But regardless, as a passer-by seeing someone in trouble, how could I just have walked by without lending a helping hand? Furthermore, this is where I live as well."
Silence fell over them. Her phoenix birthmark shimmered brightly in the brightness. A medium-sized pearl illuminated the cave, allowing him to focus on her excellent facial features. She had been dressed in a simple thin dress, her hair bound in a single high ponytail. The boy wondered what a beauty like her was doing in the mountains.
"Here, drink this and get well," the beautiful woman said after some time had passed, handling him a vial containing a concoction for his recovery. In the years of living in the mountains, she had brought with her books on the way of herbalists. For eleven years, she had been cultivating and practising herbalism in the mountains, using herbs that she gathered with her own hands, to qualify as a skilled herbalist. The concoction contained a potion to restore his vitality and heal his injuries, but it also contained a sleeping draught. When he woke up, it was already morning and he was back in his village with no signs of the woman he had met the night before. His basket, filled to the brim with gathered herbs, lay by his side.
Fengjiu's POV
Fengjiu recalled how the boy who appeared to be no more than an ordinary mortal, had responded to her with such a mature voice.
"What in the world, did you come to these cursed mountains for?" she asked.
"I was gathering wild herbs as the village doctors are willing to exchange the herbs for money and medication for my sick mother," the boy said truthfully. Despite him knowing about the rumoured dangers of the mountains having an evil spirit, he still went to the mountains. The hunters that had attacked him had appeared to be geared with Taoist talismans and amulets of different kinds, as they were probably prepared to defeat the 'evil spirits'.
Fengjiu asked herself how cruel fate was. She lamented, "At such a young age, he had already been destined to suffer so much. But at least he is more fortunate than me. As compared to me, he probably only has a few more years in his suffering." While Donghua's disappearance from the realms would make her suffer for eternity. Foxes chose to have only one partner all their lives. In the absence of that partner such as in death, they would often find it difficult for them to accept a new partner.
Recalling Si Ming was in charge of writing destinies of mortals and that of immortals being sent to the mortal realms regardless due to punishment or to undergo their trials to ascend to the status of high god, she wondered what wrongdoings the mortal boy had done in his former lifetime to reap such karma to be reborn to a widow who lived in such poverty.
When the boy was unconscious, she used her newly acquired powers as a high immortal to tap into the boy's energy to find out for herself if he was indeed a mortal, and to look into his life as a mortal. She was unable to detect any immortal energy on the boy, and deduced that he was a common mortal. As his silvery hair had reminded her so much of her lost lover, she knew that it could not be possible for him to reappear as a mortal with no immortal energy on him.
She felt sympathetic towards the boy upon seeing in his life, how he had been bullied and , remembering her time in the mortal realm where she inhabited the body of Donghua's mortal self, the Song Emperor's consort. Due to the jealousy of his wife and several concubines, they had called for a Taoist priest who insisted that her phoenix birthmark was a demonic flower and hence, the mark of the devil. Furthermore, as the birthmark appeared on Consort Chen's forehead only after she took over her body, they were suspicious of her identity. If not for the Song Emperor's intervention, she probably would be put to death. And now it was happening to this boy, just because he had white hair. In the different worlds she had lived in, she realised the fact that mortals often tended to jump to conclusions about things that were unusual and many had been superstitious.
In her sorrow, Fengjiu turned to the clear, dark sky and watched the twinkling stars. "Donghua, where are you?" she asked bitterly. "When will you come back?"
Was fate teasing her? she thought as she received no answer from the sky.
Perhaps it was time she returned to Qingqiu, after roaming the worlds for such a long, long time. Furthermore, she had already accepted the reality that Donghua was finally gone, and it was a fact that would never change.
The young boy had been the reason that she would break her own rule that she had imposed on herself, when she cast a light spell to spirit him back to the entrance of his village. She probably could have left him in the woods below the mountains, but she had feared for his safety.
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Meanwhile, Zhang Ya returned home after sending the rare collection of herbs that he had gathered to the physicians, and collecting his payout as well as a few packs of prescribed medication, which he would brew in a pot with a slow fire, to feed his mother with. But to his dismay, when he arrived home, his mother was lying weakly on the ground, breathing her last moments.
She was just as beautiful as she had been when he first remembered her as a young child. She had loved wearing floral dresses, and due to how poor they were, she would constantly patch up their clothes when they got torn. They had survived on whatever produce they could harvest in their fields. With the exception of winter, his mother had busied herself in planting whatever she could. She had been sick for a very long time, and her condition deteriorated when she overworked herself by taking care of him and working hard in the fields. Her last words when he hurriedly hugged her had been, "You are so smart, Ya'er. How I wish I could have lived to see you in a scholar's robe."
And it had been with his mother's last words, that Zhang Ya, a mere boy of ten, vowed that no matter what, he would sit for the imperial examinations and achieve the title of scholar. Following his mother's death, he found work in a rich tycoon's estate as a servant, eventually growing up to impress both masters, young and old, with his intelligence and photographic memory. When he was a teenager, the old master had him study with his grandchild, whom he later grew up with, and later, both men sat for the imperial examinations together.476Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyrmPAhZ31o
In the boy's brilliant mind, nothing would ever stop him from accomplishing his mother's wish to become a scholar. He had a long road ahead, filled with discrimination and people belittling him due to his status as a poor servant, all of which Fengjiu had seen in his mortal life. But in spite of all his hardship, he was determined to overcome his problems and prove himself with all his intelligence and his heart of gold.
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