The Child-and-Mother River and the Twin River

"Back when this immortal was a hegemon of a realm, an entire planet was my domain! I could shape it however I pleased to bring blessings to the world." "This Twin Conjoined Lotus is also a new species cultivated by yours truly!" "Wait, really?" The Immortal Fairy had been chattering endlessly in Lu Yang's spiritual space. At first, Lu Yang had treated her words like wind past his ears, in one ear and out the other without really listening. Now, his curiosity was piqued. Lu Yang had always felt that heavenly treasures and earthly wonders had existed since ancient times, fundamentally unchanging. For example, common precious medicinal herbs like ginseng and lingzhi, or even roadside bristlegrass and wild chrysanthemums, had been around for as long as human history had been recorded. Since they were called heavenly treasures and earthly wonders, they were naturally treasures born of heaven and nourished by earth. Lu Yang had never heard of any heavenly treasure being cultivated by a mighty figure of later generations. Yet here she was, claiming just that. "Tell me, what happened?" Lu Yang asked attentively. The Immortal Fairy smiled smugly, immensely pleased with his attitude. This was how an immortal ought to be treated! "To speak of this, I must speak of my incredible abilities." "This was after I attained immortality. As you know, I possessed great renown in the ancient era, and many people willingly worshipped me." "At the time, a devout female worshipper came to pray to me. She wanted a pair of twins, but such matters were beyond human power, so she came seeking my aid." "I gave it some thought and figured granting such a wish wouldn't hurt, so I set about handling it." The Immortal Fairy was a goddess with a sense of propriety; she didn't grant just any wish. "Originally, I could have simply refined a pill to help her conceive twins. But then, I remembered something Immortal Jiuchong once said." "Immortal Jiuchong said that whenever one believer makes a wish, ten more want to make the exact same wish." "Fertility is an eternal wish; there was no way only a single believer would want twins." "Even if I refined a pill now, what would I do when someone else prayed to me in the future? Keep refining pills? Far too troublesome!" "So I thought of a solution once and for all: by relying on my supreme divine arts, drawing upon the world's spiritual energy, extracting Dao rhythms, altering certain rules, and applying various other methods far beyond your current understanding, I refined an entire river into an immortal artifact!" "Anyone who drank the river's water would conceive twins in her womb." "I named the waters the Twin River." Lu Yang fell silent for a moment before asking, "...You didn't happen to have another flash of inspiration later and create another river called the Child-and-Mother River, where any woman who drank from it would become pregnant, and all of them gave birth to girls, did you?" "Well, no, not later..." Lu Yang breathed a sigh of relief. "I made the Child-and-Mother River before I made the Twin River!" The Immortal Fairy asked curiously, "How did you know about the Child-and-Mother River? Was it recorded in ancient texts?" "Just pretend I saw it in a dream." The Immortal Fairy didn't think much of it and continued, "The living things growing in the river were influenced by its waters, undergoing a deviation—or rather, a change—at the very origin of their souls." "The one with the most noticeable change was a lotus. Originally, it only bloomed with a single flower, but after growing in the Twin River, it began blooming with two flowers on one stem." "Finding it novel, I named this lotus..." "The Twin Conjoined Lotus?" Lu Yang blurted out, following her line of thought. "The Sister Flowers!" Lu Yang: "..." "When Immortal Ying Tian found out, he advised me against it, saying that calling them Sister Flowers sounded terrible and failed to capture the grandeur of an immortal's creation. He urged me to change the name to Twin Conjoined Lotus." "I thought it sounded pretty good, so I agreed." "The seeds of the Sister Flowers tasted great, too. I often made porridge with them for Ying Tian and the others." Earlier, the Immortal Fairy had said that lotus seed soup could bless people with many children and great fortune. It hadn't been an empty boast; such an effect was genuinely possible. "As the ancient era came to an end, who knows where the Child-and-Mother River and the Twin River went? Whether they were refined into other immortal artifacts or hidden away by someone, I haven't the faintest idea." The Twin Conjoined Lotus, a precious heavenly treasure capable of helping someone form a first-grade Golden Core, was regarded by the world as a treasure born of heaven and earth. No one had ever imagined it was an immortal's creation—and that its original purpose had never been Core Formation, but making porridge. "What kind of accomplishment is forming a core with a Twin Conjoined Lotus? Stick with this immortal, and I'll teach you how to form the Invincible Core!" The Immortal Fairy scoffed at the idea of using the Twin Conjoined Lotus for Core Formation, considering any Golden Core produced that way far inferior to her own. Even among first-grade Golden Cores, there was a hierarchy of strength. Lu Yang rolled his eyes and stopped paying attention to her. Snapping back to reality, he resumed discussing how to divide the lotus. "Since the purpose of the conjoined lotus is Core Formation, why don't the four of us examine it together? Whoever gains an enlightenment on Core Formation gets to keep it. How about that?" Meng Jingzhou's proposal met with unanimous agreement. Meng Jingzhou found a vase and placed the conjoined lotus inside. The four of them gathered in a tight circle, their eyes glued to the lotus. The scene was genuinely bizarre, resembling a demonic cult holding some forbidden ritual. Fortunately, all four were disciples of the Dao Seeking Sect—proper, bona fide righteous cultivators—so they wouldn't arouse suspicion. Lu Yang stared intently at the Twin Conjoined Lotus, wondering if he could form a fiercely offensive Yin-Yang Golden Core like Second Senior Brother had. Meng Jingzhou burned the image of the Twin Conjoined Lotus into his mind. Through prolonged evolution, the conjoined lotus had developed the ability to reverse attributes. Meng Jingzhou hoped that by comprehending the lotus, he could invert yin and yang and transform his Bachelor Spiritual Root into a Harem Spiritual Root. Tao Yaoye was pondering how to incorporate the variations of yin and yang into her illusions to make them even more elusive and unfathomable. If she could fuse these illusion shifts with an enlightenment on Core Formation, that would be wonderful. Man Gu stared at the conjoined lotus, his head filled with poetic descriptions of lotus blossoms, like "emerging untainted from the mud, washed clean by the ripples without being coquettish," and "the lotus leaves touch the sky, an endless green; beneath the sun, the lotus flowers blush a distinct crimson." Soon, Man Gu thought of another crucial question: *Can you eat the lotus flower? Can it be roasted?* Just like that, the four sat in silence for two full days. Lu Yang's eyes grew dry from staring. He pulled out the eyedrops Eldest Senior Sister had given him, applied two drops, and felt much better. "Did any of you gain any insights?" he asked. The other three shook their heads in unison, all coming up empty-handed. Contemplating it for two whole days without gaining anything showed that their fortunes did not lie with the conjoined lotus. Forcing Core Formation would never work. "It feels like a waste to just throw it away after fighting so hard for it. Why don't we sell it at a chamber of commerce and split the spirit stones equally?" Tao Yaoye suggested. Since continued meditation wouldn't bear fruit, it was better to give up now and cut their losses. "Sounds good." Neither Meng Jingzhou nor Man Gu had any objections. Lu Yang raised his hand with a different request: "I'd like the lotus seeds. I won't take any of the spirit stones from the auction, all right?" The Immortal Fairy had been throwing a tantrum in his spiritual space for ages, demanding the seeds. To quell this immortal calamity, Lu Yang had no choice but to claim them.