Origin.

Thousands years ago, the heavenly emperor creates a place, in the human world, for the numerous homeless creatures who aim to gain immortality through cultivation and become immortals. This place was called "Taohua" or "The cherry blossom grove".

It was a vast landscape with mountains, rivers and also everywhere you were stepping the cherry blossom petals were following you.

Somewhere, in this place, he plants a special cherry blossom seed that slowly starts to sprout. While sprouting, growing as tall as a child's stature and suddenly blooming for the first time, the young tree becomes surrounded by a glowing aura. All the small peasants who were gathering in that place, were curious to know why this cherry tree is different from the others trees but no one finds out the answer. When a wise and young cultivator from the human world gets lost somehow and enters the forbidden realm of blossom and also wanders through that place for several months until, in one night, he finds a grove where a glowing cherry is planted and becomes enchanted by its beauty.

He quickly realizes that this tree is also wise and it can also cultivate on its own. This is how the word about the glowing cherry gets out and the other creatures start to understand what it really is and how important it is for Taohua.

The handsome man spends the entire night sleeping at the tree's trunk where he is safe from danger, even though only peaceful creatures are residing in the cherry blossom grove.

In the morning, when the sun washes his white like the chalk face and he wakes up, he stretches his body rising his arms toward the clear sky.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, a dry sweet voice whispers "water, I'm thirsty"!

He gets startled and thinks at the beginning that it is his hallucination but the voice whispers a second time, a third time and a fourth time.

"Water, water, I want water! It's too dry lately!"

"It's anyone around", he asks but in all the time he wandered through this place, no human face could be seen and only small animals were there.

Deep inside he knows that it isn't the voice of a human but is something more powerful than that, so he carefully tries to comfort the one who's calling him out.

"Whatever you are, can we pass by each other in peace", he tells to that voice but nothing responds.

The silence was deepened by the blowing wind and the man once again thinks that it is just his imagination but after the few minutes of peace, the voice could be heard again.

"Can you water my roots, it was extremely dry these months?"

Astonished, the man turns around and looks at the tree behind himself asking it: "you're the one who is talking to me?"

The cherry tree says "yes" and explains that the pond near dried a few months ago and since then no drop of water could reach its roots, the poor plant was in need of help because it was unable to move from that place and search a source of water on its own.

The handsome cultivator is friendly and kindhearted, so he promises to water its roots until the rainy season comes back again.

By the way, here in Taohua it was only one season all year long and the flowers never wilted because of the change of the season but instead they were degrading because of the change of the weather. He finds a river at some kilometers far from the groove and carries water in some improvised bamboo buckets. All the procedure would take almost seven years in the human world but because here in Taohua the time was passing slowly, the young cultivator only loses seven months of his life watering the cherry tree. He stops when the rainy season starts.

The tree is very grateful and as thanks for his good deed, the tree's petals pushed by the flow of "qi" energy leads him out of the groove's maze. It is a win-win situation for the both sides. They part their ways here, promising to see each other again in the future if somehow the fate pushes them on the same path.

It was not a place easy to reach by a mere human because it was always changing its form and a huge aura was surrounding Taohua, making it impossible to be detected by a normal eye.

The man returns to his own world and paints Taohua's landscapes in many various ways, while the young cherry continues to glow and its evolution is visible in the days to come. While I keep telling the story, the clock is tick-tocking in Taohua and the human realm.

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