Chapter 805: The Bottle
Early the next morning, several carriages departed from the military camp, carrying the old man and a dozen young people towards the Seven Profound Gate's main hall on Feixia Mountain in Taizhou.
"The Seven Profound Gate is a renowned sect in our Taizhou..." Along the way, a middle-aged man who seemed to be the old man's attendant chattered incessantly, boasting to the sharp young men selected from the refugees about the Seven Profound Gate and the old man.
The old man sat alone in another carriage, his activities unknown.
From the middle-aged man's descriptions, they learned that Elder Mo was a master of medicine and an honored guest elder of the Seven Profound Gate, specifically responsible for handling various difficult and complex cases within the sect.
His visit to the refugee camp was mainly to use these refugees, whose lives were as cheap as grass, to test the efficacy of the new wound healing medicine he had recently invented.
As for this so-called "righteous army," it was backed by the Seven Profound Gate as a test of the court's level of decay.
To see how much control the court still retained over the local regions.
Of course, the latter was merely Bai Mo's deduction from the attendant's words.
As for why the other party had a sudden whim to pick a few people out of the blue, that point was not mentioned at all.
The young man who had pleaded desperately yesterday to bring his younger brother along was now huddled in the corner of the carriage with the other person.
Bai Mo merely glanced and immediately discerned that this so-called "younger brother" was actually a "younger sister," a little girl who had put considerable effort into disfiguring herself.
Fluffy, disheveled hair, dirt smudged all over her hands and feet, and a face covered in coal ash made her look like a stereotypical street beggar.
Seemingly sensing they were being watched, even though they were now safely in the carriage, the siblings still appeared somewhat nervous.
Days of precarious living in the refugee camp, where they never knew what the next day would bring, had clearly left a profound impact on them.
...
"These are the few seedlings I picked from the refugees."
"Elder Mo, please." Steward Wang, who greeted the group at the main hall, said with a fawning smile.
"All of you, come over here. Take them to the guest courtyard in the back, by the bamboo grove." The steward quickly summoned a young servant, who led them to the guest courtyard.
"Tomorrow at sunrise, everyone is to gather in the back mountain."
"Yes!"
...
"Compared to the chaos outside, this place truly is a paradise." Bai Mo lay in the rather secluded house, slowly continuing to sort through the vast memories belonging to the Celestial Venerable.
The mortal body he had taken over was indeed too slow at processing memory information.
Tens of thousands of years of memories from a Celestial Venerable, even if only a portion was carried by the remnant soul, still amounted to a library's worth of information for a mortal.
"In this life, what should I do?" A question surfaced in Bai Mo's mind.
Back when he was the Demonic Sun Celestial Venerable, all those who had obstructed his path during his tribulation had been cast into reincarnation, though he too had ultimately fallen due to his severe injuries.
Even those who hadn't completely perished, if they wished to return from the dead and start anew, would likely need tens of thousands of years to recover.
"Then, I'll spend some time searching for the so-called 'Historical Texts'?" Bai Mo once again idly toyed with the jade pendant in his hand.
"..."
After much thought, he temporarily found only this one goal that could barely be considered a goal.
As for the Seven Profound Gate or Da Gan, in the eyes of a former Celestial Venerable who had lived for ten thousand years, there was truly little difference between them. Mortal organizations with mere one or two hundred years of history were no different from mayflies that lived and died within a single day.
...
The next day's entrance test, under Elder Mo's subtle hint, was easily passed by everyone as a mere formality, and they were then naturally assigned to his tutelage.
"If you can cultivate this Five Elements Art to the fourth layer within a year, you can become his indoor disciple; otherwise, you'll be sent back to serve as an outer sect menial?"
Elder Mo assigned a task to the few individuals he had chosen, giving each of them an ancient book and some medicinal ingredients, and then left again, leaving his temporary disciples dumbfounded.
This time, he disappeared for several months.
...
"Six months of the one-year deadline have already passed... and I'm still stuck on the first layer. If I lose Elder Mo's care, life with my sister will become much harder later on." Whenever Han Yu was troubled, he would habitually wander around the Seven Profound Gate's back mountain.
When he had first brought his disguised sister to the Seven Profound Gate, they had enjoyed a rare half-year of peaceful living.
The few of them, thanks to Doctor Mo's patronage, had always enjoyed the benefits of inner sect core disciples.
Through this period of observation, he understood very well that outer sect menials of the Seven Profound Gate had to perform at least five or six hours of miscellaneous chores a day, and their treatment was extremely poor.
Compared to their current situation, where food and drink were plentiful, and they only needed to focus on cultivation without any other duties, it was truly a world of difference.
"I don't want to lose this life!"
A surge of nameless anger rose in Han Yu, and he vented by kicking a pebble-like object on the ground.
But with that kick, he found that he seemed to have kicked an iron plate, and the pain made him plop down onto the ground.
"What's this?"
Only after the pain slowly subsided a little did he have the presence of mind to turn his head and look at the perpetrator.
A small bottle half-buried in the soil.
He curiously dug out the bottle. It was covered in mud, its original appearance completely obscured.
Just as he wanted to take a few more looks, his vision suddenly went dark, and he fainted, the small bottle slipping from his grasp.
However, just as the small bottle was about to return to the ground once more, a hand gently caught it from below.
Bai Mo appeared amidst the dense shadows of the back mountain.
In half a year's time, he had recovered to a strength nearing the Foundation Establishment stage. As for his divine sense, it could even rival that of a Golden Core cultivator.
Within the entire Seven Profound Gate, every action and movement of each person was observed by Bai Mo.
Han Yu's fortuitous encounter caught his attention.
"A little familiar..." He casually summoned a gust of clear wind, and the mud clinging to the bottle automatically fell away, revealing the bottle's true form.
"It looks like something belonging to a Light ** Venerable?" After searching through his memories of that final battle for a while, Bai Mo basically confirmed that this was the true spirit artifact of one of the individuals who had besieged him back then.
He didn't believe in such things as fortuitous coincidences. This fellow he had just knocked unconscious was very likely chosen by the other party as a contingency for their revival.
For figures of a Dao Venerable's caliber, even if all their current existence in the mortal realm was eradicated, it was extremely difficult to completely erase all traces they left behind.
And any such trace could potentially become a hidden piece for their resurgence.
"It's all in the past."
Bai Mo, holding Han Yu in one hand and the bottle in the other, vanished into the back mountain.
...
"Where am I? What just happened?" Han Yu's last memory was still of himself picking up the bottle.
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