” Momo, you’ve grown up?”
While Lin Luoran’s surprised, the young girl Momo seems to be confused. It looks like she has never seen Lin before.
“Why were you crying?” Momo still doesn’t understand what has happened between them, yet she changes the topic, asking Lin Luoran the reason she cried. It’s strange to see a grown-up crying like that. Momo wants to calm her down, and she can also feel Lin Luoran’s sadness.
Lin Luoran feels weird about Momo’s reaction. She wipes away her tears and hesitates for a while. But looking at Momo’s crystal clear eyes, she suddenly desires to talk to her.
Perhaps it’s also because she’s been suppressed for too long.
Returning from Penglai, Lin Luoran was faced with the upheaval of her homeland. Later, she experienced both the happiness to reach the top and the pain and despair of falling. For people around Lin Luoran always look up to her, this is the first time for her to speak out her uncertainty. Momo is absorbed into her story.
Momo doesn’t offer any comfort to Lin Luoran. She looks away at the strange but comfortable bed, starting to tell another story.
“Once there was a village called ‘Sang’. On the left of the village was the tall Qingluan Mountain, inhabited by beautiful and gentle cyan luan birds. On the right was the rolling hills. There were delicious wild vegetables in spring, berries in summer, and wild fruits in autumn. Even in winter, you could catch hares hiding in the cave.”
Momo lowers her voice, looking out of the window. There are medicine gardens and spirit fields. The fruits in the space remind her of the beautiful hidden village called “Sang”.
Simple but impressive, Momo’s description makes Lin Luoran feel as if she’s in the story. “Sang” sounds like a lost paradise.
“Deep in the mountain, there were exotic flowers and plants, and also monsters. In winter, when the animals hid, the monsters turned to attack hunters. Every year during the coldest time, some villagers would die in the mountains.
An immortal in white on the Qingluan Mountain often helped villagers. Seeing hunters in winter often lost their lives in the mountains, he taught tribes nearby to grow their food. With the fertile land, Sang started to have a better harvest than other villages. As people don’t need to get into the winter mountains, there were fewer casualties. Kids in Sang dreamed of going to Qingluan Mountain to learn the arts of nature, so they could protect their village.
In a snowy winter, a little girl was born in the village. Having a child in their old age, the girl’s parents loved her very much. Although they had grains in winter, the delighted father wanted to put meat on the table. The old wife watched her husband into the mountain with her daughter in arms. It was really heavy snow. She waited until the night fell and the day came. The old hunter never went back… Within a few years, the heartbroken mother died, leaving her only daughter behind. Since then, the little girl born in the snowy day had become an orphan. She was already six years old but looked way shorter than other girls of the same age. ”
The words are like a knife cutting Lin’s flesh. She feels an underlying pain. Lin Luoran hold Momo ‘s hand. The girl’s palm is cold.
Momo is the little girl who lost her parents in her childhood, right?
Lin Luoran remembers the days when she was a student. She tried to recite the Kangxi Dictionary. It said mo means humble. Momo, does it mean a humble orphan?
Momo laughs. “Do you think the orphan is pitiful?”
Momo knows what she is thinking. Lin Luoran doesn’t know whether to shake her head or nod. Fortunately, the girl doesn’t mind. She shakes her head and speaks with a low voice, “You are wrong. People in Sang Village thought she was lucky. After her parents died, she fainted at the bottom of Qingluan Mountain due to hunger. The immortal living on the mountain top saved her.
She became the youngest apprentice of Qingluan Mountain.
There were more than 300 people in Qingluan Mountain. Due to her age, all the school brothers cared about her very much. They picked her fruits and even took her to the sky to see the crane. In less than two months, the skinny girl gained a lot of weight. Her face then was as round as an orange. Master White Beard promised to teach her Training Qi when she turned eight.
It turned out that the school brothers and sisters on Qingluan Mountain, including the masters, were all called Qi-trainer. They were not immortals as the villagers believed.
Because the master said that she couldn’t improve her personal ability until she was eight. The little girl was counting the days every day.
When could she become eight years old?
She asked the school brothers so often that they didn’t know what to say. The girl always giggled when they were speechless. She gradually forgot her sad childhood and began to feel that she was the happiest little girl in the world.
Unfortunately… Things easy to get are also easy to lose. ”
” Momo, stop it.” Lin Luoran feels her pain and wants to stop her from talking.
