Mo Yuan and Shao Wan (三生三世十里桃花) - Vol. 1 [COMPLETED]

Chapter 16

written by kakashi
edited by JoAnne

For reasons not entirely clear to the Water King of the Western Seas and his Queen, this year's White Rock Sea Festival drew a much larger crowd than any of the previous festivals. As usual, they had sent out a generous amount of invitations to this cultural celebration of Realm diversity, expecting many polite refusals. However, more and more immortals had put their name on the guest list this year as the festival drew closer.

Because it was thus, the Water King saw himself confronted with a irksome problem days before the festival started - there weren't enough guest rooms, not by far. He and his first son debated putting only Celestials (and Foxes) into the available space at the palace, but that was likely to create bad blood or even a crisis with the Demon and the Ghost clans.

Luckily, his clever wife came up with a solution: put everyone into tents at the beach! Not only would this add a touch of adventure and playfulness to the festival, it also freed space at the palace to host more small events ... and political side-meetings. The White Rock Sea Festival was a celebration of peace and unity, but everybody knew that tensions were rising in the Demon Realm due to the return of the ancient Demon Overlord. The Water King of the Western Seas had felt honored, even thrilled when Dijun had asked to use the opportunity of the festival for diplomatic meetings between Celestials - represented by the God of War - and Demons - represented by the Demon Ancestor and the other attending Demon Kings.

***

Mo Yuan meditated for a few hours after his arrival at the Western Seas, then stepped out of his tent into the salt-laden air. The Water King had assigned him a tent that was slightly elevated on a dune. It awarded him a spectacular view across the entire encampment with its hundreds of small and large tents. Apart from difference in size, all of them looked the same, deliberately denying the guests signs of status and power. However, the Water King had decided to put Clan members with Clan members instead of randomly assigning and mixing them - which was probably wise, given the history of war between them. The tents of the Demon Clan were the farthest away from the Celestial encampment and, though visible from where he stood, he could not tell who had arrived and who had not. All he knew was the Demon Goddess had accepted the invitation, which meant she was alive and (most probably) well. This knowledge had been enough to stop the violent dreams so that he slept much more soundly of late and felt sufficiently rested.

Mo Yuan had brought his Senior Disciple and Sixteenth with him, leaving Second Disciple in charge of the school. The two were sharing a tent next to his. Die Feng had tried to hide how proud he was about his family hosting this grand meeting, but he was smiling much more than usual. Sixteenth on the other hand ... when Mo Yuan had found out about his oath to guard the Sea of Innocence until the end of his life, he had scolded his disciple. He had told him that it was wrong, even likely to anger fate, to take punishment for saving someone's life - especially a baby's life. A child was an innocent life and had no guilt, even if they were a child of the Ghost Tribe. This child's mother - Xuan Nu, who had betrayed them so nastily during the Ghost War - was already dead, as was her father Li Jing. No debts were owed.

This was what Mo Yuan had said to Sixteenth, even raising his voice a little in anger, and Sixteenth had bowed and apologized profoundly ... but he remained gloomy and had stopped smiling altogether after rejoining them at Kunlun. From the little he knew about what had happened in the Ghost Realm, Mo Yuan could guess why Zi Lan had done what he had done and he understood what was eating away at his disciple. Unable to help him directly, the Master of Kunlun had taken him to the Festival hoping that Zi Lan might be able to talk to Seventeenth here and that it would help to cheer him up a little or even give him some of his spirits back.