Momo turns to her, with a smile sweet as honey. “Then one day, an enemy came up the mountain. The master was killed. She and the school brothers were arrested… Faced with more than 300 people in Qingluan Mountain, the vicious enemy killed one person every day to torture her eldest school brother. Just because he didn’t want to compromise. On the last day, only she and her eldest school brother were left among all the Qi-trainers. The enemy then threatened to kill her. Thinking about her father who were lost in the winter forest, the little girl refused to submit. Out of anger, the enemy turned more cold-blooded. He wanted to tear her apart.”
Lin Luoran tells Momo to stop. However, hearing that her life was in danger, Lin Luoran can’t help but ask, “What happened then? How did you… that little girl escape from danger?”
Feeling the concerns in her voice, Momo pulls her hands out from Lin Luoran’s.
“Then a person suddenly appeared, saving the little girl and her school brother. The killer was a devil. Because he was annoyed, his whole clan joined to chase the descendants of the person.”
Lin Luoran has an intuition that the person who saved Momo was the man in robe.
What happened to Momo then?
” Momo, why do you tell me all these…”
The girl shakes her head. “I don’t know. Just like you are willing to talk to me. I have never told the story to others, but I want to tell you. It’s really weird.”
Weird? Maybe.
Lin Luoran is more willing to believe that the girl told her the old story because she didn’t know how to comfort Lin— Maybe she wanted to share her miserable past so that they could help each other?
Momo’s smile is like a delicious sweet cake. It can melt people’s hearts. If she doesn’t tell the truth, who would know she has lost her parents as a child and witnessed her sect massacred. Compared with her, Lin Luoran had parents who loved her very much. Even though they have been separated, they still have the opportunity to reunite. She shouldn’t give up.
Seeing Lin regain her hope, Momo is happy, too.
She looks around the room. “It seems I’ve seen you somewhere… By the way, where is this?”
Lin Luoran is a bit surprised. Momo used to be the owner of this space in the pearl. And she doesn’t even know?!
But the girl doesn’t seem to be lying. An idea hits Lin like a flash of light. “Wait,” Lin says to herself. Considering her words and behavior, Lin comes up with a bold guess.
“Momo, have you really not seen me?”
Momo shakes her head.
Lin Luoran frowns. Perhaps that’s the only possibility. She looks at the ancient blue book on the table. The Lin family has two heirlooms. One is the magical space in the pearl. The former owner died and her spirit stayed as a child. Only when Lin Luoran breaks the inhibition of the wooden hut during the Bearing Essence period can they meet each other.
Another ancestral treasure of the Lin family is the unknown medicine book.
Momo, the girl in front of Lin Luoran, is not a real person. Is she only a memory from the past created through the magic of the medicine book?
No wonder the Momo that Lin saw after her Bearing Essence looked like a child but spoke like a well-experienced adult, leaving Lin Luoran with many questions. Momo now has the mind of a little girl at the age of thirteen or fourteen. She even told Lin her own story to comfort her.
“Are you hiding in that medicine book?”
Momo is curious about the furnishings in the room. If Lin Luoran allows it, she even wants to go outside. After hearing Lin Luoran’s question, she wonders. “What medicine book?”
Looking at the book Lin Luoran refers to, Momo is surprised. “This is not a medicine book. Why do you think it is a medicine book? He will laugh if he hears it.”
Lin Luoran believes that the “he” in Momo’s words is the mysterious man in robe. But if it is not a medicine book, what is the ancient blue book?
Momo laughs. “Obviously it’s ‘Tao’. You can’t read the cover?”
The smooth book cover doesn’t have a single word on. Where does the name “Tao” come from? Lin Luoran doesn’t want to argue with the little girl. Momo moves her finger. A gold pattern that she is familiar with appears in the air. Lin Luoran’s stunned. Momo merges into the ancient blue book.
Two large golden figures appear on the cover of the book. Lin Luoran has never seen such a writing style.
Title—Tao?
The golden figures seem to come from the ancient world. Driven by a strong impulse, Lin Luoran opens the dust-covered book. Only then does the book show its true cover.
Open it. Open it. Take a look.
The unknown medicine book from Lin family’s ancestor is found by her in space. Is the ancient book titled “Tao” only about medicine?
She hesitates and turns to Momo for advice. But the door is closed and the girl named Momo has gone.
The village she called “Sang”. Qingluan Mountain where Qi-trainer lived. An orphan experiencing her sect massacred … Suddenly the story is like a dream. If there were not the intact blue book and the golden title, Lin Luoran would think everything is an imagined story.
